If you're reading this, then either the One Tusk Pantheon is back online or you got really fucking lucky. We're in the middle of some sort of shitstorm that I don't even understand. Here, join me in a tour of my misery:

So we are now on a virtual private server on Dreamhost. Basically, for those who don't know–and you're happier not knowing, just trust me on this–I'll put this as simply as I can.

Let's think about this like a train.

Shared hosting is where you start off. It's the third class car. You're crammed in there with everybody and anybody and they've overbooked the car, so it's pretty much SRO. And if you've ever been on a NYC subway during the stampede, then you know what this means. Strange crotches are pressed against your ass, your ass is probably pressed against some other part of some other stranger's body, the whole place stinks…you know. The server hosting equivalent effect is that somebody else can step on your toes. If somebody does something terminally wacky, you can be affected too.

Why in the world would anyone settle for shared hosting? Same reason you take the subway. It's cheaper than a cab. It gets you there, and most times it gets you there in a reasonable amount of time (granted, the metaphor here breaks down a bit because the subway is generally faster than a cab what with traffic and all, but all the things being equal, I mean). You remember all the breakdowns because those stick in your memory, just like people who are convinced of miracles remember the lovely coincidences and not the 999 other times where the shit just didn't work out.

Anyway, shared hosting will only get you so far. Then you're looking at a virtual private server, which is where we are now. This is where you're on a server with other people, yes, but they've carved you out a space that is your space. It's like business class. You have room to stretch out and you're not in danger of being stepped on. The costs for this have come down–hell, the costs for everything involving hosting have come down–so it's reasonable.

Most of you are on shared hosting. If you don't know what sort of hosting you have, you're on shared hosting. Most people who are just running a blog or something don't need anything else. For Christ's sake, though–he said, in a total sidebar–if you are running a blog and you're serious just about blogging–at least get yourself your own domain name. Get the hell off of Blogspot or LiveJournal or MySpace or whatever. In an age where you can have your own printing press, for God's sake, own one, don't rent. That way you get the traffic, the ad revenue, the whatever.

Sorry. Anyway.

When you get really ginormous, then it's time for a dedicated server, and those can go as big as you want. And as pricey as you want.

So today is the first day I've really gotten a chance to play with our new VPS setup for Needcoffee. We've seriously gotten to the point where it's time to take the plunge, right? So. What happens?

Dreamhost takes a huge network outage.

About this same time, the One Tusk Pantheon blows up too. So for a while there, it looks like the two are interlinked. However, when I go look at my memory usage, I see this:

That's Pacific time, so for those that can read that chart, yes, apparently around midnight EST we spiked our memory usage at a shade under 4GB.

Four. Goddamn. Gigabytes.

Now, it would be absolutely lovely if the One Tusk cavalcade of fun was drawing so much traffic that we actually needed that much memory. I would be renting a goddamn Cray right now if that were the case. But no…that's not the case, sad to say.

The truth is I don't know WTF is happening. This isn't like before where the comment spammers were trying to kill us in a Carthaginian manner, no. In fact, I went through every single access log for every single site and can't see anything out of the ordinary. Sure, there's a Yahoo Slurp bot from China that's a bit too amorous, but I'd much prefer to deal with that shit when I'm a little less frazzled. But no, the access logs look clean.

So WTF is happening? I don't know. Apparently other VPS sites on Dreamhost are having the same problem, so we'll see.

And now a short postscript before I try and close this. A lot of people find it fun to slag off Dreamhost. I've worked a support desk and run more than one, so I know what it's like. It's even more thankless a job than running tech crew on a stage show. At least with that you're just ignored–running tech support is purely for the masochistic and self-medicated, I assure you. And am I terribly excited about the fact that my site is a smoking crater right now?

No, of course not. However, most of these idiots are paying $9 a month for hosting. They wouldn't complain about $9 of Burger King food they way they complain about Dreamhost. If you're going to bitch and moan, upgrade. If not, then shut up. And if you're talking about your business crashing and burning because your $9 hosting is down for the moment, then you have other problems besides that. Somebody who actually knows how to run a business will take that opportunity to work on something else that still helps the business. At least Dreamhost comes back and explains the problem. The hosting service I used before them was crashing and burning for about a month solid and never responded to any requests for information or even any problem tickets. They devolved into a joke.

Anyway, I've sent off the OMGWTF support ticket to Dreamhost, the first Sev 1 ticket I've ever sent them. We'll see what they say.

What was my point? Oh right: never become a webmaster. Listen and hear what I say.