Apparently, BBM lies

BlackBerry Messenger is now a multiplatform messaging service. However, it has some distinct limitation that I would have never known about had I not been able to actually use it on my own phone. By design your history is not saved on BlackBerry servers for what I assume are security reasons. Also, you cannot be logged on to multiple devices at once. This is important because the way BlackBerry Messenger was designed it would be too hard to be able to see which devices it has been delivered to and if it has been read.

It could have been designed differently, but these are the choices BBM made with their particular goals in mind. There are other ways to have read receipts on messages. (Delivered can get complicated.)

However, I was in a situation this week that highlighted problems with this design and shortcuts BBM developers took. I sent a message to a friend on Monday. He got it on his phone, but apparently didn’t use his phone on Monday. He bought a new phone on Wednesday and logged in with BBM. I sent him a message about the new phone and he responded. I also noticed that my messages from Monday were marked as read. I knew that messages don’t transfer between phones: If I’m on Hangouts I can see my whole message history (unless you turn off the feature or set a conversation to off the record), if I’m in ChatOn it can load any messages in the last two weeks. But BBM acts as though it clears the messages from its servers and will not send older messages to your new phone. So I asked if he had actually gotten those messages.

He had not. The messages were lost. Yet, they were marked as read because he had seen the most recent message and my BBM phone assumed that all the messages before the last one had been read by my friend. I find this to be appalling. I thought BBM was better engineered than that. Is it possible this is only a shortcut on Android phones? Maybe. But it’s pretty damning, I think.

Since I consider read receipts to be one of the most important features of BBM I feel rather betrayed by the fact that it is missing. Also, I find the Android up fast, but complicated. I would also rate it higher if it was using the Android interface guidelines rather than BlackBerry 10 or whatever design guide they used for the app.

Psst! Your agenda is showing! Cosmos & Bruno

When people become obsessed they begin to see everything through one lens. For example, people who are against the gay will see 'the gay' everywhere. And worse, they attribute it to the Gay Agenda. This makes for the comical situation of anything remotely not anti-gay becomes part of an overwhelming gay conspiracy to destroy straight families and upset the fragile balance of hetrosexuality. Those with an agenda see anything that doesn't mesh well with their agenda as being part of the anti-agenda. Black and white. There is no middle ground. And facts often fall to the wayside.

Consider Hank Campell's review of the first episode of Cosmos:

Then suddenly we get a claim that Giordano Bruno is responsible for the concept of the universe - because he read 'banned' books. Lucretious wasn't science - there was no scientific evidence for his claim that wind caused earthquakes or worms spontaneously generated - it was philosophy, and his book was not rare in 1600 AD, people were also not martyred for reading it, and yet we get told a philosophical belief in infinity was what got Bruno into trouble.

Having watched the first episode already, I was quite amused by this. The segment being discussed clearly showed that Bruno got these ideas from already banned books. How Campell can claim that he is responsible for the idea is odd. Though it did seem to imply that after Bruno came to believe the universe was infinitely big he did populate it with stars and planets. I don't know if this was an idea unique to Bruno or not.

Campell clearly tries to discredit the idea that the book was banned. Was the book universally banned, all copied destroyed, and was housing it a crime? No. But the book was officially blacklisted by at least one church:

The Jesuistic Florentine Synod banned Lucretius, confessing that schoolteachers might be tempted to teach De rerum natura because of its gorgeous Latin, but sentencing those who did teach it to eternal damnation, plus a fine of 10 ducats.

The book was clearly banned in schools in 1516. It is a banned book. If that definition is good enough for the American Librarian Association it's good enough for me.

Campell in the same paragraph also slammed Cosmos by saying that Bruno's position wasn't based on science, it wasn't based on evidence. It was merely a philosophical thought experiment. Neil deGrasse Tyson is going to regret when he said otherwise when he said:

Bruno was no scientist. His vision of the cosmos was a lucky guess, because he has no evidence to support it. Like most guesses it could have turned out wrong. But once the idea was in the air it gave others a target to aim at, if only to disprove it.

Oh, he didn't say otherwise. In fact, he pointed out exactly that. I'm beginning to think that Campbell didn't really watch Cosmos. Or, he let his hypersensitivity to the conflict churches have had with religion get in the way of seeing what was there.

Why has Bruno martyred? By now it should be clear that Campbell it speaking about what he thought he saw, and not what Cosmos actually showed. In Campbell's Cosmos we are told that he was killed because he read the wrong book and because he thought there were planets and stars outside of our solar system, and for no other reason (emphasis mine):

his book was not rare in 1600 AD, people were also not martyred for reading it, and yet we get told a philosophical belief in infinity was what got Bruno into trouble.

It's an immediate disconnect for people who know science history because it smacks of an agenda. I instead object because it is flat-out incorrect. To claim that Bruno promoted the concept of the universe, a "soaring vision", despite persecution, while simultaneously being hired over and over by the institutions we are told were oppressing him, makes no sense. That segment of the show makes it sound like he was a devout Christian tormented by reason rather than what he was - a cultist who engaged in confirmation bias to pick and choose anything that matched his beliefs.

Bruno's "science" was never mentioned during his trial, he was on trial for being a cult worshiper. He only took up the cause of Copernicus because he believed in the Egyptian god Thoth and Hermetism and their belief that the Earth revolved around the Sun, not because he had perceived anything radical. Galileo rightly dismissed most of Bruno's teachings as philosophical mumbo-jumbo. Bruno was only revived as a 'scientist' and a martyr for science by anti-religious humanists in the 19th century.The church didn't even bother to ban his writing until well after he was dead.

In reality the charges upon which Bruno was convicted were as follows (emphasis mine):

• holding opinions contrary to the Catholic faith and speaking against it and its ministers; 

• holding opinions contrary to the Catholic faith about the Trinity, divinity of Christ, and Incarnation; 

• holding opinions contrary to the Catholic faith pertaining to Jesus as Christ; 

• holding opinions contrary to the Catholic faith regarding the virginity of Mary, mother of Jesus; 

• holding opinions contrary to the Catholic faith about both Transubstantiation and Mass; 

• claiming the existence of a plurality of worlds and their eternity; 

• believing in metempsychosis and in the transmigration of the human soul into brutes; 

• dealing in magics and divination.

He was charged for assert things against Catholic dogma and doctrine including the existence of other planets like Earth. What did Cosmos actually say he was convicted of?

You are found guilty of questioning the holy trinity and the divinity of Jesus Christ, of believing that God's wrath is not eternal and that everyone will be saved, and asserting the existence of other words.

The segment in Cosmos in question here noted that his views of the universe were a minority of charges against him, as it was in fact. But in Campbell's Cosmos these facts were never mentioned. If I watched the documentary he watched, I might agree with him. But since that documentary was never made I cannot see it.

Instead, when Campbell says "It's an immediate disconnect for people who know science history because it smacks of an agenda" I wonder if it isn't Campbell who has an agenda of downplaying any conflict between churches and individuals with religious belief and science as a body of knowledge. Many people participated in the same Charge against Cosmos. And for years I've heard people make the same claim. There is no conflict between science and religion. And any time you think there was wrong, you are wrong.

Perhaps he is like one of these people who go around saying that Galileo was not sent to jail for his beliefs. This is true: he was sentenced to house arrest. This doesn't change the fact that Galileo was persecuted by a church because of his beliefs that were out of line of that of the church in question at that time and politically he was annoying the church. But the fact is that his belief that the Earth was the centre of the universe was what he was specifically asked to recant. Another tactic I've noticed is apologists noting that Joan of Arc was not killed by the church. This is also true. The church merely supported the killing and convicted her in their own court. But civil authorities carried out the sentence. In both cases people are misleading by splitting hairs. The fact of the persecution remains.

He is so driven by the agenda that he missed a point of the segment, and of the history of the church's persecution of science: In almost all cases they are persecuting other religious people. This is not religion vs science. It's people who cling to doctrine and dogma attacking those who do not. Bruno was religious. As was Joan of Arc, Galileo and Copernicus. In the three Cosmos episodes that aired each one has included a religious person who pushed science forward. In some cases they were attacked by other religious people for what they believed. I see religion as neither being cased as the villain or the hero. Rather, questioning versus idoeology.

I did not see this segment as an attack on religion. But Campbell seems so obsessed with it that he thought it was, and was unable to see what was actually before his eyes.

Art Collection of the Obama's circa 1996

Back in 1996 the New Yorker posted these interviews that included photos of the Obama's apartment.

Some people were a little confused about what the works of art surrounding them were. I thought it might be fun to actually look them up.

The first picture frame on the left contains two images of classical Thai dancers put together:

1. 12" x 24" Thai Temple Rubbing - Black Musician Playing the Traditional Ranet Ek (Thai Xylophone)
2. Thai Temple Rubbing - Black Classical Thai Dancer

The middle picture frame contains an image from Ramayana, an ancient story from the Cambodian culture. It's a rubbing from an actual stone carving. This is a scene just before the good guys get the upper hand. Important in any good story.

The final picture frame is hard to see but looks like more dancers or musicians like the first one.

The statue on the side is probably some African statue. What is very interesting is I heard some people say that it's a Voodoo-Santeria idol. Of course, Voodoo and Santeria are completely separate religious traditions and have nothing to do with each other.

Speaking of misinformation, I also saw it said that the picture frame in the middle showed the devil, which is clearly incorrect. And the one on the right was supposed to have Masonic symbols. And I certainly cannot see any. Besides, it clearly look Thai as I said above. Sadly, those who are likely to believe conspiracy theories just reposted such misinformation without even looking at the images which don't show what they say they do.

I could tell right away. The devil? Nope, didn't look like any Christian or Jewish type of art at all. That was the first clue. And I didn't see anything Masonic or New World Order in these pictures at all. Of course, the one on the right has a lot of glare. So they may be there. But they just as equally may contain some writing that says 'Shawn is always right.' You cannot prove it doesn't!

So, no Voodoo-Santeria idol. No images of the devil. And no Masonic symbols. What a let down. Instead, it's just a bunch of cultural reproductions from around the world, just as you would expect educated and wealthy people to own. (And did you see the prices? Some are not that much to buy.)

I found some useful information over at IBA and Cosmophobia when I did a little research on this image.

GreenGeeks limitation - What you should know before web hosting

I have been using a dedicated web host since my university days for multiple websites. Eventually I switched service providers. And even tried to switch again. That's when I realized there were bad service providers, and worse providers. The worse was HostPapa. All the bells and whistles, but a provider built on a foundation of sand.

I had mixed feelings about HostPapa going in to my short time with them. But the reviews online were so polarized and from such bad looking websites that I wondered if they were legit. In the time between starting to research Canadian web hosts and the time I switched to HostPapa for 30 hours, I got an account with GreenGeeks.

See, I was shedding as many sites as possible from my account. I wanted them all cleared out so my account was my account and I didn't want any of these charity cases on my site. This one site was ran by an organization that could actually have their own server. But what I did instead was get the GreenGeeks account and bill them for my time and money. They then issued me a tax credit for my work. Essentially I donated it to them and got a tax write off.

My time with GreenGeeks was okay. The server times were mediocre. The sites went down for a minute or two sporadically. About the same as my analysis of HostPapa and even iPage. More importantly, customer service was immediate. I never had to wait more than about an hour, unless I opened a ticket to billing in the middle of the night.

For a 'race to the bottom of the market' web host like HostGator, JaguarPC and HostPapa I thought GreenGeeks was pretty good, and Canadian.

Then I tried to leave. Oh, they didn't give me any trouble about leaving. But I wanted to download my cPanel backup. They don't allow that. Which means I cannot download a file, and restore it on another cPanel website in a way that easily preservers all the data:

• Files have to be (zipped and) transferred manually, via FTP.
• Databases have to be exported one at a time, manually, via phpMyAdmin. Then you have to manually create each database and import them to the new host.
• Database users? Cannot move those. Have to make sure you have kept records or can find them out. Apparently, someone on this site had automatically created some databases with some software installs. So I had to make sure I found all the web apps and edit their configuration files to find the passwords.
• Add on domains? You have to re-add all of them.
• MX and DNS records? You have to remake all of them.
• Any email on the server? They didn't tell me how to transport that. I would be able to do it myself, but what about all my users?
• Mailing lists? Dido.
• Server logs and usage? Gone. (Luckily, we are using Google Analytics.)

So this makes it a pain to move away from them. But here's the kicker: it also makes it harder to move to them. Oh, maybe they will restore from a backup from the previous host. But I have no way of doing this. And I don't know if this is allowed or not.

Took what could have been an easy day for me, and made it a mess. I've transferred the databases and am transferring the files as I type this. You see, I was so dissatisfied with web hosts, and I was already hosting other people's sites that I decided to become a web host reseller. That means I charge people to use my server, which I sublease from another company. This means I can provide top notch service that doesn't have as many outages and a full support team, but as I buy in bulk I can pass the savings on to small and mid-sized website.

So I'm transferring it to a new cPanel account I created on my own server. Manually. Because they suck.

My 30 Hours with HostPapa

When I began to actually have my first website hosted, I was using Aletia, which was bought out by JaguarPC. Then I switched to Drak.net which was bought out by A Small Orange. But unlike with JaguarPC, A Small Orange did not degrade my service until it was almost unusable. But it was more of a premium web hosting provider. You didn't get all the bells and whistles. But you got affordable, reliable website hosting.

But I was ready for a change. I was slowly gathering web clients after trying to get rid of them for years. I wanted a reseller account so I could sell full service accounts to people, not just multi-hosted domains I managed. I wanted renewable energy. I wanted Canadian data servers. I wanted some bells, damnit. And the whistles.

I don't feel like that anymore. Because the only way to get that is to fall for the nonsense of unlimited this, and extremely high that for such an unreasonably low price. I narrowed it down to two Canadian companies: HostPapa and GreenGeeks. GreenGeeks I already use with another organization I work with. It was fine, if a little slow. I thought I could do the most with HostPapa and it came highly recommend by friends, and I was using their servers at a previous job.

I did some research online. The some reviews of HostPapa were poor. Or rather, were extremely bad. So bad, from websites I honestly think look like fly-by-night operations, I took them with a extra large purchase of salt. What if this company just extorts protection money to get good reviews. I also didn't believe the many glowingly positive reviews I saw. Can I trust either of these reviews? They never truly sat right with me.

With a small amount of trepidation, armed with some reassurance from friends, I made the plunge this month.

Monday morning, around 6:40 I purchased my account. Almost immediately I was given a username and password and access to my reseller account. At 7:02 AM opened a ticket asking for a private name server, as the knowledgebase told me to do. I knew from my last transfer to a new service that I needed to make a backup of my cPanel account and upload that. But which would be the best way to send the file? I opened a ticket around 8:02 AM asking what their preferred method was after searching the help section.

A friend asked why I didn't use live chat. It was early: I figured either they might not have tech support on live chat, I was too tired to deal too much with it and wanted to do something else for the moment, and wanted to wait a few more hours before I began the transition because of some final changes I was making to one of my sites. I also wanted to make sure none of my clients were going to be making changes during the transition.

So, for my private name server, I asked them what I need to do at 7:02 AM. At 4:02 AM the next day, I got a response.

Ticket Detail

Ticket No: 1411486
Subject: Create Custom Reseller Nameservers (snowbank.ca)
From: "Shawn P. Conroy"
To: HP - Support (Support English)
Date: 2014-02-03 07:02:11

Date:	From:	Message
2014-02-03 07:02:11	"Shawn P. Conroy"	Good day, I would like to use private nameservers for my reseller account. I just bought the domain semanticcomputing.ca and would like to use that domain for my name servers. The support section told me to open a ticket from the dashboard. Can you help with this?
2014-02-04 04:02:59	Tim R <>	Hello, In order for custom nameserver entries to be created for your reseller account, you must first contact your registrar and request the creation of two “glue records” with the following information: ns1.snowbank.ca (IP: 65.39.199.18) ns2.snowbank.ca (IP: 65.39.128.55) When these glue records have been created, please reply and let us know so we can start the next step of the process. -- Regards, Tim R. Technical Support Representative HostPapa Inc.
2014-02-04 10:02:49	shawn@snowbank.ca	Thank you Tim. 1. The private name server will be for the domain SemanticComputing.ca not my 'primary' domain. 2. I have set the A-Records for ns1 and ns2 as recommended. Ready for the next step.

If you look at the time stamps you will see it took them 23 hours to respond to my simple request. 23 hours. For a ticket to be responded to AT ALL.

My second ticket was at 8:02 AM on the Monday. (I am beginning to wonder of there is something wrong with the ticket system that makes every entry be listed as two minutes past the hour, or if it's just a lot of coincidences.) This second ticket was about the transfer.

Ticket Detail

Ticket No: 1412714
Subject: Transfer Reseller Accounts
From: "Shawn P. Conroy"
To: HP - Support (Support English)
Date: 2014-02-04 04:02:23

Date:	From:	Message
2014-02-03 08:02:10	"Shawn P. Conroy"	Good day, I just got this reseller account and wish to transfer over my personal cPanel account. When the backup is generated should I tell it to send it via passive FTP from my old server directly to my new server? -Shawn
2014-02-04 12:02:54	shawn@snowbank.ca	Okay, I have uploaded the cpanel backup from my old host to the home folder on my HostPapa reseller account. Please replace my account with the contents of the backup (including my personal websites). Thank you

I just wanted to be sure I would do things right. The last time I did a direct server to server transfer of my cPanel account and nearly overloaded one of the servers. But, I got amazing speeds! I didn't want to be the start of another professional relationship.

24 hours passed with no response. As 30 hours neared I uploaded the cPanel backup and posted the second submission saying so. By this point I had already noticed that I seemed to be able to do a restore myself, so it might not be required that needed the ticket at all.

I still had not received a second response from my private name server ticket after 30 hours. In 30 hours I had gotten one response.

Imagine if I had used live chat and the problem was fixed. Imagine if (as I imagine some friends saying) I called HostPapa up and got it fixed. I would be under the impression that they have good customer service. But it wouldn't be true. I don't always have time to go to live chat. Though I did have the time this week. I just didn't wish to. I wanted to post a question, and come back and work on it later. Sometimes I have commitments I cannot get around and tickets are useful tools because they allow you to post and run. They keep a record if the issue comes up again. There is great benefit to this type of system.

And I hate using the telephone. Such old technology. Very 20th century.

I started looking at alternatives. I made lunch and decided if I got back to my computer I would close my account if I still did not have a response.

Guess what happened next?

Ticket Detail

Ticket No: 1413456
Subject: Close Account, Full Refund, Please
From: "Shawn P. Conroy"
To: HP - Billing
Date: 2014-02-04 01:02:43

Date:	From:	Message
2014-02-04 01:02:43	"Shawn P. Conroy"	Good day, I am very dissatisfied with my first 30 or so hours with HostPapa. Support takes about 20 hours to respond to my tickets at all. One ticket, started yesterday in the AM asking a single question, hasn't been responded to yet. Website migration has not happened yet. By now I was hoping to have the new DNS updates propagating across the net. Please close my account and refund my credit card the almost $300 I paid. Reseller account is included on the page that says: Our Pledge To You: 100% Service Guarantee 30-Day RISK FREE Money Back Guarantee I thank you for refunding my credit. Have a nice day. -Shawn

Yeah, I closed my account.

After no response from billing after a couple hours, I called. Someone from billing came on and I said I wanted my account closed. He walked me through the online process. (Not by email, not by phone, not by ticket. Only by clicking a link in the client area. That's fine.)

I got a preliminary email within an hour or so. And a final email about a day later. The charges were reversed, and I got my money back completely.

HostPapa, like JaguarPC and I assume GreenGeeks and HostGator are all in a race to the bottom of the market. To make the least expensive most feature rich packages to get the most clients with mediocre service. A Small Orange, my previous and now still current provider is not like that. They have high tech facilities which means they have less storage, and less bandwidth. But faster servers and better uptime.

I decided to stay with them, especially as I was hosting other people's websites: I had looked in to alternatives, but the best options didn't offer reseller accounts.

Changing my mind

There is no way I could possibly change my mind. I've seen first hand how their customer support works for over 30 hours. The fact that some people seem to get around this does not help me. The fact that some modes of support are treated more seriously than others is, if true, upsetting. I should not have to fight for equal treatment. There is nothing I can think of that would grind all their customer support to a halt for over 30 hours. A bad shift? It happens. People calling in sick? Sure! But not this.

But wait, there's more

In some simple irony and a obvious self-righteousness, I'm going to point out that their ticket system is broken. Every ticket message is posted from two minutes past some hour. However, I just checked the email I got when Tim R. responded at "4:02" and the email is timestamped as "4:50 AM." So their interface for viewing tickets doesn't even display them right. A pointless, unfair punch? Maybe. But I don't feel like holding back today.

What about GreenGeeks

Not only are GreenGeeks the same type of company as HostPapa and JaguarPC, but they also have slow servers as I have been using 200 Please, some of Pingdom's tools to and UptimeRobot to watch server speeds for the last week or two.

See for yourself

Here's some quick links to reviews of HostPapa, so you can see it's not just me. I probably believe both the good and the bad now. I think their customer service is so uneven and their servers so periodic that without a systematic review we may never know what their actual customer support is like, or their server uptime, or even server speed.

• Web Hosting Reviews gives HostPapa 12% with 1 out of 18 recommending them. This was the website that was so ugly it made me question all the others. So sketchy I wasn't sure how to trust any such review. Now I know you need to find and compare these reviews with actual people's blogs to find the right balance. I also recall other sites showing discount codes and affiliate coupons. How can you trust that?
• http://www.whoishostingthis.com/hosting-reviews/hostpapa/ gives them 3/5.
• http://www.hostreviewsite.com/reviews/Host-Papa has no overall score.
• http://hostingreview360.com/hostpapa-review/ This one really helped me think it might be okay for me, being in Canada and having website that are mostly targetted to local groups, businesses and charities.
• http://www.webhostingsecretrevealed.net/hosting-review/hostpapa/ gives them 3/5.
• http://webhostinggeeks.com/user-reviews/hostpapa/ rates them at 4.08/5.
• http://www.hostjury.com/reviews/Hostpapa rates average to below average.
• http://www.hosting-review.com/canada-web-hosting.php says they are great.

And of course, if you go to HostPapa itself, it says customers rate it 4.7/5. I will try to submit my story and see if they post my ratings.

My experience with Drak / A Small Orange

I have a bewildering number of domains and websites and projects scattered around the web. But they are pretty much all hosted through whoever my current host provider is. My first host was Jaguar PC, but I found my service was becoming unbearable. At first I was pleased with my package getting more features and the limits becoming less limiting. Also, the price was fall. I was getting more, for less. Jaguar PC was in a race to the bottom of the web hosting market to pick up the most clients. Eventually this started causing problems. So I decided to move. It's tough being me. Because I am a cheapskate. I hate spending more than I feel I have to. Though, whenever I say something like that my father usually points out that I am willing to pay dearly for something thats worth it. Rather than being cheap, I am really concerned about value. My old host didn't have value. Not only was it inexpensive, it was actually cheap. And that's not a good thing.

It's hard to get a firm grip on value with hosting providers. On the surface they all offer the same thing. It's just the price that's different. After doing some investigations and talking to friends, I moved to Drak.Net. They were not cheap. But that wasn't the most important thing for me anymore. It was a webhost owned and ran by Jen Lepp and her small team. Their data centre was well managed by a professional data centre company, and they had 24 hour customer support.

My experience with them was good. Their servers were reliable. Their speeds fast. Though they weren't the cheapest out there, but their support staff was dedicated and quick to respond. That small community with dedication was part of the appeal. The servers all had fun codenames as Jen would ask her kids to name each server. And on several occasions I was in communications with the actual owner of the company and getting top-notch service. It felt like a good company and was a good experience.

Then she sold out: Drak.Net was purchased by A Small Orange, which is a premium web hosting company. This is supposed to be the part where I rant and rave about how terrible all the changes were. But that wouldn't be true. A Small Orange is a good web host. Their packages are not cheap. While they are full featured, they nickle and dime you for things like bandwidth and disk space. But in return you get fast, reliable, high tech service and equally fast customer support.

There was an error in my billing and I feel like I am being charged a couple dollars more a months than my plan with Drak.Net because of their error, but I never brought that up. Also, after paying for a year I was charged the following month for a month. The problem was quickly fixed.

After several years that slightly increased cost made me wonder about switching again. Maybe I just should have brought that up. Or maybe I was just remembering wrong. During that time I also thought I would like to start a reseller account and sell web hosting to others. With that in mind I began comparing web hosting reseller accounts. I actually switched to another web host for well over 30 hours. But I cancelled that new account before closing my account with A Small Orange. Having had a very bad experience I instead upgraded to the reseller account with A Small Orange. The difference between a premium web hosting company and cheap web hosting company was more obvious than before.

I certainly do recommend A Small Orange. On the other hand, I will post about my 30 hours on another day. (Edit to add link.)

Further reading:

If you are curious about why this premium web hosting company cannot seem to afford enough cheap hard drives to give unlimited storage and extras like that, I learned it's because they don't want to. Here are some great reviews that seemed to get to the bottom of the matter, honestly talk about the positives and negatives, and reflect my experiences over the last decade and more of web host experience.

• Best Host News' A Small Orange Review
• Host Dispatch's A Small Orange Review: My Take as an Actual Web Hosting Customer
• Last year ASO was highly recommend by Life Hacker's users.

Also, you can see ASO reviews at Web Hosting Reviews.

My experience with Aletia / Jaguar PC

It was the early 21st Century. I was gearing up for my second year at Wilfrid Laurier University. I was not only a member, but a student rep in one of the geekiest clubs on campus: The Physics and Computer Science Club. Despite the name, it was primarily for any student who had an interest in computing and technology, not just students in the Physics and Computer Science department.

The president of the club was Tudor, who I had only seen once before as a fill in teaching assistant (Tudor the tutor). He asked if anyone wanted to have their website hosted for free. His provider — Aletia — allowed him to multihost up to 5 domains for free. I took him up on this offer, and am very grateful to him for the opportunity to have my own hosted website with it's own domain and server side scripting.

A year later I decided to run a service selling unique email addresses to people, which required me to get my own shared hosting plan. So I moved off of sub-leasing Tudor's server to my own shared hosting at Aletia. Eventually, Aletia was bought out by Jaguar PC.

For the longest time I was extremely happy with Jaguar PC. They were in a race to the bottom of the web hosting market. I would pay for a year, and then a year later wonder why I didn't get an invoice. Turns out, they had lowered their rates and credited my account the difference, so I was getting free months. And whenever I popped on to their site I'd learn that my package was become ever more powerful: multi-host unlimited domains, unlimited databases, unlimited emails addresses and finally unlimited disk space. My yearly price was going down and the features were being added on top of features.

Then everything began to go wrong: Technical support stopped understanding the tickets I was posting, and they were responding in extremely poor English (second language), my server starting running slower, and slower meaning pages were taking longer and longer to load. Finally my server started grinding to a halt and going offline for at least an hour several times a month. I asked why, and they said someone else on the shared server was being bad and causing problems (i.e., was running resources intensive applications) and that person was being moved off my server to a different one. And I waited. And waited. And kept having problems. When it came time to renew my contract, I left Jaguar PC. And haven't looked back.

Disclaimer: Jaguar PC may have gotten its act together. And the major problem I faced was only faced by people on my shared hosting server. And Jaguar PC has many, many servers. Your experience if you were a customer at the same time may have been different. And things may well have changed.

Next: I switched hosts. See the blog post about my experience with Drak.net / A Small Orange.