Explosion at The Planet’s H1 Data Center

Posted by Markus Langenfeld - 05/31/08 at 08:05:24 pm

I got an interesting email tonight, apparently there was an electrical fire at The Planet’s H1 data center in Houston Texas. According to some sources there was an actual explosion powerful enough that it knocked down walls in an equipment room. So far there are no reports of damage to servers or networking equipment but power is offline at the facility and approximately 9000 websites are affected. This will surely be all over the tech news websites by morning.

Here is the official release that was sent to The Planet clients -

Dear Valued Customers,

In the interest of keeping you updated, tonight at 5:45 p.m. here in Houston, a transformer in our H1 data in Houston caught fire, which required us to take down all generators as instructed by the fire department. All servers in the H1 data center are down, as is our ServerCommand customer portal, which are working to move to another data center.

None of our other data centers are affected.

Our management team and facilities staff are on site evaluating the situation. In our latest assessment, we have determined that networking gear has not been damaged, but we are without power so assessments continue. All disaster recovery systems are in motion, and we have teams already working in the data center.

We are posting messages in our forum, in Orbit and on our customer support phone system.

We appreciate your patience. We are working around the clock to resolve these critical issues.

From Silicon Valley to The ATL, we’re moving.

Posted by Markus Langenfeld - 05/30/08 at 10:05:59 am

In between my ever expanding daily routine at work and trying to keep up with everything going on in life - I’ve been moving websites all week to a brand new web host. I recently expressed my dissatisfaction for Media Temple (MT), and although I’ve been in contact with MT management since then, and they did their best to make up for the many problems I’ve had with their services, I just don’t feel that they are living up to my expectations in terms of reliability and value. However, this might not be good bye forever. The upcoming developments at MT sound very exciting and I really hope that they iron all of the little issues before it’s released. If they do it right the next time around there’s a good chance I could come back, but for now I’m able to get a competitive plan with solid customer support for half the price and I’m not about to pass it up.

After shopping around and actually signing up with and trying a couple different hosts I’ve decided to choose A Small Orange as the new home for my little internet empire. So far A Small Orange (ASO) has offered very quick support and a few nice features I was missing with MT. The pricing is very competitive but most importantly they are already offering very reliable service. ASO’s data center is located in the state-of-the-art AtlantaNAP Colocation Facility in Atlanta, Georgia. Just for the record, Media Temple’s data center is in 365 Main’s new El Segundo, California facility.

Anyways, this entry will be my last with Media Temple. When I return (hopefully everything will return) later this weekend I will be bringing you my captivating ramblings from my new home.

Windows 7 & Broken Space Toilets on WebbAlert

Posted by Markus Langenfeld - 05/29/08 at 12:05:47 pm

Making Money Online: Niche Blogging FTW

Posted by Markus Langenfeld - 05/28/08 at 10:05:12 pm

I’m starting to notice the growing number of blogs that are focused around making money online. I’m not just talking about A list bloggers like ShoeMoney and John Chow, it’s like every other blog I visit is trying to give me tips on how to make money, off blogging. Since I joined Entrecard I’ve started exploring other blogs outside of my little ring of interest and I come across countless websites that have just a redunkulous amount of subscribers and most of them barely offer any real content, they just refer people to advertising networks and claim they make X amount of money off of the networks they are referring their readers to.

Every time I read the title on John Chow’s website, which says “I Make Money Online by Telling People How Much Money I Make Online” I get a good laugh, it gets me thinking about the whole ‘Make Money Online’ niche and all of these blogs people are turning into cash cows simply by talking about how to theoretically make money on the internet. Maybe I should start talking about how to make money on the internet…

Absolutely Stunning.

Posted by Markus Langenfeld - 05/27/08 at 09:05:54 pm

ISO50 Obama Print

One of my favorite artists, Scott Hansen AKA ISO50 released a beautiful print this morning. The artwork is for Barack Obama’s campaign in a new project called “Artists for Obama”. The print entitled “Progress” is limited to 5000 and can be purchased for $70 from the Obama campaign store. 70 bucks is a little steep for an ISO50 print (I own a couple of his other works) but all of the proceeds go to the Barack Obama for President Campaign.

You can check out some of the other truly amazing works of art ISO50 has created here.

2008 Hooters Swimsuit Contest

Posted by Markus Langenfeld - 05/25/08 at 02:05:27 pm

It’s been a very busy holiday weekend for me but I wanted to mention one of the many highlights and share some of the many photos I had taken. My birthday was on Thursday and part of my celebration was spent with some friends at Treasure Island Resort & Casino near Red Wing, Minnesota. They were hosting the 2008 Mall of America Hooters Swimsuit Competition and my friends made arrangements to get us VIP passes and a hotel room for the night. In addition to the hotel room, the VIP package scored us free drink coupons for the bar, dinner at the buffet, and some blackjack money.

2008 Hooters Swimsuit Contest

I can only barely express how much of a blast I had but the photos from the swimsuit contest should give you an idea. You can see all of the pictures I took of the beautiful Hooters girls on Flickr (probably NSFW).

Time to say my goodbyes to (mt)

Posted by Markus Langenfeld - 05/21/08 at 08:05:17 am

It’s been a rough ride Media Temple. I’ve put up with you guys for almost 2 years now and since I’ve signed up I waited patently through one false promise after another in hopes that you would finally work out all of the bugs and glitches that come with your Grid Service, once and for all.

I’ve paid a lot of money for your services, a lot of hard earned money, and I did nothing but promote and praise your company. It almost brings a tear to my eye as I sip my morning brew out of my Media Temple coffee mug to think about actually moving everything to a new host. But that will be my big project this holiday weekend.

You guys are supposed to be the best, you host countless top notch designers and big name bloggers and granted many of them are not on the Grid, I almost wish they were so they could see what’s going on. Daily downtime. DAILY, even if it’s just for a minute or two we pay a premium price for premium hosting that should never go down. Why are there so many problems? I know you know how bad it is, look at your status blog once, you guys don’t even bother apologizing for the intermittent problems anymore – “DOWN: 10:15AM Pacific Time, UP: 10:25AM Pacific Time” That’s it, what is that?!

When is it going to get better? When will my website be online for a month or even a week straight without a hiccup? And why is everything so freakin’ slow?

Your support is amazing, the various features and flexibility of the system is unmatched. But none of that matters if you can’t provide what matters most, Uptime.

Difficult is Worth Doing: Behind the Scenes

Posted by Markus Langenfeld - 05/19/08 at 12:05:31 pm

Difficult is worth doing is the theme behind the new Honda ad campaign that features an unbranded focus on advanced skydiving maneuvers. The project is designed to build interest for a future launch of a new vehicle which will accompany a more detailed version of the advertisements. Right now the television spots last 10 to 20 seconds in length like the one shown above and as you can see the only branding is the web address at the end – Difficultisworthdoing.com.

Movies_wind_tunnel_300x206b

The website is actually a behind the scenes blog about the production of the advertisement, it’s an inside look into everything that is put into an ad campaign which in this case includes a lot of training and wicked camera work. Unfortunately the advertisements will only be shown in the UK but the filming is being done here in the United States at the Perris Valley Skydiving Center in California.

I’m not an advertising expert but I do find these “outside of the box” methods of gathering people’s curiosity for new products to be pretty interesting.

Sponsored by Honda

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