ramblings of a {sys,net}admin…

Just wanted to give a heads-up to anyone looking for web hosting: avoid IX Web Hosting!

Let me rewind a bit…I used to purchase my web hosting from 1&1.  I was always completely satisfied with them but about a year ago, I purchased a VPS from VPSLink.  I decided I wanted “full control” of my web hosting environment and the ability to control everything about it. A big factor in my decision was that I wanted to customize my mail services as well (SpamAssassin, ClamAV, postfix, virtual domains, etc.), so I switched to the VPS. The VPS worked out quite well for me and I was happy with it. There were two instances of downtime (to move my VPS to another physical server) and both times I was made aware of it well in advance. The downtime was minimal.

A few months ago I moved my e-mail services to Google Apps and, for the last several weeks, was not using the mail services on my VPS. In fact, postfix was “turned off” quite a while ago. I finally decided that the VPS was overkill and I could save some money by getting rid of it (it was costing me $39.95 a month). Thus my search for a new web host began.

I came across IX Web Hosting’s site and began looking at their services. I was sucked in by “The CEO’s Promise” “30-Day 100% Money Back Guarantee“, “Any-Time Money Back Guarantee“, and “Uptime or Cash Guarantee“) and signed up a few moments later and paid $95.40 via credit card for a year’s worth of service. That was on November 17th.

Since my VPS was still active and hadn’t yet been cancelled, I wasn’t in any rush to move my websites over. I moved this blog over first and, two weeks later, happened to be doing some work on it when some “weird things” started happening. That lasted for a few moments until the entire site was unavailable and visitors instead received the infamous “Wordpress database errors” message. I waited about 20 minutes to see if it cleared itself up. When it didn’t, I created a support ticket.

Two hours later, the site started working again. I started messing with it some more. Ten minutes later, it was down again (note that it wasn’t me causing the issues!). After a bit, it was straightened out and everything was well. Remember that IX Web Hosting had a 99.9% uptime promise — they’d already ate up about half of their available downtime for the next year.

That little incident pissed me off and I was ready to cancel, but I stuck it out. Two weeks later, the same thing happened again; more problems with the mysql400.ixwebhosting.com MySQL server. I decided enough was enough, headed back to 1&1’s web site, and signed back up for their Business package. With their end-of-year special, I even got a lower price ($17.27 for three months, with a year agreement). I backed up my files from IX Web Hosting and copied my database once the MySQL server came back up and promptly created a ticket for account cancellation. This was on December 17th, exactly 30 days after I signed up (remember the “30-Day 100% Money Back Guarantee”?).

While creating the ticket for cancellation, I was asked to provide an explanation:

Please provide reason of cancellation? I’d be happy to. I was blindly suckered in by your outrageous claims regarding the quality of your service. In the last two weeks I have experienced no less than *THREE* outages due to database issues. I was going to cancel two weeks ago but when I realized you’ll keep half of the monies I already paid, I backed out. Well, not this time. I’m done. I’m going back — no, *RUNNING* back — to a former provider. They (1&1) provide better service, and at a better price to boot. Please terminate this account immediately. Monetarily, rape me for whatever your contract allows — I don’t care. At this point, I’d just about pay you to be done with you. Good riddance. Jeremy L. Gaddis

Yeah, I was a little pissed. =)

IX Web Hosting’s package came with two “free” domains, which I promptly registered. They were stupid domain names that I’ll probably never use, but hey, they were “free”, right? Uh, no. Of the $95.40 I paid to IX Web Hosting, they:

• credited me $57.45 “for unused but prepaid period of Business Plus”
• charged me $18.21 for the first domain
• charged me $18.21 for the second domain
• refunded me a grand total of $21.03

I don’t mind paying for the domains.  Well, I don’t mind paying reasonable rates for the domains. Everybody and their brother can register a domain for seven or eight bucks, so I know that the two domains didn’t cost them $18.21. Apparently “30-Day 100% Money Back Guarantee” doesn’t really mean that. Likewise, apparently CEO Fathi Said doesn’t keep his promises.

Fortunately, I had already went back to 1&1 by this point. Once again I’m happy with my web hosting and haven’t had any issues with them. Altogether, I’ve used them for a few years and I imagine I’ll just stick with them. With what I ended up paying IX Web Hosting for one month, I could’ve gotten nearly a year’s worth of hosting from 1&1.

In summary, I’d stay away from IX Web Hosting if I were you. Their service was unreliable, support tickets weren’t responded to in a timely manner, and they kept over 75% of the money I paid them. If you’re looking for a reliable web host, do consider 1&1.

Thanks to Ryan McGeehan, developer of the “My Public Key” application, you can now add your PGP public key to Facebook.

Anyone know if it’s possible to pair up a Blackberry Pearl with a MacBook over Bluetooth in order to get online?

I can do this pretty easy with XP and have managed to get it to work under Ubuntu Linux after casting some ancient African spells, but once my MacBook gets here that’ll be irrelevant. I don’t have a need to do that very often, but occasionally it comes up so I thought I’d ask while I’m thinking of it.

Have any of you been able to link up your Pearl with OS X over Bluetooth in order to get online? Thanks!

A few weeks ago, I jumped on the Twitter bandwagon. “Twitter is a free social networking and micro-blogging service that allows users to send “updates” (text-based posts, up to 140 characters long) to the Twitter website, via short message service, instant messaging, email, or an applications such as Twitterrific. Twitter was founded in March 2006 by San Francisco start-up company Obvious Corp.” (–Wikipedia).

If you’re reading this on my web site (as opposed to reading my RSS feed or my Facebook notes), you’ll notice a section in the top right entitled “Jeremy is…”. The items that are underneath it come from my updates to Twitter.

Normally I wouldn’t spend much time updated some web site what the latest details of what I’m doing, but Twitter has made this exceptionally easy via their Twitter API. By using the API, third parties can write their own applications to interact with the Twitter service. Shortly after signing up, I wrote my own “client” that would update my Twitter status from the Linux shell. It was easy and useful, but meant I had to stay logged into a Linux box to quickly and easily do updates. Eventually, I found OutTwit and Twitterfox.

“OutTwit is a add-in for Microsoft Outlook with lets you send and receive tweeter messages (tweets) without leaving Outlook.” I work in I.T. and I have Outlook running 24/7, both at home and at work. OutTwit integrates with Outlook by putting a small “toolbar” on the main Outlook interface. Updating my Twitter status is simply a matter of entering my update in the textbox and hitting enter. It’s very quick and easy which means, of course, that I’m more likely to update my status at random times. You can also choose to receive your friends’ updates in your Inbox as e-mail messages, though I chose to turn that option off.

“TwitterFox is a Firefox extension that notifies you of your friends’ tweets of Twitter.” By installing the extension, you also get quick access to update your own status as well as being notified of your friends’ updates as well.

If you are a “twitterer”, like me, and you have either Outlook or Firefox running most of the time, definitely check ‘em out.

Less than a week ago, when referring to GrandCentral, I said “This is going to be awesome. I can’t wait until it launches.” Now I don’t have to!

Saturday afternoon I got an e-mail inviting me to sign up for the GrandCentral beta. I was out riding the motorcycle when I got the e-mail so as soon as I got home I got on the computer and signed up. I had to spend a few minutes reading all about how it works and then I got to playing with it. First up was choosing a phone number from the limited number of available ones. I managed to find an available one with the last four digits of 4346. The cool thing here is that I’ve been telling people “my new number is XXX-IDIOT” (Yes, the last “T” isn’t needed, but there weren’t any other cool words I could make with those numbers). Anyways, people are remembering it, which was the goal. =)

I haven’t yet been to work to test whether calling my GrandCentral number rings both phones, but it’s supposed to so I have to assume that it works. I did get a call to my number at 1.53am last night that rang my Blackberry. I was in a rather loud establishment at the time so I didn’t answer, but it did ring my phone. That person left me a voicemail as well, and I got an e-mail nearly immediately telling me that I had a voicemail. I just logged into the GrandCentral web site a few minutes ago and was able to listen to the voice mail right in my browser — definitely cool.

I’ve even recorded a custom greeting for one particular caller, and I think she quite likes it. There’s definitely some awesome features here and I’m excited about playing with some more of them.

By the way, I was given five “invites” that I can give out. Those will allow for the immediate creation of a GrandCentral account, without having to wait to be invited by Google. If you’d like one, post a comment below, making sure to include your real first and last names and e-mail address (your e-mail address won’t be displayed or given out to anyone by me, except to Google for the invite).

This is going to be awesome. I can’t wait until it launches.

Oh, and Google 411 is pretty cool too (and free!)

From Time:

In a startling decision this week, a federal appeals court in Cincinnati ordered the feds to keep their mitts off e-mail stored with an Internet Service Provider (ISP) like Yahoo! unless they notify the sender first or show that he doesn’t consider the e-mail private. The ruling was based on the conclusion that most people think e-mail, like letters or phone conversations, is private, and protected under the Fourth Amendment against unreasonable government searches and seizures.

That seems a pretty fair conclusion, but the amazing thing is that no court has ever reached it before. In other words, we’ve been living under a legal regime that essentially assumes we don’t much care if, say, Alberto Gonzales sees our e-mails after they leave our outbox. So for a federal appeals court to upend that regime is a big deal, as experts like Professor Orin Kerr at George Washington University Law School will tell you.

This is awesome…

After first hearing about it at the Red Hat Summit, I finally created an account on Mugshot earlier and I’m trying to figure out if I like it or not.

From the “About Mugshot” page:

Mugshot makes it easy to show off what you’re doing online and keep track of what your friends are up to. Learn more about what you can do with Mugshot at the features page.

WASHINGTON–The Bush administration on Thursday blasted a congressional proposal that would shield a broad swath of news gatherers, including some bloggers, from revealing their confidential sources.

The latest draft of the Free Flow of Information Act would pose a grave threat to national security and federal criminal investigations by protecting far too large a segment of the population, a U.S. Department of Justice official told Congress.

[ Read more… ]

The Indiana Government finally does something right.

High school students are allowed to practice free speech online and are protected, the Indiana Court of Appeals ruled this week. A three-judge panel ruled on Monday that even if the speech is laden with expletives, what a student says against school policy or against the state is protected under both the US Constitution and the Indiana State Constitution.

The student, only named as A.B. in court documents, was originally sentenced to probation for six counts of harassment based off of comments she made on a MySpace page. The comments were posted to a fake profile created by another student posing as the principal of the school, and they were focused mostly around A.B.’s dislike of the high school’s policies and principal. She clearly indicated in her comments that she was aware that the profile was not real and that she was “pretty sure” she knew who created it. The principal, Shawn Gobert, testified that he never received any of the messages directly and only observed them as he was reading through the fake profile page.