NuclearDonkey.net

After several weeks of researching, and one canceled web hosting service, I've finally settled in at a new home. I previously had web hosting through a friend's company in the CRC, but web hosting is not their primary business and there was some PHP functionality I wanted that wasn't installed on their web servers.

DreamHost ended up being the winner in my new web host sweepstakes for several reasons.

First and foremost, they offer all the features that I was looking for: the basic PHP, CGI, Ruby, etc. packages; my own set of MySQL databases; and shell access via SSH. I am still surprised at how many of the web hosts I looked at didn't offer anything SSH! I spend most of my day at a shell prompt as it is, and I don't want to be stuck with a combination of FTP access and a lame web interface, which is all that most providers seem to offer.

I was also struck by how similar the culture at DreamHost seems to be to what we have here at Webmail. Just look at their main page and they've got their support forums, blog entries, and system status updates all right there. There's no such thing as an outage-free IT company of any kind. The fact that they aren't afraid to admit that is awesome.

Finally, though really least important as far as I'm concerned, is their referral program. It turns out DreamHost rewards their customers for referring new customers. This is done through a $97 referral bonus and a 10% payout on future renewal payments that one's referrals make. So, if anyone happens to read this and be looking for a web host, check out DreamHost and use the referral code NUCLEARMAXDONKEY. It's setup to give $97 off the cost of signup instead of giving me the $97 bonus. I'm just a nice guy like that :)

As for Movable Type, it's a grand blog software and installation was a snap. It's actually the same software we use to run the Webmail Blog, so it'll be nice to work in the same back-end interface I've used before. One of my goals for next quarter is going to be blog-related, so here's to a long and fruitful relationship with Movable Type. Just need to find a nice layout, or make one using this handy tool I found while poking around on Google.

This is Jon signing off...

It's getting near the end of March, so it's time to start looking at how I've done on the goals I set for this quarter.

1. Make Tier2 training sessions a regular, monthly event to show others in Customer Care the ins and outs of assorted Tier2 tasks.

We had meetings in January and February but March has been a bit of a wash, though I don't necessarily consider that a bad thing. Different folks are moving on to different tasks, and so we are really at a point where more one-on-one time is a better solution than continued group meetings.

2. Learn enough Perl to be able to make more functional (not just cosmetic) changes to RT at the request of Customer Care.

Oh, the RT project. A number of changes have been made to the RT code on our secondary support server, which I've been using for beta testing. However, other projects have put the next RT live upload on hiatus for the time being. Don't worry, RT, I'll be back to wrestle with you again soon. As far as Perl goes, I'm also tinkering with some small scripts outside of RT. I definitely prefer PHP overall (it's so much easier to read, but that's partly my coming from C++ and Java which are pretty similar syntax-wise), but we use Perl so much, it will be worth knowing for way more than just RT.

3. Gain a better working knowledge of our API and its implementation with both Perl and PHP, enough to solve 70% of tickets on that issue without having to escalate the ticket.

I don't have any specific numbers to back it up, but I'd say that this goal has been met, with few API issues needing to be sent to our developers. One ticket that I recall especially well involved an interesting issue with how a SOAP client interfaces (or sometimes fails to) with a SOAP server of a different version. Many kudos to Kevin for helping with that one, as well as any other tickets that get sent up (I still can't make heads or tails out of that lousy .NET stuff).

4. Automate portions of our reseller provisioning process using API and/or database calls from a simple web interface that can be accessed by Billing, Sales, and Customer Care.

This was to be my project for Hackathon IV this weekend, though it may be taking a backseat to the setup of some new servers for a large part of the day. I already did some work on the API code to interface with our DNS system and account system, but it may be some time yet before the project is finished.

5. Further my general Linux knowledge and gain the knowledge and skills of a Red Hat Certified Engineer.

Just missed on this one. I was to attend another Red Hat course and get my RHCT at the beginning of March, but commitments to Dexter's obedience training pushed that back to the beginning of April instead. I definitely know my way around in Linux about ten times better than I did at the beginning of the quarter, but we'll see how that stacks up to what Red Hat has to throw at me.

Overall, I'm feeling pretty good about this past quarter. Not all goals were met but, like any roadmap, it's not always ideal to stick to it 100%. As to what's in store for the second quarter of this year, stay tuned.

This is Jon signing off...

Today was Webmail's fourth Hackathon. The projects were uniformly awesome and I'm quite stoked about seeing some of these feature and service additions. For specifics on some of the projects, Bill has been covering events today on his blog.

As far as my project goes, I got a bunch of new servers up that should be ready to go live by Monday. The reseller provisioning project will just have to wait, but not for too long. I see a personal mini-Hackathon in my near future :)

This is Jon signing off...