Posted On: Thursday - May 6th 2021 9:40PM MST
In Topics: Internets Music Websites Inflation
Regular Peak Stupidity readers may very well have noticed that the site was first slow, then unreachable for a good bit of this past Tuesday. (Commenter Dieter Kief noticed this first, from Germany.) I was positive that the problem was my site's being behind a security firewall of some kind, as part of the package deal to get 2 years SSL, setting things right from our April Fool's Day non-joke.
Well, all it took was another $135 to make this right. I'm not too happy with the way it's been going. Now, I like the GoDaddy people I talk to, almost every time. We didn't get down to the root of the problems happening other fellow explaining that, yes, if I got back in front of this firewall, things would probably work fine. I'd thought the security deal was an extra feature I'd gotten in early April as part of the SSL deal, but it was the opposite. It had saved me money, so 2 days back I had to back up and pay the full SSL price.
You just gotta wonder if the price means anything at all with respect to any costs at the host, beside initial development, I suppose. Memory is cheap, and signal use (the site calls it bandwidth, which is plainly a wrong term) is cheap. I've got the money, so no problem. It's just that, as I've written before, I have a good memory for prices. Though Peak Stupidity has been up as a site for 4 1/2 years, I'd paid for hosting and the domain name for at least 2 years before that, maybe 3, before I got my shit together and got going. I remember how cheap it was then, and I'd say even without the extra SSL and that, things are 3 or 4 times more expensive than 7 years ago. There's that inflation again, on a service which, in a country with solid money, should be getting cheaper if anything.
I've got to face it. The marketing people at GoDaddy do the same as the cable-internet company. Someone has determined what a steady customer acts like, and when you're on the hook, you get no more deals.
Again, the smart White guys at tech-support/billing are great people. However, the next time hosting payments are due, I should have another company or even my own server ready for the job. Besides the monetary savings, it might be nice to have more control for possible cancellation threats or action. Peak Stupidity has not reached our goal of being noticed by the big hate players, such as the $PLC, who could perform a cancellation. (But we hope for the best.) We'd only know how much GoDaddy will stand up against the woke stuff, were we known and hated like the best of 'em.
We've got to roll with the changes here. One of the problems that was happening, as I conversed with commenter Smith about, was my not being able to easily write youtube embedded videos to the database easily. That should be back to normal again now (crossing my fingers), and this will be a good time to try it.
It's REO Speedwagon for tonight. We've not featured this 1970s-80s band before. Once could think of them as a "hair band" as they do have that big hair thing going, but that term wasn't used in the '70s yet. This band formed in Champaign, Illinois, at the Univ. of Illinois, in the late 1960s. After many personnel changes, their 7th album You Can Tune a Piano but You Can't Tuna Fish* released in '78, had the first song I'd even heard from them (albeit a few years later), Roll with the Changes.
The lead singer, Kevin Cronin, has a unique voice, that likely determines whether the listener will like the band. I do, to some degree. There are about 3 more songs by the band that Peak Stupidity ought to feature later.
With what's coming in our future, we all better be ready to roll with the changes, yeah, yeah, you know you got to keep on rolling, keep on rolling ...
REO Speedwagon:
Kevin Cronin – Lead and backing vocals, rhythm guitar, piano
Gary Richrath – Lead and rhythm guitars
Neal Doughty – Hammond organ, Moog synthesizer
Bruce Hall – Bass guitar
Alan Gratzer – Drums
* I like this title a lot, but apparently, per wiki, the critics think it was the worst.
Comments:
Moderator
Saturday - May 8th 2021 12:09PM MST
PS: I meant the band, not the old vehicle it was named after, was pronounced "ree-oh", but the band by the letters, yes.
Adam Smith
Saturday - May 8th 2021 9:47AM MST
PS: That is a beautiful truck...
It's a 1936 Speedwagon Pickup, one of only six known to exist.
https://www.mecum.com/lots/CA0817-299977/1936-reo-speedwagon-pickup/
Pronounced just "ree-oh"? Interesting. I've always heard it pronounced “are ee oh”...
I'm not sure I've heard 5 REO Speedwagon songs. Maybe I have but just don't know it. Nice “business” model indeed.
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It's a 1936 Speedwagon Pickup, one of only six known to exist.
https://www.mecum.com/lots/CA0817-299977/1936-reo-speedwagon-pickup/
Pronounced just "ree-oh"? Interesting. I've always heard it pronounced “are ee oh”...
I'm not sure I've heard 5 REO Speedwagon songs. Maybe I have but just don't know it. Nice “business” model indeed.
☮
Moderator
Saturday - May 8th 2021 6:39AM MST
PS: Adam, that's maybe my 5th favorite REO Speedwagon song - ha, that must have been shown during my non-MTV/VH-1 watching years. Great "business" model for a rock & roller: "Yeah, my girlfriends get to be in my videos, in their underwear, if at all possible.", he says to the finest ladies on the floor in the shows. It's easier to make a video like that vs. the artsy "Money for Nothing" or "Take on Me" ones, and I'm sure they got just as many "likes" - wait, no "likes" back then.
Oh, is that an REO Speedwagon (pronounced just "ree-oh" from what I read)? That's a beautiful truck.
Oh, is that an REO Speedwagon (pronounced just "ree-oh" from what I read)? That's a beautiful truck.
Adam Smith
Friday - May 7th 2021 12:16PM MST
PS: Good afternoon...
https://cdn1.mecum.com/auctions/ca0817/ca0817-299977/images/ca0817-299977_2@2x.jpg
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3G8jAPPjpGs
☮
https://cdn1.mecum.com/auctions/ca0817/ca0817-299977/images/ca0817-299977_2@2x.jpg
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3G8jAPPjpGs
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Moderator
Friday - May 7th 2021 12:09PM MST
PS: No, Alarmist, regular links have been working fine. When I would use my edit page to write or correct a post of mine, I could no longer stick in a youtube embedded video or work on one WITH that embedded video, as whether correcting or doing it the 1st time, there is the same write to the dBase. The firewall found a security problem with my writing those few embed format tags, I guess, as I would get a security error page.
I was putting the last few youtube vids via the direct "on" the database page. It was more of a pain in the ass. As I reckoned, it had everything to do with this security "feature" I was hooked up with.
It's back to normal now. Thanks for asking.
I was putting the last few youtube vids via the direct "on" the database page. It was more of a pain in the ass. As I reckoned, it had everything to do with this security "feature" I was hooked up with.
It's back to normal now. Thanks for asking.
The Alarmist
Friday - May 7th 2021 11:37AM MST
PS
Is the embed problem one of getting the link to output properly to the page?
Is the embed problem one of getting the link to output properly to the page?