Rottweilers Ate My Laptop

Rottweilers. Computers. Cameras. World Domination. Not necessarily in that order.

Rottweilers.
Computers. Cameras.
World Domination.
Not necessarily in that order.

This and that

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  • I don’t really get Tumblr yet, but it seems like a good place to put things that are too long for Twitter or that perpetuate this blog’s recent identity crisis. So here goes with Rottweilers Tumblrd My Laptop.
  • Even though I’m probably one of the most antisocial people on the planet, I spent part of today checking out the RockMelt beta. RockMelt bills itself as a “social browser” and is tightly integrated with Facebook and Twitter. It’s based on Google Chrome which is already my secondary browser so it was definitely worth a look. Marc Andreesen’s involvement was a bit intriguing, also. I’m liking it ok so far, except that it seems to turn on my Facebook chat at random, whether I want it on or not.
  • My Hybrid server prize from WiredTree is happily chugging along. The cutover from my VPS was totally trouble-free. I asked for the cutover to happen anytime between November 1-5. They scheduled me for November 1 at 1 a.m. I got a reminder email on Halloween night at about 10 p.m., and another one at 12:59 p.m. advising me that the upgrade had started, followed by another one not quite an hour later upon successful completion. Have I mentioned how much I love WiredTree? My business also has email and website hosted with WiredTree. Today I had to put in a ticket for an email issue. I got a reply in two minutes. Yes, minutes. I love these guys.
  • Doesn’t look like we’re back on track with the Rottweiler and computer related content yet. But here comes a Rottweiler to help. I think I’d better let it do what it wants. It outweighs me.

(NaBloPoMo | November ’10: 8 of 30)

Preparing for the upgrade

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I’m preparing for my server upgrade by making sure I have current backups of all of the sites on that server. Seems like I have been much more diligent about keeping up with backups for my friends and family than for my own sites. Go figure.

I have found that the mere act of making backups seems to ward off disaster. This is probably faulty logic in the extreme, but since I haven’t had to restore anything from a backup in a very long time… it works for me.

(NaBloPoMo | October ’10: 29 of 31)

Winning is good

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A while ago I entered this Twitter giveaway by my VPS provider, Wired Tree:

Guess what?

A Hybrid server is a lot more server than my current sites generally need. If you compare the specs to my current VPS512 you’ll see what I mean. But it will still be nice to move up. I’ve had the occasional out-of-memory errors and those likely won’t be a problem once we’re on a server with 2,048MB of RAM as compared to 512MB.

Of course, even if I hadn’t won the giveaway, I would still consider myself a winner. My personal sites, and those of my company, have been on WiredTree VPS servers since May 2009. It has been a happy and trouble-free 18 months. I am more than satisfied with our low-end VPSs and the fact that even with our low-end servers, I am still treated like a high-end customer in terms of response time and quality of customer service. Thanks, WiredTree… for everything!

(NaBloPoMo | October ’10: 21 of 31)

Exceeding expectations

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A virtual chat world where I was once an active member has had quite a bit of downtime lately. I don’t spend much, if any, time there any longer. In fact, the only reason I’ve been checking their forum this week to see if they are back in service is so I can close out my presence and my account there.

One thing that has always annoyed me is how people talk about “withdrawal” when just one of their online places goes down. Unless your internet has completely gone down, and even if it has, aren’t there a bazillion other online and offline things to do? Sorry, pet peeve there.

Another conversation I noted on their forum was someone speculating about price increases since hardware repairs and upgrades were involved. I know nothing about that, but that brings me to my next, and real, topic: have I mentioned how much WiredTree rocks?

I hope I haven’t lost you there, because we both know the answer to that is that yes, I have mentioned it quite a few times since switching VPS providers in May. And like the virtual world I am about to leave, WiredTree has also done some recent hardware upgrades. So will there be a price increase for my VPS? The answer is… NO!

Not only has there not been a price increase, my plan has been upgraded a step and the price remains the same as the old one. Last week I got an email notifying me of the upcoming changes. Here’s an excerpt:

We are pleased to announce we are upgrading VPS resources for all existing customers! We will be phasing out our VPS384 plan and we will be introducing a VPS1024 plan as our new high-end VPS plan. Every VPS plan will be shifted up a step from the plan it is on currently. For example, if you have a VPS384 currently, you will be upgraded to our new VPS512. If you have a VPS768 you will be upgraded to our VPS1024. This “level up” will be occurring for all current VPS customers, and the best part? Your rates will remain the same!

It is so nice to see an improvement or price break given to current clients, not only as a incentive to attract new business.

Today I got the email saying that the change to my server had actually taken place. Here’s an excerpt:

[my_server_name] has been upgraded from a Virtual Private Server 384 to a Virtual Private Server 512 !
Your guaranteed memory has been increased from 384MB to 512MB!
Your bandwidth allocation has been increased from 600GB to 1000GB!
It looks like you used a coupon which gave you a discount on your current plan rate, and we are passing this onto your new plan for you!

Thank You for being a WiredTree client!

Is that great, or what? With several blogs and galleries on this server, I am so, so grateful to have the extra memory and bandwidth and thus, some extra time before a paid upgrade to the next step is needed. A big thanks to WiredTree for taking care of their existing customers.

(NaBloPoMo | July ’09: 29 of 31 | 75% Challenge: 186 of 274)

Searching for an answer

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You know what we do here whenever we’re lost for a topic, don’t you? That’s right, the search stats page!

wiredtree provisioned in: I moved my VPS servers to WiredTree in May, and so far my experience has been overwhelmingly positive (see the related blog posts if you’d like). My first VPS server was provisioned in 2.5 hours from time of order to receipt of welcome e-mail with login instructions. My second VPS server’s provisioning was not quite so speedy, but the delay was primarily due to a screw-up on my part regarding the number to contact me for the required telephone verification. I have no experience with dedicated or hybrid servers and do not know how long those would take to be set up.

mary wild: I’m a bit surprised at the number of searches that still come here on that name. Unfortunately, I have no new updates to supply. The most recent article from the St. Louis Post-Dispatch was on July 6, and I’ve seen nothing since then regarding sentencing for the handler who caused heat-related deaths of seven of the eight show dogs she chose to leave in a poorly-ventilated cargo van overnight in late June. I do have alerts set up for this topic and others that I follow, and I will post should new information come in.

did michael jackson have a rottweiler: In the 15 years I’ve owned Rottweilers, I have never heard that Michael Jackson was ever a Rottweiler owner. Honestly. Does he really seem like a Rottweiler person? Jackson’s name does not come up on any searches for “celebrity +Rottweiler” or similar, so I’m guessing that the answer is “no.”

(NaBloPoMo | July ’09: 28 of 31 | 75% Challenge: 185 of 274)