Bluehost.com: I invite you to eat a dick

The story of how Bluehost.com fired me for getting Dugg.

When I started this site in May of 2007 I did quite a lot of research as to the technology I should employ and the companies I should trust. I read countless reviews of publishing solutions and hosting companies. Settling on WordPress with ComicPress, I only needed a place to pitch my proverbial tent.

Bluehost.com was well reviewed and even listed in several places as being a Digg-stable or Digg-proof (this is important later in the story). I signed up with them, prepaid a year and Hijinks Ensue was born.

Lesson 1: Hosting for $10 a month is cheap. How often does “cheap” have a positive connotation?

Right off the bat the problems started. 30 min to an hour a day the site was down. This wasn’t much of a problem when I had 50 readers, but it was certainly annoying. Every time I called tech support I was introduced to a new kind of stupid. Well, less “stupid” and more “I can’t wait to get off work so I can masturbate into a Red Bull can, eat a ham and pass out on the couch to Family Matters reruns.”

I’d say, “My site is down, again.”
He’d reply, “Really? Did you look at the error logs? What did they say?”
“No Morpheus, I don’t read Matrix. Take your typing finger out of your asshole and look them up yourself.”
“Yeah, your site’s down. There must be a problem.”

And so on and so forth until my head would literally pull a “Scanners” and my wife would have to clean up the mess and get me a new head.

One time a Bluehost rep told me I was on a “messed up” box that always had a lot of problems. I told him to move me off of it and he refused. There was some sort of moratorium on moving people away from Box 269. “Why?” I asked.

“Cuz everyone that’s on it wants to move cuz it’s always messed up and stuff.”
More solid an argument I have never heard.

Fast forward to the first time one of my comics got a front page Digg. 100,000 people trying to ping a shitty server all at once is a lot like 6 rhinos trying to fuck the same watermelon. In this analogy my server was not one of the rhinos.

This time I saw it coming and called Bluehost support as soon as the site went down. Let me use my “I shit you not” voice when I say this. The tech guy told me I should upgrade to a dedicated box. I asked how much that was, and he said they didn’t offer them. I asked why and he replied (here’s the part where I’m not shitting you in the least), “Our three owners are making so much money, they really don’t care if you need a better server.”

Then the douche-taster asks me how to get on Digg because it sounded like something he would like to do. I assume he hosted elsewhere.

After my next front page Digg had me down for almost a day, I paid to move to a “High CPU” box. The moment they “upgraded” me my IMAP email accounts went shitballs, spitting out errors left and right. I sent in a trouble ticket (knowing good and well that most of my previous TT’s went completely unanswered). They responded to the ticket 3 weeks later saying they couldn’t replicate the problem. Think about that for a second. Let it stew. That’s like me bleeding to death in my garage, my arm severed by a chain saw, and 911 refusing to respond. Instead they send my loved ones a letter a month later saying they couldn’t replicate the problem.

So Valentine’s Day 2008 rolls around and I prepare a token of my love to my readers in the form of a special Valentine’s card. Come about 10 pm it hits the front page of Digg (sensing a pattern?). The site screeches to a halt and bursts into flames. I expect to go through the same BS to get my site turned back on, but this time the bullshit is new. Not only do they refuse to turn my site back on, but they try to convince me it’s impossible to do so even if they wanted to. As if they had cast cement shoes around my site and sunk it to the bottom of the ocean. Hey, insult! Here comes injury!

“We’ve left FTP access active so you can get your files and move them to a different server.”
“You’re firing me?!”
“Did I stutter, mother fucker? Get your shit and get the fuck off our box!”

At least that’s how I remember it.

I screamed at that guy so loud, I think he peed. In the end, his manager agreed to a 48 hour stay of execution while I found a new home. The site is now safe and sound (?) at Media Temple. DNS is still resolving for various parts of the world, but it should clear up in a day or so.

So tell me, what are your hosting horror stories?

UPDATE 2/19/08
Cheese it! They know!

UPDATE 2/21/08
UnCheese It! They know nothing! And what they don’t know, they make up! And by THEY I mean THIS ONE DUDE! Several readers pointed out that Weasy had amended his statement about my dealings with Bluehost.I sent him this email:

Hey, Weasy. Have all the opinions you want, but one thing I don’t appreciate is lying. You show me one “illegal material” on www.hijinksensue.com and I will remove it. How you can misconstrue getting Dugg as “abusing bandwidth” is beyond me. Somehow that implies malicious intent and, as I’m sure you know, getting a first page Digg is a passive act. I have no control over whether it happens or not. I think you just gave me some insight into why I was getting the caliber of service from Bluehost that I was.

Here’s the whole thread as of this posting. I wonder if someone at Bluehost lied to this dude, or if he is making this up as he goes along.

Again, STAY THE EVERLOVING ‘EFF AWAY FROM BLUEHOST!

If Loving You is Wrong…

Dear Readers, Here is my St. Valentine’s Day present to you:

A Valentine’s card of today’s comic you print out, inscribe with proclamations of love and give to your sweet heart. Just don’t give this to your twin sibling. They might get the wrong idea.

(1.5mb – Print this out landscape style on 8.5 x 11 paper and fold it over to complete the romantic magic)

UPDATE: There’s a better version HERE. The margins are a bit off on the original.

You can also partake in one of these lovely desktop backgrounds, presented in both sqaurely and rectangulish formats: [removed since updated versions are in The Vault]

A Prison for College Kids and Divorced Men

S.W.A.T. (Swedish Weapons and Torrents)

When you think pirates these days, you conjure images of flamboyantly foppish fellows, beards beaded and doo-ragged domes. I comment today not on those sea fairing swashbuckling skalewags, but rather the dastardly digital do-bads downloading documents, data, dance music and DVD dupes.

I just dropped some alliteration science on your asses. Brain mouth words tired have now.

…rebooting…

The Jolly Roger waivers at the Pirate Bay are in some hot meatball sauce with the Swedish Government. Sweden, often known as the land of lawlessness and cheap, ready-to-assemble furniture has finally decided that creating an online portal for the sole purpose of allowing users to take and use software and media they haven’t paid for is somehow morally ambiguous. Possibly illegal!

The eyepatchers and pegleggers claim:

They aren’t making the gigantic stacks of cash (what do the Swedish use for currency? Carp? Slacks? Children? Tufts of hair?) and
They can never be stopped for their reach extends beyond the four corners of the (round) earth and into the very internets we breath.

I’m not passing judgement on what’s right or wrong, just what is legal. File sharing copyrighted material (even making a mix tape) is illegal. Fair use be damned. The law is clear. These are not laws I agree with, but they are real and carry serious consequences when ignored.

If they really have scattered their servers world wide, I certainly wouldn’t suggest that the Swedes or the RIAA or the MPAA or the producers of “Ugly Betty” and “Grey’s Anatomy” check Josh’s file server. There’s no reason he should be on their radar. He doesn’t have season after season of high quality HD-rips of every show imaginable. He just doesn’t.

Part 2 of this comic will deal with the aftermath of the raid and Josh’s inevitable prosecution and incarceration. What’s with all the continuity lately?

——————————-
P.S.

Sorry for missing Monday’s comic, but it was important that I get the podcast edited, uploaded, etc so you guys could enjoy it. Thanks for all the support and feedback regarding the Podcast. We have fun doing the show and plan to record episode 2 this Saturday. The process of editing and uploading should go MUCH faster this time. Don’t forget to email questions to podcast(at)hijinksensue(dot)com.

The head’s name is Jor L. Ron

The Tom Cruise Trilogy (as it will forever be known) has come to it’s logical conclusion… that L. Ron Hubbard was a human vessel housing the soul of an evil alien Galactic Emperor, and Tom Cruise made a baby (emphasis on “made” because I’m thinking there was a space lab involved) in order for him to recorporialize and dominate this sector of space. Logical.

Truthfully, read that first paragraph, then read up on Scientology. Is it ANY crazier than what they actually believe?

I’m glad this trilogy is over and I can get back to making fun of Lost and Steve Jobs and Star Trek, etc, etc. Glad only because the concept of Tom Cruise as a magical super hero was starting to consume my being. I would wake up in the middle of the night, tearing at my flesh and screaming Tom-comic ideas at the moon.

Here are a few that I considered before going with “The Fortress of Scientologitude“:

L. Ron is Darth Siddious, Tom is Anakin, Thetans are Midichlorians. The story writes itself. Tom strangles Katie Holmes with his mind and she dies during silent child birth. Tom fights (I dunno) Val Kilmer on a lava world and his scorched remains are transplanted into a cyborg body. “NOOOOOOOOOOoooooooooooooooo!”
L. Ron is Vigo, the Scourge of Carpathia. He lives in a painting and he wants to posses Katie’s child that he may rule for 1000 years. There’s a river of pink slime under the city, yadda yadda yadda, and Tom Cruise pilots a beheaded Statue of Liberty to save the day. This is similar to the direction I went but had great potential for for a Bobby Brown theme song over the end credits.
Tom is the Commander of a disputed space station orbiting a war torn planet, and he is also the emmisary of their wormhole dwelling god-aliens. L. Ron is a Cardassian military leader that rose to political power during war time, and Katie is a refugee from the occupied planet turned resistence fighter. Ummm…John Travolta is a shape shifter with unknown origins, and his people have an army of mind-programmed clones. Let’s say Kirstie Alley plays the station.

Honestly, this one wouldn’t have been funny because it’s too close to the truth.

I want to make a desktop from the Tom Cruise Trilogy. Any suggestions? I also REALLY want to do a podcast. Would you listen? Let me know.