Archive for April, 2009

Coachella Rules

April 29th, 2009

Last week I got back from Coachella, a 3-day music festival in Southern California.  It was my 4th time going, the other years being 2001, 2002, and 2006.  This year, like previous years, was awesome – good friends, good drinks, pimpin’ house and pool, and tons of cool bands and DJs to rock out to.  Here are noteworthy moments followed by details from the whole weekend

Coachella 2009 Lineup

  • Groove Armada doing superstylin for like 20 minutes, including a few mins of daft punk in the middle.  After “Around the World” they unloaded the superstylin’ drop that totally electrified the crowd.  This was my favorite moment this year – 3rd favorite coachella moment of all time, after daft punk in 2006 and my personal fav squarepusher in 2001.
  • The Do Lab giving off a great burningman vibe, sick music, interesting art and decorations, water hose, and central location. My favorite spot. Video. Big UP to Jupiter, Random Rab, Beats Antique, Lucent Dossier, and many more.
  • The Dome was another sound location in addition to the Do Lab and the 5 official ones – they provided sound as you entered and left, going till 5am for those in camp city.  LA Riots played sunday night.
  • Naked Hippie getting tasered.  3 fat cops using a taser on a dude out of his mind. article.
  • Contact solution containers are very useful.
  • The Ting Tings singing “Whats my name” (my fav song of 2008)
  • Yeah Yeah Yeahs rocking it – love that gold costume, Karen O. video.
  • Girl Talk really knows how to rock a party, short-attentions span style. milkshake.
  • MIA was good, but Blackstar (her Coachella DJ) went a little crazy with that air horn – could barely hear the songs. Lame.
  • Public Enemy doing the entire album of “It Takes a Nation of Millions to Hold Us Back”
  • The Black Keys got Soul, damnit.  a video.
  • Leonard Cohen rocking it at age 74.
  • Morrisey left the stage early cuz he smelled burning flesh.  Sigh. Pass the Bacon.
  • The Cure did almost 3 hours – including 2 songs after they cut the sound and lights (only saw first hour, tho).
  • I heard Paul McCartney, would have been really impressed if i still loved him.
  • Wish I saw Etienne De Crecy. Awesome video.
  • Wish I saw MSTRKRFT, saw them in 2008.
  • Wish I saw Roni Size, The Kills, Atmosphere, M Ward, Crystal Castles, the Orb, etc.
  • Out of 166,000 people attending coachella, I ran into my boy Zac (chicago) twice. I ran into tons of other people from California as well. Attendence was second only to 186k in 2007 (src).

Team Coachella

It all began with my arrival Thursday night, along with checkoway and kerry, crashing at my friend Rob’s place in Ontario. Friday morning our new best friend Jason picked us up in his super 80’s Van – Our Carpoolchella.  The rumor was that one lucky crew with “Carpoolchella” written on their car/van would win lifetime vip tix to coachella.  No, wed were not that lucky crew.  Anyways, we drove 80 miles to Palm Springs, got supplies, checked into our house for the weekend, and met up with Isabel (not Babs), Jess, and Brian.  We got our drinks on and headed to coachella friday, coming home around 1 or 2 and staying up till 5 in the morning.  2 hours later I’m up for some reason and ready to go.

Saturday started with more drinking, a surprise arrival by Ding Dong, Cake-Oh, and Katheeee.  Yay.  After some pool shenanigans we left the house for the iMeem party – more pool, free-drinks, DJs (A-Trak was there but did not spin), and great people watching.  It ended up being pretty fun, till the Asahi ran dry.  We made it inside the coachellas around 5 or 6 and lasted till about midnight,  then home and more drinks and late nite grilling by Chef Checkoway. Sunday was more of the same, morning cocktails, donger made eggs, pool chillin, a few visitors, and music at coachella from 6 to midnight.  I was planning on leaving sunday night but I aborted that plan due to lack of sleep and desire not to get sick.

Monday we cleaned up and left the house by noon, made it to LA where most of us did more pool side chilling at the roosevelt in hollywood.  Around 6pm everybody left but me and checkoway – he was in LA for biz and my flight didn’t leave for chicago till 6am the next morning.  Lee Williams showed up, instigating round 7, and with the help of Katie Curry we were out drinking till the bars closed.  After some post-bar pizza I took checkoway back to the hotel where i crashed from 3:30am till 4:30am (thats 1 whole hour of sleep for you kids at home), got up and taxied to LAX.  Needless to say i slept the entire plane ride home.

Good times, Good times.

Hostmonster Sux

April 28th, 2009

I loved hostmonster.com ever since I signed up with them in September 2007.  They are a dirt cheap web hosting with pretty much unlimited storage, lots of easy to install applications, and ssh access.  SSH is very important for developers like me – I can get in there and do my business cmd-line style, as all hardcore developers like to do it.

But then after 19 months the abuse department gets all up in my business.  Basically they suspended all my sites and removed ssh access without any notification whatsoever.  After several unanswered emails and form submissions, I call and finally get a hold of somebody.   Initially he was cool – he gave me back my ssh access so at least i could get to my files.  But when I tried to get out of him what I needed to do end my account suspension, he kept it vague, telling me I was not allowed to store stuff online.

  • First we ended up arguing for almost 20 minutes over the fact that I had 4 versions of my resume on there (all publicly addressable) .. he claimed that was storage.
  • Then it became an issue of any file not linked to by my website was storage – what, i can’t put stuff on my site and email a link to it to my friends? I have to publicly link to it from my blog or something?  what type of policy is that?
  • The last issue revolved around .tar, .tgz, and .zip files.  First he said they were allowed if it was “software release or something similar”, which makes sense.  But how does that really differ from having my resumes as a .tar file?  Ok, now that i question the policy changes – he refines his statement and says those files are never allowed.  sigh. Again, WTF?
  • Over and over I asked the same 2 questions – what do i have to do to remove suspension and what is hostmonster policy.  The answer was always the same subjective “no online storage allowed”.

Sure, they are legally allowed to do that – their Terms Of Service (TOS) state they are not to be used as online storage and can suspend users without notification for violating this rule.  Online storage is a pretty broad term, legally they could suspend any one of their users since its pretty hard NOT to store anything on your website.  But the way they handled me was incredibly rude and disrespectful.  In the back of my mind I wonder if they just wanted to get me to leave since I used so much storage – several GB’s of jpgs (all 35,000+ are now on flickr).

The guy I spoke to was the acting manager of the abuse department the day I called, April 8.  He was childish, immature, and seemed to be on a power trip.  I attempted to get a hold of anyone else in management thru various form submissions, emails, and phone calls, but 36 hours later (almost 3 days since initial suspension) I gave in and signed up with mediatemple.net and started moving my domains over.  The next day I got a voicemail from the real manager of the abuse department, but by then I was behind in work and already moved to mediatemple, so why sink any more time in this?   This post is to just warn people – hostmonster.com sux.

So if you noticed some hiccups a couple weeks ago, this is why.  For that I apologize.