Happy Birthday! You're dying.

February 28, 2008
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Not really, but I felt like I was. Last Sunday was my birthday and what did I get for it? Pneumonia.

So four and a half days later and I still feel about like I have a bad cold but am no longer completely out of commission. I’ve heard that emphysema is a lot like having really bad pneumonia only it never goes away. If I were still a smoker this would be enough to make me quit.

To all my friends and family (and anyone else who will listen): if you still smoke, quit. If you don’t believe how miserable it is go catch yourself pneumonia, let it grow for a bit, then you will get a feel for what your life will be like, day in and day out, should you eventually develop emphysema.


Extremely annoyed.

February 13, 2008
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So I woke up this morning to find that my site was down. For that I apologize to anyone trying to access it.

I contacted my host to find that my entire server, and everyone on it, was down. Instead of redirecting to another page that had a generic message like, “We are sorry for the inconvenience but we are having technical issues right now. Please try again later.”, I got a time out message from my browser. When I inquired about this with support I was told that “we don’t have things installed that way”, which had little relevance to my complaint – its simply a matter of having the DNS forward to a static server. So I was forwarded to the “Manager’s” queue 11 hours ago and have yet to hear anything. I don’t really expect to – the last time I had an issue I never heard anything either.

For anyone trying to get to my site over the past 20 hours, I am sorry for any delay and I wish I could tell you it wouldn’t happen again.

Can anyone recommend a GOOD host that will support at least PHP and Ruby on Rails? Java too would be nice but I know that is pushing it…


Site was down

January 24, 2008
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Sorry to anyone who tried to access my site earlier. My host seems to have had a moment of incompetence.

You can read the transcripts of this drama by clicking the “Ticket #” links as you read along.

I have been in contact with them lately (Ticket 1) trying to get everything working so that I can host a Ruby on Rails application and have been having quite a bit of trouble. I finally figured out how to get the apps up to the server, configured everything, then it wouldn’t start. So I filed a ticket last night (Ticket 2) to fix this. Everything was working fine this morning with my ruby files sitting on the server, useless.

Around noon today (queue the tension building music) I went to my site to find a generic site is having difficulties page. What!?!? My bandwidth is fine, I didn’t violate any terms of service, the server is up – what is going on? So I file another ticket (Ticket 3) and the struggle really begins. I ended up waiting half an hour before picking up the phone and calling, where I spent another 40 minutes on the phone waiting for an answer. The answer I got on the phone was that it was a mistake and they were fixing asap, which differs greatly from Ticket 3.

I am speculating here but am relatively certain that I am right about what transpired. The support crew changed some things so that my RoR applications would work then launched my ruby apps on my behalf. This caused a CPU spike, which I knew nothing about b/c I had changed nothing, that caused them to suspend my account.

Four hours later and my site is back up. I have removed the links to my host from my blogroll and plan on cancelling my reseller account through them. I sent an email to the management email address detailing the problems I have had but I am still really pissed about this.

Can anyone recommend a GOOD host that will support at least PHP and Ruby on Rails? Java too would be nice but I know that is pushing it…

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2/13/2008 Update

I never heard back from the “Manager’s queue” and found my site to be down again today. They did manage to fix the problems listed in this post and got me up and running, however to this day I am apprehensive about putting any ruby apps on my system. I would not recommend ANHosting or MidPhase. The price is great but the service sucks.