Last week I visited an electrical shop to buy a new table fan. While at the cash counter, I noticed a rather unique credit policy written in big red letters and placed on top of the computer at the counter. It said - “credit will only be given to people over 85 years of age“. I wondered if there is somebody over 85 in my family whom I can bring to the shop. But then I noticed the fine print!

In case you can’t read it - It says “only if accompanied by both parents!”.

This site is hosted on Dreamhost - the so called “employee owned” hosting company. Dreamhost hosting is cheap and their customer service is pretty good.  But lately they seem to having real problems with the infrastructure. Today they had the ultimate problem - all DNS servers were down for over 5 hours! It is pretty funny that a company which hosts 400,000 websites cannot keep their DNS server up!

Now the real fun is on the dreamhoststatus.com site. This is a blog by Dreamhost which tracks the problem affecting their services. Whenever something major happens with Dreamhost, you see a pattern of response from the customers. It is very predictable and at the same time very funny as well!

John : help! All my servers are down! I am loosing all my customers. Why is this happening every day?

Anna: It is funny that this problem is rated as medium. Do you call an issue critical when the data centre is bombed?

John’s Mom: Shut the f* up John. You are on a shared server and it is damn cheap. Be happy with whatever crap you get.

Chris: I am happy with DH. Please fix the problem whenever you have time.

Lis : I am devastated. Today I got the biggest business and my client says the site is down.

Dreamhost fan: Hey Anna, your site is up. Where are you from? Looking for a date?

DH Guru : for (int i=0;i<400,000;i++) {nslookup i; print result;}. It seems still some sites are down. Maybe we all should go for advanced custom DNS solutions.

Mike: Hey check out Lunarpages. They have some good schemes and they might even kick some DH ass. I also recommend registerfly.

Susan : You all are gay.

Now the above conversation is almost identical whenever Dreamhost posts a problem. Names and the words used may change sometimes

I don’t claim to be a big expert on English, but still there are a couple of English grammer tidbits you can learn from me.

Being a software engineer automatically means that you are considered an expert in all fields. So yesterday my cousin asked me a question on english grammer. He asked,

“How do I change the following sentence to passive voice?”

I made a mistake

It was long time since I tackled such a difficult English grammer question. After thinking deeply for 5 minutes, I replied:

I was made by a mistake

I stay in Kerala, southern state of India. Kerala is unique in many respects. I won’t go into details but in short, day to day life here is a challenge!

Today I came back from work early since I was not feeling well. Summer is at its peak and there was no electricity when I came home. My father told me that power was down from morning. I called electricity office to check on the status. Here is the conversation,

Me: Hello
Electricity office guy: Hello, electricity office

Me: We don’t have power in area “xyz”
Electricity office guy: We have switched off electricity in the entire “abc” area

Me: Why? What happened?
Electricity office guy: We are painting the transformer

Me: eh? painting? oh! When will it be over?
Electricity office guy: No idea, probably by evening

As you can guess, power came back after 12 hours of painting! You can imagine how challenging it is to run a business around here

I don’t think any explanation is needed for the following one!

It is probably photoshopped, but too good to miss. You can check out other similar ones here.

An English professor wrote the words:

“A woman without her man is nothing”,
On the chalkboard and asked his students to punctuate it correctly.

All of the males in the class wrote:
“A woman, without her man, is nothing.”

All the females in the class wrote:
“A woman: without her, man is nothing.”

Do you know that internet is so advanced that now you can chat with God? Well, that is what iGod offers! It is very similar to Eliza, the therapist. I had a chat with God and it wasn’t much fun

Me:
 hello god
God:
Hello child. What is your name?
Me:
 i am jayson
God:
  Nice to meet you,  jayson.
Me:
 I want more money
God:
Why do you want  it?
Me:
 to be happy, god
God:
Are you  happy god ?
Me:
 what the?
God:
Are you surprised?
Me:
 yes i am you sounds like a 2 year old
God:
I wouln’t have known.  Do you mean your name is  me sounds like a 2 year old.
Me:
 ok forget it
God:
OK Thanks for trying to explain that to me.  I hear you.
Me:
 I repent
God:
That is interesting:  jayson said   repent.
Me:
 I repent I came to this site
God:
Thanks for the information:  jayson said   repent he or she came to this site.
Me:
 bye
God:
Bye.

You can catch a bit more intelligent conversation here.