Might as well call it ‘WhiteAngloSaxonProtestantAmericaBlog’

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Please. Please stop. Stop, stop, stop, stop hurting America. You are partisan… what do you call it…hacks.

The link is to the Washington Post’s new blog – ment to speak to just one segment of America’s population – its largest – in the WaPo’s quest to connect with the part of the nation it seeks the most sales, subscriptions, and click thrus from.

If the Washington Post ment to reach out to an underserved audience maybe it should have launched a blog with a focus on ‘BlackAmerica’ or ‘HispanicAmerica’, ‘JewishAmerica’, ‘MuslimAmerica’, ‘WomenAmerica’, ‘GayAmerica’ or ‘CatholicAmerica’?

‘CatholicAmerica’? Underserved? Gettoutta here you sneer. Hey – I’m Catholic. I feel underserved. I’m sure Steven Colbert would agree with me. It’s all about how I feel dammit.

Really though…. why not go for broke and focus on ‘WorkingClassAmerica’ or ‘WorkingRealJobsSoYouDontHaveToAmerica’? No one seems to give a shit about that demographic, Heaven’s sake.

What? Not enough hits you say? They’re too busy working to click and comment? Yeah. Fuck that. Better to serve up division – far better “heat” that way ya know – and will keep folks from thinking too deeply.

So we get something that might as well be named the ‘WhiteAngloSaxonProtestantAmericaBlog’. I don’t know. Maybe ‘OurAmericaRocksYoursDontBlog’, ‘WereTheMajorityGetUsedToItBlog’ or ‘WeRunTheCountrySoShutTheFuckUpYouTraitorsBlog’ fits better don’tchya think?

Good job on broadening the discourse WaPo. Good job.

See Jon Stewart let them have it on Crossfire for the reference.

Note: this post is obviously satirical in nature. But my disappointment is real.

Update: David Brock writes a letter to the Washington Post asking if there are plans to give a liberal blogger equal exposure. It’s a good letter that I agree with. Domenech isn’t simply a journalist ya know. But let’s not stop there. I want Libertarians, Independents, and the Green Party to have *their* operatives at WaPo.com too. Hey – on the web – there is no such thing as space. So much division to exploit – so little time.

Going to be a busy and important week

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These past few weeks have been some of the most intense I can recall. This week will be especially huge.

1. I’ve been helping migrate two web sites of a local non-profit’s to a new host. Down the road I will be assisting them to learn how to use the web effectively and building an online community around the good work they do.

2. I was backed into a wall with Dreamhost and had to migrate four personal sites and Philly Future to a new host.

3. This week will culminate in two huge events: the first an unconference this Saturday to bring together a group of thinkers, movers and shakers in online publishing and in local newspapers, to discuss the future of local journalism, in the wake of what’s happening to the newspaper industry. It’s been months in the making. Will Bunch, of the Philadelphia Daily News, has got the goods. I’ll have more to add later. The second, this Sunday, family will be coming to our place for Emma’s Baptism.

4. Speaking of Emma, I’ve gone back to work, and handling the division of responsibility between Richelle and me has left me feeling spent and guilty. It sucks leaving Emma everyday, and it bothers me the huge load Richelle has taken on. We went from a 50/50 split to something more like 85/15. I have no idea how single parents do it. No idea at all.

Emma has not only effected how and what I prioritize in my life, but has helped me to see what’s really important. She’s helped me find my Zen.

An email I was happy to send….

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Hello,
Due to down time that my users were subjected to – by a decision one of your staffers made in shutting down access to our database – I have migrated the sites and domains I maintain that were hosted and managed at New Dream Network and Dreamhost to a more robust and secure solution.

Previously, when your staffers worked with me to diagnose and solve a high CPU situation, they showed patience and willingness to find a solution to pass on your other customers. Dreamhost impressed me then. I was very much ready to sing its praises.

That patience and customer care was entirely missing in this episode.

Without warning there was the decision your staffer made to shut us down. He sent an email to me upon doing so. And then for the next 24 hours there was no reply to any emails I sent to you for details.

Adding serious insult to injury was the removal of all access to my database, not permitting me to diagnose the problem, or migrate to a new host with up to-date data. One of your staffers told me it was my responsibility to have a back up. Well duh.

I had come to expect better from Dreamhost.

I hope you can rectify the problems you are experiencing with your customer care. I hear more and more from others similarly dissatisfied.

Please cancel my account immediately.

– Karl

Philly Future Status: In Transition

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DNS is still propagating so there are two status messages to pay attention to on Philly Future. Each alerts you to whether you are using the new Philly Future, and can resume posting and commenting, or the old.

Hopefully by noon we will be in better hosting environment, one that is more reliable, better performing, and can handle the growth in features and in scope I’ve been wanting to tackle.

Philly Future Status: All clear

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Let me put this diplomatically (for now): I am in the process of resolving Philly Future’s hosting issues and expect, by morning, for Philly Future to not only be clear of the downtime that was inflicted on us, but for Philly Future to be blazingly fast as well. I expect there will be few lingering issues to resolve, but over the next few days, we should be able to tackle them and come out of this better than ever.

Philly Future Status: Dreamhost has shut us down

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Yesterday, March 11th, at 6:23 PM, a Dreamhost staffer alerted me that Philly Future was incurring too much database load and that they were disabling it:

Hello,

I am sorry but I had to disable your database (it was single-handedly killing the database server – the load was around 20 and is now down
under 1 (4 is optimal) after disablement.

We can re-enable it if you can assure us you’ll take proper steps to curb the usage (you need to be sure you are indexing things if you weren’t and perhaps re-evaluate the efficiency of your code).

Thanks!
John

Immediately upon getting the notice we emailed Dreamhost our intent to help them resolve any issues they may have.

As of 12:03PM EST I still cannot access our database to attempt to improve performance or do a dump of it to migrate us. I have been emailing them all night.

This situation comes as a surprise since back on February 3rd we received a thank you from Dreamhost stating we had successfully reduced resource utilization:

You have successfully reduced your resource usage on machine limbo-spunky.

Therefore we have moved your account (#109016) back to its original home machine foothill.
Thank you for your efforts and we are glad to have your account in good standing again.

Moving you back to the original server will change any IPs associated with your web services. Please get the new ones if you set up any custom scripts or DNS that relies on the old IP to function.

Happy Dreamhost Support Team!

While we looked for and prepared a new hosting solution, Dreamhost’s staff worked with us to reduce our CPU utilization to an acceptable level over the course of January and as you can see, we had a successful resolution.

That experience strengthened my trust in Dreamhost, I came away impressed by them, and it enabled me to not worry about our hosting situation while my daughter was being born.

I assure you there were *no* warnings and *no* indications of a current problem.

I want to apologize to our community. This is an unacceptable situation that we hope to have resolved sometime today.

Thank you for your patience and understanding.

More updates as they come.

Karl