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  • Hey, DH? You sold me already.

    written by

    james

    I don’t get a chance to check my email very often while I’m over at my parents’ place, where I’ve been since yesterday. But, I did get a chance to check it tonight. And this little surprise, from they who host this blog, was waiting for me. Now, keep in mind, the service they’re offering? I’ve been using it since October or November or so.

    Hey again James!

    Last week we again sent you an email inviting you to try our still-new
    DreamHost PS (Private Servers) and/or our DreamHost PS MySQL service!
    But again it looks like you never checked it out at:

    https://www.dreamhostps.com/

    Nor did you choose to sign up by visiting:

    https://panel.dreamhost.com/?tree=vserver.provision

    Well, it’s hard for us to understand how you couldn’t give it a shot for
    just $10/month (66% off). But not impossible for us to believe. What’s
    IMPOSSIBLE for us to believe is if you don’t take advantage of this, our
    final and greatest offer!

    $10/month off.. forever. That’s 100MB free.. meaning you can get your
    very own Private Server with 150MB of ram for just FIVE dollars a month!
    Awooooooga!

    The main advantages of DreamHost PS are:

    * You get full ROOT access .. complete control to run whatever you’d like!
    * You get your own PROTECTED system resources for improved stability!
    * You get included unlimited live chat support!
    * You get increased performance via lighttpd, nginx and PHP caching!
    * You can scale your resources on the fly, and reboot your own PS!
    * It’s currently only +$10/month for every 100MB of memory. ($10 off!)
    * It’s a completely seamless transition from our regular shared hosting!

    You can also sign up for DreamHost PS MySQL, which is just like PS but
    for your databases. If you get both PS and PS MySQL, you get another 20%
    off both, forever!

    Now, this is really our final final offer. And, it expires one week from
    today (by 2010-02-13) .. sign up and we’ll be able to provision you
    ASAP!

    Thanks one final time,
    The Happy DreamHost Evite Team!

    P.S. If you’d prefer not to be notified by email in the future should
    you be given any more invitations, please visit our contact preferences
    page here:

    https://panel.dreamhost.com/id/?tab=contact

    And select to not receive “DreamHost Promotions” anymore!

    I giggled a little. I snickered. And then, I wrote this reply.

    Folks,
     
    I’m already signed up with your PS plan. Not that I don’t want to keep receiving discount offers, but I only need one and well, I have it. Can I still have
    the discount, though?

    Think I’ll get it? Yeah, I didn’t think so either. But maybe they’ll update their database to stop trying to sell it to me. Since, you know, I bought it the first time.

    Update: I’m big enough to admit when I’m wrong.

    Hello,

    Thanks for writing in! I went ahead and increased your subsidy from $5 to
    $10. That gives you 66% off (if you allocate 150mb of memory at
    $15/month).

    Please let me know if you have any additional questions.

    Thanks!
    Dan G =]

    —
    DreamHost Support Team + support@dreamhost.com

    Sometimes, I really love this web host. Also, gotta respect the root access.

    ,

  • Hockey. It’s in the family.

    written by

    james

    The Leafs being up 4 nothing in the second against Ottawa reminded me, I’m a lot closer to the game than I often times realize. Just how close, though? If we’re all connected by at most 6 degrees of separation as I’ve been told, I’m connected by 2. My cousin plays for a AA level minor league team, the Upper Ottawa Valley Aces. They recently managed the semi-finals at the International Silver Stick tournament. I heard a rumor, though my google skills do not appear to prove it, that he may have also been called up to the Ottawa 67’s at one point. Growing up, I always wondered what it’d be like to actually have a relative in the NHL–even if I haven’t personally seen that relative since before he could walk. Now, I might just get a chance to know. Just here’s hoping he doesn’t become a Senator.

    , ,

  • Devils 4, Maple Leafs 3.

    written by

    james

    How in the 7 levels of hell did that happen? Three, yes three, awesomely sweet goals in the second period against yet another olympic goaltender–one playing for team Canada next week, of all things–and we go and give it up. Through most of the game we pretty well owned. I mean, really and solidly owned. Last 4 minutes of the third, and the Devils just got cheap. Hell, for the last couple minutes of the game they played 5 forwards, for crying out loud. There’s not such thing as a bad forward on that team, so you stick 5 out there and we have problems. The 6th they threw on in the last minute didn’t help us either. Ah well, that’s life in Leafs nation. At least we didn’t suck this time.

    Last time

    Different story 3 days ago in Toronto. We played just as well, and actually managed to nail the two points. Plus, we shut them out. Of course we also had Giguere in net. Not that that might have helped us last night, but hey, the media’s gotta have something to blame.

  • New Canadian federal party: the Onion party?

    written by

    james

    I promised myself I wouldn’t do much in the way of political blogging on this site, mostly because it probably ends up being popular with all of maybe 2 people who read. But this one I just couldn’t resist. Stephen Harper is now second in popularity to an onion ring. Rumor has it it will run in the next election on a platform of more Burger King for everyone. Can you tell I’m bored?

  • Maple Leafs 3, Devils 0.

    written by

    james

    All the news reports say we won. Even the commentators while I watched last night confirmed it. Mike confirmed it from the third row at the ACC–lucky bastard. So I guess we did. I should be excited. Or, at least surprised. I’m not. In fact, I’m not really anything. As I wrote on Sunday, all I can do is shrug.

    Last time

    A completely different team barely lost the last trip around that block on Saturday. By then, I’d pretty much already lost that lovin’ feeling for my badly beaten team. Sadly, I haven’t gotten it back yet. Even more sadly, I don’t even care.

  • How do you like your coffee? Crisp!

    written by

    james

    Jessica and I got to talking a couple days ago, and we somehow got on the topic of old-ish commercials. Particularly, that early 90’s or so commercial for coffee crisp. Turns out, she’s never seen it. Ever. For my part, I forgot how it went. Fortunately, the internet knows all. So, because I’ll occasionally do the nostalgia thing, and because in its own way, it’s semi-amusing, I give you the 1990’s, in a commercial. Wanna see? Just hit play.
     

    ,

  • Accessibility by accident? Possibly.

    written by

    james

    Over the few months leading up to the Christmas holidays, the original cordless phone set I had for the apartment–one of those older two-handset jobs–was really starting to let go of, like, everything. I had one who’s battery might last 30 minutes, and another who’s battery might last 30 seconds. My parents, who bought me those phones a few years ago, had the exact same ones–and were having at around the same time the exact same problem. I can’t even remember what model they were, but turns out they were pretty well crap. They were promptly replaced in both households by phones made by Panasonic instead. We got our hands on one of those digital answering systems–the phones, 3 of them for my place this time, come with their own built-in answering machine so you’re not paying someone for voicemail. I didn’t exactly plan to use that, but it’s nice to know they have that option.

    We got them set up, and were introduced to a rather neat little surprise. It seems, though we didn’t know this at the time, the handsets in use at my parents’ place come with the option to have call Id information read out to you via text to speech built into the individual handsets. Now, granted, you can’t use the same method for being able to go back through your history of missed calls, but this is perhaps the second model of phone I’ve actually seen it implemented on–the first, a corded model several years ago, quite frankly made me want to pitch it out the window. And the thing wasn’t even mine. Naturally mine didn’t come with that option, but it was still nice to see some of them did.

    I have no idea if Panasonic is actually starting to consciously make their equipment just that much more accessible, or if it’s another example of a measure of convenience just so happening to double as something you can use without requiring the ability to actually see your phone. The naive part of me would like to think the former, but here in the real world, it’s more than likely the latter. Still, it’s a nice touch for a phone system. I wouldn’t mind seeing this end up becoming a trend for other manufacturers. For the curious, here’s one of the models with talking call ID on Amazon. I wonder if it’s too late for an exchange…

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  • Popular posts (January, 2010).

    written by

    james

    January’s been an interesting/exciting/entertaining month, to be sure. Definitely more entertaining than I figured it could be, what with mom’s unplanned trip to the hospital and all–she’s very well recovered now, by the way. Other folks found things interesting in January, too. Have some highlights.

    • Every geek should have a netbook. It’s a rule or something. They’re smaller, lighter, cheaper, and damn near as powerful as your average laptop nowadays. Not to mention they can probably take a hell of a beating. Still, to say I don’t have my reasons for not owning one would be a lie. I like my machines to last for, say, more than a year.
    • Mom’s unexpected trip to the hospital started at a casino in Quebec. And promptly lasted over 3 days. Most of that time was spent waiting to figure out whether or not she’d need surgery. Fortunately, the surgery she did need was hardly anything major and her recovery was quick.
    • I like the theoretical idea of the iPad. I don’t like its design on quite a few levels. No multitasking? On a portable computer? Really?
    • I get all kinds of spam in my inbox. Some of it is just plain moronic. And some of that, even, still fools people. I wonder just how many username/password combinations this one actually got out of people.
    • If I’m ever in the market for a new machine, someone please remind me about this post. I refuse to look at it right now, on the grounds that it may distract me from writing. But I still want those machines. Apparently, so do a few other people.

    might be inclined to say there was a fair bit of at least semi-useful to someone content posted in January. Except this would be my blog, and I very rarely post anything semi-useful here–so I know better. Still, it’s an interestingly nice thought. Now, back to posting bits of randomness that constitutes my life in a nutshell. The content may improve, but don’t count on it.

  • Use IE 6? Use Google? Not for long.

    written by

    james

    Just about everyone who watches this kinda thing’s been reporting that as of the beginning of March, Google’s officially going to shut down IE 6 support for its services. You’re strongly encouraged–well, by them anyway–to use that as an opportunity to give their new web browser a try. IE 6.0 hasn’t been supported directly by very many for quite a while–since the initial release of IE 7, really. Microsoft almost immediately dropped support for it, and now more and more sites are cropping up that strongly recommend you upgrade. If you’re a frequent user of Gmail and company, if only because your performance will benefit hugely from it, I’d strongly recommend you either consider installing IE 7 or 8, or even do what I recently did and give Firefox a shot. It’s good for your health. Or, at least, Google says it is.

    ,

  • The Leafs make two huge trades, and I can only shrug.

    written by

    james

    We saw it coming from a mile away. Especially after losing 6 in a row and very much being at risk of doing worse than North Carolina. These are potentially huge trades that very much change the overall look, at least on the face of it, of the Team. And yet, it’s just another article to appear in my RSS reader.

    Away goes half our forward lineup, with Mayers, stajan and Hagman getting airmailed to Calgary. On the up side, we get a defenseman that’s actually capable of doing something with the puck besides throw it away. We lost Ian White in that trade too, but he didn’t do much last night besides give the damn puck away anyway. In return, the unlikely happened. We actually got someone who could possibly be a good match with Caberle–hello, Dion Phaneuf. Could it possibly be that we might actually have something that calls itself a hockey team now? Again, all I can do is shrug.

    In related news, Toronto ditches Deadweight Vesa for J.S. giguere and a pencil to be named later. It cost us Blake, too, but oh well. Hopefully we still have someone who we can stick with the thrill, or it’s gonna be painful. Oh, wait. We’re Leafs fans. We’re used to painful.

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