Two Minor Annoyances

I’ve got about one more post in me and then its bedtime. So, I’m going to post about two somewhat annoying situations.

Well, the big one has to be what happened with my server. The reason cited for pulling my blog offline for more than a day was that it was creating a load on the Company’s server. Now, mind you I’m paying for about 40GB of Bandwidth and last month I used a total of 2.76 GB. I kept getting jargon shoved at me. Here’s a few excerpts from support:

Your database was blocked as it was creating problems on the server. We have unblocked it now. Please make sure that this does not happen again else your database will be blocked permanantly.

That’s great. So its creating some type of problems on the server and whatever happened (which was beyond my control) I’d better see to it didn’t happen again.

After about the third time of them pulling my server, I asked what exactly I need to do to fix the “problem”:

We have enabled your database “adamsweb_b21″ again and now “http://www.adamsweb.us/blog/” is working absolutely fine.

Please take care of it that it dosen’t causes load on our server.

This was really frustrating because I’m an expert on a lot of things. MySQL databases aren’t one of them. How to avoid this I didn’t know until I finally got a response after 4+ hours:

We have checked your account for the domain adamsweb.us. It is found that your database is been creating heavy load on the server, we sugest you to delete unwanted record from your database adamsweb_b21 also sugest you that to optimize the database and fine query the database so that the records are featch more quickly and processed. Following is the report of it.

So, I just need to go and yank out a few blog posts. Yeah, well I was looking into switching services, but someone on the B2 Evolution forums found that downloading the latest stable version of b2evolution could solve the problem and it looks like it has.

However, as someone who works in Customer Service, I’m truly unimpressed with the service I’m getting from my current host. If something like that happens, an e-mail might be a good idea as well as some actual empathy or understanding of what they were doing.

Second peeve:

The one tip I’ll give you if you’re going to Boise is to try to avoid restaurants around BSU on Broadway. I don’t know why but I’ve tended to get pretty bad service in a lot of places on Broadway. That’s not to say some good people don’t work there, but in general the standard for customer service is less than I get in any part of the greater Boise area. In general, Idaho has great customer service because people tend to be polite, friendly, and you still have a bit of that small town charm with a lot of people.

Anyway, I have to use stuff out there because the closest Urgent Care clinic in my health plant is out near Broadway and with my shift and the clinic’s hours, if Andrea or I need urgent care, we don’t have time to get dinner before we go.

So we’d been through the McDonalds drive through the last three times we’d needed urgent care and then we decided to go to Burger King and I don’t know what happened. I ordered 2 Cheesburgers and I looked up on the order screen and I saw they had a total of 50 cheeseburgers on the screen.

I said, “You have 50 cheeseburgers for us up there.”

The drive thru guy ignored it and asked if I wanted something else. I said I did. When I was done with the order, he asked once again if I wanted anything else. I replied, “I would like not to pay for 50 cheeseburgers.” Finally the large number of cheeseburgers disappeared.

Pulled up to the drive through window and paid and was advised to park by the door. The door to this particular Burger King is right by where the cars come out from the Drive Thru, right in their path. I sat there for about 3-4 minutes and became nervous and became pretty nervous at the prospect of someone driving through too quickly, I parked in the main parking lot and went in. They had the food about eight minutes after the order, and about six after they told me to park.

Having worked in fast food, I could understand that things happen, but I was at a loss to explain this. If the restaurant had been packed with people, I’d understand, but it was totally deserted. In fast food, beef doesn’t take long to cook. At one burger place I worked, they had a grill which fried the meat in around 25 seconds. Burger King gives them a flame-broiled flavor but I can’t see it taking that long.

I think that I’ll go ahead and stick to McDonalds or better yet, stay healthy and not have to go to urgent care. That’ll work even better.