Ode to Bluehost

Like an abused wife defending her husband, I defended Yahoo! for over a year before their lack of support for a higher level of MySQL (geek stuff) made upgrading my blog impossible.

So I switched to Wordpress’ recommended host: Bluehost.

As most moves go, it was fairly intrusive and caused a lot of head-aches. Not the least of which was figuring out how to move my database from Yahoo! I annoyed the Yahoo, online forums and Bluehost tech support for almost a week until I figured it out (I had to switch back to Yahoo, download everything, then switch to Bluehost before my contract with Yahoo extended another month).

I was happy with my decision then. Bluehost was 40 percent cheaper, had a program that automatically updates my blog and has auto re-directs that Yahoo could only dream of. This isn’t even to mention their e-mails, ftps and database permissions which are almost 100 times the amount of Yahoo’s (literally).

But Bluehost wouldn’t deserve an ode if not for their tech support. Yahoo has constant quality assurance tests that send you an e-mail every time you call their tech support to see what they can improve (everything). Bluehost just does it right the first time. The tech support at Bluehost knows what it’s talking about.

It’s surprising how rare that is now.

As anyone who checked this blog from 2 to 3:30 a.m. GMT (I’m lying, I have no idea what time GMT even is, but then, neither do you) will know, my site was down today. I accidentally deleted a table in my database that turned out to be necessary for the subsistence of the Internet… who knew?

So I called Bluehost and, in less than one minute, I hung up. Some five minutes later, they reverted my blog to its previous state as if nothing had ever happened.

(Sorry this ode doesn’t rhyme. It’s more of an ass-kissing review for the people that saved my butt than lyric poetry.)

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Haiku to Moofruot

Meshie, I miss you
I have search’d high and low
Where are you? Don’t know

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Moof is such a doll

I mailed Moofruot a $1 Family Dollar doll.

I know it’s been a year since she mailed me a sock, but it’s been a busy year. Besides, I thought about what to send her for so long that nothing seemed random anymore, so I just went shopping and let ‘my little pal‘ call out to me.  The fact that it says ‘$1′ right on it is what makes it, I think.

Ha ha.

Moof is so awesome.  If I had $1 million, I’d send her one million dolls.

Although I’m sure it would be pretty hard to explain to the IRS that I really did give a $1 million dollar gift of dolls.

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Ode to Jenny

Dear Jenny Belle Werness,
Thank you for being such an excellent activist. Thank you for being so cute and possibly related to the head of the American Atheists that you won their scholarship. You’re probably going to spend that money on tuition, or fees, or books, or liquor, or perhaps just a giant bar of chocolate. Well, bully for you. Enjoy it while it lasts. Because I needed this scholarship, and now, thanks to you, I likely won’t have it. Now how am I going to pay for my International Student Exchange? Hopefully you have a plan, because I don’t. And you know what hurts the most? This quote:

“And so the scholarship applicants are chosen primarily on these aspects of activism. Did they bounce back from defeat, only to be victorious in a subsequent battle? Did they put a face on their activism, so people could see that the person behind the keyboard was a normal, likeable, and downright sensible person?”

Are they saying I’m a faceless, defeatist, abnormal, unlikeable, and unsensible person? Or am I reading too far into this? Perhaps I’m not reading far enough. I mean, this was for the 2004 scholarship and this year, if I’m correct, is 2005. Oh. Sorry Jenny. My bad. Disregard this message.

Love,

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