I honestly don’t understand how DreamHost stays in business.

December 5, 2020 by 2 Comments
Dossy tweeting: "@DreamHostCare Is anyone actually watching this Twitter account? You're about to lose a $350/mo customer because a server migration has been going on for 6+ hours now, with no updates from your end. What are you all doing over there?"

Yesterday, a client of mine was having their DreamHost dedicated server migrated to a new dedicated server because the one they are on intermittently becomes unresponsive at 8pm ET, seemingly at random.

DreamHost’s diagnosis is that the server is on a Linux kernel version that is supposedly causing this, and their recommended solution to the problem isn’t to just upgrade to a kernel that doesn’t have this problem, which would be trivially simple, but to upgrade the entire operating system and migrating to a new dedicated server.

As a person who manages servers for a living, I get it: it can suck having to support old stuff sometimes. The old server is on Ubuntu 14.04.6 LTS, which is quite old at this point, but isn’t due to reach End of Life until April 2022. The new dedicated server they’re moving us to is only on Ubuntu 18.04.5 LTS, which isn’t even the newest Ubuntu at this point, which would be Ubuntu 20.04.1 LTS. Still, any opportunity to force a customer to do a major OS upgrade because the service you’re providing is failing intermittently, I suppose if you don’t give a shit about your customer, you make them do it.

There’s only four small sites being hosted on this server.

There are a combined total of 103.3 GB worth of files, and 7.5 GB worth of MySQL data. These numbers might seem large by year 2000 standards, but in 2020, this is trivially small; it can all fit comfortably in RAM on any modern server, or stored on a modern iPhone.

Transferring this from one server to another over a 1 Gbps link shouldn’t take more than 19 minutes, and less than 2 minutes on a 10 Gbps link. Migrating from one server to another shouldn’t take more than 30 minutes, tops, and that’s if you’re a Neanderthal and type with your fucking elbows.

A woman typing on a Dell keyboard with her left elbow.
Source: odiouswench on YouTube

Thinking that this should be a quick and easy migration, we requested the migration back on October 28th, asking for a date and time when the migration could be done. On October 30th, DreamHost responds saying the data center team would need to do some prep, and that they’d let us know when they could schedule the upgrade, “likely early next week.”

Apparently, “early next week” in DreamHost-speak takes over a month.

Fast-forward a month, and on November 28th, I send a follow-up message asking what the status is with our request. Four days later, on December 2nd, I get a response saying they’re ready to go. I respond on December 3rd, requesting the soonest available time slot, because at this point I just want to get this over with. I get a response late that night saying that they’ll schedule the upgrade for the next day, December 4th, at 11am PT/2pm ET. Fantastic, we’ve got a plan!

The time comes, it’s 2pm ET, and I’m sitting here, with the Cloudflare panel open in one tab, the DreamHost panel open in another, and the sites all lined up in 4 other tabs, ready to pull the trigger on changing the DNS to point everything at the new server to minimize whatever downtime I can. I’m prepared.

At 2:57pm, I get an email from DreamHost saying that they’re only now starting the migration. 🤦 Okay, fine, whatever. The email says I’ll receive an automated email once the upgrade is done. Cool, let’s get this over with!

… time passes …

… and some more time passes …

… I’m starting to wonder if my spam filter ate their automated email …

… and the sites still haven’t been migrated …

At 7:26pm, I send an email pointing out that at least one of the sites is down because it can no longer connect to its database. I point out that I haven’t gotten an email that the migration has completed yet, so either their process has failed or they have seriously taken four and a half hours, so far, to complete a migration that should have been 30 minutes, tops.

At 8:37pm, having gotten no response to my earlier email, and the site still being down, I send another email, asking for an update. How much longer could this possibly take?

Getting no responses to my emails, I decide to give DreamHost support’s “live chat” a shot. I queue up at 9:17pm, and eventually get connected to a person at 9:27pm. I ask for a status update with our migration. I notice that while I was waiting in queue, an email arrived at 9:16pm saying their upgrade process failed and had to be restarted.

Are you fucking kidding me?

I stay on the live chat to try and get progress updates, and see if there’s any chance this is going to actually get done tonight. Sadly, at 10:19pm, I’m told that the migration process has failed again, and that the tech who was doing it will revert part of the migration to point the sites at the databases on the old dedicated server to bring the sites back online, and that they’ll come back to this on Monday.

At 10:42pm, I’m informed that the sites should be back online and that and that there’s nothing more that will be done this evening. I confirm that the sites are back online, and end the chat.

***

I was a long-time DreamHost customer, myself, since 2006. But, after they changed their service offering in 2015, I had enough and closed my account.

At that time, I was just happy enough to leave and leave it at that. But now, 5 years later, seeing that the DreamHost experience has continued to get worse over time, I’ve decided that not only am I not going to give them my business, I’m not going to have my clients give them their business, either.

If you’re currently hosted at DreamHost and unhappy and want to move away, but haven’t because you’re either uncomfortable moving your site by yourself, or you’ve tried hiring someone in the past to do it and they failed, I want to help move you.

Contact me and tell me about your DreamHost experience, and I’ll see to it that you’re moved to better hosting.

Filed Under: Believe it, or not, Business, Freelancing, Geeking out, Linux, MySQL, Panoptic, WTF 2 Comments

White chocolate and red liquorice are just wrong

May 8, 2011 by 5 Comments
These are wrong

Did you know that there’s no such thing as “white chocolate” or “red liquorice”? No, really …

Maybe sure you’re thinking, “But I’ve had white chocolate, and I’ve had red liquorice. What do you mean there’s no such thing?” What I really mean is: these names are misnomers.

“White chocolate” isn’t really chocolate. “Red liquorice” contains no liquorice.

Of course, these foods probably got their names because it was easier to refer to them by these names than something more accurate. Or, perhaps it was a clever act of marketing. Still, I’m doing my part by spreading the word about these inaccuracies.

Know of any common misnomers, things that people call by a certain name, which is actually technically inaccurate? Let me know by leaving a comment. Thanks!

Filed Under: Believe it, or not, Food, Observations 5 Comments

A fine Dungeon Master in the making

October 8, 2010 by 3 Comments

I came downstairs this morning and noticed that someone, most likely Charlie, was playing with the LEGO table. What do most kids build out of LEGOs? Little vehicles? Maybe a pet shop? Or spaceships? And what do my kids make … ?

The beginnings of a LEGO dungeon.

Yeah, that’s right — it’s a LEGO dungeon. With a secret, hidden treasure room, an altar that looks like a diving board, and its own red dragon guardian and giant serpent.

Every day, I wonder if today’s the right day to try and introduce D&D to her … I have a feeling we’ve got a fine Dungeon Master in the making, here.

And this is how I get to start my day, today. I think it’s going to be a great one.

Filed Under: Believe it, or not, Family, Observations 3 Comments

J.K. Rowling throws down “gay wizard” and “epic fail” at Harvard 2008

June 6, 2008 by Leave a Comment

One of my fetishes is to read commencement speeches. They’re usually full of the lulz and J.K. Rowling’s commencement address at Harvard 2008 is no exception.

Early on she breaks the ice with some humor about gay wizards. You might think if you were giving a speech at Harvard you’d stick to the straight and narrow, but some people play to win, not just to avoid losing. This sets the tone for her speech right away: as long as it may be, it’s going to be worth it.

The faux apologetic tone for the content of the speech in the beginning is cute. Who would possibly believe that someone who can turn out seven Harry Potter books would have any difficulty choosing how to address an audience of Harvard graduates?

To be totally honest, I’m probably one of the few hold-outs who still hasn’t read the Harry Potter series. The notion of a Messianic child wizard engaged in battles of good and evil are a yawner: if I wanted to read that story, I’d go read the Bible–it’s got more whores, violence and all that begetting and it’s been on the best-seller list for a lot longer. However, after Rowling drops the “epic fail” in her speech–“I had failed on an epic scale”–I might just have to skim the books to see if they’re as good as her speech was. It’s clear she’s made of win today.

The second half of her speech talks of the value and power of imagination. Just reading her message brought actual tears to my eyes that kept running down my cheeks for minutes after I’d finished reading. I’m going to quote the money shot paragraph, because to elide any of it would be criminal:

“If you choose to use your status and influence to raise your voice on behalf of those who have no voice; if you choose to identify not only with the powerful, but with the powerless; if you retain the ability to imagine yourself into the lives of those who do not have your advantages, then it will not only be your proud families who celebrate your existence, but thousands and millions of people whose reality you have helped transform for the better. We do not need magic to change the world, we carry all the power we need inside ourselves already: we have the power to imagine better.”

Amen.

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Filed Under: Believe it, or not, Education Leave a Comment

A Buzz Lightyear … dildo?

April 21, 2008 by 5 Comments

My wife went to a swap meet tonight, where folks bring things they want to get rid of and exchange it for stuff that others are trying to dump. As a goof, she saw this and knew I’d want to blog a picture of it:

Buzz Lightyear dildo

Yeah, seriously, WTF is that? Is that really a Buzz Lightyear dildo? I don’t think this is what Buzz meant when he said, “To infinity, and beyond!” Hell, look at his crossed arms and disinterested look as he tries not to look downward.

Of course, this is one of those stupid “turn it on and the top spins around with lights” toys, but if you flick the switch and hold the top, the shaft rotates … hello?! Even my 8 year old daughter asked me, “Daddy, what’s the green thing at the bottom do?” All I could do was shake my head sadly and say, “Nothing, honey. Now go upstairs and brush your teeth and go to bed.”

You just can’t make this stuff up.

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Filed Under: Believe it, or not 5 Comments

Kiek in de Kök, not what you might think

April 14, 2008 by 2 Comments

One of the many blogs I read belongs to Trading Goddess, who seems to find some of the best pictures to use with her blog entries, like this one:

Kiek in de Kok street sign

Being an American who only speaks English and has a juvenile sense of humor to boot, I got a good chuckle out of this picture. Of course, I couldn’t leave well enough alone and had to find out what this actually meant (it couldn’t really mean what I thought it meant, could it?) and Wikipedia comes to the rescue. It turns out, “Kiek in de Kök” is “an old German language nickname for towers, mainly those which were parts of town fortifications.”

So, the next time you ask someone, “what’s cooking,” you might just be asking them for a Kiek in de Kök. Watch out. :-)

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Filed Under: Believe it, or not, Blogging 2 Comments

Can someone at at&t please fire whoever broke data services?

February 2, 2008 by 2 Comments

mock of new at&t logo with Death Star from Return of the Jedi

“Wish you weren’t paying $40/mo. for unlimited cellular data services that aren’t working? With at&t, you will.”

Yes, at&t’s cellular data services have been unavailable since January 31. You know, the service I pay $40/mo. for each Treo 650 and I have two on my account. It’s been unavailable since the outage started, and it’s still not working today, February 2. This also includes SMS text messaging.

I don’t know how many people are affected, but it seems this was widespread enough to make it a newsworthy outage. It’d be interesting to see if there’s any estimate as to how many customers are being affected by this.

Do the math real quick and you’ll see that this service is costing me close to $80/mo.–that’s roughly $2.60 a day. Is at&t going to give me a service credit for this outage? I doubt it. The best you’ll probably get is a “oh, we’re sorry” and basically screw the customers. But, if I “forget” to pay my bill on the due date, they’ll cut the service off until payment is made! WTF?

Is this a large enough outage to create a class-action lawsuit? If they fix the service by tomorrow, that’ll be 3 days of outage, or $7.80. I don’t know how much your data portion of your monthly bill is, but I imagine this is at least a few million dollars of revenue that at&t is collecting but hasn’t provided the service for. It’s plain old theft, if you ask me. Telcos should be federally mandated to return monies paid for services that weren’t delivered–customers shouldn’t have to wait for hours in hold queues to get refunds that weren’t their fault to begin with.

Did this outage affect you? Is it still affecting you? If you want to join the angry mob, drop a note in the comments. Lets see how widespread this is: share your city and state so we can see. I’d also like to know what data plan you’re paying for, to get an idea of how much this outage is costing us all.

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Filed Under: Believe it, or not, Piss and moan (Rants) 2 Comments

Alas, I’m still obese!

October 25, 2007 by Leave a Comment

Even though I’ve lost a net of 5 pounds since last year, I’m apparently still obese. Losing 5 pounds doesn’t seem like a lot, but sometime during the year I peaked at 215 pounds (!) … so making it all the way back down to 185 lbs feels great.

I also measured myself and it appears that I’m 5’4″, not 5’3″ like I thought. It’s not a big deal, but it makes a difference to these calculators, I guess.

It seems that I need to get down to 174 lbs in order to reduce my BMI to 29.9, which would put me at the top of the “overweight” category instead of in the “obese” category which starts at 30.0 and up. Getting down to 160 lbs would get me to a BMI of 27.5, right in the middle of the overweight range. To get into the optimal range, I’d have to get down to 145 lbs for a BMI of 24.9.

So, since I’ve managed to shed those 30 (!) pounds going from 215 down to 185, I think I can manage to lose another 15 to get down to 170. I’d like to try and do that by the summer of 2008. Then, maybe I’ll try for another 15 to get down to 155 in 2009.

I can’t even imagine what I’d look like–much less feel like–if I weighed 155 lbs again!

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Filed Under: Believe it, or not, Dossy, Dossy and more Dossy! Leave a Comment

Jo Lupo says: There’s plenty of backdoor access for everyone!

October 3, 2007 by 3 Comments

During last night’s Eureka episode, “A Night at Global Dynamics,” a priceless line was spoken by Jo’s character: “Boys, there’s plenty of backdoor access for everyone!” I couldn’t believe the script writers got away with it! I tip my hat to you guys, I’m still laughing and smiling at that scene. To preserve this gem of television magic, I ripped it off the TiVo and uploaded it:

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Filed Under: Believe it, or not 3 Comments

Arrr! Blymy, I’m a Pirate … err, Puppet!

September 19, 2007 by Leave a Comment

Ahoy, me hearties! In honor of International Talk Like a Pirate Day today, I wanted to point out the great work of my friend David, who has gotten into puppeteering.

Here is his Rocky Horror Puppet Show, performing to the tune of Blymy the Pirate A Halo Called Fred - Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band - Blymy the Pirate by A Halo Called Fred:

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Filed Under: Believe it, or not Leave a Comment
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