Schadenfreude

July 24, 2007 on 11:30 pm | In Business, Foobars, Insider View, Musings, Tech News by Josh Jones | 22 Comments

Almost exactly a year ago today, DreamHost experienced its last unplanned power outage.

Last ever?

Last ever so far! Who knows what the future holds? (Besides me.)

But for now, I’m just glad the present has been a little better for DreamHost customers than for 365 Main’s!

Because in case you hadn’t heard or noticed, power outages in San Francisco today caused downtime at Craigslist, Technorati, TypePad, LiveJournal, Yelp, RedEnvelope, and more!

Who here is glad DreamHost is in sunny, safe, earthquake, mudslide, forest fire, riot, tsunami-free, Los Angeles now? And who here is publicly enjoying that 365 Main is not?

Here’s a big hint: he’s really good looking and wrote this post.

Of course, the real reason we had no problems is not because our data center is finally super reliable, or that Los Angeles itself never has so much as a cloudy day, or even that we’re just lucky.

It’s because I am in Chicago at HostingCon and so am temporarily unable to break anything.

Of course, that’s not really true either. I’m not in Chicago; as everyone knows, I’m a compulsive liar. In fact, this statement is a lie.

But, even if I was at hosting con (and everybody knows we don’t go to hosting conventions), my ability to break DreamHost systems knows no boundary of time or space, and strikes at any time, usually without warning and definitely without mercy.

Why were we were spared this time?

The honest truth is that any data center can, at any time and for any reason, no matter what precautions they take, have an outage! You’d think making a reliable data center would be a lot easier than making a reliable software service, seeing as how it’s all just power cables, air conditioning, and gasoline.

And yet somehow, it seems like all even the best and most expensive data centers can do is make the outages a little less frequent.

What IS a poor host to do?

Nothing, really.

I mean, the only way you can really achieve “five nines” uptime is by having an entire architecture designed around the assumption that ANYTHING can fail… and at the worst possible time. Duh.

However, like most Las Vegas escorts, that sort of redundancy does not come easily. Or cheap. And the truth of the matter is unless you’re Google, most likely an entire day of downtime once a year is not going to cost you as much as it would to truly prevent it.

In fact, I wish there were some low-reliability data centers out there! I bet if somebody made an ultra low-cost data center, one that provided “adequate” cooling, network, and power capacity, but no UPS, fire-suppression, generators, crazy physical security, or extra earthquake protection, they would clean UP.

They could probably charge around half of any data center I’ve ever seen, and I bet with only twice the downtime… and that would be very appealing.

I mean, think about it… how many of you could deal with an extra day of downtime per year for half the price? Heck, you’d probably be fine with FOUR days of downtime a year if it meant 75% off.. but would you pay double to save 12 hours of downtime a year? Would you pay FOUR times as much to save 18? Eight times as much to save 21?

That’s pretty much how it works, and I’m guessing not a lot of you would.

Of course, maybe I’m over-estimating the cost savings of skimping on redundancy in a data center a little, and maybe I’m under-estimating the reliability hit a tiny bit. On the other hand, my blog posts have never been wrong before.

AND, if somebody did come out with a “Crap-of-the-Art” data center, it’d make it a lot more feasible for those who really need reliability to get two; thereby keeping all their company’s eggs out of one risqué basket.

In fact, what we’ve been doing over the last year is breaking our system down into smaller and smaller isolated “clusters,” and distributing them between three data centers (all in LA). The idea being, data centers will go down.. let’s at least try and keep the eggs in our other baskets un-scrambled. And since we’re not really counting on much reliability from them anyway, it sure would be nice if those data centers all charged a lot less!

Of course our network still has a single (though redundant) point of failure, but we are working towards eventually making each data center a complete stand-alone “node”… some day.

This day, however, I think I’ll just go to bed… while taking pleasure in the fact that it was somebody else this time!

Friday Predictions

July 20, 2007 on 10:58 am | In Musings by Josh Jones | 9 Comments

Who will win the HD video wars, HD DVD or Blu-Ray?

Download.

Who will win the Next Generation Console wars, Sony, Microsoft, or Nintendo?

Nintendo.

What will more people be using for phone calls in 2010, an iPhone or UMA?

The iPhone will do UMA.. otherwise, UMA.

Will The Simpsons movie make money?

1 BILLION dollars.

Will Green Hosting save the planet?

I hate the environment.

What is the most bad-assed new technology that nobody’s heard of right now that nobody will remember living without in 2017?

Wireless power.

Who will be the biggest web host in the world in 2017?

1Daddyahoo.com.

What web host will have the best blog in 2017?

I pray it’s not still DreamHost.

Will the DreamHost Blog ever have another hosting-related blog post again?

Reply Hazy, Try Again

Will the DreamHost Blog ever have another hosting-related blog post again?

Better Not Tell You Now

Will the DreamHost Blog ever have another hosting-related blog post again?

Concentrate and Ask Again

WILL THE DREAMHOST BLOG EVER HAVE ANOTHER HOSTING-RELATED BLOG POST AGAIN?

Don’t Count On It.

Friggatriskaidekaphobia

July 13, 2007 on 8:15 am | In Business, Funnyish, Insider View, Rants, Tech News by Josh Jones | 12 Comments

Usually I’m no triskaidekaphobiac, but I already know it’s going to be a very unlucky day for me today; the 13th of the month.

Not only that, I don’t know about you folks in Europe and Asia and Africa and Mexico, but right now, this July, in America, the 13th is falling on a Friday!

And everybody universally knows (even Thetans) that bad things happen on Friday the 13th.

Especially for me. Especially today.

Why?

Because today is my wife’s last day at her job. She’s retiring at the ripe old age of 30 from cancer biology to start a floral design business.

I, on the unfortunate hand, am not retiring. In fact, I’m going to have to work about 8% HARDER.. just to make up for the lost income! And, if she decides to spend any of her extra free time not designing florals but instead buying, in a month or two I estimate I’m going to have to be working about 800% HARDER!

And that’s where the web hosting angle of this post comes in. (I still feel an inexplicable urge that I need to tie my posts into Web Hosting at least a smidge.)

You see, as unlucky as it is for me to start working 800% harder, it’s doubly unlucky for you, Happy DreamHost Customer.

It’s well known in business. Wait, scratch that.. it’s well known in the Web Hosting business. Okay, sheesh.. it’s well known in the DreamHost Web Hosting business, that things work best when the Honchos are on vacation.

It always seems as though the moment I start messing with anything, just trying to whip up some random boring newsletter feature, the rest of the company goes irrationally bonkers.

JUST because I don’t notify them first? JUST because I don’t test things even once before I copy them live? JUST because it causes hundreds upon thousands of unnecessary support cases, that could have been avoided if only I’d rolled it out a tiny bit more gradually?

Seems a bit unfair to me, all that hate. I just ask that everybody wait one day before passing judgement, please!

Everything I do, I do only to mercilessly crush our competition! And that’s to everyone’s benefit. Especially mine my wife’s.

But really, as nice as it is to sit back and your tray table in their upright and locked position, it doesn’t really make any sense! And I’m not just talking about that sentence. What I mean is if, like mine, your goal is to ruthlessly crush all those inferior, it doesn’t make any sense to sit back and blog post all the time when you could be working 800% HARDER to make some crazy new feature that breaks everything… at first!

But at second, things start to heal… and, just like a torn ACL, they heal stronger. And with more money. And blog posts. And wives.

What am I babbling about?

Well, the real take home message is that I should probably lay off the wine before writing this stuff. Really, I should just lay off the wine before seven in the morning, period. That’s rum time.

Anyway, I think I’ve sort of made this point before, and I don’t want my posts to start repeating themselves so soon in my blogging career, so I’d better come up with an original point before I wrap things up.

And uh, that is, that, er.. how about: we stopped decreasing disk and bandwidth quotas for new signups!

Does that mean “our precious rep is restored?” I dunno, maybe a little? Maybe a little more will be restored in a fortnight, when it’ll have finally been a full year since our last (unplanned) power outage?

Aw yeah. That’ll be pretty sweet. Our competitors must now be trembling in their homeless shelters!

Oh yeah, that also reminds me: July 23rd-25th Dallas and I are going to HostingCon 2007 in Chicago. Since we’re soo un-lame, we’ve never been before. We’re really only going this time because Dallas wants to meet my other friend named Dallas, who lives in Chicago. Then, July 26th-28th we’ll be in Cincinatti, visiting my other good friends, Houston, Austin, and New York.

Secondarily, Dallas (of DreamHost) is going to talk at the con about us “being green.”

I’m tagging along in the hopes I meet some competitors to rend limb from limb. (And heh, I got a free pass by registering as “press.”)

Isabel Wang said I could… and I really need to conserve money.

(I’ve got a wife to support.)

Photo Finish

July 2, 2007 on 10:33 am | In Funnyish, Musings, Promotions, Tech News by Josh Jones | 27 Comments

I’ve decided.

We got a lot of reallllly bad entries to our iPhone contest, but we also got a fair number of not completely horrible ones, so I’ve decided to make a 2nd and 3rd place prize as well.

First place is still a Josh’s-forehead-greased-up 8GB iPhone, but 2nd place (and there’s an 8-way tie!) is either a $120 DH account credit or an iPod shuffle of your choice (I’ll be emailing the winners to ask their preference), and lowly 3rd place (a 7-way tie!) is still a not-entirely-shabby $50 DreamHost credit!

3rd Place

2nd Place

And now.. the winnnnnnner:

Why them?

1. They followed the instructions.
2. They did a pretty good photoshopping job.
3. They tied in the whole iPhone thing.
4. They made a PUN.
5. They used an old-school DreamHost logo.
6. They even included a flattering picture of the judge!

Congratulations, them!

Before we wrap things up, let me go ahead and give you my unsolicited impressions of the iPhone.

First off, it makes a great forehead de-greaser. The glass screen is very clear and cool to the touch, and good at sucking up grease when applied to a human forehead. Other than that, I didn’t really get to do too much to it; it’s basically a $599 skipping stone until you activate it with AT&T.

It is definitely very cool in actual person… smaller than you probably imagined and with a super bright, crisp, colorful, high-res screen. I spent several hours just sliding to unlock and then calling 911 (”Hi, just playing with my new iPhone before it’s activated! Bye!” “Me again!” “Ack, I’m being stabbed! ” “Just kidding, it was me again!” “I’d like to order 911 pizzas, please!” and so on).

Before it came out I didn’t really want one, since it doesn’t have 3G, forces you onto AT&T, and I’m happy with my indestructible phone. But, when you actually get one in your hands, all logic starts to drift to the wayside, and you get very strong urges to just RUB IT ON YOUR FOREHEAD NOW!

(An aside. I’ve always had a thing for rubbing my forehead grease on large, pristine glass surfaces. It just feels like I’m getting a good deep pore clean when I look back at the mirror, window, or whatever, and see a long streak of my oily face mess. In fact, in my last job ever before starting DreamHost (over the summer after my freshman year in college), I worked at a very small pre-press place. Every time I would go to the bathroom, I’d rub my face on the mirror while washing my hands. And, pretty much every day when I came back, the mirror would be clean again! It was great.

Then, one day, I was talking with the one other guy who worked in the shop with me and he was like “The other day, the building janitor asked me if I knew if you’d been rubbing your face on the mirror in the bathroom.” (!!!!!!!!!!!)

And I was like, “Huuuuuuuh? What are you talking about?”

“You know, haven’t you ever seen those streaks on the mirror in the bathroom? He’s been cleaning them every night, and they’re pretty high up so he figured it must have been somebody tall. And there aren’t really that many people who work on our floor. And it only started happening this summer.”

Sweat beading up on my brow, I finished the lie: “Nope, no idea.. I never noticed that! How strange.”

And we left it at that.

Fortunately, this was all on my last week of work that summer, so I was able to hold out and not do any more greasing for the rest of my tenure. However, on the very last day of work, I was seriously conflicted about whether or not to leave one, final, good-bye streak. It’s a good thing I ultimately decided against it… because as I came out of the bathroom, who just so happened to be walking by, right then? The janitor!

As soon as he saw me, his eyes lit up, and he immediately bolted into the bathroom! Oh man, the look on his face.. he was so excited to finally catch his alleged mirror-greaser in the act.

Mwahh ha ha ha ha haaaa!!

NOT TODAY, MR. JANITOR MAN, NOT TODAY!

)

As I was saying, the iPhone is pretty lust-inducing. Fortunately, in the name of the contest, I was just barely able to resist! But, my cell-phone-fever was not to be denied. Because the very next day I went and bought two of the only phone you need from T-Mobile! I thought I’d never retire my old Nokia 6010.. but this new Nokia 6086 has something going for it no other phone in America, not even the iPhone, has:

Seamless transitions between VOIP and Cellular wireless calls (via UMA)!

It’s actually pretty freaking amazing. When I’m by any free wifi, or any T-Mobile hotspot (at Starbucks, airports, and Starbucks in airports), the phone automatically switches over to making VOIP calls.. which are unlimited for free (incoming and outgoing!) .. then, when you leave the wifi range, it seamlessly switches back to the T-Mobile cellular network, even while on a call!

And it really works!

It is soooooo good.. I probably use 90% of my minutes at work or at home already (since I stopped having a land line about 8 years ago), and it means if I’m overseas, I get free unlimited calling to (and from) the US on my regular number anywhere I can find a 802.11b/g signal! It even beats Skype because it’s a regular old telephone number on a full-featured cell phone!

And you know what ELSE? I just remembered I can actually turn my laptop INTO a wifi hub, which then uses its Verizon EVDO Rev. A PCMCIA card to access the internets… so I could theoretically have free calls anywhere there’s EVDO coverage too!

I’m expecting my usage to drop to about 100 minutes a month.. and all this for only $9.95/mo extra and a $49.95 phone! However, if you hurry and go to one of these t-mobile stores at 8am tomorrow wearing a bathrobe they’ll give you the phone and a year of service ($170 value!) FREE! This thing was only launched last Wednesday!

So, what am I, some kind of T-Mobile shill? And what, now I can’t afford those expensive regular cell phone plan? Well, no, but I feel like in 4-5 years everybody’s going to be using wifi to make cell phone calls, and for like $40/month you’ll have unlimited calls to any number in the world, from anywhere in the world… and I’ll be able to say:

“I resisted wiping my forehead grease on an iPhone to be down from day one.”