The End To My Hosting Provider Search

Last week I posted a complaint and vented my frustration with my hosting provider. My freelance site was up the next day, after a series of sporadic outages. However the instability had me ready to seek new providers. I looked at a few sites and checked out rates. Today I logged in to my service provider to check when my next billing cycle would come. Lo and behold, a new company has taken over my hosting provider.

I drilled in through the new interface, checked on some of my services and like the improvements! For an additional buck and a half the new company will guaranty 99.9% up-time. I'm not going to upgrade just yet. My site has not come down since last week and I have been using it frequently via FTP. I have noticed major improvements with speed and accessibility. The response times in navigating through the mail and blog manager have also improved. So much so that - yes you guessed it, I have created yet another blog.

The focus of that blog will be for my personal business and tech interests. With the exception to seosource, a search engine blog that is not linked in the navigation above but part of my profile, the blogs I have here are dedicated for my hobbies. Most of my readings deal within the technology/internet sector (the industry I work in), whether it's through trade magazine, newsletters and other tech blogs. I'm going to take a dabble and share my experiences to an area I am very familiar and have a strong interest in.

To sum up this post... I am a happy camper once again with my hosting company and appreciate those e-mails and posts I received from a few of you with your recommendations. I am not sorry for deleting the comments from all you other spammers! :)

Music Industry Investigated Over Pricing

The music industry has made no secret of its desire to raise prices of legal music downloads, but the record labels have instead raised the ire of New York Attorney General Eliot Spitzer. Spitzer has subpoenaed the four major music companies as part of an investigation into collusion on the pricing of digital music. | source: Nate Mook, BetaNews

Thank goodness! As an avid music addict I hope prices don't go any higher. I think we've been swindled far too long, with those $16.99-$17.99 CDs for only 11 songs. This was the price of regular sale price CDs about a year ago. I have noticed that those prices are not as common, now regular prices in the ballpark of $13.99-$14.99. Now with services such as Napster, iTunes and rhapsody song downloads is more common. The average going rate per download is 0.99 cents per song. I am a user that must love the song extremely for me to download it. I still pay Napster for their music listening service. I enjoy listening to a full CD and determine if it's worth purchasing. I rather buy CDs at sale prices and have the artwork that comes with. I've also been yahoo LaunchCast member for years and the news that yahoo has entered the music download industry is of no surprise. I've used Napster, music match, AOL music, rhapsody paid services and prefer Napster. I don't think I'll subscribe to yahoo full version, even though the song rate is 0.79 cents per song. I do enjoy rating the different songs and customizing my own radio station on the yahoo free version. Napster has a function to build your own radio station based on the playlist you create. I will continue to pay my eight bucks to them for a while.

Merry Christmas!!!

It seems my gifts to the family were well received. That makes me very glad, as you may have read it was a struggle to get all of them. I enjoy putting some thought into each gift and they all truly come from the heart. I spent Christmas eve with my family at my uncle's house. Our tradition is to wait until midnight to open all the gifts. It was a long night, I think I went to bed until 5:30am. Today is time to recuperate :)

Santa's Crib

Inspired by MTV's popular show CRIBS check out the most recent addition to the tours. It's Santa's Crib - powered by IFILM

The "Incident" Before Christmas Game

Tis the season to be merry...
but Santa's helped himself to an eggnog too many. This fun little flash game allows you pick up the presents Santa has droped along the way. See how many presents you can recover at www.the-incident.com/flash.php

My Neighborhood Video

Do you want to feel dizzy? Follow the link below and take a drive along with me as I go towards my house. This short silent video clip was recently added to Google video - another experiment of mine. In this clip you will see the view from my car as we travel along the Chicago side streets and feel slightly nauseated along the way. View Celi's Chicago Side Street Video now.

ascii-Matrix movie

This may be old, but it's the first time I've seen animated ASCII text. Nice matrix clip at - www.justbewise.net/matrix.html

Hosting Providers

This is so frustrating - I need a new hosting provider! The service I use to host my freelance site and inclusively some of the style sheets I use in my other blogs has been completely down for a few days now. My Chicago photoblog, the most popular section of this blog site, is completely dependent on the style sheets housed in these non responsive servers and it looks horrible. What I hate now is having to do the research and trying to find a better, reliable service and a reasonable price. Any suggestions? Unfortunately this isn't a fluke, it's time to take my business elsewhere.

My Christmas List 2005

What is in your Christmas list? I've noticed that my list is pretty much the same year after year. CDs & DVDs always make the list along with other items. Which CDs and movies are on that list this year? This will give you an idea of what I listen to and watch. My tastes are usually very broad, but these are the items I do not have in my collection yet :)

CDs...
The Killers - Hott Fuss
Shakira - Oral Fixation vol II
Toni Braxton - Libra
Green Day - American Idiot
Cypress Hill - Greates Hits From The Bong
Interpol - Antics
Michael Bubble - Caught In The Act
Maroon 5 - Live Friday The 13th
Joss Stone - Mind Body & Soul, Special Edition
Madonna Tribute Band - Smooth Sax Tribute to Madonna's Greatest Hits

DVDs...
Mr & Mrs Smith
The Island
Sin City
The Polar Express
Sex & The City - Vol 6 part II
Spiderman II
Hotel Rwanda
Diary of a Mad Black Woman
Collateral
Bourne Supremacy

Shopping vs. Geeking

In less than two weeks Christmas will be here and I am in trouble! I am no where near complete getting all my gifts. I'm not in the mood for shopping these days, this weekend was horrible. I went out shopping with my sister and was frustrated with the traffic to and from various stores. That's what I get for not doing my online shopping early.

I've actually come home and have been expirementing with google and yahoo maps. I haven't decided yet which I prefer. I've implemented a version of each on my freelance site and pinpointed the coordinates to the loop area. I know it's hard to believe I prefer geeking out over shopping? (Well maybe not that hard to believe?) I'll keep playing with them, I like certain things from both of them. It seems the google map loads faster, but I like the zoom control on yahoo. See the work in progress here:
http://www.exceliweb.com/googlemap.htm
http://www.exceliweb.com/yahoomap.htm

Which do you prefer?

I'm Not A Fan Of Winter

I am dreading tomorrow, I survived the snow storm today. However, tomorrow I have to wake up extra early to clean the car from what I expect will be around nine inches of snow. It's still snowing where I live and although it looks nice, I would rather not have any part of it.

There were so many accidents today. I took a picture of one on my commute into the loop. Notice to the far left there lies a turned over vehicle, and to the far right is what I assume is the other car involved in the accident.

The big news for today is the fact that a Southwest airline plane, trying to land at midway airport aafter this snow storm, slid off the runway and crashed through a barrier wall into an unsuspecting car. I consider walking a few blocks to take some pictures, but I knew the streets would be blocks and frankly I did not want to walk in this snow.

The snow began falling shortly after I began my commute back. This week I was at a search engine conference. Dreading the cold I drove in today and after today's final session I opted to avoid the rush hour and head home early. I tried to avoid the madness that I knew would come from the expected snow storm. Unfortunately a few minutes into my drive the snow began to fall, and fall and fall.

Making The Band - The Final Cut

I have been following this little show on MTV called making the band3. Yes it's true it's my guilty pleasure. I have been a viewer since the first season, and have followed the cuts and rooted for my favorites. For the most part I agreed with the cuts. I hope I will agree with the final cut. My absolute favorite is Aubrey. It's amazingly true that people have a presence that can project at first glance. Aubrey had me at hello. This is a Mega-star to the likes of Beyonce. I've also been loyal to Aundrea. She and Aubrey clicked in the show and became close friends. These two have warmed my heart and I would like to keep them together.

Today P. Diddy is selecting his final five. Before they are selected these are my top 5 in order of preference.
Aubrey, Aundrea, Taquita, Jasmine, Shannon

The selected are....
Aubrey, Juanita, Shannon, Dawn, Aundrea!!!!!

Hey I picked three out of five. I can live with that. I look forward to see what these girls produce. I will have fun continuing being a fan of these ladies.