The whole drama is over hosting. User A who shall be known as Missing, hosts around half the people on the board and the activity that is associated with the board. Missing is quite friendly with the owner of the board, who I’ll call Owner, and another person on the board who I’m going to name…Friend.

So, we’re all chugging along together until…oh noez, Missing goes, well, missing. So Owner and Friend check up on Missing with a txt message and Missing told them she’d be gone about two weeks on vacation. But after that, she’ll be back. The masses are appeased for the time being.

The two-weeks deadline come and goes. The masses are unsettled, but not ready to put a pitchfork in someone’s eyes yet until…OH NOEZ, Missing’s domain suddenly goes missing and the server is not serving and mass hysteria ensues.

So one of Missing’s hostee starts a thread on the forum asking whether Missing’s domain is giving out a 404 error to anyone else? A few people agrees with the 404 error. By about the seventh post, users are getting agitated that they might lose their files and all that. By the 15^th post, Missing is being crucified for being MIA. Until about the…20^th post, someone finally has some mind to say that perhaps Missing is in serious health troubles. Thank god, about time. After that, the discussion about the promised torture that shall be inflicted upon Missing on her return dies down dramatically.

Approximately one week passes…

Friend starts a new thread plugging her website that provides hosting to people in need. Well, that’s all great and dandy. I even had a look and it wasn’t too bad, it was pretty decent…besides the damn welcoming message that is probably meant to rub some dirt in Missing’s face! Intro went something like this (excuse my forgetfulness but after I saw that message, I never went back to her website):

…free but reliable hosting…

OK, I know what you’re thinking. “Oh for fuck’s sake, it’s just a damn word which has been italicized! See, even I can italicize it without sounding offensive!” But I think I need to remind you that this is my blog, my rants, my opinions.

So, I see that italicized font and I’m thinking there can be no way that this is some fucking coincidence that Friend not only has a domain after Missing’s sudden indefinite vacation, oh no, it’s a hosting domain, which is supposedly reliable. And that’s what I have an issue with. Nothing is reliable. Nobody is reliable.^** So essentially, Friend is promising something that she in actuality, can’t deliver. (By the way, after all these “reliability” crap, a few days ago, her whole server threw a hissy fit and wasn’t very reliable when pages hosted by her kept throwing up errors to visitors.)

My issues with this whole drama:

1) The people hosted by Missing shouldn’t have stoked the fire of crucifying Missing for “missing files” because the hosted were responsible for their own damn files. They should have made a fucking back-up weekly, or monthly, or whenever they have time to. Not to rely on Missing for back-up. Even if she did promise to have a backup of her whole website including hostees, the hostees should have jolly well have their own files anyway.

I’ve been hosted by a handful of people since I started this whole website thing. And I’ve never once relied on their back-up. This whole image files and whatever, I have it on my hard-drive. If there’s not enough space, I use GSpace. What’s that I hear about “oh noez, yours is a simple website. I use WP and I can’t get a back-up of my database unless my host does it for me!!11!!11″ Well, WP has it’s own database back-up system. Or you can use one of the many plug-ins available to do that. If a script doesn’t have many plug-ins or in-built functions to back-up a database, search through Google for a solution!

2) The whole “I can’t believe Missing would host people and then suddenly go AWOL!” business. Missing hosted all of you out of the kindness of her heart. She pays for the space and name. But does she ask the hostees to pay for the space that they are allocated/used? Nope. So those hostees should suck it up and shut up. Just be grateful she even hosted all these people.

3) Before mother nature can blow away the “Missing gone missing!” drama ashes, maybe even before the fire even burnt out, Friend opened her website with the whole “reliable” thing going on. The whole nature of it cannot be classed as co-incidental. I’ll be really lenient with my thinking and go with the masses that maybe she bought the domain name and had the whole idea for the website to be a hosting domain way before the whole “Missing gone missing!” drama started, but there is no way in hell the whole “reliable-in-your-face” thing could have been done before the drama.

—

^** In hindsight, I realize by saying that, I would instantly be painted as an extreme pessimist. I neither agree nor disagree with that statement. I am merely stating that while living my life up until now, and even my parents telling me, that I should never rely on anything or anyone except yourself. And this advice has served me well.

Mini-tirade over, I’m 99% sure I’ll be getting my paws on the DS Lite Red Mario console next weekend. I can’t wait. Doesn’t help that there’s also the Pokemon Heart Gold and Soul Silver game with more interaction via the pedometer. That should encourage me to exercise more. Mm-hmm. I’ve checked out some games that I may buy initially. They will hopefully include one of the following: Kirby – Canvas Curse; GTA – Chinatown Wars; and Drawn to Life. Hopefully.

And to entertain yourself some more, Modi’s take on good health is sound advice.

PS. Bought a few items online. Should be coming soon. *glee* ♥

I came across this handy-dandy post that shows a few tips and tricks on optimizing Firefox. I have to recommend the browser.cache.disk.capacity tip. I always knew that Firefox is a real RAM hogger but I didn’t know how to combat this without actually breaking Firefox. Then came along this article and I feel a bit safer knowing that I’ve set a limit that Firefox can’t override.

The fix to my pop-up issue is the last one. And thank god for it! I have already set in my Firefox options menu to always open pop-ups in a new tab. But somehow, some sites doesn’t follow that rule and half the time, will crash my Firefox because of trying to open annoying pop-ups. I’ve used the trick in that article, tested it out, and by my holy moly spaghetti it works! I can now continue along on my happy-browsing walkway.

In real-life, I’m thinking of taking up dancing. Hip-hop/contemporary dancing. Seriously. I’ve been checking out local dance theaters that offer this type of dance classes for beginners like me. There’s only one dance theater around here and the only way to contact them is by calling. The urge to take up this type of dancing came really suddenly and it just won’t go away…I’ll probably call them up to see about this sort of classes. Hmm…

I’m looking around for a wireless mouse because my optical mouse on this laptop is slowly crapping out on me. When I want to highlight a text, the laptop thinks I’ve double-click and refuses to highlight. I’m trying to select my bookmark folder in Firefox, the stupid menu wouldn’t open because, again, it thinks I’ve double-click so refuses to open. I’m trying to insert a text in the middle of a paragraph, it selects the whole paragraph and I have to slowly move the cursor using the D-Pad. I’m just about ready to throttle the mouse itself if only it was alive. And today is only the second day it’s screwing up.

Oh yeah, my ring arrived! Be jealous, my minions, be very jealous…

Pardon the bad lighting in the first picture, hence the second. All from webcam. Now you see what I mean that it is like a wedding band? Oh well. I love it.

I’m up to level 24 and it’s kicking my butt. XD

Because of how the game is meant to be played and that I’ve been playing all afternoon, I find that my thinking processes is slightly out of loop. Because of too much Chronotron. For example, while I am typing up this post, I keep having to think what I have to end with first instead of what I meant to start with. Just by simply reading a sentence, I keep thinking shouldn’t I have read the ending first?

Moving on, I’m participating in a Secret Santa over at PsyPets. I’m pretty sure it’s international. I originally had an idea of making a small book, but that was about a month ago and now, I’m doubting myself. We’ll see. I might scout around town to see what’s a good little present on Thursday. Besides the book, I’m all out of ideas. (S)He likes purple. Sad to say, that’s one of my least favorite color. Haha.

I don’t know, I’ll think of something. Like always.

EDIT: Miniclip is a stinking poo. Stupid bug won’t let me pass the last four levels and there was no awesome background music unlike the one at Kongregate. So I have to start all over again at Kongregate. >_>

In other news, remember the AshPink rant I made? Well, a whole month and nearly two weeks later on Twitter, we are told about free hosting until May 2010 for paid clients. Note we weren’t told what the fuck happened until somebody else asked what the fuck happened. Turns out the server was revoked. Great. So can I have my money back now since I only got nearly two months worth of my YEAR-LONG PAID plan? I still have the receipt.

On a lighter note (I want some sort of compensation APHost, damn it!), I finished all my exams just this Saturday gone by. This course, I just need to pass it. It’s so nerve-wrecking. I remember one question totally got me stumped. Something about skin lesions by Atherosclerosis, I think. Only this morning, the answer hit me. Something about fatty dots, fatty streaks, fatty pools and all that. Cue head/desk.

Will edit this post once all entries have been cross-posted successfully.

EDIT: I present to you, Boateng! Inspiration from the one and only Ozwald Boateng. ♥

Mother of Nepal Vanquish a Killer of Children (Measles)
Rumor, Fear and Fatigue Hinder Final Push to End Polio
Dose of Tenacity Wears Down a Horrific Disease (Guinea Worm)
Preventable Disease Blinds Poor in Third World (Blinding Trachoma)
Beyond Swollen Limbs, a Disease’s Hidden Agony (Lymphatic Filariasis/Elephantiasis)

Just a side note, it is thought that the origins of this medical sign is based on the Guinea Worm. The Guinea Worm persists back from when Egyptians were building pyramids up until the current times. The Guinea Worm can be “helped” by curling the worm around a twig as it slowly comes out. This is something like what the medical sign looks like.

Going totally off-topic, if you’re a budding waiter/waitress, you might want to check out 100 things restaurant staffers should never do. Part 1, part 2. Of course, the writer can talk the talk, but can he walk the walk? In my opinion, I don’t think so.

Since I can’t remember, enjoy the Heineken advertisement. It never fails to send me laughing so hard, I cry. Watch the woman wearing the black dress (the one introducing her new walk-in wardrobe). I love her expression when she hears the guys screaming. XD That is the best part, I think. Hehe…

And this is the Bavaria spoof. Freaking awesome, man! Just for this, Bavaria deserves to get a few extra sales.

It stinks because the finals are looming over me. However, I am living up to my name as Queen Procrastinator. So what have I been wasting my time on? Psypets!

I came across this site back in 2007 when I wanted to have a virtual pet but nothing like Neopets. I played Psypets for a year then I took a hiatus of it. In that time, I made a lot of money. If only I can convert it to real $$$…After a one-year hiatus, I’m back at it again. If any of you play, I’m Decimate.9 over there.

What else have I been wasting my time on…oh yeah. My final writing assignment. If I did not take this incredibly stupid writing course, I would have had zero assignments/essays this trimester. *whine whinge whine whinge* Hem hem. For this course, (I can’t even talk about this course without my blood boiling…) we have four essays to write. The first three are off my hands. The fourth one is set on the last week of the damn course and we have two weeks to complete it. Do you know what it’s on about? My freaking reflection on the writing course. Argh! Hear my screams of frustration!

You might think it’s easy. It’s not. They make it sound easy to trick people like me. At first I thought it was a personal opinion on what I thought about the course. Then the tutor tells me it’s actually what was taught in the course to attract more students doing it.

“… … … WTF?!?” *head/desk x4820375*

It’s only 700-900 words and I have completed it with 800+ words of bullshit. There, I finished it. Now they can’t say I didn’t do it.

Since the exercycle is finally fixed in my house, I’m off to cycle. Ta-ta.

So, a couple of months ago, I bought myself a domain and a shared hosting plan from AshPink. It was a small plan, mainly to host a few projects that would take the load off Teacup’s server. It’s all fine and dandy until a few days ago when I tried visiting my domain and I get a “Page Load Error. Address not found. Firefox can’t find the server at ______”.

OK, that’s fine. All servers go through some downtime. I tried going to their main website — 404 Error. Support website — 404 error. I remembered them having a Twitter account. Googled long and hard and finally found it — APHosting. Their last upate on this downtime was more than a week ago.

They say their server is working on their side. Yeah, that’s great. What about on the CUSTOMER’S side? How about that?!

So now, I’m stuck with a YEAR-LONG PAID plan, which doesn’t fucking work. I mean, seriously. The best they can come up with is “The Oreo server is still working at our end…”

The web support address on their Twitter profile doesn’t even work! The least they could do is, oh jeez, I don’t know, PROVIDE AN ALTERNATIVE WAY FOR CUSTOMERS TO CONTACT YOU?!?

EDIT: I just did a quick check on whether their server is actually running using SiteUptime, their result was Failed.