Accidentally Validated My Idea

I'm currently working on an MVP for Cert Monitor - a simple tool for monitoring SSL certificates and sending out notifications when they're about to expire. Earlier this week it turned out that Cert Monitor would really have come in handy for me.

I spent all of Thursday working, and actually managed to get a lot done. Barely any interruptions all day. Towards the end of the day I checked my emails and realised why I'd made such good progress - I hadn't received any emails all day 😳

Obviously something was wrong somewhere, so in a bit of a panic I started troubleshooting my mail server. After about 15 minutes the culprit was found - an expired SSL certificate on my mail subdomain. Thunderbird had been quietly failing to connect all day as a result.

Immediately I wished that the MVP had been ready in time to catch this and save me the trouble. It did feel quite validating that I had stumbled across a scenario where Cert Monitor would have prevented a problem, a bit of a silver lining I guess.