Marketing and Reality – the worst hosting provider… ever

This is copied straight from an online support conversation with “professional” web hosting company. I just swapped out some names and corrected some typos…

You are now chatting with SupportGuy (Support)
SupportGuy: hello Elmar, how may I help you?
Elmar: Hallo SupportGuy. I recently purchased a subscription account at IncompetentProvider.
Elmar: I would like to use it to run it with ASP.NET on Mono. I have some questions regarding this and none of my support emails got answered
Elmar: So I am beginning to think, that I am doing something wrong here
Elmar: My emails went to ’support@incompetentProvider.com’
SupportGuy: I do not see any ticket submissions from this email address in our support system. To ensure that we receive your requests, we recommend that you log into the support center at support.incompetentProvider.com to submit your ticket requests.
SupportGuy: We do not offer support for Mono at this time, but I will do my best to answer your questions
Elmar: Oh ok. The thing is that your are running on an old version of Mono and I would simply need a more recent version
Elmar: Your Mono is basically ASP.NET 1.1 and the more recent version supports ASP.NET 2.0
Elmar: so in order to use your service I would need the current mono release installed on the server that we are running on. Is that possible on your side?
SupportGuy: I am afraid that in a shared environment, we are not able to update the current versions
SupportGuy: this is due to the fact that it would affect all users on the machine as well
Elmar: Ok. Then, please make sure to update your marketing material because you are basically offering a very dated und literally unuseable version of Mono.
Elmar: Do you have plans to update your Mono support anytime soon?
Elmar: Hello?

…

So to sum it up: They don´t offer any support for Mono, have a dated version running and are not able to offer an upgrade. I think, I can consider myself a lucky man to be even allowed to put an html file on their servers.

Error Message of the month

This is a fabulous error message, don´t you think?

It´s Microsoft´s Enterprise Library installed into the default directory and with the default Namespace. Sure, the project that is using it is also nested into some subfolders but if you look at the insanely long folder and namespace-naming it should be obvious who is guilty in this case.

I hope they´ve changed it in the more recent releases (the one I have to use here is from 2006).

Wanna be cool like a Mac? Get the “what I am currently listening to” feature for your PC

Well, I am afraid this tip might not really get you on par in terms of “coolness” but it´s nice addition to every Windows desktop.

Mac Users get this nice little “What I am currently listening to in iTunes”-Status baked right in on their Mac. Now, you as a windows user, you don´t have to stand behind anymore…

Mac users pay for minor version number Update - take that )

Check out AMIP. It´s a great tool and let´s you connect to virtually any Media Player as well as every major IM-Client. So if you are up for WinAmp and use MSN or you like iTunes to show your music on your Skype status message – no probs!

Auto-update Skype status from iTunes

You will want to download the base software as well as the configurator that offers a basic GUI for configuring AMIP for your specific needs.

Limited Insanity

If you own or owned a business, it is likely that you needed to create some kind of legal entity for it at some point. In Germany we not only have lots of different legal statuses that you can choose of – they also have one thing in common – they are totally overregulated for the needs of small Businesses.

I chose a Ltd. not only because it very easy to set up but also because it gets you going in no time when compared to founding a GmbH (more or less a German equivalent of a Limited Company).

Unfortunately, tax-wise you have the same amount of paperwork you would get from running a multi-million-Euro corporation – at least if you have that company registered in Germany – which I have.

The German tax law is by far the most complicated in the world. In fact it is so complicated that most tax consultants cannot follow up with the pace that new laws and regulations are set up. Instead they higher up their insurance limits for false consultancy to protect themselves and their customers.

Even the local tax office often cannot give you definitive answer on specific tax issues because they simply don´t know either. There goes the word that 70% of the world´s tax literature is about German tax law!

Even if you are running a Business solely on your own, you need to sign a whole lot of Paperwork in which you officially declare decisions that you made with yourself. Two copies of course – one for you and one for the other you !

How mad is this?

Amazing Holidays

Ahhh, just came back from a relaxing 2 weeks holiday spent in Greece. It has been great! I realized once again that it so important to step out of your day-to-day routine and to something entirely different. It doesn´t need to be productive or focused on anything special – the only thing that is important is to be aware of and available to my kids and family. Because of that (and the fact that I had no Internet connection right at the place we stayed) I only checked E-Mails every other day.

It does not sound like a big thing – but for me it actually is. As a web-business owner and consultant I am connected to the web for probably 15h per day on average. It feels strange to cut the line and to constantly “offline” for the first days. But I think it is the best way to be open for new impressions especially if on holiday.

Even switched of the mobile. Wow.

So we all enjoyed our time together a lot. Having kids makes it´s so much easier to switch off working mode and go into play mode. They are literally programmed to being aware and available to the current moment in order to play and learn, that one just can´t resist and does the same.

I actually love being a kid myself and for some great reason it is not even a contradiction between being the one who sets up all those rules and being a close and cheeky friend to my kids.

My all-time favorite error message

I am terribly sorry to be the bearer of bad news for all you Yoga-Fans but Skype (VOIP-Software) has real bad news for you:

There you have it. Skype officially announced (via my Laptop) that taking a deep breath no longer works as advertised by millions Yoga-practicers.

It´s alive Jim – but not as we know it…

My local IIS got busted due to my ingenious programming in which I produced a respectable denail-of-service attac on my own machine.

Anyhow, when I opened the task manager, I was a supprised to see that my computer in fact had a heart attack and was just recovering from it. What? Yes, sir! Please have a look at the Physical Memory Usage History and tell what else this could be rather than a perfect heart pulse?!?!

Update on Vista

Needless to say that I got my first blue screen THE DAY AFTER i posted the probation post…

Still, after 3 months of working with the new Vista x64 machine I couldn´t be (much) happier. Just make sure that you have appropriate drivers for your hardware *before* installing Vista x64.

Have fun!

VISTA – let off on probation

In the past I had quite some issues with VISTA. It came preeinstaled with my Sony VAIO but never really worked well. Lot´s of driver and stability issues that I already ranted about in great detail here and here.

Anyhow, I´m kind of a Microsoftie and don´t think that Linux is the greatest thing since sliced bread. I also like challenges so I did not give up and got myself a new Dell. Ok, not really because of the challenge but because I really needed to replace the Sony for performance and warranty reasons.

All warning lights were on and blinkling brightly because I intended to wipe the preinstalled config and install VISTA x64 because I want to use all the 4 Gigs of RAM (VISTA x32 only supports up to 3 Gig of RAM) – and so I did – and it worked pretty well! Sure, it´s a bit tricky to get hold of all the x64 drivers for my XPS M1530 because VISTA x64 is not officialy supported for that model. There is a big community especially around the XPS product line and after reading through some helpful posts, I had it all up and running.

What a difference. Granted, there are still some minor quirks getting my phone to talk to my computer but it was basically just connecting it to the PC, doing some Windows Update, waiting for the driver install to fail, Restart and -tadaaa- have both Bluetooth AND USB connections actually work.

Same goes for VISTA in general. I haven´t had a single issue with x32 software not running on my x64 machine. It´s very stable, no Bluescreens or other defects so far. UAC is still not working well but luckily there are ways to turn it off. I actually wanted to use it but it doesn´t work well with my Post-Build-Events where I need to call some .EXE´s and .DLL´s and get´s rather having to confirm a pop up every time I compile a project.

Finally, my OS is not longer blocking my productivity and the 2,5 Gig Centrino-Chip doesn´t hurt either ).