It's just like a computer. The more you load up, the slower it gets, the more issues arise.

This is all going to depend on how the state budget works and what other issues arise. We wanted to raise the issue now so they know, and maybe there will be a bill within a couple years.

The silicon microchips themselves might be cheap (relative to times past, anyway), but CPU cycles are not cheap. Every CPU cycle consumes clock time. Clock time is latency. A wasteful application makes its users wait longer than they need to, and if there’s anything users hate, it’s waiting. For web systems, latency in the application has a dual effect. The added processing directly increases the burden on the application servers themselves. Suppose that an application takes just 250 milliseconds of extra processing per transaction. If the system processes a million transactions a day, that extra 250 milliseconds per transaction makes for an extra 69.4 hours of compute time every day. Assuming an 80% load factor on each server, you’ll need four additional servers to handle this load.

We don't have a real firm date, but we are still looking at the springtime date to begin construction. Maybe late March or early April, somewhere in there.

Pella is a unique town and this is a unique look for Wal-Mart.

We've developed quite a bit in the state of South Dakota in the last year or so. South Dakota has been good to us.