Rottweilers Ate My Laptop

Shopping around for a new web host has been on my list for a while now. I wish it were actually the case that I was outgrowing my current web host’s servers, but even the combined traffic of my personal websites, my company’s website, and my friends’ and clubs’ dog-related websites isn’t a very taxing amount of bandwidth.

Right now I have two different web hosting providers. One provider has very good customer service, and even still has 24/7 toll-free non-outsourced telephone support in addition to email support. Unfortunately, the last change of ownership also brought a move away from the VPS and dedicated servers provided by the previous owners. They still support the existing servers but are not planning any upgrades at all to the older hardware and software. This means that I will not be able to get more recent versions of PHP and MySQL, which is definitely going to be a problem for me very soon.

The other provider also had a recent change of ownership. I was lucky in that I did not experience the technical problems that some other customers were plagued with, some for weeks on end. Customer service went downhill, and then outsourced. I’m not very comfortable with what might lie ahead there.

I’ve put off shopping for the move long enough, so it’s back to the top of my to-do list to complete this month. I’m looking at these providers:

WiredTree
KnownHost
Media Temple

If you have any personal experiences with those hosts, particularly with VPS, please share!

I learned of this project through a post at BlogHer. Darren Rowse at ProBlogger is hosting the “31 Days to Build a Better Blog” challenge. It starts today, April 6, but it is not too late to join. Even though my blog is mostly personal and free-form, and ProBlogger is geared more towards blogging as a business, after taking a quick look through the archives of the two previous “31 Days” in 2005 and 2007, I think I will still benefit from this challenge. Whether blogging for business or personal reasons, the goal of attracting and retaining an audience that you can interact with for mutual benefit is pretty universal.

If you think you might be interested, it doesn’t cost you anything but a month’s time. Here is the sign-up page if you would like to join me and a cast of several thousand other better bloggers!

31 Days to Build a Better Blog – Join 9100 other Bloggers Today!

Hanzi Smatter is one of my favorite websites. The subtitle to the blog—dedicated to the misuse of Chinese characters in Western culture—says it all. Or almost all, as the blog does address Japanese characters (Kanji) as well. Let’s just say that rampant misuse seems to be a problem regardless of which Asian characters are involved.

One of the most frequently-addressed topics within the blog is bad Kanji tattoos, and this has got to be one of the best entries ever:

Co-worker’s Tattoo
Q: [My co-worker] thinks it means “Bitch”
A: What this woman tattooed really means “cheap whore”

Even though I know it is wrong to laugh at other people’s misfortune, I am still laughing and I have shared the link with my co-workers so that they may laugh as well.

And yes, I am a teeny bit smug about having a team of “Kanji advisors” who would never let this happen to me! Although I speak and read only a very little Japanese, my parents, uncles and aunts are completely bilingual and if they don’t know a specific character, they have their own “Kanji advisors” to get more help from. Although I must say I wanted to die when my mom asked the reverend at her church about characters on a particular tattoo (thank God, and I mean that in every sense, that it didn’t say something filthy), at least I know I will never need a tattoo saying “cheap whore” removed from my body!