Life according to Gordon

This is my second post. I accidentally deleted my first post. It was titled, "It's Alive!," and it was quite good. I'm not going to try and remake it verbatim, but I am going to repeat some of the ideas that were in that post. Here goes.

I've been feeling sad, lately. It doesn't help that I've literally been getting 3 -- 5 hours of sleep every night for the last two months, that I had no summer vacation, and that I can't even describe all the things going on in my life right now. On top of that, I've been feeling a little nostalgic lately. "Nostalgic" really isn't the word I'm looking for, maybe "forlorn," although that's not really a word anyone uses anymore. I don't think that the right word exists in the English language, but anyways, I miss my friends. Alex, Jay, Jake, Darrel, Bob. The good ol' days. I feel almost stupid talking about the "good ol' days," since that's such a cliché thing to talk about. Everyone yearns for times past where life was simpler, when the world made more sense, and when things were better. I can't honestly say that the world was in any better or worse condition back then as it is now; I think the world is always changing and it's almost useless and naïve to try and say that it was in a better condition when you were younger. But I can say that I miss my friends.

So I decided to start blogging again. I made a conscious decision that I would at least try to write in it on some sort of regular interval, which I hadn't done in the former blog in months. I'm going to delete that blog eventually, so please update your links. And speaking of links...much to my dismay, please note that there is a hyphen in this domain name: Gordon-Myers.com. A few days ago I went to register gordonmyers.com, and to my shock and disappointment, I found out that someone else had already taken it! This was really irritating for a couple of reasons. First, with the utter lack of sleep lately, I've been a bit irritable. And secondly, take a look at that site for a second--it's disgusting! There's no layout, no content, no nothing! Just a picture of some gross-looking middle-aged guy and a few spurts of text. Maybe I can WIN A DAY WITH GORDON MYERS! All I have to do is register! (where?!) I realize that there is a chance, perhaps, that there is some content not stored in the root directory and meant to be private on that site. But I doubt it. People make websites like that to show them off, albeit there's really nothing there to show.

So rather than wallow in my anger, I decided to do something productive. I would e-mail the site owner and ask if he'd be willing to give up that domain name. I decided to phrase my e-mail just like that, too--asking him to "give" me the domain name, not to sell it. If he wanted to sell it to me, I might consider, but I wasn't about to put that idea in his head if I could get it for free, first. At the same time, I really wasn't willing to pay more than maybe $30 for it, if he did want to sell it. So I used a site called Whois.net, which allows you to look up all the personal and contact information of the person on file for any given website. So I quickly learned that gordonmyers.com is not owned/maintained by anyone named Gordon Myers, but instead by Bobb Kurinka of Pennsylvania. I don't feel bad about giving out this information, since it's all publically accessible, anyway. So I e-mailed Mr. Kurinka, hence forth known as "Bobb," and asked if he was willing to give it up. I told him that I appeared that maybe this site was an old abandoned project, and that he should let me know either way. I received his reply:

I maintain several websites for my family members, and this is one of them, I am sorry but it is not available.

"Maintain"? Keep up the good work. If it weren't for the picture of "Gordon Myers" on that website and the fact that it actually costs money to reserve a .com-name, I would seriously wonder if an unborn fetus had created that website--if you can even call it that. Argh. Frustrating. So I bounced around a few ideas for awhile, one of which is the current domain, and finally came to the concensus that if I talked about the hyphen enough, you'd all remember. Another idea would have been soapergem.com, but that's just not quite the same. So I apologize for every time you open a browser and accidently wind up at Bobb's ugly site, but you can't blame me for it. Blame Bobb, and blame the iron fist of major cereal vendors. Actually just blame Bobb.

But I'm glad that I have a simple domain name like this. The Host Ultra account just wasn't cutting it. I have to say, after using their services as both a free and a paid customer, they're really one of the worst web hosts I've seen. I got sucked in by the promise of unlimited web space and unlimited bandwidth, because "unlimited" is a word that easily sucks people in. But the service was terrible, there were occassional blackouts that could last hours, the popup ads all contained viruses and malware, the 404 error pages sent you to sites that were very difficult to leave, and many of the common features in PHP were disabled. Even with a paid account, PHP was still limited, there were still unexplained blackouts, and the technical support was almost non-existant. I would not recommend them. I would, however, highly recommend the current web host I'm using, and the best web host in the world: A Small Orange. They're always extremely responsive when I submit my support requests, the features are virtually unlimited, and I haven't had any downtime yet on any of my accounts. It's $25/year for 75MB of web space and 3GB of bandwidth. I know there are alternatives out there that will offer more for less, but I've come to realize that web space and bandwidth aren't everything; features (and how they are or are not limited), uptime, support, and trust especially are more important in my mind. I've also used GoDaddy and 1&1, and although they offer competitive rates, they're much more limiting that ASO. Here's an excerpt from an e-mail I once sent to 1&1, and their reply:

Gordon:
My problem is kind of complicated . . . [the mail() function] seems to fail in a very particular case . . . So the next logical step was to change the headers. . . . However, doing so yields no success. The return-path is . . . overwritten by your CGI mailing program. . . . I did notice that your server, or perhaps the CGI mailing program you use, injects a number of extra headers into messages being sent. . . . The problem comes from either the configuration or the CGI mailing program installed. I appreciate any help you can offer.
1&1 Tech Support:
Unfortunately, we do not allow users to change the email headers, as this could potentially promote spoofing.

And now, in plain English:

Gordon:
WTF?! Your server is totally effing up all the outgoing mail. Anything I send gets flagged with a special mark saying, "OMG THIS IS PROBABLY SPAM, LOOK OUT!"--and I can't override it. Can you honestly believe that my messages will be delivered properly if you do this?
1&1 Tech Support:
Eff you.

Long story short: ASO is wonderful. Use them if you want to set up your own website. So about this website: I'm going to have a lot of fun with it. I decided that I would have the forums again, but running on phpBB3 (I'll migrate all the posts from the old one later), a wiki powered by MediaWiki--mostly because I can--and things like multimedia and scripting (coding) galleries. Plus I might write how-to articles that no one will ever read about all the fun stuff like JavaScript and PHP. Plus a portfolio / CV. If you can think of anything cool to add, let me know. This is my playground. I have more to write--many headlines about what's going on in my life, but I'm going to sleep right now. I can write more later.