Observation

Rick writes, '...even if you don't "win" a particular item, another one will show up that may be better and most likely cheaper.'

That one hit close to home. I recall a time when I would bid outlandish sums for items I wanted in the mistaken belief that "it's my only chance." I cringe inside sometimes when I see how cheaply those very same items are selling on eBay today. Don't fret if you miss out on an item the first time you see it on eBay, or even the second, third, or fourth time. You will see it again...and again. Eventually, you'll get it on your terms, and that will make it seem all the sweeter.

February 23rd was horrible.
March 2nd was horrible.
March 9th was a little better.
March 16th was pretty good.
March 23rd ( today ) ???

They've steadily improved performance over the past 3 sundays. I am hoping for a repeat performance over last week.

The worse eBay runs, the worse we run because we're constantly checking for outbids, bidding, seeing if you won, running searches, etc. When those dont work they slow down things here too. For an example a snipe status may still say "ready" even though we've already sniped, it's just that we cant tell if you won or lost so it still says ready until we can figure out the new status by contacting eBay. If they are slow then we get behind from previous snipes before yours and we gotta do those first... etc.

Anyways after 2 bad weekends at the end of February and beginning of March I was really wondering if it might be our fault. So we even added the extra webserver,which didnt help. So it musta been eBay, then it got better the next two weeks after that.

So I'm going to bed, hoping for blue skies when I wake up!

3 Sunday's in a row! Looks like ebay's Sunday nights are improving. I'd still follow the advice to use longer lead times.

I can see blue skies.

Grasshopper

Hmmm, saying it's improving might send out a warp into the time/space continuum of the universe causing things to regress...gotta be careful about jinxing things, you know. I still wouldn't use a shorter lead time because of the tenacity of Murphy's Law.
OK, that's 15 posts for me. Am I a bona-fide sniper now instead of a junior sniper?

Look under your name, fordfalcons.