Defining the date here (same as incr_stat) is problematic. The function definition is in the module scope, so this default arg is going to be evaluated exactly once when the module is first imported. It won't get the current date on each call.

```
>>> from datetime import datetime
>>> def foo(date=datetime.utcnow()): print date
>>> foo()
2014-03-06 16:06:54.999362
>>> foo()
2014-03-06 16:06:54.999362
```