Author Archives: Skaag

Stay away from UltraHosting

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Today I have been burned with UltraHosting.

They want me to pay $75 just to boot a rescue CD on my machine which failed to boot a new kernel, around 24 hours ago (it has failed, because they initially set only 46mb to my /boot/ partition, which is not enough for modern kernels). So basically, my data is being held hostage for a $75 ransom, until next month where I am entitled to another 15 minutes of free support. Then I will be able to ask them to spend the 2 minutes to boot a rescue CD. Then I will be able to SSH into the box, and get my data.

Besides, Their support staff takes hours to respond, their billing staff even longer, and they are not helpful at all, leaving you on the edge, eating your own fingernails. I mean, around 18 hours until receiving the answer from them that they won’t help me without me paying the $75…??

Why anyone works with them is beyond me, especially when there are so many superior competitors in the market, with Remote Boot and KVM-IP features (Hey, With those features I could have fixed my own server in less than 10 minutes! been there, done that!).

Goodbye Ultrahosting… and “good luck” surviving as a hosting company…

RabbitMQ for Beginners

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Or shall we call this “The missing beginner walkthrough”? Another name I liked and saw on the web was “The Attention Deficit Disorder Guide to …” :-)

In this short post, I describe how to get RabbitMQ up and running very quickly, on Ubuntu 9.10 Server. Although this will probably apply to other operating systems, since most of the issues are with RabbitMQ configuration and principles.

Click to continue reading “RabbitMQ for Beginners”

Couch Surfing

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I first heard about Couch Surfing from my wife. We both joined the site, because we loved the concept and were curious about trying it.

Since joining, I hosted one cool person, and joined several real life meetings (last one being yesterday night). We are also about to host a lady from France this coming Saturday.

I have to say that so far, my experience has been very positive. The members of the site who seem to “get” the idea, are positive and friendly, and that’s really great because it gives you a sense that something is right with the world, and that it’s easy to make new friends, hear amazing stories about their travels around the planet, and learn from their experience.

They are also extremely helpful when someone comes with a question or request, and I believe this is the spirit of being “good” to each other as people. If only more people lived their life in that spirit, the world would look more like a big family, than a bunch of people living their life alone.

My love and respect to the organizers of the site, and to the participants who really put their soul into the thing.

Their site: http://www.couchsurfing.org

Update: I have hosted another guy from Michigan, USA. He was simply awesome!!! I really love CouchSurfing.org :-)

Bash Hackers

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I’ve recently discovered something quite wonderful, and I’ve been thinking whether or not to reveal this to the world. However, looking at the statistics of my blog, I realize not many people read my blog so it’s probably Ok.

The realization I’ve come to, relates to technology chat rooms and the kinds of people that frequent them. You have chat rooms for subjects such as Linux, MySQL, PHP; you will find a lot of noobs in there, and the population is quite varied, sometimes rude, sometimes just plain stupid, but definitely full of trolls and other creatures ;-)

And then you have a channel such as #bash and this is where things get quite wonderful. So, What kind of person goes to a channel about Bash? (Bourne-Again Shell). What I found was a bunch of hackers, with a great sense of humor and the ability and willingness to help people, and educate them about proper bash scripting. They are the right mixture of geek / mature IT person / mature developer, that I have come to appreciate and respect over the years.

“Asli” Yemenite Soup

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One of the positive effects of the creation of the state of Israel, and the ensuing “import” of Jews from so many exotic places on the planet back into their original homeland, is the culinary richness we now enjoy in the country. Every family brought unique and exquisite recipes from their host country, and some of them have opened little food shops that dispense their special outlook on what recipe “X” should really be like.

One of my own personal favorites is the Yemenite soup and the accompaniments, and for me it’s no longer just about the soup but also about the ritual ;-)

Click to continue reading ““Asli” Yemenite Soup”