Hello. This is the DreamHost 2004 February newsletter, a mere two days
after the end of February! Or, if you prefer more accuracy, a mere ONE
day after the end of February! Leap years and I have something of a
love/hate relationship. Every four years I love having one extra day to
put off the February newsletter. Tragically, I hate having to wait one
extra day for March!
Speaking of leap days, I guess since it was a "free day" anyway the
Academy Awards figured nobody would care if they just used the whole
thing! I know for a fact Keisha Castle-Hughes would have won Best
Actress if it hadn't been past her bedtime when the award was presented.
But I had to watch the whole thing, since I was scoring my girlfriend's
office pool. Suspiciously, I won.. so it was totally worth the four
hours of my time! Grand prize: $12.75!
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1. Search Those Archives!
Sometimes you may hypothetically wonder to yourself "Josh, was there
ever a movie more undeserving of 11 Oscars than LOTR: The Return of the
King?" At times like that, you may wish that you could search some sort
of huge archive of old data via a simple search box. So you could then
answer to yourself, "Titanic."
Well, this scenario need not be hypothetical at all... if you happen to
have a DreamHost discussion list where you discuss the Academy Awards!
Because now, new this month, DreamHost discussion list archives are
searchable! Via a little search box at the top! That's all there really
is to it! And I should probably say, not ALL discussion list archives
with us actually currently have this feature. Because it requires a new
version of mailman, and only about half our discussion lists are
currently on a server with the new version. But I thought I'd mention it
anyway. Because hey, February's a short month.
Now that we (you and I) are all flush with cash from our local Oscar
pool, it's probably as good a time as any to start thinking about what
to do with all our millions. Well, if you're like me then you've decided
to donate all your hard-won earnings to charity. I figure, there's a
first time for everything.
But, giving to charity is always such a pain in the butt. And the worst
thing is, I hear once you've donated once, you're hounded the rest of
your life! Personally, I bought a box of girl scout cookies from my
sister in '87 and now a year doesn't go by the little buggers don't bang
on my front door trying to sell me more! ATTENTION GIRL SCOUTS OF
AMERICA: I AM NOT MADE OF MONEY.
To deal with this problem, we Happy DreamHost Employees have come up
with a new PARADIGM for charitable donation! At all times, we'll have a
"DreamHost Charity" up on our web panel at:
https://panel.dreamhost.com/?tree=home.charity
All you have to do, as a Happy DreamHost Customer, is visit that panel
and choose how much you'd like to give to the noble cause du jour. Your
donation then shows up on your next hosting bill, and we handle the
rest! PLUS, we MATCH your donation! Why give on your own when you can
give TWICE as much through us, for HALF the effort? Well, I guess
because when you give on your own, you get to pick the charity. But,
assuming you don't love AIDS, you'll probably be pretty okay with our
choices. AND, you can donate as little or as much as you'd like.. we
clump all the donations together into one big payment periodically so
nobody at the charity will ever know you only gave fourteen cents.
Pretty cool.. although we don't know if you can claim this on your
taxes! But check it out anyway.. and especially donate to this first
charity, since it helps out Happy DreamHost Employee Jason and Happy
DreamHost Ex-Employee Stephani meet their requirement to run in a
charity marathon in Alaska in June!
However, we still REALLY don't recommend you do it, since:
* Frontpage works fine without the extensions.
* Every "extension" can already be handled via our included features.
* If you enable them, PHP and CGI won't work on your domain.
* If you enable them, the .snapshot backups won't work for your domain.
* If you enable them, you can't access your site via FTP.
* Enabling them will take several days to happen because DNS changes.
BUT, if you _really really really_ want the extensions turned on, now
you can do it yourself. Just don't come crying to us to turn them back
off later! (Well actually, that'll be your only option, so I guess it's
okay.)
And this month's winner of the coveted DreamHost Site of the Month award
is:
THE LORD OF THE RINGS: THE RETURN OF THE KING
I can't believe it! A clean sweep! This puts them ahead of Ben Hur and..
oh wait sorry, the winner is actually:
http://www.era404.com/
Sorry again about that, PriceWaterhouseCoopers is so fired.
Anyway, check out era//404, which is apparently a web/print design place
that's done a nice website with a lot of flash and pizzzzzzzzzazzzz.
Everybody go visit them, but only AFTER you donate some of your Oscar
winnings to charity. And only AFTER you don't enable Frontpage
extensions on all your domains. And only AFTER your submit YOUR site for
next month's DHSOTM award:
