John’s Crawlspace

Finding a reliable proxy host can be extremely difficult. I’ve been running a handful of proxy sites for a little under 4 years now, and I have yet to find a host that I’ve been happy with. Some hosts have worked out well in the short term, but after a few months, for one reason or another, things always tend to fall apart.

Last year, I posted a review of Fused Hosting. If you didn’t read it, let’s just say that things didn’t go very well with them, and I’d recommend avoiding them at all costs.

After that debacle, I decided to give VPSNOC (VPS Network Operation Center) a try… They offered VPS Hosting solutions and they allowed proxy sites on their servers, so I figured it was worth a shot. Unfortunately, there aren’t a ton of reviews of web-based proxy hosting services on the web, so I didn’t know better.

On October 11th, I created a proxy hosting account with VPS NOC.

I decided it’d be a good idea to use Pingdom’s uptime monitoring service to keep an eye on the sites, and get a feel for how much downtime (if any) I was experiencing.

On October 13th, the first Pingdom downtime notice hit my inbox. From that point on, it was basically a continual stream of downtime notifications. On most days, I got 15 to 20 of them. To give you an idea…

Notice that this is just a small sampling of the VPSNoc proxy hosting downtime notifications from 10/13 and 10/14.

I was hoping that this was just temporary, and that VPS NOC would get things back on track. Unfortunately, I was wrong.

Any and all attempts on my part to get in touch with VPSNoc were unsuccesful. At times I wondered if they had anyone working there at all. Tweets, emails, etc all went unanswered.

I sometimes wondered if somehow I had blocked my own devices from connecting to the server. A quick visit to Down For Everyone, Or Just Me? straightened that right out.

The only beacon of hope were the billing notices. I still received these invoices for the proxy hosting “services” like clockwork each month – Even when my sites had been completely down for days.

Anyone with half a brain would have cancelled these “web hosting services” after the first month. I may have a little too much fun on the weekends, but I pride myself in having at least half a brain left. I’m a pretty busy guy though, and between work, freelance work, and extracurricular activities/social life, I wasn’t able to find the time to properly research a new proxy hosting company.

The holidays came and went, and at the end of December I found a new webhost.

I tried to cancel the VPSNOC proxy hosting service in January, when I had all of my files transfered over to the new host.

I sent my first cancellation request email to VPSNoc on January 12th. Nothing. I tried again on the 13th… And yet again on the 18th. None of these emails were replied to. I didn’t want to just *cancel* through the cpanel, because I felt that the company owed me a refund of some sort – not only because of all of the crazy downtime that I faced, but also because I was charged for over a month’s worth of hosting that I wouldn’t be using. I also tried calling the business number listed on their website. Both times I called, it went straight to an answering machine. I left detailed messages with my information and requested a callback, but naturally I never heard anything back from them. Surprise, surprise.

I finally decided to just chalk it up to a loss and cancel my account through the cpanel, since I didn’t want to be charged for a second month of service in a row that I wouldn’t be using at all. One month of proxy hosting service, down the drain. Crappy, but certainly not the end of the world.

However, my account cancellation requests still haven’t gone through. VPSNoc.com is still sending me invoices for hosting. Is it possible that all of the owners were kidnapped or something?

The new proxy host? So far, so good. Due to the fact that I’ve experienced next to no downtime with this new host, my network of web-based proxies are picking up steam again, and now I have a new issue to deal with – bandwidth overages! I think that any webmaster will agree that this is a much better problem to have than downtime, though.

Needless to say, I would not recommend utilizing VPSNOC for any type of hosting. Downtime of any sort is unacceptable, but when your sites are down for days at a time and you can’t get ahold of anyone to resolve it… Well, that’s just ridiculous. As you can see, the support is non-existent, so avoid using VPSNOC hosting services entirely.

I don’t know a whole lot about Mount Everest. I knew that it was intense, and that most people that attempt to climb it tend to be on the slightly crazier end of the outdoor enthusiast spectrum.

A buddy of mine sent me this blog post about Everest this morning. Here are a few of the things that stood out to me:

There is a landmark on the ascent known among climbers as “Green Boots Cave”. It’s a small limestone overhand at 8500 m. It earned it’s nickname because a climber died there and can still be seen in the fetal position with his fluorescent green boots sticking out of the snow, as if he had died yesterday.

For every ten climbers who have ever reached the summit of Everest, one of them dies. Out of the 216 people that have been claimed by Everest, 150 of their bodies have never been recovered.

Mount Everest actually penetrates the troposphere, where Jet Streams regularly flow up to 200 mph. Everest is 1 of only 14 mountains worldwide (known as “eight-thousanders“) that reaches up into what is known as “the Death Zone” (beyond 8000 meters). In the Death Zone, climbers regularly experience odd physical and mental states, including unsettling hallucinations.

Even rescue operations are essentially suicidal in the Death Zone. One attempt by a Sherpa and a Nepalese policeman resulted in the falling death of both individuals.

“Rainbow Valley” is an area along the northeastern route of Everest’s summit. It earned it’s nickname due to the multicolored jackets of corpses that can be seen all along the hillside. Due to Everest’s sub zero conditions, these corpses remain intact for decades.

David Brashears, who has summited Everest five times, has said that “there had been nothing in my training to prepare me to pass through the open graveyard waiting above.”

Needless to say, Everest is much more intense than I had originally thought. I had always thought that when I’m older and have money to throw around, it might be something I’d like to try. After reading this article, I can honestly say that I’ve changed my mind. Crazy stuff.

I spent entirely too much time on AOL in high school… So this sound is all too familiar to me. I think it is permanently burned into my mind.

Out of all the links I encounter on a day-to-day basis, I’m not sure why this particular one prompted me to post it on my site, as opposed to just tweeting it or IMing it to a handful of people, which tends to be the easier route of sharing these days. Anyway, enjoy the flashback.

This is awesome, and reminds me of something I would have daydreamed about when I was younger. The Peregrine Falcon reaches speeds of nearly 200 mph… The fastest one was clocked at 242 mph. In this video, a mini video camera was attached to the back of the falcon (as well as a Goshawk) and the resulting footage is nothing short of awesome. Check it out here.

In other news… Between work and social life, I’ve had little time for this site, as you can see in the lack of regular posts. Life in SoCal is great. I’ve been seeing a ton of live music (seeing Furthur tonight and Bluetech on Thursday) and there’s something fun going on every single weekend (going to Vegas for a bachelor party this weekend). I still refuse to let this site die though, and will continue to post things here whenever I’m feeling inspired.

Did you know that Elvis Presley was made an honorary DEA agent by Richard Nixon? I had seen this photo before, but never knew the context in which it was taken.

The irony here is that he was (most likely) out of his mind on all kinds of painkillers when he met Nixon and was made a “Federal Agent at Large” in the Bureau of Narcotics and Dangerous Drugs. When he died (at 42) on August 16, 1977 he had 14 drugs in his system, including Codeine, Morphine, Quaaludes, Valium, Demerol, and Diazepam.

This is most likely common knowledge to the majority of you, but I thought it was pretty interesting… They mentioned it on Howard Stern on my drive into work.

On a completely unrelated note, I laughed pretty damn hard at this video: My Voice Is Higher Than Your Voice. It may have had something to do with the fact that I had been at work for over 12 hours prior to viewing and was slightly delirious, but I still think it’s funny. That is all, carry on.