$8.89 Web Hosting

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Last year when the promotional deal I had for three years of Web hosting was running out I purchased a VPS costing about $24.00 for the year. A VPS, aka Virtual Private Server is a Virtual Machine at a hosting provider that is setup just for you/me. It is a nice playground to let me install use the compute power however I want it. The deal I bought I thought was great. To renew via the traditional hosting plan I had at the time would have run me like £15 a month. I wrote about the crazy costs of web hosting when i purchased the VPS (Virtual private Server) aka a Virtual Machine dedicated for my use at a hosting provider.

I have had really good luck with the VPS and the provider. I even purchased a 2nd more powerful VPS when they had a New Years sale. I use each VPS for different purposes however the one I used for hosting I have used all year. The only slight downside is that its my responsibility to manage and maintain. In a big deal however it is in the back of my head what happens if I have a catastrophic failure. I do have back ups it would be awesome effort to get the system restored. Thanksgiving started rolling around I kept my eye out for new deals for hosting. When Black Friday came around the same provider that offered the VPS deal had a deal for what they call CPANEL hosting for $8.89 a year. Basically that means they were offering a managed hosting package for less money a year than many plans offer for a month. There were some small limitations on the number of domain’s i could link to the account. For a few dollars more i could increase the offering. For my needs the $8.89 plan was just fine. I “splurged” and bought 2 years for less than $18.00.

One thing I like about this provider is when they offer a deal it’s not an introductory one. Meaning I just renewed VPS purchase last year and I feel exactly the same amount for the renewal. This is a refreshing change from pretty much all other mainstream Web hosting providers at the deal the offer is only good the first time you buy it.

Over the past few weeks I’ve been testing out there setup. It has been pretty stable. Anything I have wanted to do i have been able to. Building that confidence today I migrated my mail and blog over to the new hosting. The VPS i have is not going away. I renewed that already for the next year. I will continue to use it for some other apps i host and a few other things however i will entrust my blog to the hosting provider instead of running on my own VM.

And no I cannot tell the difference between the £100+ per year hosting vs the $8.98 a year one. That is what amuses me.

Now lets hope that after writing how things look stable they do not blow up in my face tomorrow.

W Sisters Short on Making Dinner

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Both girls wanted to help peel carrots for dinner tonight. When it was A’s turn she was peeling the carrot and the peel was flinging out onto our counter and side of our microwave. I told her that she should not fling the peels. Her response was “It is ok, I am a kid”

Why Hello Delicious

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bagel and lox

On our way back from an outdoor market today we took a detour for what we had been told were really good NY style bagels at Beigel Bake Brick Lane Bakery. Now we had to be the judge for ourselves. The line was out the door and down the street. It was worth it. They were not huge like a NY bagel but pretty dam good.

My only issue with the place was how they spell bagel.

The Story of that Overseas Check(s)

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Apparently one of my US banks made some error in interest calculations or something. I know this because they sent me what as of this writing is 4 separate checks with an explication. Each check has been for well under $2. Two of them for under 10 cents each.

This is noteworthy because they sent paper checks instead of just direct depositing money back into my account. This is of course a bank i still do business with. The biggest reason for calling this out is that the postage for each of these checks was $1.30 since they were sent internationally. None of the checks were worth more than the postage it cost to send them. That is funny as is. When one of them is 4 cents it gets into bonkers territory.

Holiday Plan B

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This was not the post I was expecting to be writing 48 hours ago. To tell this story I have to go back to August. M has to work so I decided to take off term break and take the girls somewhere. My master plan was to take the girls on a cruise out of Southampton for a few days. I was worried about things to do however the ship seemed like there was a ton of options and the girls are generally fine in a pool.

48 hours ago we got an email from our cruise line saying that due to a covid exposure the kids club and a host of activities were going to be closed our sailing. Around the same time others in a group I am in for the ship were sailing on were saying they only let 11 kids in the indoor pool at a time and then they get 10 minutes and they have to get out. Having to queue for 20-30 minutes for one of the few activities they can do was troubling however doable. When Royal Caribbean emailed they gave us 3 options. 1, get some money back and we cruise, 2, a lot of credit for another cruise or 3, all our money back no questions.

Lots of people in the group I was in for the cruise said they were going to bring games and make the best of it. I thought about that. Doing that was doable. My issue was more the fact if we took the credit the amount we would’ve spent on the cruise was way more than I thought we would be getting out of it. With all the restrictions. That I was by myself and not having any kids club to get a break from the girls was a big deal. The fact that Covid was on the boat was is another concern. Talking with M we both agreed that just getting our money back was probably the safest bet.

The girls and I were disappointed. I would rather be disappointed and plan another cruise then go on this and have the girls have a negative feeling towards cruising. The last cruise we did with their grandparents they thought was out of this world fantastic. I thought it was pretty epic also.

I went into back planning mode. The girls love a pool. I figured if I could find a nice hotel with a pool they would be very happy. After looking at several options I settled on one with an indoor pool that did not require any sort of pre-booking the pool. Several I investigated did have that restriction.

So instead of cruising today girls and I start our few days holiday in London. It’s a little odd being able to go home in 40 minutes if we forgot anything however we are settling into hotel life nicely. Our view is pretty awesome also.

As plan B’s go this feels like a winner.

The Posh Half Work Day

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Wednesday I had a meeting at company main office. I have never been there since we were in lockdown when we were acquired. I continue to be based out of Canary Wharf. I generally like the office there however the visit this week was a very nice upgrade.

A view of St Paul’s from my window was nice. The single train I needed to take to the office (no transfers are nice) was also great. Then the 34” wrap around monitor at the desk was a nice bonus.

Sadly I only spent the morning before I had to go back to Canary Wharf. When others asked if it was nice my only response was they have proper mugs at the coffee station.

W Sister Shorts on Hobbies

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As we left the house today to walk to school, A turned to T and said “our hobby is fighting”. I asked why and her reply was because they do it so often.

I thought that was pretty funny especially since i do not think they excessively fight.

The Story of Our HomePod Mini’s

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I mentioned in a previous post about Amazon Echo‘s “Comming Full Circle with Amazon Alexa” that the Apple HomePod minis came out at the perfect time for me. Not only did it fill a gap that I voluntarily created by not using Amazon echo anymore. I also had some gift card money and was able to pick up several of the HomePod mini‘s when they came out and not break the bank.

The original intention was to put speakers in every usable room. We put one in the kitchen to replace an echo. We replaced another echo in our master bedroom. I replaced the last echo in the guest room / office with another mini.

We had a charging base for the Amazon tap in the living room and we put two HomePod mini’s there. The intention with the two HomePod minis in the living room was to make them stereo speakers to use with the Apple TV. They sounded fine however we noticed early on that there was a delay between what was spoken and what we saw on the screen. That was really annoying so I reverted back to my Bose speakers that were hardwired into the TV. We still have both HomePod minis in the living room however it’s only for stereo music playing.

I like that I can handoff from my iPhone to a speaker to play music. What I don’t like is it’s not a consistent experience yet. There are times when it takes a really long time to hand off. There are other times when it tries to hand off to my office speaker when I just have my iPhone on my desk near it. Same problem happens on my nightstand at night sometimes.

Another function I like is streaming to multiple devices at the same time. Although that has been a problem in the past when there were a few instances that I couldn’t break the pairing as easily as you would think. It feels like the functionality is improving however it’s not quite fully seamless.

I also like the intercom. The girls like it as well. They’re not yet using it to message us between rooms however they are using the speakers to put music on every once in a while.

As of this writing it’s been over six months since getting the speakers and they may not be functionally on parity with an Amazon echo for us they are working out just fine.