Cheaper than Gas!
I’m usually not one to complain about high gas prices, to be honest I think a continuous high gas price would cut down on the number of idiots on the road. With that being said, my commute to work and back is ~60 miles both ways, and I often have to drive around Kenosha County for work. So, Gas prices are kicking my wallet right now.
I may just have to take this signs advice…
Happy Fourth of July - From an Unpatriotic Person!
Annoyed. That described me after what should have been a nice conversation with an elderly neighbor. We were talking about the beautiful weather, the holiday weekend, and just how nice it was to have both at the same time. She asked me where I was going to go watch the fireworks from, and I replied that I wasn’t, as I was no longer a fan of fireworks. Then I became unpatriotic! Yes me, Unpatriotic. Go figure.
Hell’s Kitchen Season Three(3) Episode Thirteen (13)
I just got around to watching the latest episode of Hell’s Kitchen. I really enjoy the show when they get rid of all of the morons and get down to the real chefs.
However from watching the earlier episodes I never figured it would come down to the contestant that burned Chef Ramsey two times in one night or the chef that couldn’t memorize the menu. Who would have guessed?
If I had to bet on winner of Season Three of Hell’s Kitchen, I would have to put my money on Petrozza. Although I do think Christina has a chance since she has won all of those challenges and Chef Ramsey has spent more time with her.
Keeping Customers After a Disaster
Recently The Planet, a large web hosting company that has numerous data centers, experienced an explosion in their H1 DC. At one point over 9,000 servers were offline. It’s been fun to watch the commotion. I am very happy that I am no longer in the hosting business (with the exception on one non-profit site) since the two dedicated servers I had at one point were located in this DC. No, I never used The Planet, but The Planet bought out ev1Servers.net which used to be rackshack.net.
Anyway, Douglas Erwin, CEO of the Planet, recently announced the compensation for customers affected by the outage. It ended up being two months free service and 10% on new services for the rest of the year. Most customers were expecting one month free, so the second was a surprise. There was a twist though, the second month of free service will be in December. Why would they do that? Why not get it out of the way right now? While some folks were speculating it was to keep their cashflow up in the short term, I don’t think that was the answer. They did it to keep customers from jumping ship! Folks who were looking to leave will stick around to get their free month in December! If The Planet can keep a customer until December, they probably aren’t going to leave. Smart, if you ask me.
If you are still in the hosting business, this should serve as a reminder for the need of local backups, offsite DNS, load balanced servers in different geographical areas, your customers contact data, and lots of caffeine!