Yet more DreamHost problems. The site keeps becoming unresponsive for a few minutes at a time, then comes back for a few minutes, etc. Support furnished me with this terribly helpful explanation:

It appears as if the load on your server virgil momentarily spiked:
virgil: 01:39 AM# uptime
01:40:06 up 17:53, 2 users, load average: 3.71, 10.56, 25.12
This was due to connection errors to one of the NFS servers that it mounts. This meant that many io requests where backed up though the CPU and RAM weren’t very stressed.

So, from what I can understand, it sounds pretty temporary, right? But this message is from late last night and the problem is still ongoing. I submitted another ticket this afternoon and they replied with a polite brush-off containing fewer grammatical errors. I really don’t want to switch hosts — it’d be a lot of work to copy over all the special settings and user accounts (esp. if the control panel is different). But if the service keeps going downhill like it’s been for the past few months I’ll have no choice.

I started reading Hyperion last night. There’s a lot of stuff about it that reminds me of Dune — weird religions, mystical beasts native to frontier worlds, anachronistic costumes, an aristocrat main character, a massive human empire (called the Hegemony of Man in this novel). Simmons’s writing is a little on the viscous side of things for my tastes… I find it very easy to get distracted while reading the book. Hopefully I’ll adjust in the next hundred pages and be able to start chewing through it at a faster pace.

(Tangent: Speaking of Dune, did you know that lyric from Weapon of Choice is about sandworms? “Walk without rhythm and you won’t attract the worm.” I always thought that line was about getting drunk on tequila!)

Here’re those buffalo wings I mentioned in yesterday’s post. With two different dipping sauces, even. Fancy! One’s ranch, the other’s honey-mustard with a mayo and sour cream base. I can’t believe how much better frozen wings are from the deep-fryer than from the oven. Way crispier, a little juicier.

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