Jeff Blogs

Ever since our return from vacation, I’ve noticed that my son Dakota seems to be obsessed with the mail. Usually it is like pulling teeth to get one of the kids to go down to the mailbox and retrieve the mail. You would think that I was asking them to do battle with Big Foot or try and cure cancer instead of going down to a community mail box and get envelopes from a small metal box. Oh sure their reluctance may have something to do with the concrete being fairly close to the temperatures of the sun. But it’s not like I am asking them to walk down there in their bare feet. As I said, for the last week Dakota has not only volunteered to go down and “get the mail” he have actually taken it upon himself to go down to the box and check the mail several times per day. One or two days of that and as a parent I begin to get suspicious. If I didn’t know any better I would think he was trying to get to something before his parents had a chance to see it. Perhaps I am just being paranoid. Still my parent spider sense was definitely tingling.

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I truly thought that after I posted that my hosting services had finally been restored that this would be an end to this never ending saga. I expected that the servers had to be bullet proof and I would not be seeing any more outages. I was of course temporarily delusional as I expected that IX Web Hosting would be about to maintain their hardware. On Monday of this week my sites again incurred an outage of nearly an hour. I went back to the problem ticket center and entered a ticket and followed up with a visit to the online chat. I was told that the server was having communications issues and that the administrators were aware of it. I asked for an estimated time this would be resolved but the chat host never returned to answer my question. I can only assume that he fell over dead and was laying there waiting for medical personnel to appear to remove the body. After the outage and services were restored I noticed strange behavior with regards to my blogs. Prior to the outage I was able to post entries and have those entries broadcast to several of the micro-blogging services including Twitter and Plurk. Now though that functionality was not working. After a quick troubleshooting session I realized that IX Web Hosting had somehow removed or uninstalled two PERL modules. I went back out to the web and opened yet another problem ticket requesting that these modules be added back to the server. That request occurred on Tuesday. Here it is Friday and the modules are still not installed and there is no timeline of when these might be completed. This is pretty much the end of my patience and I decided that I need to finally change hosting providers.

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Ever since getting my iPhone I have been completely paranoid about it. The AT&T store where I bought the phone did not have any cases that did not look completely lame. I have therefore been carrying around a naked iPhone for nearly 2 weeks. I am so worried it is going to get scratched that it is driving me crazy. Trina says I carry it around like it is made from high-grade weapons grade plutonium. I am not quite sure I am comfortable with my wife knowing how high-grade weapons-grade plutonium is handled but that is probably another completely unrelated subject that I should leave for another day. So since iPhone 3G day I have been searching for a case that would protect my iPhone without making it look like some sort of plastic encased brick. I really thought I would get something like the Griffin iClear that I use for my iPod Touch. I like the clear plastic cases as it lets the beauty of the device show through but also provides the needed protection from the elements. It is kind of a hassle to dock since it won’t actually fit in the dock but I have gotten used to just using the cable so I can’t complain too much. Now that I have the iPhone I want something that is a little more elegant and useful.

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While we’re talking about Christmas (I am milking every character out of that Hallmark Ornament Premiere post), I thought I would provide a little feedback and perhaps a short product review. Last year Trina asked what I would like as a gift and I immediately blurted out Bose QuietComfort 3 Acoustic Noise Cancelling Headphones in my best Ralphie voice from the movie Christmas Story. I was half waiting for Trina to retort with “You’ll shoot your eye out!” but she refrained. I currently own a set of Sony MDR-NC20 noise-cancelling headphones but I was really interested in trying out the Bose. I had purchased the MDR-NC20 when they first were released. I was very skeptical of the whole notion of noise cancellation but after making several cross-country flights with the Sony headphones I was sold. They were by far the best travelling gadget I owned. Why then was I looking to change if I was so enamored with my current Sony headphones?

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While we were at the Hallmark Ornament Premiere Trina happened to ask me what I might want for Christmas this year so she could start planning. I briefly considered suggesting that she get me a 2008 Corvette or put me on the list for a 2009 Camaro SS when they are released. Trina could see the wheels of my demented mind spinning and before I could even utter a sound she added the qualifier, “Remember, you’ve been good but you haven’t been THAT good.” Ouch, that smarts. There is nothing like a reminder from your wife that you haven’t quite been the model husband. I have a theory on that. Yeah I know, I have a theory on everything.

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