I'm a Rambler (part N of M)

quick thought on the philosophical front -

What questions are worth asking? One of the biggest problems when looking for information is in knowing how to frame your question properly - when I talk about it being likely (IMO) that the answer to most philosophical deep / base-level questions is found and forgotten frequently, I'm talking about exactly the same type of issue you find when you go to Google looking for the answer to something you know very little about: you have to spend *some* time searching ineffeciently just casting a wide net, learning the terms of the trade, so you can narrow your search down to the stuff you're really interested in. until you've narrowed your search, you probably see the exact answer you need several times without being aware of it, because it's significance isn't apparent until you see what's noise and what contains that nugget of useful information you're looking for. and "useful" exactly equals "what you're looking for" - information isn't intrinsically useful or not useful without a purpose to be evaluated against. IMO.

example: my wife cut her finger and got raw pork in it one day. the search trail first started with generic terms like "raw pork infection", and ended up with searches for "septicemia" and "yersinosis", to get very targeted articles on the medical implications of this cut. in my analogy, philosophical questions about human nature and the nature of the world are like searches on a database of immense size, and the volume of search results is so huge that getting to the really choice keywords is not feasible. in google searching, it's obvious what keywords are relatively rare and targeted, just by looking at the first 10-50 results. in human thought and observation of the world around us, factoids and plausible theories are so plentiful that even the statistical tail end of the uniqueness curve is actually a huge number, so with our scarce amount of time available, we can't absorb enough information to clearly say "yeah, that train of thought is static, and that other trail has the good stuff". I know this isn't exactly clear, but i guess i'm trying to elucidate one of those scalability issues that enters the picture when inspecting thought and existence.

to be continued.

To ABC:

don't block our nation's chance to focus on significant issues. our nation has become more and more led by bullshit politicians, and it's due in large part to the resonance between their tendencies towards meaningless gestures or sound bytes, and the media's appetite for rewarding such stupidity with airtime and sensationalism. you lower yourself when you participate in this cycle, and you encourage fools to run our country, which means that the american public would be fools to support you by watching your programming.

Pickin' Em Up and Layin' Em Down

On to the next dedicated hosting provider. Most recent failure: netrack servers (www.netrackservers.com). Looks good, but in the three months I've been with them, I've seen at least one QOS issue per week (e.g. we just had a 3-hour period of time during which there was packet loss rate of between 40% and 60%). I was tempted to blame it on Level3, but tracert implied otherwise - solid responses all the way up to netrack's doorstep.

The fun thing is that their tech support number drops straight into a voicemail box. I have never spoken with a human being at their company, and they strongly encourage you to use their support website (https://support.netrackservers.com), which is of course on the same network as their dedicated servers, so if you have a network outage of some level, your ability to access the support site is compromised as well. neat how that works - sure keeps the customers off your back during a crisis. Today, i called into their tech support number, and was informed that their mailbox was full. Hah.

BAD, BAD, BAD Netrack Servers!! Stop pooping on the carpet!!

Moving on... Next stop: GoDaddy.com, Amazon's cloud computing, Google's cloud computing, and Rackspace (once my $3mm trust fund kicks in, or i win the lottery)

O Hillary, My Hillary

I'm from New York. I used to be one of those people that thought "why are people so negative about Hillary Clinton? There's nothing particularly unique about her, she's done some good things, she's done some bad things, what's the big deal??"

I've learned an answer to that question. She's a phony. She presents herself as a force for change in a government dominated by men. She presents herself as a skilled and thoughtful leader. She presents herself as "just one of us, trying to make it". She presents herself as being a democrat.

Fortunately, her acting skills are crappy when she's bent by the frustration of being thwarted on the yellow brick road to the white house. She thought she was a shoe-in for the job.

I'm pretty sure that in truth, she's a Good Ol' Boy Republican. She's got a good makeup team.

There's room for more than one at the "call me naive, but the political machine is fucked up and I want to fix it" table. She's too jaded to go there; she fully embraces the tricks of the trade that she's learned over the past two decades, from spin to smear to diversions.

That is, of course, why I will not vote for her ever again, in any race.

I Question Their Dedication

Dedicated hosting is, in theory, a nice way for the little guy to pay a monthly chunk, and get access to enterprise-level hosting facilities, hardware support, and bandwidth. In practice, it's just another one of those industry broken promises fueled by cut-throat competition and the constant downward slide of customer service and service quality that typically comes along with aggressive price undercutting.

I can't find a reference to the first hosting provider that suffered from this, but it was some company in Canada that was offering 3000GB of bandwidth, reasonable hardware specs for the time, for $70/month. Network goes down, nobody can be reached. Seeya.

AIT - my most frustrating experience, even though i stuck with them for nearly four years hoping that the stability of the service would be good enough that i didn't have to *deal* with their crappy tech support / customer service department. dumb of me (although i make many decisions that could be considered dumb, simply on the basis of not having enough time to take the proper course of action). it seems that my loyalty/apathy had its own special reward (this is very much like The Brick Joke & The Cigar Joke)

Act 1: Josh Takes Command

Information Ticket # : [ 643467 ] Callback Settings No callback currently set. Domain : ___.com Email : james@___.com Phone : 000-0000 Date received : 12/5/2007 1:57:43 PM Status : Closed Action : Click here to reopen Ticket

Sequence : 1 Request on :12/5/2007 1:57:43 PM Topic : Dedicated Support the ip address 216.117.148.140 has been assigned to me for over two years. today, i'm finding that suddenly when i browse to this ip address, i get a web page from some one else's server, instead of my client's website on my server. i have confirmed that my web server is up, working properly, that all dns entries are correct and the domain is in good standing with the internet registrar. this seems to be a routing issue within your network. Submitted By : Unknown Unknown Customer Comment : i spoke with a first level tech, who asked me to clarify the problem in my ticket comments: the ip address 216.117.148.140, which has been assigned to me for over two years, is now routing to some server other than mine. for your reference, here are all of the ip addresses assigned to my account: 216.117.147.190 216.117.185.123 216.117.173.233 216.117.164.13 216.117.148.140 216.117.148.83 216.117.145.214 216.117.137.78 -- the contact that i spoke to asked me about the web site i had running at that ip address, and looked into the whois for the account, etc. these pieces of information only confuse a very simple issue - this ip address [216.117.148.140] is assigned to me, and the traffic to that address is not reaching my server. Submitted on :12/5/2007 4:03:45 PM Reply Sent on : 12/5/2007 6:38:48 PM By : Joshua Walton Hello, I have looked into your issue and verified that these IP's are assigned to you and are no longer dually assigned. We have taken action against the customer who stole your IP. 216.117.148.140 216.117.147.190 216.117.185.123 216.117.173.233 216.117.164.13 216.117.148.140 216.117.148.83 216.117.145.214 216.117.137.78 Should you have any more issues, please contact our customer service. I apologize for the inconvenience. Thank you for hosting with us. Joshua Walton System Administrator AIT, Inc.

Sequence : 2 Request on :1/19/2008 3:19:40 PM Topic : Fixed Contact Customer i now appear to be having the exact same problem with the following IP addresses: 216.117.137.78 216.117.148.83 216.117.145.214 , all of which are assigned to me, confirmed per previous comments on this ticket. please confirm that they are still routed to my server, and that they are not assigned to any other server. Submitted By : Unknown Unknown Reply Sent on : 1/19/2008 10:10:34 PM By : Philip Eatherington Hello, and thank you for contacting AIT. Per my conversation with James, the three IPs are all now working correctly. The last, 216.117.145.214 had some more difficulty because Windows detected a conflict and dropped the IP. These had all been assigned to newly provisioned customers because an internal system was not completely up to date. I have ensured these IPs are correctly marked as assigned to you so this should not occur again and have migrated the other customers to different IP address, which were initially going to be provided for your use. This was done because all three sites for the fully managed customers were still resolving to the default page, and were only a few days to a week old, indicating they were not yet underway. Should a future conflict occur, I cannot guarantee such a favorable outcome. I have personally checked each IP in the list Joshua sent to you in the last iteration to ensure that these are properly assigned to you and should not be reassigned.

Downtime: 9 hrs

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Act 2: Josh Giveth and Josh Taketh Away

Information Ticket # : [ 654365 ] Callback Settings No callback currently set. Domain : ____.com Email : james@____.com Phone : 000-0000 Date received : 1/14/2008 10:17:51 AM Status : Closed Action : Click here to reopen Ticket

Sequence : 1 Request on :1/14/2008 10:17:51 AM Topic : Abuse notice Submitted By : Unknown Unknown Customer Comment : I"ve been told by the last AIT tech that i spoke with, that we"re somehow under suspicion of stealing ip addresses. every ip address associated with our dedicated server has been assigned to us for OVER TWO YEARS, and i have the messages to prove it from your tech support. please substantiate this claim immediately or restore our hardware to service. Submitted on :1/14/2008 8:15:19 PM Reply Sent on : 1/17/2008 9:54:46 AM By : Alton Hurley Closed ticket without sending reply.

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Information Ticket # : [ 654442 ] Callback Settings Callback Time : 1/14/2008 1:35:00 PM Phone Number : NNN-PPP-XXXX [ Close Callback ] Domain : ____.com Email : james@____.com Phone : 000-0000 Date received : 1/14/2008 1:31:44 PM Status : Closed Action : Click here to reopen Ticket

Sequence : 1 Request on :1/14/2008 1:31:44 PM Topic : PTS Server is down. Immediate reboot is needed, as client websites and email are down. This is a PTS immediate response needed - NOT a non-pts reboot issue. Please reboot asap. Submitted By : Unknown Unknown Customer Comment : nearly 2 hours after it was determined that the reason for shutting our server down was invalid, it remains down. Submitted on :1/14/2008 11:03:25 PM Reply Sent on : 1/14/2008 4:47:22 PM By : Mark Greene Thank you for hosting with AIT. Our system administrators have a ticket regarding this issue in their tier and will have your services backup shortly. We appreciates your patience and thank you for choosing AIT.

Sequence : 2 Request on :1/14/2008 5:32:51 PM Topic : PTS This PTS ticket was improperly closed as it was NOT rectified. Please reopen. If you must consolidate tickets, close the original ticket from 10:17am, NOT this PTS ticket until the situation is fixed. Submitted By : Unknown Unknown Update Sent on : 1/14/2008 5:44:30 PM By : Mark Greene Thank you for hosting with AIT. Our system administrators have a ticket regarding this issue in their tier and will have your services backup shortly. We appreciates your patience and thank you for choosing AIT. Reply Sent on : 1/14/2008 6:20:40 PM By : Alton Hurley Closed ticket without sending reply.

Sequence : 3 Request on :1/14/2008 8:16:32 PM Topic : PTS this issue has not been resolved, our server is still down, and we did not receive a call from tech support confirming that this ticket should be closed. Submitted By : Unknown Unknown Customer Comment : our server appears to be up and functioning properly. i"m able to connect to a remote desktop, and am confirming that it is intact. Submitted on :1/14/2008 11:26:13 PM Update Sent on : 1/14/2008 9:09:42 PM By : Mark Greene Thank you for hosting with AIT. As per our conversation, your server modeic.com had been taken offline because it was believed that the IP address 216.117.147.190 was in use on the server but was not allocated to you. However ticket number 643467 indicates that the IP address was in fact assigned to your account. I have sent this information to our system administrators as well as to our Abuse manager. I apologize for the confusion and your services will be restored shortly. Thank you for your patience and thank you for choosing AIT. Mark Greene Technical Support Supervisor AIT Inc. Reply Sent on : 1/14/2008 11:34:06 PM By : Mark Greene Thank you for hosting with AIT. As per our conversation, your service has been restored and all services are responding normally. Thank you for your patience and thank you for choosing AIT.

Downtime: 20.5 hours
Compensation offered: $37.50 (1/2 month hosting cost)
The Brick: The system admin responsible for shutting our server down at 3am with no notice at all was Joshua Walton, the one that said "We have taken action against the customer who stole your IP."

None of these cost-competetive providers gives a shit about the SMB impact of their crappy customer service and the downtime associated with their unresponsive staff. Their goal is to get your $$ for as little effort as they can put out, which translates to "get you off the phone" style phone banks. This one event cost our little business over $10K in lost business, but the most we can do about it is blog about it and hope to warn the next guy. Then get ready to hand over our wallets to rackspace, for the privilege of having someone actually be responsive when their network and server hardware fucks up.

I would say 'peace out', but...

war.