Synchronous con jobs are BROKEN (logs inside)

[Richard]

I have a game that relies on a synchronous cron job.  For the last few days, the game timer has been out of whack.  I pulled the logs and finally figured out that my 3 min synchronous cron job fires like this (see below).

In the mean time, is there ANY way I can get my game working and always firing a URL (to create leaderboards/etc) at 3 minute intervals ?

10/Jul/2012:09:39:20
10/Jul/2012:09:42:11
10/Jul/2012:09:45:06
10/Jul/2012:09:48:05
10/Jul/2012:09:51:07
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10/Jul/2012:10:33:18
10/Jul/2012:10:36:03
10/Jul/2012:10:39:07
10/Jul/2012:10:42:11
10/Jul/2012:10:45:14
10/Jul/2012:10:48:03
10/Jul/2012:10:51:08
10/Jul/2012:10:54:03
10/Jul/2012:10:57:04
10/Jul/2012:11:00:08
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10/Jul/2012:11:18:15
10/Jul/2012:11:21:15
10/Jul/2012:11:24:09
10/Jul/2012:11:27:11
10/Jul/2012:11:30:15
10/Jul/2012:11:33:08
10/Jul/2012:11:36:09
10/Jul/2012:11:39:12
10/Jul/2012:11:42:08
10/Jul/2012:11:45:06
10/Jul/2012:11:48:07
10/Jul/2012:11:51:03
10/Jul/2012:11:54:05
10/Jul/2012:11:57:03
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10/Jul/2012:12:03:08
10/Jul/2012:12:06:04
10/Jul/2012:12:09:07
10/Jul/2012:12:12:03
10/Jul/2012:12:15:04
10/Jul/2012:12:18:03
10/Jul/2012:12:21:05
10/Jul/2012:12:24:13
10/Jul/2012:12:27:09
10/Jul/2012:12:30:04
10/Jul/2012:12:33:21
10/Jul/2012:12:36:10
10/Jul/2012:12:39:12
10/Jul/2012:12:42:07
10/Jul/2012:12:45:15
10/Jul/2012:12:48:12
10/Jul/2012:12:51:09
10/Jul/2012:12:54:14
10/Jul/2012:12:57:06
10/Jul/2012:13:00:09
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10/Jul/2012:13:21:03
10/Jul/2012:13:24:07
10/Jul/2012:13:27:03
10/Jul/2012:13:30:04
10/Jul/2012:13:33:04
10/Jul/2012:13:36:14
10/Jul/2012:13:39:07
10/Jul/2012:13:42:09
10/Jul/2012:13:45:13
10/Jul/2012:13:48:06
10/Jul/2012:13:51:04
10/Jul/2012:13:54:08
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10/Jul/2012:14:21:17
10/Jul/2012:14:24:05
10/Jul/2012:14:27:12
10/Jul/2012:14:30:08
10/Jul/2012:14:33:04
10/Jul/2012:14:36:13
10/Jul/2012:14:39:10
10/Jul/2012:14:42:14
10/Jul/2012:14:45:11
10/Jul/2012:14:48:13
10/Jul/2012:14:51:08
10/Jul/2012:14:54:11
10/Jul/2012:14:57:04
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10/Jul/2012:19:12:33
10/Jul/2012:19:15:07
10/Jul/2012:19:18:14
 

[Jeff Schnitzer]

Put this logic in a backend. Start a thread that sleeps for 3
minutes, processes cron, and goes back to sleep for 3 minutes. You'll
want to be a little more clever than that because you want to be on
3-minute boundaries not 3-minute intervals but it should be
straightforward.

Appengine's cron is "best effort" and your game requires precise
timing. It's better to manage the schedule yourself.

Jeff

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