deinonych's lair

I made the decision to change web hosts this week. A friend of mine, who also hosted at Bravidio Networks, lost access to his mail server last weekend (starting on 5/13 — go figure). He submitted several trouble tickets to Bravidio's helpdesk, but received no response whatsoever. I attempted to contact the powers-that-be at the company to no avail. In fact, I have a few open trouble tickets with them as well (including my cancellation/refund request)!

I had been quite satisfied with Bravidio's uptime and performance since moving my site to their servers back in April. However, I was concerned about getting a problem resolved if something went wrong with my site. Having moved from FeaturePrice hosting prior to Bravidio, I didn't want to go through the trauma of having my site down for weeks on end. I'm simply not going to put up with subpar support from a hosting company again. I suspect Bravidio's issues are related to growing pains. Outgrowing the ability to support one's customer base seems to be a common trend among web hosting companies. I hope for their sake that Bravidio can get their problems sorted out. However, I'm not going to wait around for them to get their act together.

I am now hosted at UnitedHosting. This host is highly regarded at the WebHostingTalk forums. Although the company itself is located across the pond in the UK, their datacenter is located right here in Texas (I'm on the Spirit server). The transition was seamless. After signing up with them yesterday, I already have my site up and running and am in the process of uploading some new projects. I've even had the opportunity to test their highly-touted support team. This evening, I submitted a trouble ticket to get my email to stop bouncing mail (apparently new accounts take a few days to authorize with UH's mail scanner). Within 10 minutes, I received a response to my ticket stating that the problem had been fixed. Needless to say, I was impressed.

Hopefully, their support will remain consistently good, and my domain can stay put for a while.

Posted by Deinonych at 11:45 PM | Permalink | Comments (1)

I picked up a voice mail at work today from Precision Camera stating that my EOS-10D had arrived (see this entry). Although I was pressed for time, I was able to swing by the shop to pick it up over lunch. I also picked up a Canon EF 28-90mm f/4-5.6 II USM zoom lens, as I didn't want to cannibalize the wife's camera for her 35-80mm lens.

The camera is slightly larger than a standard EOS body. The controls are very similar to that of an EOS, so if you've used one before (as I have), you can pick up the camera and start shooting right away. One thing I noticed right off the bat was the fast response. Most digital cameras have a fairly slow response when taking a shot. The 10D is very quick; I'm not sure how quickly it takes a shot, but it's certainly faster than my G1 and seems to be faster than our Rebel G.

Since it is an SLR, you don't use the LCD to frame your shots. Instead, you use the viewfinder since it allows you to view your subject directly through the lens. I prefer an SLR specifically for this reason. It gives you better control over the shot.

I still have to read up on all of the features (yes, I actually RTFM believe it or not) so I can pretend that I know what I'm doing. But, so far I am very impressed with the out-of-the-box experience and look forward to using the camera more.

Posted by Deinonych at 09:16 PM | Permalink | Comments (1)