Rinsefirst

As I continue this moving process, I keep running into this issue that I don’t really know what the solution is to. Dreamhost, so far, has served me wonderfully. The ability to compile php is fantastic, and the amount of bandwidth available is always a very important thing to me, as I am hosting tons and tons of videos.

What concerns me though is overselling.

Every major host does it. Dreamhost, Lunar Pages, etc. all have to do it to some degree. How do you offer… If every client used their 250GB, the server would be empty in no time. But I can measure how close a server is to being “full” of storage space. It’s the things I can’t measure that bother me.

Namely: processor load. The biggest problem with shared hosting is that the processor load can shoot through the roof due to 1 client. When that happens, your looking at slower sites, or even shut down sites. This is simply, a problem with virtual hosting in general. VPS solutions are often better, but they still are not perfect. The only great route to go is dedicated. But then, there’s the cost.

All that said, I’m a man that believes everyone should have the best uptime possible at the best cost, and the features they need to run. That said, I’m willing to tell my clients that Dreamhost is the right solution. They haven’t had MAJOR downtime problems with the exception of an incident last year (one which is fixed). Their fairly easy to deal with. The only thing missing: phone support, but hey… That’s what I’m here for right :-).

I think though that Mike showed me why it is I will stick with recommending dreamhost, despite the negatives I have read.. Read his article here.

So Dreamhost stays my leading choice for clients at the moment. I might give lunar a try… And I know westhost is a great safety to fall back on. But thats that.

So I’m curious, did anyone get signed up after my post yesterday with Subvert?

As many of you know, I’ve been looking for simple ways to make money online with things like adwords, adsense, affiliate marketing, etc. Most have just been trial runs of sorts to see what I could figure out. So far, I’m not rolling in it, but I’ve learned a lot for whatever I decide to do for my final effort.

So todays endevor is so sickening simple, that I had to share it. The system is called subvert. Basically it works like this:

If you are a user (like me) - You get paid to vote on certain digg and stumble upon articles. For every article you vote for, you make $.50 cents. Just to give you an idea… You vote on 300 digg articles (which doesn’t take very long, and that’s 150 bucks in your pocket.

If you are an advertiser (which I sometimes am - You can pay to have people vote on your stumbleupon articles/digg articles, basically causing tons of “organic” traffic to hit your site.

So basically, you can get paid to spend some time voting on digg. How sweet is that? Best part is, the signup process is so simple that anyone can do it in about 10 minutes. All you need is a digg account, a stumble upon account, and to fill out a little tiny form.

Give it a whirl and let me know what you think!

So as many of you have heard by now, I did in fact make the decision that JR will stop hosting sometime late 2008. That said, I’ve already begun moving some of my clients to other hosts….. Now don’t get all jumpy on me though… If I haven’t talked to you yet, it’s probably because I have something special in mind for you… Or I just haven’t…

In other news, I’ve posted more free stuff from buy.com. This time it’s halfway decent virus scan that comes with a 2Gb jump drive. Again, free after rebate. I really do love the fact that every other week, I can find something free on buy.com that might actually be worth getting.

Speaking of 2Gb: For about the last year, my computer has had a problem with it’s RAM. It seemed that whenever I stuck it in dual channel mode (fast fast ram), I was only able to run without blue screening for about an hour. In single channel mode, assuming I put the sticks in the correct order, It would take somewhere like 2 to 3 days before I would blue screen. I had run a memtest and sure enough one of my two sticks had a minor problem with it.

In any case I had been living like this long enough. I purchased 2 1Gb sticks (my old ones were 512), and how proudly say that it feels more stable, I’m in dual channel mode for over 24 hours now, and I have more ram to use up in photoshop! I must admit I love it. I’m also going to stick the good stick of 512 in the apple, which should help with my video editting ventures immensly.

In other news: I launched the new wlcyouth.org last night. There are still some things that need to be finished or updated, but for the most part, it’s running. I plan on making various updates to it over the coming week.

Amber’s in Orlando… Thought I would mention that as well. Well that’s enough blogging for now… I need to go write a query that allows for date selection on a multi table join.

I’m not even going to write…

In case your wondering… The binary across the bottom: 100$ LAPTOP and APPLE

PS: Harry Potter Comes out tomorrow… Get yours!

Many of you know, I have been looking at getting and Iphone as soon as the people over at #iphone-dev manage to get it unlocked so I can use it with t-mobile. But the truth is, I’m more just looking for a phone that allows me to do the following (easily):

• Get my Email
• Surf the Web
• Surf the Web on my laptop (via bluetooth)
• Sync my calendar
• Maybe play *some* music
• Maybe play some video.

Even if I got the iphone, I still would be missing the “Surf the web on my laptop” until someone built a custom app to allow a pc to connect to the iphone as a modem. So all that said, I’ve been looking around at the alternatives.

Currently, I’m with T-mobile… And my options seem very very limited. Blackberry is their leading business type mobile device, and they have a line of “sidekicks” that I just don’t think cut it. Their data network also isn’t quite up to par. I will give them credit though for having very solid phone coverage (at least for me). I’ve also enjoyed their rates.

But now that I really want data, I have to asked myself if it’s time to switch. And so far, I’ve been leaning heavily towards verizon…

I have always thought of sprint as having the best data network, and I believe that for the longest time they have. Verizon though has stepped it up at least here in the twin cities. They have a network technology here called evdo, which yesterday when I ran my laptop over Palm Treo 700w, I was able to get pings in the 300’s and download speeds close to 2Mbit. I could almost play world of warcraft with lag like that.

So the question is: do I make the switch to another company. I’ve been with tmobile since it was known as voicestream. I’ve got my entire family on the plan. My girlfriend is with tmobile. Everything when it comes to voice calls says I should stay with tmobile. Just a question of data…

Maybe tmobile will step up their data plans here in the near future.

First, I thought I would mention that I linked a free hard drive enclosure to the left… Might be worth checking out if your a collector of computer junk like I am.

Second, well… I was going to write about stress, but that just caused me more stress… So for the time being… Just enjoy the link before they run out.