Teacup.

I was part of this forum where a big drama exploded a few weeks ago. Now it’s cooled down and it’s time to do my ranting.

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.

Sometimes, I think it’s ridiculous to set a minimum post count per week for any sort of hosting. I saw one that said the hostee must update at least three times a week. Right. Sometimes I can’t even update three times a month without sounding like a broken record.

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* ?

So I really had it with some websites really loving those pop-ups and so I scoured the internet for some solutions to combat this…issue that makes me want to slam someone’s face in to my desk. Preferably the site-owner’s face. Anyway!

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…

It’s really stupid that Photobucket removed the old uploader for anyone who has Flash installed. I’m on Firefox 3.0.11 and it should be compatible (I think…) but it’s not. Everytime I use their stupid Flash uploader, all my images say ‘uploaded’ and when I refresh, it’s not there. I’ve been using FireUploader to go around the stupid PB problem. Anyone want to suggest a better service?

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.