Oh I see. I have a generic "This row was last updated @" timestamp. I dont have an "I'm Alive" timestamp.

Currently, working with the object involves spawning an external process that might not return for 1 minute or 100. I'm not sure when I'd get the chance to update the "I'm alive" timestamp while that operation is happening unless I spawned threads.

However, its a neat idea and is hitting on a more genreal approach of using some sort of watchdog process either external or internal.