Pleasanton Web Design

I used Prohosting for about 3 years. They are a bona fide web hosting company, not just an affiliate who resells a large web hosting company’s server space. Prohosting’s tech support is based at their facility in the U.S. (Midway, Utah), which is a definite plus in my book. They have a toll free customer support line that is answered promptly during regular business hours. After hours? Out of luck. But, there isn’t usually the 15 minute wait that you so often experience with other, large web hosting companies. So the availability and quality of technical support is Prohosting’s silver lining.

Wait. Did I imply Prohosting was a dark cloud? Yes I did. They had a lot of problems handling spam. They used a software tool to block suspect I.P. addresses, so every week or so, my Dreamweaver would make too many connections and they’d block me. Usually in the middle of publishing, which meant the Website was sitting there incomplete on the server until I could call them up and have them manually unblock my I.P. address. Not good when it happened on a weekend.

Another problem was they rejected an unusual amount of email due to senders’ “suspected” spamming mail servers. Not good when one of them happened to be my client’s largest customer.

Prohosting always had more downtime than other hosts I’d used, but when the server we were on crashed and it took 3 days to recover from back-up, that was the last straw. Their story explaining why it took so long didn’t make a lot of sense, so we were gone.

Good technical service is important in a web hosting company, but you shouldn’t have to use it too much. I’ll take never having to call a bad tech service department, over having to call a good one all the time.

It was a great day for baseball. I took BART up to the Oakland Coliseum, or should I say, the McAffe Coliseum (when the hell did that happen?)? It was the A’s vs the LA Angels. Now, I thought it was the Anaheim Angels, but ticket says Los Angeles Angels. Oh, but the Website says Los Angeles Angels of Anaheim. Am I getting bogged down in the details already? Ok, lets proceed.

My friend Dennis hosted a luxury suite and invited a lot of us Santa Clara Bronco alumni and families to enjoy the game with him. I felt extra special entering the ballpark at the suite entrance, because a lot of people were trying to get in there, but were being rejected and redirected. Then I got the backpack search and had to throw my full can of Rockstar Energy Drink in the garbage. No cans means no cans, even for us special luxury suite people.

The suite was nice. It was a “suite” on the upper level, where we drank mingled, played with the kids and ignored the game until the good parts. Down a few steps and you could watch the game at a great vantage point from stadium style seating:

The A’s lost, but it was great fun. Like having a party, and, oh by the way, there’s a professional baseball game going on outside, if you care to take a gander out the window.

If you’ve never seen the MTV series “Jackass,” it’s a show made up of various stunts that invariably end up (if they’re successful) with someone getting injured or vomiting. It’s hosted by Johnny Knoxville and has a cast of extreme sports types who regularly fall prey to his evil schemes.

Not having access to nework TV, let alone cable, I’d never seen “Jackass” until a month or so ago. My mom has satellite, and although we normally go to bed early when we visit, last time the kid’s and I stayed up late watching TV. We were all hooked. Why that type of thing is so funny, I have no clue, but you just can’t laugh that hard at things that are witty or clever.
If you have seen the series, Jackass the Movie takes it a bit farther, not that that’s a good thing. I actually would have enjoyed the movie more without the added “things up the butt” dimension. It does have some funny bits though. If I had one recommendation it would be that you skip the special features. They’re not that funny and leave a bad taste in your mouth.

It’s from Holland! Isn’t that veird? Bavaria Holland is beer of the “Skunk” variety. Very similar to Heineken, with the teeniest touch of bitter aftertaste. On sale, of course. It’s been brewed in Lieshout Holland since 1719, so you know that they got their beer-brewing shiznit together . Not like Budwieser Energy Beer (nasty), brewed in Vacaville, CA since 2005. The labeling and beer carton are devoid of any factoids or marketese. Just the warnings, importer, website and “store and serve cold.” It’s a mystery beer then. A stylishly generic import. I’d buy some if I were you.

I first saw the B52′s at the Warfield Theater on their Wild Planet tour in 1980. It was one of the most energetic and fun shows I have ever seen. There were probably a few hundred people there, if that. Having only two albums under their belt, they had no choice but to play every song. They were all great.

The second time I saw them was in 1998 at San Jose State Events center. There were about the same number of people there as when I first saw them. They had some bizarre dating game gimmick going on, and the opening band was a competent, but very cheesy tribute to the 80′s new wave and punk rock music scenes. Each member dressed up in a different outfit; skinny tie guy, sid vicious look-alike, stray cat dude, and so on. The B52s were good, but lacked the energy, fun and enthusiasm of their early years. Singer, Cindy Wilson, had an old-lady haircut and a business suit-looking outfit on.

So going into it, I figured the B52′s would continue their decline and be a bunch of old people forcing out another set to get the green. I was wrong. Their song selection was impeccable IMO. They mixed their strongest songs from the early years throughout the set, with their big hits of later years. They “forgot” to play Rock Lobster, which I got sick of about 20 years ago.

They opened with “Planet Claire” from their self-titled debut The B52′s. We were far away:

From where we were, Fred Schneider looked like a little speck running around with a nice tan and no shirt on. The music drew us in for a closer look. We got reasonably close to the stage with little effort. From our new vantage point we could see the old B52 fun, energy and sense of humor that made them such a great band back in the 80′s. No encore this time though. Maybe that’s what they were saving Rock Lobster for, but the Alice show Nazi told them “no encore.” Didn’t matter. I’d see them again without a doubt. And Fred was wearing a brown shirt.

I tried their sweet and sour chicken take-out a couple of months ago. It was passable, so when the kids decided they wanted Chinese food for dinner, (and were ready to let go of Rose’s A Chinese Cafe in Union City, our old family favorite) we were on our way.

Hunan Chef Wong
4285 Valley Avenue
Pleasanton, CA 94566
925 484 0480

The service was outstanding. There was only one other table occupied at 5pm though . Our ultra-friendly waiter, who called himself Uncle, was prompt and attentive. We had our regular meal of:

• Egg rolls
• Vegetable Chow Mein
• Sweet and Sour Chicken
• Steamed Rice
• Hot Tea

No pork won ton soup this time. Everything was pretty tasty. Styrofoam to-go boxes. Not quite to the level of Rose’s, but a solid Tier 2 chinese restaurant. Uncle even drew a picture on our to-go box (he also painted the flower mural on the wall).

I’ve had my Compaq Presario 2500 notebook 802.11b wireless networked using my DI-614+ Wireless Broadband Router for three or four years now. The only problem I’ve really experienced is with a certain species of streaming video (Yahoo! Music for instance). I just get the “Opening” dialog forever, then it times out. The problem is most likely related to bandwidth through my cheapy router, but I’m not going to buy a new one, so the case is closed on that.

A few months ago I purchased a used notebook through the PC refresh program of my part-time employer, ADP Probusiness. Getting a wireless-card was a nightmare, and I think because it is installed internally and on the bottom cener of the notebook, the reception is probably not very good.

So everything was running smoothly. My daugher used the Dell Latitude 600 notebook to surf the internet, looking for flash animations related to japanese anime series. Once school started, she also used it to write out homework assignments in MS Word and print them to our HP Color Laserjet 5500. Every once in a while the internet connection would drop. Refreshing the browser usually did the trick to get things going again.

Then one of our near neighbors jumped on the wireless bandwagon. Our PC started dropping our “Excellent” network connection and picking up their “Low” network connection constantly. This is a well documented annoyance with PCs running Windows XP SP1. It is caused by the Zero Point Configuration service, which constantly scans for better networks and connects to them. Problem is, it doesn’t have to be a better network. You can turn Zero Point Configuration off, but then you can’t choose your connection.

Through my researching a solution to this problem, I came up with the following steps you should take to troubleshoot your wireless networking problems, especially those caused by conflicts with other wireless networks in your area:
1. If you are running Windows XP SP1, update to SP2. That alone will likely solve your problem.
2. Make sure your Service Set Identifier (SSID) is unique. Don’t leave it on default.
3. If you are able to, set the channel on your wireless router to an unused channel.

And of course you can always reboot the router, restart the modem, and you should always have your network WEP encrypted.

That said, the way I solved my particular problem was to move the notebook to another part of the house where new neighbor’s stupid default network wasn’t detected. Easier.

I have to admit I like the Scary Movie series. If you haven’t seen one, these movies are gross, immature, sexual, stupid and kind of funny. I didn’t like them at first, but they grew on me. This one is a little tamer than 2 and 3 (haven’t seen the first one), but not too much.

Scary Movie 4 pokes fun at several movies, including:

• The Grudge
• War of The Worlds
• The Village
• Saw
• Brokeback Mountain

Other satirical targets are President Bush, played by Leslie Nielsen, Tom Cruise played by Craig Bierko and, of course, Michael Jackson played by Edward Moss.

The plot isn’t really important. It’s a collage of the above listed movies, and just a way to get from bit to bit. If your self-image can withstand laughing at a movie that is aimed at 13 year-olds, rent it on DVD.

Finally launched the redesigned Pleasanton PTA Council Website. I’d been struggling for over a week to transfer the domain away from Homestead Webhosting to 1 and 1 Internet.

You need an authorization code to transfer .org domain names. In my first request to Homestead support I asked that they unlock the domain and supply the authorization code. They unlocked the domain, but apparently didn’t read far enough to get to the second request (and didn’t know that you need an auth code for a .org transfer). Anyway, to make a long story short, a week and a half, and 4 or 5 dropped balls later the site’s up!

I’d like to say that’s horrible service from a Web hosting company, but it’s actually not bad. Compared to Web hosting companies who outsource their support to call centers in India it’s actually pretty good. The problem was resolved without having to talk to a person who doesn’t understand what you’re saying, but is trying to pick the most appropriate parts of the script to read to you based on the words you are using. That can take hours and doesn’t always end in a happy resolution. End rant.

Yeah, I know. It’s not beer. It looked like beer though. It was next to the “weird beers,” like Budweiser Energy Beer (nasty). It is the same color as beer. It was on sale. When I took my first taste though, I knew it wasn’t beerish. Then I looked closely at the label. A rhino bursing past two barrels of apples.

I tastes more like really old martinelli’s apple cider. Watered down apple juice, a hint a bitterness and a buzz. I guess this is what they had to drink in the Beowulf days, along with their Mead. In modern days though, if you wanted to drink something like this, you might as well go for a Zima. Horsnby’s Hard Cider is on my “do not purchase anymore” list. Now what am I going to do with the other five?