Site was down

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.

Images

After reading one of Mark Turansky’s latest posts I remembered an application I wrote a while back that fit into the same image category. His post describes a script he wrote that will download pictures from a camera and sort them. Unfortunately I didn’t have this script (until now) and through multiple transfers of the image library from one computer to another I found myself with many duplicate images.

So some time last year I threw together a simple C# application (sorry non-MS users) that will give you a list of all the duplicate images on your system as well as a quick way to view them to verify they are the same and a way to delete them. The application uses the time stamp that the image was taken to determine likeness. If you have your camera take burst pictures then you will likely see a lot and this is probably not the application for you. However, if you take normal pictures then this can help ensure that you don’t have a bunch of duplicates floating around.

Image Organizer

This code/application is free to use and distribute with two conditions:

1. If it is going to be used in any way to make money you must get my prior written consent

2. Leave the copyright and distribution rule info in place in all places it is found.


Download source: Image Organizer – C# Source

Download Windows installation files: Image Organizer – Windows installation files

Enjoy!

Performance v. Effort Revisited, ceteris paribus

After speaking with Mark Turansky about the original Performance v. Effort post and he gave his impression that my post is confusing because it delivers arbitrary numbers with no explanation of how I arrive at those numbers or what they mean.

Ultimately the post is saying this:
You can’t expect to hire based upon an industry or market standard and end up with a solid company. You must understand your needs (weights) and the abilities (ranks) of candidates in order to find individuals who are a proper fit for your company at any given time.

The numbers are arbitrary because they are used to illustrate a theoretical situation. The rankings and weights assigned to each individual are fictional numbers that are at the discretion of each theoretical company to arrive at. In this case I have illustrated a scenario where Company A places the most value on productivity, sociability, then effort while Company B values fall in the order of sociability, effort, then productivity. These numbers could just as easily fall in any other number of combinations and, in a real world situation, would involve far more parameters than the three listed here. Likewise, the weights are indicative of a simplistic scenario where everyone in the company who’s opinion counts feels the same way. In a situation where there are conflicting views on weights the scenario would be far too complex to model easily. Once again, the weights used were arbitrary and illustrative in nature.

This confusion, I think, arises from my neglect to include an obligatory reference to ceteris paribus. The concept that this is a limited scenario with a very focused view should be qualified and my original post was truly intended to work on a finite and unchanging model. Without focusing on a situation qualified by ceteris paribus you would find yourself in a situation much too complex to illustrate easily.