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***MAJOR SPOILERS***

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If you’re considering using DreamHost as your web host… don’t.

Back in August of 2007, I wrote a post singing the praises of DreamHost, and how for the first time I ever I had actually stayed with a web host through an entire contract.  I was really happy with them, and I was acutally renewing my contract for another two years of service.

Well, that ended up being one of the most frustrating decisions of my life.

The Bandwagon Debacle

Previous to that post, I had written about DreamHost partnering up with Bandwagon to allow you to backup your iTunes libraries to their servers.  It seemed like a fantastic idea, and I for one couldn’t wait to give it a try once there was a version of the software for PCs.  They were even giving a free year of hosting away if you signed up for the service, that’s how into this idea DreamHost was.

Well, at some point shortly after that (I can’t find the exact date), DreamHost said this was a violation of their Terms of Service, and you would not be allowed to store your files there.    Never mind they had promoted this idea, and told all users it was okay, but they were suddenly reversing their decision, and any and all files on their servers had to be served to the web or it would be considered a violation of their ToS.

Fine, I hadn’t done the uploading yet, but I did think it was a rather poor decision on their part seeing as they had promoted it.  I had saved other files there over my time with them, always with the understanding it was allowed, but now, suddenly, it was no longer that way.  They have every right to enforce their TOS, but to get people to sign up for one thing, and then strip it away with no grandfathering of those new accounts just seemed sleazy to me.

Strike 1

The Billing Debacle

In January of 2008, DreamHost was upgrading their billing system, and somehow messed up the date, telling the system that it was in fact December of 2008.  The system kicked in automatically, and all customers were billed for 12 months of hosting in one shot.  Those who had credit and debit cards on file were automatically charged for one year of hosting.  Seeing as I had a business account with them that was nearly $100 a month, I woke up to $1200 missing from my debit account I used just for paying bills.  This completely drained my account and made several charges not go through, causing me to be overdue on some bills.

How did they handle the situation?  By writing multiple snarky blog posts about it that laughed it off in a “Oh, our bad” tone.

True, DreamHost had always had a joking tone to their blog posts, but when you’ve completely drained people’s checking accounts, caused them to miss other bills and made us jump through hoops to make sure we got our money back, now was not the time to be making jokes.  I did eventually get my money back, but not before numerous headaches and troubles.

Strike 2

The DMCA Debacle

On April 18, 2008, I posted G.I. Joe Cast Pictures from the upcoming movie.  As these had appeared on several websites, I believed them to be okay.  On April 21, 2008, I received a DMCA (Digital Millennium Copyright Act) from Paramount Pictures informing me they were in violation of their copyright, and to remove the images.  Within 45 minutes of my receiving that email, I had the pictures removed from the site and server as they requested.

Feeling I had satisfied the request, I was shocked to find my site closed down by DreamHost shortly after that, and it remained closed until the next morning.  I made multiple attempts at contacting DreamHost to discover what was going on, but I had to submit them via their support desk as DreamHost refuses to supply a phone number where you can actually call them.  Yes, I could request “call backs”, which I did multiple times through out the night, but I received no calls or replies.  Never mind the fact I actually had two accounts with them, and was paying them well over $100 a month for hosting, I couldn’t get them to say so much as the word “boo” to me.

By the next morning, I still had not heard from them, and I went so far as to call the lawyer from Paramount who had sent me the DMCA.  He was very understanding of the situation, and he felt DreamHost had over reacted to their letter.  He sent them an email, which he copied me on, telling them that Paramount was satisfied with my compliance and they saw no reason for my site to be down.  Dreamhost still would not reply.

I finally got a terse email from a man in customer service telling me I could reinstate my site and they hoped I had learned my lesson.

I fired back with an admittedly angry email which resulted in me being lectured by the same DreamHost employee, and essentially telling me how I should consider myself lucky they didn’t do worse to me.  He also informed me that my “righteous indignation” was misplaced, and he hoped I had learned my lesson about respecting copyrights.

Don’t get me wrong, yes, I violated a copyright, albeit unknowingly.  That, however, does not give you the right to speak to me like a child and scold me.

Strike 3… you’re out.

A Total Lack Of Communication

I already mentioned that a DreamHost phone number is non-existent, which is bad enough, but when they won’t even reply to support requests for a simple answer as to what happened, that’s too much.  I am writing this post nearly a year after the mess because I still had data on their servers, but that is now all gone.  As I parted, I wrote them a lengthy email about why I was leaving… and not one word of response.

While my anger had cooled over the past year, and I had not planned on saying anything about them publicly, their lack of even acknowledging my complaints just fueled me up again.  If you’re looking for a host, I would recommend that you look at options other than DreamHost because, from my experience, they apparently couldn’t care less about their customers.  I pulled two hosting accounts and dozens of domain name registrations I had through them, and still not so much as a word from them.  And if they make a billing mistake, that ends up costing you money and troubles, they think it’s okay to make snarky jokes about it.  Changing TOS in mid-stream of a promotion?  No problem!  DreamHost phone number?  Oh… er… well… small problem.

I ended up moving to BlueHost, whom I have been very happy with thus far… course, complimenting hosts seems to lead to problems, so maybe I shouldn’t say I’m happy with them… -knocks on wood-

Oh, and by the way, when you leave DreamHost, they prorate what you’ve paid them and keep the unusued portion “on credit” with them should you ever choose to come back.  HA!  Oh well, there’s some money I’m not sure I would ever even want to see.

I think they may have been victims of their own success.  I think they always had some problems, but as they grew more and more, the problems with their customer service were just that more exasperated. I have no clue if they have fixed any of these problems, or their horrendous attitude, but seeing as there is still no customer service phone number, unlike pretty much every other web host in existence, I somehow doubt it.

Of course these are all just my personal experiences with them, and I am sure some people have had flawless runs with them, I just wasn’t one of them.  Based on my time with them, and how it so quickly degenerated, I wish I had thought twice before signing up with them.

This is one of those movie reviews where you have to wonder where you even begin. Do you judge it based on its faithfulness to the source material? Do you judge it based on it solely as a theatrical work? It’s a tough question, and an even tougher one when it is a film adaptation one of the most beloved works ever in the history of comics.

For 23 years people have attempted to make Watchmen into a movie.  Some called it “unfilmable”, others wanted to make huge changes to the plot and characters, but ultimately it fell into the lap of Zack Snyder, the director of 300.  The good news was he didn’t want to make many changes at all, and he fought to keep it as true to the original as he could.  While there are some minor and some major changes, overall the main themes still shine through, and it makes for an engaging film.

Let me be up front in saying I thought the opening credits, all set to “The Times They Are A-Changin’” by Bob Dylan, may be some of my favorite opening credits of all time.  As the music plays, we are treated to amazing photographs and video that helps us follow all of the costumed crime fighters that have existed in this movie universe since the 1940’s.  It is a great use of time, it conveys the history you need to know that this is an alternative world you have entered that runs fairly close to ours, but not quite.

This is a story that happens on so many levels simultaneously that it is almost impossible to easily summarize what it is really about.  It is a story of humanity and are failings.  It is a story of what would you be willing to do and/or live with to accomplish what is ultimately a noble goal.  It is a story about ideals.  It is a story about the type of people it would take to dress up in a silly costumes and fight crime, and if they do it for the good of their fellow man or if they do it as some sort of  adrenaline rush/aphrodisiac.  When you realize the number of ideas this work tries to convey, you begin to understand why people thought it was “unfilmable”.

What you end up with for the film that is a surprisingly breezy 2 hour and 43 minute running time that flies by without feeling anywhere near that long.  And while it may not give you clean-cut answers to those questions and ideas it puts forth, it at least addresses each of them.  The thing is that you have to watch for them, you have to pay attention to so much, that most people will just see it as an unusual super hero movie when it is really so much more.

If anything surprised me about the film, it is how unbelievably brutal it is.  While the comic was certainly no field of daisies, when you see the violence of the comic projected on a theater screen, it becomes shockingly violent, but it works.  This is not a film for the squeamish, you will feel uncomfortable, and that may be one of the highest compliments you can pay the filmmakers.  It never feels exaggerated, it feels like these people live in a brutal world, and, at times, they must be brutal in return to do good.  Although I will say the Comedian/Sally Jupiter scene in the billiards room is done so effectively, that even knowing the outcome, I still found it difficult to watch for its realism.

From filming, music selection, special effects and acting, this movie delivers on all fronts. (With the exception of Malin Akerman as Laurie… she got it right in some scenes, and in others you were fairly certain she had no clue what was going on, or how to play it)   Sure some things are missing that I would have liked to see stay in from the original work such as the news stand owner and the kid for example, or Rorschach having his pocketful of sugar cubes, but, in general, Mr. Snyder did his job, and you get to see a Watchmen movie that is darn close to the original work, and is a heck of a good film to boot.

To the fans of the book who have complained about “the squid” being absent (I’m not going to explain this to non-readers of the book as it would give away the ending of the movie completely), what they replaced it with makes a ton more sense.  You don’t miss the squid at all, and you actually wonder if it was ever really needed in the original work.  Believe me, I was nervous about the change, but the new solution works out a heck of a lot better.

Although I was uncertain as I left the theater, I liked the film more and more as I thought about it through out the evening.  My highest possible recommendation, even if you have no clue what you are getting in to.  Just don’t go expecting The Dark Knight, because this is certainly nothing like it.

(And thank you to regular commentor “Contrary Jack” and his wife for actually convincing me to leave my office to see this opening day with them)

***MAJOR SPOILERS***

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***MAJOR SPOILERS***

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***MAJOR SPOILERS***

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In what seems to be becoming an annual event, it’s time for a new entry in the Call of Duty franchise of video games.

This year’s entry is going back to the roots of the series by moving the setting back to the days of World War II, with a heavy focus on the Pacific Rim theater.  There is also a change up in that last year’s mega-popular Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare (CoD4) was by the design house at Infinity Ward, and this year’s version (Call fo Duty: World at War is the full title) is by a group named Treyarch.

Everyone on XBox Live has been able to download a demo for a few days now which allows you to play on three of the multiplayer maps.  As long time readers of this blog know, I am a huge fan of online first person shooting games, so I downloaded and gave the game a try.  To be honest, Call of Duty 4 has literally not left my XBox since the day I inserted it, which has been about 8 months now, so me playing anything else is a novel concept.

First impressions tell me… I’m not going to be nearly as addicted to this game, and that is if I even buy it.

To be completely honest, this game is so similar to CoD4 that it feels more like an expansion pack than an entirely new game.  I almost wonder if that is why this game doesn’t have the number “5″ in its title, it almost feels more like a “4.5″ than a wholly new game.  Sure, there are some new aspects such as the addition of vehicles in at least one level of the three they let the public sample, and at some point in the game there is the inclusion of flame throwers, but otherwise the basic mechanics of the game just feel far to close to the last game.

I will say they did add far more details to what weapons damage could do to you, which I am not sure is such a wonderful idea.  I noticed after shooting a guy with a shotgun at fairly close range that I could see his rib cage clearly where the blast hit.  At another point I got hit with a grenade and as my character fell backwards I could see his left leg was missing.  Not to mention the amount of blood that gets splattered on the “camera” when you kill people at close range.  While I understand thay are going for a realisitc approach, I’m not sure I need that much gore in a game I play to relax after a long day of work.

One of the largest annoyances, and I know this is minor, is the inclusion of the attack dogs.  In CoD4, after you would get 7 kills in a row, you could call in an attack chopper.  Well, seeing as this is WW II, they couldn’t have coptors, obiously, so they replaced them with attack dogs.  As an animal lover, I’m not thrilled with haing to shoot dogs to save myself, and my 3 real life dogs are not thrilled with the barking coming from the TV whenever they show up.  Again, minor, but annoying.

True, I am judging this game by only a small slice of it, but the basic mechanics are there, and the actual character movement even feels a bit clunkier.  I mean the way the character itself moves, I expect the weapons to be clunky and harder to manage, but the actual physics of the figure you control just doesn’t feel smooth for some reason.

Will I end up buying it?  I don’t know, I’m tempted, but I may just wait for Infinity Ward to come back to being the designers with the next installment before I once again answer… the Call of Duty.  (Stop groaning!)

***MAJOR SPOILERS***

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