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Dream HostnewsletterV2.06 June 2000 Jun 6, 2000
Table of Contents
0. Introduction.
1. DHSOTM Round-up.
2. Suggestion Round-up.
3. Third Visor Contest Winner!
4. DreamHost Contracting!
5. Random Quotes(s) From newdream.net
0. Introduction.
Hello Heverybody! (the H is for Happy!)
Welcome to the June installation of this mighty institution known simply
as the DreamHost Newsletter! This time around, it's a pre-summer
extravaganza! I call it pre-summer because summer isn't here yet but it
ALMOST is (at least for those of us in the northern hemisphere).
Today I had a busy morning before I got to work.
A FedEx guy (actually it was a gal) came to my apartment with a package
I've been looking forward to getting for the last week. It was from
ZapWorld.com and it included my new Zappy motor! What, pray tell, is a
motor you ask? It's a little thing that takes electricity and makes
itself spin! And what, pray tell, is a Zappy? It's an motorized (hence
the motor) electric-powered foot scooter made by ZapWorld.com! (NASDAQ:
ZAPP Price: $6 3/4) See http://zapworld.com/catalog/zappy.html if you
don't believe me!
Anyhoo, I got my yellow zappy a couple of months ago in the mail and
happily rode it to and fro, getting stares and comments everywhere I
went. It's really fun to ride, and gets you around well enough, and you
can feel good about not adding to the air or noise pollution of your
neighborhood. You can, until it breaks! Honestly, I don't blame poor
Zappy for it's malfunction. The motor apparently couldn't handle the
combined weight of both me (200lbs) and Simon (140lbs) and it started
making a narsty scratching sound even when just being pushed, as well as
losing it's electric oomph.
I called ZapWorld and told them how the motor "just out of the blue"
stopped working and since I was within the 6 month warranty they sent me
a new one free of charge, which arrived today! I got out my wrench and
screwdriver and went to work dissecting the poor bugger as soon as the
fedex guy (still a gal) left. It wasn't too bad and soon I had zappy back
into a ridable state, and so rode it to work!
When I got to work I noticed my laptop was unplugged and the battery had
become drained. I plugged it back in and booted it up and went to the
bathroom. When I came back from the bathroom the screen had a "Drive
Failure: Abort, Retry, Ignore, Fail" message on the screen. That was
worrisome. I told it to Abort and it promptly shut off. I tried booting
it up again to the same result. I tried booting it in safe mode and it
just froze. I tried booting it in command line mode and it just froze. I
tried booting it in safe command line mode and it worked! But I couldn't
do anything from there, like scandisk or nuttin' so I rebooted it and
decided this proved my hypothesis I'd been slowly developing over several
months use of my laptop: Windows98 is a piece of Crap. I decided to order
a pcmcia CD-ROM so I could install linux onto it (the only other port my
laptop has is USB which I don't think I could get working under linux for
an install).
Fortunately Zappy was not Crappy! So I figured to myself, "you win some,
you lose some, and today you won one and lost one." Well actually it
turns out today I lost two. See later I let Simon borrow Zappy to go to
the Post Office, and when he came back he said it was making a funny
sound. It just sounded like a problem with the drive belt, so I made
some adjustments on the floor of the office and did a tiny tiny test
ride. The belt promptly snapped. I've now ordered two replacement belts,
hopefully adding maybe a 1/4 point to ZAPP's share price. Not that I own
any.
Well what's the point of all this, besides maybe to encourage you that
your day isn't going so badly? I just thought that you needed that
background in order to be able to fully understand my
TOP TEN FEATURES OF A ZAPWORLD.COM LAPTOP IF ZAPWORLD.COM MADE LAPTOPS!
10. Revolutionary dorky little yellow trigger replaces mouse!
9. Keys inflated to at least 36psi!
8. Crashes in real windows rather than Microsoft Windows!
7. USB stands for Unused Stupid Brake!
6. Easy folding, easy rolling, and only 37 pounds!
5. Not wearing an ansi or shell-certified helmet voids the warranty.
4. Not recommended for users under 100 pounds.
3. Abort, Retry, Ignore, Kick more?
2. Would come in special Playboy edition!
(http://cgi.ebay.com/aw-cgi/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&item=360389496)
1. The only laptop that carries _you_.
1. DHSOTM Round-up.
After all that, I hope you're still up for a little DreamHost Site of the
Month action! If not, please skip to the next section, conveniently
located immediately following this one. If so, be prepared for another
winner from the lovely-artistic-design-school genre of web site creation!
That's right, this month's winner is The Jay David Web Page Explosion,
handily URLed at http://www.explosion.nu/ a site that is basically "My
design portfolio, typefaces, and other things. XPL means bizness! Step
inside my Hyundai," as Jay would say. Say Jay, Say!
Congratulations Jay, and I hope you find a place on that site to squeeze
in our little logo so it doesn't look too gooey!
2. Suggestion Round-up.
Suggestions! Well besides the ones that are always up there (which we
are addressing very very soon, for real!) the one that looked like the
best one to implement was submitted by user pca (so they'll be getting
the $50 account credit for this month!).
"I have over 40 web sites hosted with Dreamhost and it would be a great
time savior if I could go into the stats management page and enter new
passwords for different URLs and then click one update button instead of
having to click update for each individual URL. "
What really drew us to this suggestion was the chance for us to be
someone's time savior! But really, it did seem like a better way to do
that and so the change has been made! Thanks, pca!
3. Third Visor Contest Winner!
Don't forget our current giveaway running from now until the end of the
year! We're giving away one Handspring Visor a month (they're palm-pilot
compatible organizers that come in DreamHost blue!) to some lucky guy or
gal, as per the official rules at http://www.dreamhost.com/contest/
We haven't announced to the winner yet who they are, and we do know it is
somebody who is receiving this newsletter. So therefore, keep reading to
see if it is YOU who won this month's Visor (a $269 value)!
And the winner is... Paul Miller! Way to go, Paul! We'll be emailing you
soon to verify your shipping info and make sure everything is nice and
kosher!
Keep on referring people and keep on adding services and keep on sending
index cards to up your chances in our great Visor giveaway!
I just realized that this is going to be a regular section of the
newsletter for the next 6 months, so I've rewritten it in a way to make
it easy to cut and paste for next time without much modification! Heck,
maybe instead of spending all this time writing the newsletter each
month I should spend it writing a script that generates newsletters...
4. DreamHost Contracting!
A big thank you to everyone who submitted their opinions on our new
DreamHost Contracting plan we brought up last time, the comments we got
really helped us shape this new endeavor! The main thing we realized was
how many of our own customers were interested in being a Contractor
themselves, and helping with work brought to DreamHost. It was also
deemed very important that we not put ourselves in direct competition
with many of you guys, our happy and valued clients, who in many cases
do the sort of work we were envisioning for this service. And so was born
our new DreamHost Contracting program!
What we decided is rather than just allowing our own internal people work
on projects, we would also start a Certified DreamHost Contractor system,
allowing any free-lancer a chance to do work for us and our clients. We
will act as a sort of middle man, connecting those wishing to do work with
those needing work done. What do we add to the transaction though?
For Clients:
-We guarantee the quality of our contractors work. If a contractor is not
perfoming up to par we are willing to use some of our own people or find
a new contractor to take over the job, and will just swallow the loss.
-You are dealing with a professional organization with over 3 years
experience with web hosting and design, rather than directly with an
unknown individual or small group of individuals.
-We will provide management throughout the project, to ensure things stick
to the timeline set as well as to keep the client abreast of the current
status of their project.. without them having to ask.
-We allow for easy payment methods via credit card or check, and the client
will not have to pay until satisfactory work has been provided.
-We will provide a personal contact whois is dedicated solely to the project
for its duration.
-Hopefully our prices will be very competitive because of the low overhead
enjoyed by free-lancers.
For Contractors:
-We guarantee payment for satisfactory work they complete.. if a client
flakes out on a project we will again take the loss.
-We will bring work to you, generally the hardest thing about being a
free-lancer is just finding projects!
-You will also have a chance to work on bigger and better projects than
you could have snared yourself, thanks to the reputation and connections
of DreamHost.
-On all projects you are given a DreamHost contact to stay abreast of what
your client's needs are as well as their opinions on the work you've
completed so far.
-We handle all the payment details and project management side of things,
working out clearly defined milestones with the Client.
-After three successful projects completed you become a Certified DreamHost
Contractor, and are then authorized to use our CDC logo on your site and
other documents. On your site, people can click your logo to bring up your
track record and rating on projects with us!
What's in it for us:
-We take a flat 20% off the negotiated price per project. Once a Contractor
becomes DreamHost Certified that rate drops to only 10%.
-It allows us to offer more customized services to our clients, but in a way
that does not alienate our current resellers and free-lancers.
-Most sites will end up hosting with DreamHost after the project is complete.
-This is a way to add value and cement our relationship between us and our
current clients by helping them get more work and establish themselves!
That's basically the gist of it. The full scoop is available at our website at
http://www.dreamhost.com/contracting.html and from there are links to sign up
to be a Contractor yourself as well as to submit a project. Please don't
hesitate to give it a shot, this is a brand new thing and obviously we need
participation from both sides to get it off the ground and provide a valuable
service to all!
5. Random Quotes(s) From newdream.net
"You can only live once, but if you do it right, once is enough."
"When a cow laughs, does milk come out of its nose?"
"Science is to computer science as hydrodynamics is to plumbing."
