---
date: "2024-05-04T20:44-08:00"
title: "Single points of failure"
description: "When I was a kid — I want to say 5 or younger — my family went to the local cemetery. My father's sister had passed away at a young age and we made regular visits to clean up her headstone and those of family members nearby. My brother and I were tasked with refilling jugs of water for the flowers we'd place at each grave."
tags: ['tech', 'development']
---
When I was a kid — I want to say 5 or younger — my family went to the local cemetery. My father's sister had passed away at a young age and we made regular visits to clean up her headstone and those of family members nearby. My brother and I were tasked with refilling jugs of water for the flowers we'd place at each grave.<!-- excerpt -->

Usually, this went off without a hitch. Take the water jug, fill it full, complain the entire walk back about the weight. Repeat. On one of the trips — for reasons I can't remember and, if I could, likely wouldn't be able to offer a good one — I decided to lean on the water spigot. It snapped off exactly where it emerged from the ground and, lo and behold, a geyser shot into the sky.

I stood there watching and rapidly getting soaked while my grandfather ran over, grabbed the severed length of PVC pipe and force it back into place. That spigot was a single point of failure but — really — every spigot was. The water pressure was only regulated by the piping.

The cemetery flooded — water pooled around headstones — it was pretty rough. We called the owners (it was the weekend) and they said they'd have someone out on Monday. We implored them to hurry up (not the ideal on call response time, I suppose). My family told me the cemetery police were coming for me — ~5 year old me believed them and panicked (they didn't show up).

<strong class="highlight-text">Your app — or whatever you're building — isn't a cemetery, but you should expect your users to lean on spigots periodically and have a solid plan in place for when they do.</strong>