found drama

Today was the tap-dance of the domain transfer as we moved our little online shop from our previous host to here. It was funny to watch the DNS propagation today, waiting with baited breath as (for example) blog.founddrama.net started resolving to the new IP but founddrama.net did not &c. My bash history from today basically looks like this:

$ whois founddrama.net
$ dig founddrama.net
$ dig blog.founddrama.net
$ dig -t mx founddrama.net
$ dig founddrama.net
$ dig blog.founddrama.net
$ dig -t mx founddrama.net

It got kind of ridiculous. At any rate, I’m pleased to have made the switch and hopefully the DNS propagation-related kinks will be behind us in another 24-48 hours. The most fun the period this afternoon when the blog’s sub-domain was resolving but the hostname for the db was not.

Why the switch? A couple of reasons. First, while our previous hosting company had served us well-enough for the past couple years, we were looking to expand. There were some features that we were looking to add that they did not appear to have on their roadmap of upgrades. That was what started it. Considering the price-point, I was willing to accept that for a while. However, a recent episode involving a rather severe security breach was what set me off. What was worse than the breach (however) was their inital lack of response (minus the “we have received your issue” form letter) and then later their denial that any such breach was even possible. The proof was in the pudding for me though. So we packed up and migrated to DreamHost so far so good. A much better package at what has (after discounts) turned out to be a far lower price-point. I saw some recent clamoring ’round the web about some downtime they had in the past week but… Well, I have no regrets considering the monthly rate I locked into.

In other news, I have a pretty good line on a potential gig coming up toward the end of April. So that has me quite stoked. That comes right as the channels on my mixer get noisier and noisier with static. I thought one of the channels had died completely the other night but that (fortunately?) turned out to be little more than human error ¹. If I’m lucky, I’ll get a little more use out of the thing so I’m not rushing out to buy a new one. I’ve been in the market for a new one anyway though — and considering what it sounds like at home, it seems wise to upgrade rather than try to play out on it. So wish me luck folks. Hope everything comes together on that.

UPDATE: The 4th was a little hairy; domains resolved back-and-forth across both servers most of the day.  As of this morning though (05-Mar) we appear to have stabilized and all of the variously configured *.founddrama.net hostnames are consistently resolving to DreamHost now.  It would seem that we’re out of the woods now…  *knocks on wood*

1. I plugged the laptop’s output into the mixers “Rec” output cable. Duh.[↩]

About Rob Friesel