Author: Aren Cambre

Storm hits Plano. Both trees fall.

While our floors were being redone, I stayed with inlaws. (Hence the commuting piece.)

3:00 AM Thursday morning, an unusually severe storm hit Plano. The next morning, we found that my inlaws’ street had a lot of vegetation damage. Leaves and branches were everywhere.

The most stark damage was right next door where this medium-sized tree fell over:

My bedroom was on the corner of the house closest to this tree. I never heard it tip over, probably because of the pounding horizontal rain and the multiple lightning strikes each second.

Here’s what astounded me. Well after I drove away from their house, I saw this:

Yes, the wind turned my folding mirror against the car and pulled the mirror out! I have no idea how this happened; that mirror takes some force to move!

Fortunately, the inlaws found the mirror. It was on the pavement below the car. I am lucky I didn’t run it over!

The car is overdue for inspection, and this will unfortunately delay it further.

Web host comparison

I host all my sites at 1and1.com using its Linux “Beginner” hosting. Even though it’s called “beginner,” I am barely using my package’s limits. My disk utilization is about 15% of max, and my monthly bandwidth utilization is at 0.5%. At $4 per month, this package is a steal.

It still has several downsides:

  • No announce or discussion lists. Only 1and1’s $10/month and $20/month packages support these but are arbitrarily limited to 5 lists.
  • Arbitrary limits on some resources such as subdomains (25) or MySql databases (10).
  • Slooooooooooooooow. Sometimes pages on my blog or other sites take several seconds to load. It’s probably because of overwhelmed MySql servers.
  • Incompetent support. Level 1 is outsourced to foreigners who barely know what they are doing.
  • Intransigent support. Sometimes it’s like pulling teeth to convince level 1 support that, yes, I really do know what I am talking about. I’ve lost email thanks to this.
  • Missing features. For example, no SSH shell access or Image Magick.

Can I improve by going with another shared hosting service?

Probably not. All inexpensive shared hosts operate on the overselling model, meaning they intentionally overbook resources, sometimes badly. All the major overseller-model hosts, including Dreamhost, AN Host, Hostgator, GoDaddy, Bluehost, etc., all have plenty of “x sucks” Google results. E.g., dreamhost sucks.

If you are going with a shared host, just go with the cheapest one that doesn’t suck too badly. 1and1.com foots that bill for now.

The next step from shared hosting are virtual private servers (VPS). This is where a powerful machine emulates many complete computers, and you rent one of those virtualized computers. We use this at SMU for a growing percentage of our servers.

Several of the shared hosts offer VPS. However, how can I trust these hosts not to oversell VPS, too? Plus, the resource allocation is pitiful. You can’t get 512MB RAM on 1on1’s VPS until you pony up almost $60 per month.

The next step up is dedicated hosting. This is even less price efficient, understandable since you are renting actual physical machines. And since these are physical machines, you get the added complexity of discrete machine management, a real pain during hardware problems.

CoreNetworks.net has apparently inexpensive dedicated hosting by a long shot, but you know what they say about the lowest bidder…

Suppose I was to get a dedicated or VPS hosting plan? I know enough to hack together a Ubuntu server, but I would have trouble being a true server administrator. I need a trusted individual who can administer it for me.

Amazon.com’s Elastic Cloud Computing could be a solution. It goes back to the VPS model, but Amazon’s reputation for reliability and (relative) inexpensiveness is enticing. They just a feature called elastic IP, which mimics a static IP.

My mind is spinning on alternatives. I know a guy who has CoreNetworks.net’s $50/month midrange MR28 package. I’m willing to pay him much higher than $4/month if he can host my sites. The biggest limitation is only a 120 GB hard drive. However, since I am only using 1.5 GB right now, would that ever really be a problem? But Amazon.com’s Elastic Cloud Computing sure is tempting…

Likely outcome? Analysis paralysis, meaning I’ll do nothing!

Commuting is not for me

For a few days this week, I’ve commuted 20.8 miles from work to Plano.

We had to vacate our home because the wood floors are being refinished; this is the last step of the restoration from the ceiling collapse. A long wood-floored hallway connects all rooms, so there’s no way we could avoid walking on it.

Commuting is for the birds. Even though this commute is moderate by modern standards, it was 220% more miles and 150% more time than my regular drive to work. And because it is on a freeway, I get to experience maddening, random slowdowns as traffic unpredictably oscillates between freeflow and congestion. And yes, this happens even with good following distances and right lane travel, Steve Blow! (link)

So let’s see, I could commute and get a larger house and lower crime in exchange for:

  • No scenery.
  • No trees.
  • Maddening daily commute.
  • Loss of more than an hour of my time each day.
  • Boring neighborhood.

No, thank you.

Thanks for ignoring me, Lupe Valdez

(Scroll down if you just want to see the pictures.)

This post is emblematic of why Lupe Valdez, Dallas County’s Democrat Sheriff (yes, the sheriff–as in the one elected by the entire county), is so criticized for her lack of people skills.

It’s March 15, 2008. The St. Patrick’s day parade had just ended. My family got out of a movie at Northpark Mall AMC and got stuck in the traffic.

As we were slowing to a stop, I noticed democrat Sheriff Lupe Valdez in the back of a Sheriff’s truck, also parked in traffic, right by us. All of us were stuck in a standstill.

After stopping, BANG! A car rear ended us.

Shaken hard, we pull right over. I got out, armed with my camera.

I looked over the roof of my car right at democrat Lupe, who was staring at me, and incredulously shouted, “Did you see what just happened?” Democrat Lupe only kept her stare.

I know the she heard me. I could hear the voices from her truck. (Note for democrat sheriffs: when someone yells at you while standing near a parked vehicle where vehicles aren’t supposed to park, that means something is up. Investigate.)

I know she heard the crash. She was maybe 25 feet away? (Note for democrat sheriffs: a loud bang could mean a crash just happened.)

I know she saw two cars pulled over on a congested road, with both drivers getting out. (Note for democrat sheriffs: Red flag! Cars pulling over and drivers getting out after a crash sound could mean a crash just happened!)

I know she could see something moving in the back seat if she wanted to. (Note for democrat sheriffs: Bells should be going off in your head! The movement in a child seat means a child is on board this just-crashed vehicle!)

I know she could see we were in busy traffic. (Note to democrat sheriffs: it’s not safe for motorists to stand on the driver’s side of of a car when moving traffic is zipping by!)

Democrat Lupe did nothing. No asking me to repeat my question. No sign of concern. No stopping the truck and helping with the scene. Nothing.

No need for our democrat sheriff to bother with regular peons!

About 1 minute later (time estimated from photograph timestamps), noticing the democrat sheriff was still busy doing nothing, I snapped this picture:

The democrat sheriff didn’t get far because traffic was backed up. (Full size original picture. If you check the EXIF data, note that I hadn’t yet “sprung forward” my camera’s clock, so it was reading CST/GMT-6.)

Close up of our democrat sheriff’s unconcerned, sun squinting smirk:

Here’s my car:


Fortunately, my car’s main damage was two pockmarks on the rear bumper. Nothing got shifted around, no seams were any different. Even the styrofoam under the bumper was uncracked, looking as good as new from the bottom. We’re not fixing anything; eliminating the dimples is more hassle than it’s worth.

Here’s the car that hit us:

I think I spooked that lady by whipping out my camera and taking pictures so quickly. She was very cooperative.

What a great performance by our democrat sheriff! Thanks, Lupe!