i am indisposed

So you need to communicate with clients.

That’s freaking awesome. Is it about boring system maintenance, the minutia of small changes/upgrades in service, or about the fact that you don’t update your newsletter often enough? Do you need to send it out in an email because it isn’t acceptable to just post it to a blog? Is it long and potentially boring or sleep inducing? Of course it is. It’s a newsletter; no one reads that crap.

Or do they…

Pasted below is the text of the monthly newsletter from DreamHost, the host on which this blog is, uhhh, hosted. It’s funny, and even though I don’t care about any of the issues (read “don’t understand”) I read it all, cause it’s pithy, funny and PERSONAL. What that means is: 1) no passive voice 2) amusing digressions, but information is BRIEF and TO THE POINT 3) Self aware i.e. 1st person, i.e. THERE’S A FREAKING NAME ON IT, and I actually believe a real person wrote it! What else? LMK…

Good Job Josh Jones of DreamHost!!

-M

DreamHost November Newslettery to me

0. Introduction.
1. Spacey Moved!
2. DreamHost PS Update!
3. Promo Code Change!
4. Help us Screen Suggestions!
5. Two Silly Features!
6. Charity Addition!
7. DHSOTM

########################################################################
0. Introduction.

It’s the November 2007 DreamHost Newsletter, and you know what I’m
getting sick of? Viruses.

Not COMPUTER viruses either, I mean real, honest-to-goodness, flesh-and-
blood, airborne, casual contact or sexually-transmitted, HUMAN viruses.

They are really starting to make me downright SICK. Like, right now for
example. I should have realized I was coming down with something
yesterday when I was taking my daily symantec brand shower and it
detected more than just the usual left over cookies (they get stuck
sometimes in my rolls).

I REALLY REALLY should have known something was up when without even
being told by my brain, my mouth started asking everybody I’ve ever
spoken to in my life to peer really close into my maw, and then coughing
saliva all over them! It sounds pretty gross, but please don’t blame me!
I didn’t even realize it was happening! I know, I should have signed up
for the automatic flu shot updates… but I figured I never got to the
dirty parts of town anyway.

Even if I AM sick, I’m not really feeling TOO bad.. just a bit slower
getting started in the morning, and when my wife asked me to make the
bed, I started to, but midway through I just crashed. She had to
manually boot me out from under the covers too, I was freezing up!

I’ll probably go to the clinic later and see my physician, Dr. Norton
Kaspersky. I’m sure it’s nothing serious, but even in the worst case, I
know he always keeps his operation system clean by fully wiping it down.
I hope it doesn’t come to that though.. at least not until I’ve saved
this newsletter.

########################################################################
1. Spacey Moved!

Now, I’m sure YOU all are probably as sick of moving as we are, so I’m
sure you’re all as pleased as we are that the datacenter move of our
cluster “spacey” went off pretty much as well as it could last Friday:

http://www.dreamhoststatus.com/2007/11/30/spacey-cluster-move-reminder/

I’d like to also apologize to the few people who we mistakenly failed to
notify directly about the move that were affected. We had overlooked the
fact that a few customers in other clusters actually had their databases
hosted in the spacey cluster. It’s a practice we don’t do anymore, and
something we’ve been slowly working on eliminating, but there were still
some left over that we overlooked.

Now, the main reason for this move was to eliminate the fever a bunch of
our spacey servers were running, as well as to free up some physical
space for our other clusters to continue to grow healthily. In the next
few months we’re actually planning a fair amount of more moves, but this
was the major one.

As usual, the moves will be done late Friday night, Pacific time, and
we’ll give plenty of advance notice on our status blog:

http://www.dreamhoststatus.com/

########################################################################
2. DreamHost PS Update!

All that spacey space we freed up is not going to naught! No, naught at
all!

We’ve now been able to finally tear through a bunch of the wait list for
our DreamHost PS (Private Server) service, and if you go sign up for it
now, you’ll most likely get yours in time for Christmas! Just what every
good boy and girl deserve in their stocking: their own protected memory
space!

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

Also, we’ve finally been able to start going through the MySQL PS wait
list as well, and although we make no guarantees, there’s a chance we
may even beat the fat guy in red on those too!

PS is also getting better than EVAR with little memory saving tweaks
we’ve been making like turning off jabber automatically if you’re not
using it and automatically scaling your Apache settings to your memory
slider!

In FACT, PS is getting SUCH a ruddy constitution at this point that an
enterprising young customer has made a Mac OS X “widget” which allows
you to see your server’s memory/load graphs right on your desktop! Give
it a go:

http://myd3.com/widgets/dreamhost-ps/

Note, *I* couldn’t get it to work. But then again, I run Windows XP.

########################################################################
3. Promo Code Change!

Some people say DreamHost Promo codes have become a blight on the land,
tainting even the most innocuous endorsement of our services with the
specter of potential kick-backs and affiliate tracking!

Some DreamHost owners would say that’s a teensy bit melodramatic.

However, we’re still making a big promo code change, effective next
Tuesday, December 11th! Starting then, NO DreamHost promo code can give
a discount greater than $50! All new and existing codes will be capped
at this amount off, so start spreading the word now!

You still get $97 (minus the discount given) for somebody using your
promo code, but now that discount can’t be more than $50.. meaning even
if you max out the discount you give, you’ll still earn $47 as well. Uh,
unless you also give out bonus features, which will still work, and drop
your payout as explained at:

https://panel.dreamhost.com/?tree=home.rew

Anyway, there is a chance this will result in fewer uses of people’s
promo codes, as the savings are no longer as INSANE.. but on the plus
side, the minimum you as a referrer will make from a promo code will go
from $0 to $47! And, it effects EVERYBODY so the playing field is still
as level as ever.

########################################################################
4. Help us Screen Suggestions!

One thing most people really hate to do when they’re sick is work. I
know I hate it, even when I’m feeling grrrrrrrrrrrreat!

Which is WHY, as some people have been so keen on pointing out to me,
that our Suggestions section has gotten further and further behind..
it’s just too much work!

It just goes to show, if you want things done right, you’ve got to do
them yourself, or in this case, you’ve got to get a group of your peers
to do them, harnessing the “wisdom of crowds”.

So, here we go.. *you* can now do what *I* used to (sometimes) do all by
my lonesome! Just go to our suggestions area:

https://panel.dreamhost.com/?tree=home.sugg

and you can now see the RAW feed of what others have suggested, BEFORE
they’re put to a vote… and mark them yourself as “reject”, “just do”,
or “put to vote.” Once we’ve gotten enough votes one way or the other,
we’ll just automatically take the appropriate action! It’s how wikipedia
got where it is today, and it lets me spend more time watching Monday
Night Football, Heroes, and Smallville.

########################################################################
5. Two Silly Features!

Hmm, this newsletter is getting to be a lot like work. I think I’ve got
to start combining sections. I just pray there aren’t any dangerous
interactions between the two.

Okay, #1.. you can now show and hide your sub-domains in the “Domains >
Manage Domains” area:

https://panel.dreamhost.com/?tree=domain.manage

And #2, there’s now a “MySQL Recycle” (it’s got a nice ring, no?) bin at
our “Goodies > Manage MySQL” area:

https://panel.dreamhost.com/?tree=goodies.mysql

Which means you can no longer accidentally (or maliciously) delete your
MySQL databases! You will now have five days to restore them before they,
like my stomach, are automatically purged.

########################################################################
6. Charity Addition!

Now here’s something really disgusting.. the Union Rescue Mission, est.
1891, the oldest rescue mission in Los Angeles, less than two miles from
our data center and one mile from our new office, had their safe
ransacked and their building set on fire this weekend!

http://www.urm.org/

To try and help them get things back on their feet, they’ve currently
got a donor who will match all donations through December 31st. So,
we’re making a little last-minute change to our normal charity schedule,
and replacing our current charities with them through the end of the
month (at which point the other two will be back up):

https://panel.dreamhost.com/?tree=home.charity

So, donate to them through us, and we’ll match YOU as usual, and then
the total donation will get matched AGAIN by the grant, thereby
QUADRUPLING your investment in less than 4 weeks. Good luck trying to do
that with GOOG, you AAPL!

########################################################################
7. DHSOTM

What better way to put a weak and dying newsletter out of its misery
than with another portfolio/personal blog as the DreamHost Site of the
Month winner?

http://www.squawkdesign.com/

I can’t think of one! There’s not a TON of content there, so there’s no
reason to not spend 15 seconds or so checking it out, before immediately
returning to:

https://panel.dreamhost.com/?tree=home.dhsotm

to try and get your own site featured next month in this hallowed
hospital of digital disease and putrid publicity, the DreamHost
Newsletter.

########################################################################
Confined to bed,
Josh Jones

P.S. Too much reading for the headache you’re nursing? Your prescription
for relief is spelled:

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