I started biking [part-way] to work a few weeks ago and thought I’d mention it. I’m riding my old Fuji Sandblaster SX mountain bike that my mom bought me for Christmas 12 years ago or so. What a great bike! A little WD40 and oil and I was ready to ride (albeit still without a front brake, but I’ll get around to fixing it some day). Here is my route, which is apparently about 10.6 miles:

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I drive my bike to Canton from Winsted and park at the commuter lot there at the intersection of 44 and 179, then take 179 into Unionville and 177 to work. 177 is sketchy - alomst no shoulder in some places. I’m told there’s a bike trail that will get me pretty close to work that I’m planning on checking out one of these days.

My plan is to gradually shorten my drive and increase my ride. Maybe some day I’ll be able to ride the whole way. Right now it’s taking about 45 minutes to do the 10 miles. My entire commute is about 22 miles each way, so at my current skill level, it’s way too far to attempt. If I can get down to 30 minutes for the 10 miles, I’ll start increasing the biking part of my commute.

My web host of the past six years has finally gone super nova.  Lunarpages used to be so great - friendly, helpful, understanding.  What happened?

Every once in a while I’d log into CPanel to find new goodies, better deals, more features, more space, more transfer, etc.  I got a free domain for life at one point, and I just thought, “Damn, think about all those suckas out there who aren’t hosting with Lunarpages.”

Then the toll-free tech. support number went to toll.  “OK,” I thought, “big deal.  I have a cell phone and I don’t pay long-distance.”  Then the support line hours went from 24/7 to 9-5 M-F.  OK, not cool, but whatever - nothing was broken so I didn’t really fret.

Then something broke.  It was past their phone-in hours, so I used their support e-mail service.  After going round and round, it turned out that they’d cut a feature under the auspices that the new CPanel itself didn’t support it.  I found it hard to believe since CPanel lets you do thie thing I was trying to do - it just wasn’t taking effect.

Since that episode, little things have bean breaking from time to time.  I have to really stay on top of things to make sure it’s all running tip-top.  The tech. support isn’t bad, it’s just bad that I have to use it now quite often, and the responses are more likely to be canned or brush offs than helpful.

Finally, the last straw: they destroyed my DNS settings somehow.  I’ve read other people’s posts about this, but I’d never experienced it myself.  All of a sudden, like 6 domains I have are all pointing to lunarpages.com.  Now it’s 12 hours later and still no response from tech. support.

Sorry, but that’s not acceptable.

So the new host is dreamhost.com.  I like them so far.  The sales dept. was very knowledgeable about their product, their wiki covers all migration and technical issues … they just seem very progressive overall.  And, I got $24 off the yearly price of hosting because I went in from a link at wordpress.org’s list of recommended hosts.

I have a feeling that Lunarpages is going to need to move fast to avoid a landslide of users breaking away.  Alliances change fast on the Internet …