Did You Guys Coordinate That?

Yesterday I noticed Jason and Jeremy were both wearing the same shirt!

I’d call it a coincidence, except… they’re roommates!

Awwwwwww..

Friendless Summer

It’s hot in LA!

Which makes me think of summer!

Which makes me think of interns!

Which makes me think of hot summer interns!

Which makes me think of how sad I am to not be in Advertising!

Now, I know there are lots of other cool-sounding summer marketing internships available around this Internet world of ours, but hey, they’re not going to be very cool when it’s 96 degrees with 98% humidity in Manhattan and they’re on a street corner handing out flyers!

Meanwhile, you could be nice and cool, deep underground in one of our (assuming there’s no power outages..) climate-controlled data centres! (That was for the Brits.)

Being Los Angelenos, we don’t really know when this “summer” you speak of IS, or even really how to spell it, and because of that we’ve already “jumped the shark” and are looking to hire FIVE (5) summer interns… RIGHT NOW IN THE MIDDLE OF MARCH!

I would explain how great it is to work at DreamHost, and all the details and what-ever-for-not here, except I already wrote it once on the jobs page there, and re-hashing old content is a job best left to the professionals!

I will at least mention here that #1 this is a PAID internship, at $18.50 / hour, and #2 we’re flexible with when you want to start and how long you want to do it for, and #3 sure, this could be a good way to perhaps eventually even get a real job!

Now, juuust to wrap things up, my friend sent me an email two days ago about his experience interviewing that was way funnier than everything I’ve ever written, so hopefully he’s okay with me posting a snippet here. I can only hope that any interviewing I do for this internship will score half as many douchebag points…

So then I went to this interview at this place where really the job description was 100% me, like every thing they needed, I have done, I had all the right skills, etc. The guy there was a bit wacky. First thing when we sat down he asked me who I WAS. Like to describe myself as a whole, what type of person I am, etc. Then he started telling me how he asked some receptionist applicant that, and she said “well I’m beautiful” and then he went on this story about how she WAS gorgeous but she went on to explain that she didn’t mean her outside appearance even though it was beautiful, but she meant her inner self, she’s a beautiful person, etc. We finally got on to the interview and during it he tells me to pretend I’m a shoe salesman and I just sold him a pair of shoes but he phones me and says he doesn’t know how to tie his shoes, can I explain it to him over the phone. I was like “haha oh umm ok, sure. Haha, I feel like this is going to be one of those trick questions!” and he assures me like no, no, it’s no trick, it’s cause communication is important in this job. So I go through it, put your left lace in your left hand, pull it over to the right side, yadda yadda. Then at the end he looks at me with this smug look and goes “That was good. But you forgot one thing. You forgot to tell me to put my foot in the shoe”. Extra douchebag points here because not only WAS this a trick question, but he said tell me how to TIE them. I just chuckled and was like “oh wow yeah, I didn’t, hah yeah”, but after I was thinking how awesome it would have been to just stare at him for like 2 seconds when he said that, say nothing, and then get up and walk out and drive away.

Agreed.

We’re so high right now you don’t even know

Contrary to popular belief, we were not evicted from our Los Angeles office in October. Our lease was up and we had to skeedaddle.

However.

Due to several factors out of our control and a slight miscalculation on the part of someone I’m too nice to name…

…our new office wasn’t ready for our LA employees until a week ago.

The timing was perfect though…we had our Christmas party there last Friday and it was totally worth the wait!

We’ve moved into the AON building in downtown Los Angeles. Check it out!

Whoops! How’d that get in there? That’s actually our building as it looked in 1988.

This is the AON Center as it stands today-

It’s just a few blocks away from our old office, but it’s a few hundred feet higher. The AON Center is the second-tallest building in downtown Los Angeles. The view, as you’d expect, is obscene.

The inside is even better.

Join me, won’t you, as I take you on a whirlwind low-res cameraphone video tour!

But enough about the office! How was the Christmas party?

It was awesome. Those of us who work in the Brea office were shuttled in on a limo!

The ride into LA was quick, painless, and the air was filled with excitement! The ride back, on the other hand, smelled like alcohol, swamp butt, and broken social boundaries.

There was much lounging!

and gift-giving!

and Rock-Banding!

Our soon-to-be conference room was turned into a food-dispensing arena of gluttony by our capable caterers, The Patina Group.

If your site was down on Friday, sorry. We were too busy playing pool, eating, and sitting around doing nothing to fix it.*

*Kidding.

Great success!

By now you’re probably wondering how you can end up at the next DreamHost party, or at least get a peek at our new office in person. The answer is simple! Send us your resume.

We’re hiring people all the time and no matter how often we post our open positions, we never seem to get enough applications. Ever!

Tech support employees can choose to work in either our Downtown LA office (pictured above!) or our Brea office (also nice!) about an hour east of LA. If you’re an admin-type you’ll need to work downtown since that’s where our servers are.

See you in 2008, Internet people!

A Corny Wednesday

The world of commercial property management is a strange and fascinating thing. At least it is to me, anyway.

Property managers are essentially Mega Landlords. Sure, they handle the occasional busted pipe or sticking door, just like a residential landlord. But they also have to deal with things like regular palm tree maintenance and crazy parking lot mishaps.

You know what else they have to do? They have to give away food to their tenants once a year. It’s a nice way of saying “Here’s a snack. Now keep those rent checks coming or you’re out on your #$$.”

Some places have Free Pretzel Day.

Once a year for the last two years our property management has had Free Popcorn Day.

This is a day I look forward to immensely.

Sure, it’s outside. And there’s no chairs. Or drinks. Or napkins. And the property managers themselves are nowhere to be seen. But that’s okay. They’ve paid for an hour and a half of non-stop unlimited freshly popped kettle corn and I intended to take full advantage.

I hadn’t planned on eating lunch that day. I saved myself for just this moment.

It was so good you don’t even know.

They hired some professional carnies to make this stuff and it showed. That’s the Class A office building difference! A Class B or C operation would have opted for a microwave.

I tried to eat three bags of popcorn but I wasn’t able to beat last year’s record of two.

We headed back to the office with full stomachs and an unholy fear of what lay before us.

Every year Jones Soda makes these crazy flavored holiday-themed sodas designed to delight and disgust even the most hardened soda fanatic.

When I saw a four pack of limited edition CANDY CORN soda on clearance at Target, I knew what had to be done.

Trading one corn for another, we had a candy corn soda tasting.

Thanks to Jason for the pics and videos!

600,000 Reasons to Eat Candy!

According to webhosting.info we broke the 600,000 domain mark this week!

Just five and a half months after hitting 500,000 and here we are.

That makes us the 14th largest web host in the world…we’d rank even higher if you don’t count domain registrars that don’t offer real hosting.

As you can see, Godaddy/WildWestDomains has been allowed to become far too powerful. We’ll need to take them down a notch.

Thank you to all our customers - old and new - who helped us get here. We couldn’t have done it without you! And we hope we continue to live up to your expectations. We know you’ll let us know if we don’t. :D

Now get out there and party tonight, but be careful. You don’t want to end up like this guy.

Hey did you get a keychain?

The Time: 7pm to midnight
The Place: Elevate Lounge
The Date: Three days ago
The Reason: DreamHost’s 10 Year Birthday Blowout Extravaganza

DreamHost turned 10 a month ago and this week we had our official 10 year party!

We usually have a Halloween party around this time of year, but we decided to go high class in a high rise for 2007.

Seriously, check out this view.

Every current and former DreamHost employee dating back to the early days was invited along with a guest for an evening of dancing, drinking, and reminiscing! That’s like…at least a hundred people.

I saw people that I hadn’t seen in years! And I even remembered most of their names! I was so proud.

Yes, there was dancing!

Yes, there was even an open bar! So, so open.

And oh yes, there was swag.

We had special blue M&Ms made with DreamHost.com’s whois Creation Date stamped on them! Funny thing about those…when they come back up, they’re not blue anymore!

I also had some limited edition keychains made special for this event. Four martinis later and I really wanted to make sure everybody got some. In fact, I made it my business to personally invite every single person to get keychains before the night was over.

Or at least that’s what they tell me.

Despite my best efforts, however, I found myself at the end of the night left with a whole lot of keychains stamped with a date that will lose its freshness once 2008 rolls around.

These are nice, nice keychains. Look how they glisten and shine.

So shiny. So pretty.

Shiny.

Did I mention how shiny they were?

Did I also mention that only 500 exist in the world?

Current and former employees have had their fill, so I’m giving away the rest! If you’d like one of these keychains (and maybe some other small goodies…) you need only send a self-addressed stamped envelope to:

DreamHost
Dept: Brett is Awesome
PMB #257
417 Associated Rd.
Brea, CA 92821
USA

Make sure that your self-addressed envelope has at least $0.75 of US postage on it or INTO THE TRASH IT GOES! One envelope per person please.

If you’re outside the US you’re welcome to try sending a stamped envelope, but you’re on your own when it comes to postage (3oz envelope). I’ve heard rumors that international mail is run by an unpredictable cyclops who answers to no one and eats paper like I drink milk. (A lot.)

The friendly people at your local post office can teach you how to mail a letter in case you’ve forgotten. My hangover should be gone by next week, so get those envelopes in the mail to me right away and I’ll start stuffin’ and sealin’ just as soon as I can.

(I’ll update this post when I’ve run out of goodies.)

If you’d like to attend our next party you just need to send us a resume and get hired! We’re always looking for good technical support people, and we’ve got a few open admin/programmer spots as well.

The DreamHost 2017 birthday party is not that far away and we’ll probably have free hoverboard rides. You do NOT want to miss that.

-Brett!

Keeping In Sync

It’s been Tearin’ Up My Heart for a while that I can’t get Verizon’s FiOS service to anywhere I’ve EVER lived.

So… many… times… I check the availability on their site.

When the day finally dawns that Verizon blesses me with their almighty 30mbs beam of light, I predict the deluge of automatic notifications will blot out the sun. And along with it incoming email for everybody on looney.

Or maybe not. Because I hadn’t received one single notification when POP! I saw a new billboard advertising FiOS this weekend while at the Frank Gehry’s first/worst architectural project food court.

Had FiOS finally reared its ugly head to darken the shores of my fair little town? I sure hoped so! I was so excited I couldn’t even waiut to get back online and check their web site one final time.. I had to know immediately!

So I quickly licked the hummus off my fingers (pita is for jerks!) and dialed (888) GET-FIOS I think… already salivating and slightly aroused by how much more dominant my Bomberman Live would be with a 5mbs upload. Not to mention I’d just pre-ordered some Halo 3. (They asked me how much I wanted to prepay! Uh, what’s the minimum? $5. FIVE DOLLARS THEN!)

Anyway, here’s how the conversation went:

Thank you for your interest in Verizon FiOS .. what is your home telephone number so we can qualify your address?
Actually, I don’t use a land line.
Then we can’t check.
Uh, do you have internet?
Uh, what? Sort of.
Then go check at verizon.com!
I’m sorry, we can only check if you have a home telephone number with Verizon, would you like me to give you the number of your local Verizon sales office, who is closed until Monday?
No, thanks. I’m Gone.

URGH!

I had to know though, so I called right back, this time equipped with my neighbor’s Verizon landline number.

Thank you for your interest in Verizon FiOS .. what is your home telephone number so we can qualify your address?
310-hamana mum humuna
Thank you. You qualify for Verizon FiOS!
F*********** yeah!
Indeed. Now, are you the account holder?
No.
Are you an adult over 18 who is authorized to make decisions for the account holder?
No.
…….. oh. ……. uh… …….
Ha, no script for that, EH?! How much is it anyway?
30mbs down and 5mbs up is $54.95/month!
NICE.

Oh man, I was soo stoked that I immediately went back home and watched the Patriots choke the Chargers.

Much later that night, I remembered how stoked I was, and decided to go sign up online.

Well, my stokedidity died quick.

According to the site, my address did not qualify.. and neither did my neighbors! URGHTHT!!!

On top of that, it’s $179.95 a month, not $54.95! I don’t know where that came from.

So, I guess it’s a few more years of blaming it on the lag for me.

What the point of this anecdote was.

It’s hard to get an entire company *N SYNC. All the time, really.. but especially when there’s a new product, promotion, or feature.

Usually in a big company the website is the thing you can trust the most. It’s run by “corporate” and is generally the official company line. Ironically, for small companies the website is often the last thing to be updated, and so is usually the least reliable source of up-to-date availability, pricing, products, and all dat.

Next down the clue-stick tree is the phone sales and support team. If it’s a big company, they’ve got a lot of people working those phones, and generally they’re fairly low paid/respected and not too interested in keeping up to date on the latest and greatest stuff from corporate.

I’m sure there’s some kind of announcement, and maybe even 15 minutes of training for everybody… but until that new thing’s been out a few months, be prepared for some serious asynchronocity between what you read on the web and what you hear on the phone.

Finally, at the furthest orbit of in-the-loop solar system, is actual physical retail employees. If a company’s got retail branches, no matter if they sell cell phones, cable tv, hamburgers, shoes, or dog food, keeping EVERY employee in EVERY physically separated retail branch on the same page is, as they say in the hosting business, “sumn bitch”.

Even DreamHost, without that many employees, who are all in LA, and with no retail branches and no phone support has a very hard time getting the word out about new features internally!

It’s like these people don’t read! Or even listen! Or are never told!

Believe you me, the moment you finish reading that hilarious DreamHost newsletter every month, you know more about the current state of DreamHost than 90% of the people who work here!

But don’t worry, when you write in asking why you still haven’t been invited to DreamHost PS they’ll eventually need to ask somebody “What’s a PS?” … and then they’ll find out, usually even before they respond to your message!

Hopefully you won’t get too mad now if at times it seems as though the left hand doesn’t know what the right is doing. Or vice versa.

Because they don’t. But hey, it’s still better than only having one hand.

So, rather than getting angry all the times somebody in a company doesn’t know about their own new product, rejoice every time they do!

Be thrilled when you go to an Apple store to ask about the iPod Touch and they know “It’s not out until the end of the month.”

Shout “heckolluyeah” when you go into the T-Mobile store to get a HotSpot@Home phone and you’re lucky enough to find somebody there who just read about it on Gizmodo like you did!

And hug your keyboard and kiss your mouse when a Happy DreamHost Support Teamer actually knows we have a Cron Jobs tab or a place for end users to change their own mailbox password! (Psst… try it at your own domain.)

But This I Promise You

If we announce anything next Monday, September 24th, 2007, everybody at the company will already know about it!

Just this once.

Bye Bye Bye!

Dodge; Duck; Dip; Dive; DreamHost

I’m sure some of you sometimes wonder what exactly is going ON over here when the network goes out at DreamHost.

Well, we get right down to it. No matter how late, nor how dark, nor how dangerous, everybody heads over to the local park and plays some Dodgeball while we wait for it to hopefully resolve itself!

It’s an industry standard practice, let me assure you.

In fact, lots of times when we get there, we find several other web hosts are already playing! That’s when we take them out with our massive balls.

I usually lead the assault… since nobody can see me in my camouflage shorts!

Finally, when one lucky shmoe is declared Ultimate Dodger (small people have an advantage), they get to go back and fix everything!

The rest of us are forced to go get drunk and eat onion rings.

Friggatriskaidekaphobia

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

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.”