I’d like to write more helpful development articles… So, if you have a specific PHP related issue that you are trying to figure out, contact me, and I will do my best to write a helpful article for you!
As usual, it is been a hell of a long time since I have had time to write something here. This year has flown by… lost a job, lost a loved one, business idea failed, got a 6-month contract; it came and went, went to E3, went to a concert (Coheed and Cambria), flew in a private jet, endured “the Armpit of America”, went to IndieCade and turned 25 somewhere in between. I am sure a lot more happened in between but my point is; it has been interesting, sad, fun and quite a blur.
So I said my 6-month contract “came and went” but I left out the fact that they decided to hire me full-time. Apparently I know what I am doing, or something like that. It has been pretty interesting because after October 1st we began tapering off active development on the “legacy” platform (osCommerce). So since then I have been doing some follow-up development on minor bugs and whatnot and other than that I have been working on learning C#, SharePoint and Microsoft CRM.
It has been pretty cool being able (see having some time) to read up on and prototype some code / projects with C#. On top of that being able to integrate the C# development into web parts on the SharePoint server. I’ve been trying to spend as much time as possible working with it, but it is still busy at work. We have been working pretty closely with the consultants to help wherever we can to get this project launch ready for next year. I have been doing some front-end work, data exports and manipulation, etc; some of it tedious but it’s understood its for the greater good.
On another note, the year is nearly over. I did not realize that the next 4 weekends I am going to be either gone or busy. This Thursday night, my buddy Tylar and I are leaving for Las Vegas for MineCon for the weekend (maybe we’ll even write an article or two about it on VGVee). Next weekend is Turkey Day (Thanksgiving in the US) weekend and the following weekend Cindy and I are going to be leaving for Hawaii for a week. Guess I planned everything pretty well, haha…
It is very possible that this will be the last post for the year, unless I find something I need to write about before then. So, if that is the case, have a great holiday season and happy new year. I’ll be the drunk guy drinking, as usual.
This article is about vps.net and how I officially loathe them.
What does 30 hours of downtime mean to you? To me, it means it is time to find a new service provider; especially when it is a mission critical web server that hosts real businesses. How am I supposed to justify extended amounts of downtime to my clients, of whom are loosing money every minute the server is down?
Short answer is: I can’t justify it.
From a technical point of view, I understand when the shit hits the fan; things get bad. Though, my biggest gripe is that their support really fuckin’ blows. The story goes like this: I open my ticket, 1 hour later I get a response saying it has been escalated to their Level 3, they’ll get back to me. So, 5 hours later I ask for an update because the shit ain’t working. After another 3 hours of waiting, I decide to report a “disappointing experience”, that way the managers know I am not really that happy and would like to be enlightened.
I wrote to them:
A little more transparency would be appreciated. I understand that there are probably lots of issues being handled, but I am without my server, files, and services; so I have some angry clients.
I would just like to be enlightened on what is going on so I do some damage control.
After that, I decided I wasted enough of my birthday worrying about the fucking server and their lacking support. I went to bed. In the morning I woke to the following from Rus Foster, Managing Director:
Hi
Details are currently being placed at <url to status> regarding this. Currently I’m personally seeing a massive overhall of all aspects of the business which should be complete within the next 1-2 months. This includes the staffing and technical sides of the business. This should gear us up to provide a much better and more fluid service for all customers. I can guarantee you that the issues you are currently seeing will be a thing of the past in the near future.
You know what I though after I read this? I bet you do! Too little too late; shouldn’t they have already had in place a way to provide “much better and more fluid service for all customers”? And seriously, one to 2 months to implement this? Fuck that, my server is down now, what are you going to to fix shit?
Well, it was at this point that I had committed to moving to a new provider, because I don’t fuck around. Since, I had planned on doing this, I left a mildly terse but necessary response to Rus:
Hello Rus,
I hope VPS.net is planning on giving out some service credits or something to the your clients affected by this issue.
It is hard for me to justify 24 hours, and counting, of downtime to my clients.
I can guarantee you, as soon as I get my server back up (if your damn SAN ever finishes syncing) and running. I am transferring out. I have never been so upset by a provider as I am now.
Sweet, sweet justice.
Also, fun fact, when you claim 100% uptime because of “auto-healing” (it’s on their homepage), you better fucking mean it. And I don’t think that they do.