Onward and Upward!

If you’re seeing this entry, you’re seeing my website on my brand new dedicated server!

I have had it for almost two days now.. and already ran into and solved my first problem. Got to love it when mysql won’t start due to a bad my.cnf file.

Edit #1: Apache and PHP recompile complete!

Edit #2: I neglected to say thank you to my wonderful wife Monica for putting up with me.

American Idol > President?

Supposedly, over 100 million votes were placed last night for American Idol. That’s ridiculous.

Why?

That’s almost as many votes that were cast in the 2004 US presidential election. According to Wikipedia, 122,267,553 votes were cast for president.

On another note, it’s now obvious who the judges and producers want to win this year. Archuleta sang well last night for the most part. But so did Cook.

I feel the judges were very unfair in their assessments of David Cook. For example, all along the judges have stressed being original, making songs their own, and essentially “thinking outside the box”.  Apparently this doesn’t apply to the crappy winner’s song. His performance of I Still Haven’t Found What I’m Looking For was amazing, but I would tend to agree that he should have chose a different song than The World I Know. He performed it well, but I would have rather seen something bigger and better. I loved his little dig against Archuleta though about performing something new.

David Archuleta did exactly what he has been doing all season — he sang slow, sappy ballads. He has shown absolutely no originality, improvement, or versatility. Is that not the point of having theme weeks?

David Archuleta, if crowned the winner, will falter just like all of the other male American Idol winners. David Cook will excel and follow in Chris Daughtry’s footsteps.

Maybe Idol producers will fix the show in time for season eight.

Web Hosting Intro and Tips

This is a completed article I began writing about three years ago. It’s actually quite amazing how little I had to edit; the basics never change.

If owning and operating a web hosting account is a new experience for you, then this article is just for you. The tips and instructions outlined here do not apply to any one particular web hosting company; they are “good practice” instructions and general in nature.

For starters, a domain name is different than web hosting. The two are independent but are usually used in conjunction with each other. A domain name is what you type into the address bar in your internet browser. Web hosting is the service where a domain name’s pages, images, and such are stored on servers. Many web hosts offer domain name registrations services; some even offer free domain names with their service. If your host is one of those, it is imperative to ensure that you actually own the domain name and not the host. Personally, I like to keep my domain names and web hosting at separate companies — the “all your eggs in one basket” concept.

Next, it is important for businesses, organizations, and individuals to understand that account ownership is a very important thing. When an employee signs up for a web hosting account under their name and credit card, they own the account — not the company. Most web hosts will require some sort account verification to prove ownership such as the last four digits of the credit card on file or possibly security questions (mother’s maiden name, etc.). If said employee leaves the company, the company will need to be able to verify ownership. If the company cannot, they are in a bind and the web host’s hands are essentially tied. The same goes for an individual paying someone to be their webmaster. That individual should open the web hosting account and purchase their domain name(s) and simply give their webmaster the access that is needed. This ensures that the rightful person retains ownership if the webmaster skips town or an argument/disagreement occurs between the two parties.

I am surely going to get flamed for this next tidbit, but I am an honest person. One of the most important concepts to keep in mind, as a customer, is to be realistic. Hosting a mission-critical website on shared hosting is not realistic. Paying $5 a month for web hosting for an online business/store that generates $4,000 of revenue a month is not realistic. Obviously all web hosts strive for 100% uptime availability; however, as a client you have to remain realistic. Complaining to your webhost that the 30 minutes your server was down cost you $3,000 in sales makes you look idiotic.

As in most cases, when you have a complaint, maintain your composure. Raising your voice, typing in all caps, using inappropriate language, etc. are all sure-fire ways of quickly invalidating any and all of your comments — no matter how true and valid they actually may be. Remain professional throughout the process and better results will come of it for everyone involved.

When signing up for a new web hosting account, be sure to use an email address not a domain you plan on hosting with that company. I suggest using a gmail or yahoo address for simplicity’s sake, but it can be any other email address. If/when your server goes down, you will probably want to contact the web host’s support department. But if your server is down, so is your email. Additionally, if there is a billing problem and your account gets suspended, you will lose access to your account and therefore your email. Depending on the web host’s support setup, it may be email-based. It just makes sense to use an alternate email address.

That’s the basics as I see them. This is by no means the end-all-be-all introduction to web hosting, but it at least gives some information and reasoning.

Fixing American Idol

No, I am not saying American Idol is fixed. There are so many conspiracy theories out there concerning the outcome of American Idol, and this is not going to be one of them. What this will be, however, is my thoughts on how to “fix” the show and regain the ratings it has lost this year.

1. Limit the number of votes from a single source. In other words, one telephone vote per phone number and one text message vote per mobile phone. Once the lines close, rank the contestants in numerical order based on the totals.
2. Make Simon, Randy, and Paula part of the rankings. In my opinion, Randy and Simon are usually spot-on with their evaluations. Paula is, well, Paula. Require each judge to rank the contestants each week.
3. Selling the studio recordings on iTunes this year was genius. Take those sales into account. Again, rank each contestant based on sales. This would require more than 24 hours between the performance and results shows. Additionally, it would require the studio singles being released immediately following the performance show. Why do this? Simple. The ‘tweens’ texting 42,983 times for their favorite contestant will not necessarily translate to album sales. Incorporating sales figures will provide an actual indicator of which contestants truly are selling records.
4. Theme weeks can be killer. You can’t make a rock singer sing great Broadway or Mariah Carey. Sure, David Cook somehow pulled it off and truly showed his versatility. That is not the norm though. The goal of American Idol is to find the ‘next big star’ — and there is no way David Cook would attempt to put out an album of Broadway hits. This week’s theme though (Rock and Roll Hall of Fame) was perfect. It allowed the contestants to pick, from a wide variety of songs, two songs that ideally fit them. Eliminating the superfluous themes will better allow the public to see the true artist and what kind of album they would record.

There is one final change that would legitimize the show again — publish all rankings, vote totals, sales figures, etc.

As for this year’s show, it will definitely be a David vs. David finale. Let’s just hope that David Cook is victorious.