Lars Pind

http://quicksilver.blacktree.com/plugins.php?feature=1

Who is going to write the currency conversion plug-in for Quicksilver?

We currently have a box hosted by Rackspace in London. We’ve had it for two years, and we’re not terribly happy with it, because

• We’re paying the same monthly fee for the same hardware as we did two years ago, while the price of hardware has dropped. We’ve paid the cost of the hardware at least 5 times over, and continue to do so every few months.
• We haven’t used their so-called fanatical support.
• Their backup offer is too expensive, so we’ve rolled our own backup over the network to a couple of hard drives. I’d like a tape backup in addition.
• They don’t offer Debian, only RHEL.

I don’t care whether we own the hardware or not, so long as the hosting provider will take care of replacing parts for me, within a 12-hour timeframe (so they need to keep spare parts around). I’m willing to pay a low monthly fee, plus a fee per incident for this service.

The network needs to be good. We’re going to be doing SSH and working on an interactive shell on that box from Copenhagen, Buenos Aires, and both coasts of the US, and need decent latency.

Our bandwidth and other “power” requirements aren’t great. We’re going to be running just a handful of low-trafficked sites for now.

We do care about backups. Ideally, they’ll offer a service that lets us simulate a recovery operation, so we know the drill, in case a bad controller damages both mirrored hard drives.

What are your experiences and recommendations? Go with another managed hosting provider like Tilted.com, or buy a box and get it hosted with someone local? In that case, what hardware would you recommend?

http://www.theregister.co.uk/2004/11/09/schoolboy_sues_mum/

This reminds me of when I was a kid. It didn’t quite take a lawsuit, but I did coerce my mom into buying me one of the fancy new IBM AT clones by NCR with the big honking keyboards, and the F11-F29 keys (which really just did Ctrl+F1-10 and Alt+F1-F10), and the largest Enter key I’ve yet seen.

I must’ve been around the same age (11) when the developers at my mom’s software company got the new computers, and I begged and begged and begged until finally she caved and bought me one as well. I was the happiest buy in town. I kept running dir just to see how fast the characters would scroll over the screen. Those were the days ;-)

Reading Anothony Bourdain’s amazing book Kitchen Confidential, and this quote caught my eye:

Cooking is a craft, I like to think, and a good cook is a craftsman—not an artist. There’s nothing wrong with that: the great cathedrals of Europe were built by craftsmen—though not desigend by them. Practicing your craft in expert fashion is noble, honorable and satisfying. And I’ll generally take a stand-up mercenary who takes pride in his professionalism over an artist any day. When I hear "artist," I think of someone who doesn’t think it necessary to show up at work on time. More often than not artists’ efforts, convinced as they are of their own genius, are geared more to giving themselves a hard-on than satisfying the great majority of dinner customers.

The same clearly goes for people in the software business. We’re here to serve a purpose for our customers, not to engage in self-expression.

I’ve met particularly many graphic designers prone to artistry, which makes me even happier that I’ve found Sille, a true craftswoman.