About a year ago I started surfing the web looking for a web host to host my blog, my fiance’s blog, and eventually the Bloggerstock website.  Spent some time on Google and I landed on JustHost.com.  They gett pretty high ratings when you search for hosting reviews.  Almost always in the top 10 if not in the top three.  They offer a pretty darn good price for unlimited everything (which isn’t truly unlimited), and they make some pretty bold claims about their customer service right on their homepage.  They even provide a “secret link” at the bottom of their page which if you click, will get you a discount on a few months of hosting (oops, it no secret anymore).  In my humble opinion, all this comes with a giant BUT….

Over the past year I have not really had any cause for concern with my web hosting. Everything was working, the sites were up, and life was pretty good.  The backend was a little tedious, but many hosting companies use the same c-panel software, so there was no reason to really care about that.  Once I had the sites set up and working I rarely went into the back end other than to make backups.

Then, all of a sudden, out of nowhere, I started getting emails from JustHost.com telling me that my account had been suspended and that I was violating there TOS.  How?  Well, apparently something in my account was using too much processor time.  Somewhere in the TOS is a little line that tells you how LIMITED you actually are when you pay for UNLIMITED.  Of course, instead of just putting a CPU limit on your account, they actually just suspend your account if you spike over 10% CPU usage.  They don’t provide a means to monitor your CPU usage, nor do they give you any warning.  It’s just BAM! “Sorry, we suspended your account.”  Of course this means that you can’t even log in to make adjustments to try to correct the problem.

The first time this happened, I replied to the email and the tech asked for my IP address so that he could open up access for just me.  Response time was fairly quick, within an hour or so.  Fine.  He also sent some suggestions, but nothing really useful.  I followed all the suggestions he gave, and they re-opened my account.  However, they forgot to reset their monitoring software so within two days I was locked out again for the same exact case.

This time, I called their 24/7 support phone number.  Guess what, I got straight through to a real person!  But, hold the phone, this person could not do anything but tell me that I should send an email to their support team!  WHAT!?  So, I tried their online chat support.  Again, got right through to a support person but the answer I got was exactly the same, I had to email support.  Can someone please explain to me what the point of having on call support people readily available if they can’t help?  I would rather sit on the phone for an hour to talk to someone who can help then instantly talk to people who can’t.

So, I fire off more emails to support.  It took an entire day this time to get a response.  In fact it seems like it took a little threatening to leave their company.  At this point they said that it had been a mistake, that they had not reset the monitoring software and that my account would be re-opened immediately.  While this made me feel a little better, I was still very frustrated by their support system.

Which brings us to the end of last week and this weekend.  Once again I get an email about server overload and my account being suspended.  I am sorry, but while I would love to have tons of people visiting my sites, it just doesn’t happen.  I haven’t changed the code here beyond updating to the latest version of WordPress, so I just don’t understand what changed.  In any event, since friday, my account had been suspended and despite my multiple emails to JustHost.com support, I received to a single response until the wee hours of this morning.  I talked to two online chat techs who both claimed to elevate my case to highest priority, but  nothing came of that.

One tech actually told me that the only way you can ever talk to a high enough level support person is through email.  I am sorry, that is just no kosher.  If I can’t actually talk directly to someone who can help me then your support system is flawed.  I don’t care if I have to wait, I would rather wait if it meant getting the service that I need.

So, with a few quick clicks I had a brand new hosting account with GoDaddy.com. With a little bit of fighting with JustHost.com I was able to get them to give me a download link for a site-wide backup of my account.  The domains that I purchased through them are being transferred to GD, and my blog is up.  My fiance’s blog is back up, and bloggerstock is coming back soon.  My account with JustHost will be cloased, and in theory I should get some money back.  I better get money back or I will make their lives miserable.

Moral of the story, don’t always believe internet rating sites, and don’t use JustHost.com unless all you need is hosting for a super simple website and you don’t want any kind of customer support.  They are temptingly inexpensive, but not worth the frustration in my book.

While I don’t normally advertise on my blog, I kind of want to rub this in JustHost’s face.  So, to show how happy I am with Godaddy.com:

This post is the 200th entry on my blog.  I have entries that date back to 2005 on here.  It is true that this domain and WordPress were not always the home of my blogging, but to me, it is all the same.  It is the collection of my thoughts, feelings and emotions.  I have blogged on a few other services over the years.  In fact, the other day I re-discovered probably my first ever blog (if that is what it was called at that point) over on Blurty.  The earliest post on that blog was in December of 2003, go figure.  I have been at this on-and-off for a while it seems.  What you find here did originate in a different place, but while I have had a few names and domains it is really all one collection.

I have been writing since at least the beginning of high school.  The first journal that I ever wrote in was given to me by may father.  it came with one condition: If I were to fill it up, he would get me another.  Well, I did fill it up along with a number of other books.  They all remain private and tucked away on my bookshelf.  To tell the truth, I don’t even remember the last time I opened them.  I am sure that there is stuff in there that would make me smile, laugh, be embarrassed and more today.  I should do that at some point, take a trip down memory lane, it might be fun.

I think now that I feel like I have a real permanent home as a blogger here on this domain I have become much more regular and active with my blogging.  This is also the home of the article that I wrote about photography for theatre.  I am building a recipe book here and hopefully people will send in some recipes.  I would be happy to try them out and maybe even feature them in the future.  Needless to say, this site is home to a lot of my words, musings, ponderings, rants and more.  It is a new adventure every day and I hope that all my readers are enjoying the ride!  Speaking of my readers, at the time of this writing I 15 listed followers (I bet there are more of you out there) which is pretty cool!

I blog for myself, just to put my thoughts down in writing, to have something to look back on in the future.  The fact that there are people out there who have found my corner of the internet and take some kind of interest in what I am posting here is kind of cool.  I would love to say that I do this for all of you (my followers), but you guys are really just the icing on the cake.  I am not sure what it was/is that makes me find it interesting to publicize  the thoughts that I post here, but I appreciate the support, feedback and community that my followers bring!

While I was working on my presence here on my blog I also discovered some great blogger friends through the 20SB blogging community.  I helped start up a blog-swap event with a bunch of people from there that we named Bloggerstock.  The kick off event was a great success and the second event is shaping up well with sign-ups underway.  So I think that I am finally being noticed on some part of the blogsphere, which, I suppose, no matter what anyone says, is an underlying ideal for all bloggers.

The journey to create a web-presence for myself has been fun.  I have learned a lot of things from coding to finding ways to write.  I have received many tips from many people including my brother.  It is great.  Getting to 200 posts is a pretty cool landmark, and it makes me feel like I am kinda “dug-in” here.  So, to my readers, thanks again for joining me on the journey.  Here is to the next 200!

Yesterday was the day of the of the 20SB Blog Swap, an event for bloggers to literally swap blogs with eachother and possibly reach a different audience. 20SB was also kind enough to give us a topic to blog about, which always makes writing a little bit easier. Unfortunately, I never received a post from my swap partner to post on my blog. I did send her this post, but it appears that it never got posted either. Since I wouldn’t want the post to go to waste, I decided I will post it myself, and if I ever get a post from my partner, I will post that as well.

Quite possibly the best thing about being a blogger is the opportunity to participate in things like this blog swap. The blogsphere is really the ultimate in terms of social networks, and the niche groups like 20SB can provide some great online friends. The networking aspect is probably the biggest reason that I really got into blogging.

Sure, you can get on Facebook or Myspace or any of the other gazillions of social networking sites, but what do you end up with there? A whole pile of SPAM and contrived “friendships” with people. How many people from high school do you really keep in touch with? How many people from high school are your “friends” on Facebook? Don’t even get me started on all the apps that just clutter everything on Facebook now.

I remember when Facebook was new and you could only log in if you had an email address from a supported school. At that point it actually was a social network that connected people who actually communicated with eachother. At that point, being a blogger meant that you actually had to have some knowledge of how to use the internet, people used livejournal, and most of the major blogging sites and platforms were still in their infancy.

In a sense, blogging is a way to cut through all the noise on the internet at actually find people to connect with. It gives us a portal to things that we find interesting or entertaining, and it opens a window into how other people actually are. I have the opportunity to get hints and pointers from industry professionals and I also have the space to offer up my own insights.

Through my blogging I have had the opportunity to really be in touch with people from all over the world, and to be in touch with people moving around the world. Sometimes reading or writing a blog post is enough to get you out of whatever funk you find yourself in. Sometimes you just feel like you need to shout or rant at the world or whoever will listen. On the flip side, sometimes reading about someone else’s experiences, troubles, or rants makes you feel better. Other times you just need a forum to share your art.

Personally, I use my blog for all of the above. I write about my life and experiences, I post photos from my photo collections, I write about things that I think about. There are no boundaries as a blogger, you don’t have to abide by anyone’s rules (especially when you run a self-hosted blog). Yes, there are places that I won’t go, or I try to avoid when I blog, but in general you can say just about anything and someone will listen.

The other night I was chatting with some blogger friends about a blog event that we are working on, Bloggerstock. It started as a pure thought experiment, but has become something that we are all pretty excited about. We had someone who we wanted to be included in the first go-round of the event, but they were feeling a little morally opposed since we had already worked out most of the details. To this idea, I responded: “We are bloggers, we have no morals!” We make our own morals and it seems to work for us.

So, have I answered the question: “What’s the best thing about being a blogger?” Probably, in more words than I needed. The best thing is being able to be yourself and find like-minded people to really connect with. It is fun, entertaining, and interesting.

A few people from the 20SB gang got to chatting the other night.  The conversation started with some talk of 20SB’s blog-swap, which sounds like it should be a fun event.  We were thinking though, that creating a regular event  along similar lines that linked a bunch of bloggers together would be a really fun thing to try.  Thus, Bloggerstock was born.

The basic concept behind Bloggerstock is to create a blog-ring where every participating blogger writes a post that will be posted on one of the other participant’s blogs.  All the participants will blog about the same thing.  Every time we run an event we will pick a theme, post title, opening line, etc. that everyone uses as the basis for their post.  The idea is then that you have a whole host of blogs with posts of the same title/theme.  If we got enough people together maybe we could even give the search engines a heart attack for a day.

As opposed to a traditional blog-swap, each blogger would write a post for one person and receive a post from a different person.  Each blogger would link back to the post on their blog from the post they write for the next blogger.  This is how the ring is formed.  Thus, Blogger A writes a post to be posted on Blogger B’s blog.  Blogger B writes a post for Blogger C and so on.  In the post that Blogger B writes for C, she will include a link back to A’s post on her (B’s) blog.  It sounds a lot more confusing than it actually is.  in any event, this method of linking should create a ring of linked blogs.  Everyone gets a chance to share followers and hopefully pick up some new ones.

So, for the first Bloggerstock event we have chosen the title “The internet is eating my…” This should be an interesting one and I am not really sure how to attack it.  I could go at it like one of my normal musings which I am sure would be interesting.  There is plenty to say from that angle.  There is also the angle of complete fiction that could also be fun.  Not sure what I will do, but I have some time to work it out and get some ideas down on “paper.”  I am glad that I have some time to work on it so that I can come up with something good.

I don’t have as much time to come up with a good post for the 20SB Blog-swap, but I don’t think that should be too hard.  I would imagine that since I can generally find something to write about.  It is unfortunate that it isn’t on a Friday when i would normally share a photo.  I mean I still could, but I would have to find one that I could actually have something to say about.  Not terribly worried, it all works out in the end, it’s a mystery.

In any event, if you are interested in Bloggerstock, just click one of the links in this post.  If things go well this first time we will open it up to everyone in the future!

Last night I was catching up on shows that had piled up on the DVR.  It happens pretty regularly especially when we get into hang, focus and tech weeks at the theatre. So, after watching the Ugly Betty episodes and the Project Runways we got to the Episodes of House. I believe that it was the second to last episode of House where he was treating a blogger who blogged pretty much everything about her life and even asked her followers for advice.

One of the interesting ideas that this blogger mentioned was that she felt like it was easier to connect with her followers than it was to connect with people in person. She said that she found it easier to be honest and to really speak her mind on her blog than it was to do that with even her husband. It really made me wonder how many people find this to be the case, and how many people blog for this reason.

I work in a profession that really is all about interpersonal relationships. Even behind the scenes, everything we do in theatre is about communicating with other people (especially the audience). So I don’t usually feel like I have issues connecting with people. I don’t claim to have zillions of friends, but I have plenty of friends who I know in person and I also have a contingent of friends who I only know via the internets. I don’t feel like I divulge any more or personal information with the friends that I have made online.

Personally, I don’t think that a relationship formed entirely online, no matter how well you get to “know” someone online, do you really know them? There are plenty of people who I have “known” for a good while in an online way, but I think that it would really make for a much stronger relationship to know some of these people in person. It begs the question, does meeting someone in person change how you relate to them when you go back to your online relationship?

It was also suggested that “real” privacy is a modern idea. In that years ago when people lived in small towns and not in cities, everyone knew pretty much everything that was going on in the town. There are still alcoves where this still happens like in small departments in schools or in summer camps or the small towns that still exist. The concept of privacy though is what makes blogging hard for some people to understand. We put a lot of ourself on display every time we post even if we are not writing about our lives. Why?

Some people just like to have a creative outlet for posting poetry or short stories. Some people actually do blog about everything that happens in their lives. Some people blog to share their art, photos or opinions. All of these things though, show some insight into the personal aspects of a person’s life. Why are we fascinated with sharing this with the world or whoever stops by?

We are social creatures. Maybe we need more connections and more public lives than what we actually live today. Maybe we seek these connections in the online world because we don’t get enough of them in our day-to-day lives. I certainly don’t have the answers, I just know that I enjoy blogging and finding things that move me to write about them.