Brandon Silverstein

Don’t register .US domain names with Dreamhost

I use Dreamhost to register domain names for websites that I build and manage for myself and for clients. I hardly use Dreamhost’s website hosting services, but since I’ve registered a number of domains with them throughout the years, it was easier to continue to use Dreamhost as a registrar and keep all domain name registrations under one account. I can register a domain name, set the auto-renew option to yearly, and Dreamhost will automatically renew the domain for me without any action needed on my part. Or so I thought.

I have a number of .US domains registered with Dreamhost, and on three separate occasions in the last year, Dreamhost has failed to properly renew these domains for me, even though I always receive a bill for the renewal at the time Dreamhost “renews” the domain. The .US domains always expire and the nameservers are changed until I write Dreamhost, tell them about the issue, and wait for a response from their support team. Because the nameservers are changed without my consent, website and e-mail services stop working for the domain. It is beyond frustrating having to deal with this each time a .US domain is supposed to auto-renew.

The first time this happened (July), support told me “We are working with our registry to resolve this issue” and “I am confident this will be resolved within a year (before the domain renews).” The second time this happened (September), support told me “I sincerely apologize for the problems you’ve been experiencing with your account :/” and refunded my account the amount of the domain renewal.

This issue popped up again yesterday. I submitted a support ticket to Dreamhost about a .US domain that didn’t renew, and I’m still waiting for a response from support over 16 hours after the ticket was submitted.

I won’t be registering any additional .US domain names with Dreamhost, and will immediately transfer all .US domain names I have registered with them to another registrar once the pending issue I am having is resolved. If you need to register a .US domain with Dreamhost, here’s one word of advice. Don’t.

Update: After a second support ticket and a tweet to Dreamhost support, I finally received a response over 18 hours after my original support ticket was submitted. Dreamhost refunded my account the amount of the renewal and “manually submitted the domain’s renewal.” That means the domain in question hadn’t been submitted for renewal for almost two weeks, even though I had been charged for the renewal. Very disappointing.

Why I Won’t Support an IMAX Theater in El Paso

As I frequently do when I wake up in the morning, I grab my iPhone and start catching up on all of the news I missed during the middle of the night. I always visit the El Paso Times website, and I was shocked, appalled, and extremely angered by an article that was published this morning.

Headline: “Premiere Cinema to bring IMAX to town in ‘13”

No. NO. ABSOLUTELY NOT. I am not going to support creating a new entertainment option that increases El Paso’s quality of life, even though El Paso lacks behind every other large Texas city in quality of life and entertainment options.

Not convinced? Here are my reasons:

1. Too Soon

“Construction of an IMAX theater auditorium, with a six-story, 75-foot-wide screen and about 420 seats, is projected to begin by early next year, and it could be in operation by next summer, said Gary Moore, Premiere CEO.”

Construction to begin early next year? In operation by next summer? Whoa, whoa, whoa. That ambitious schedule is not nearly enough time to spread false information about the new theater and have community forums to complain about it. I’d like the construction schedule to be pushed back until 2014 at the earliest, so the naysayers can have plenty of time to find something wrong with the entire project.

2. Location

“An IMAX is expected to be added to Premiere Cinema’s Bassett Place theater complex next year.”

Why is Bassett Place getting the new IMAX theater? It seems like the Westside, Northeast, Lower Valley, and Eastside were not even considered as viable options for the theater. I’m not even sure an IMAX theater can fit on the existing Bassett Place site.

I went to Google Maps and found an aerial shot of an IMAX theater in Dallas. Because I’m a photoshop expert, I superimposed the theater on top of the proposed site of the theater in El Paso.

IMAX Dallas

Bassett Place

Bassett Place with IMAX

I don’t think the new theater will fit. Also, where will I park?

3. Destruction of Existing Theaters

“Premiere will probably replace two auditoriums in its 18-screen Bassett theater and add the IMAX auditorium, which also will require a higher roof to accommodate IMAX’s huge screen.”

Are you kidding me? Let me get this straight. Two perfectly good, fully functioning theaters are going to be replaced to make room for an IMAX theater? Not on my watch. Why can’t these existing theaters be remodeled to support IMAX films? It can’t be that hard to make the roofs higher and the walls wider on the two theaters that are going to be unnecessarily replaced.

4. Private Investors Make Money

“‘El Paso has been on IMAX’s radar for a number of years. It’s one of the largest markets in the United States without an IMAX theater,’ [Gary] Moore said from his Big Spring, Texas, office.”

I don’t know about you, but I don’t want El Paso on anyone’s “radar.” El Paso needs to stay off everyone’s radar, otherwise more tourists will visit the city and more money will be spent inside the city by those tourists. I’m also not going to support a private company like Premiere that spends their own money securing the rights to build a new IMAX theater, only to turn around and make a profit by selling tickets to watch movies inside the new theater. Very corrupt if you ask me. Maybe Premiere would take the bold step of donating all profits generated by the theater to local charitable organizations. I doubt any private company would do that though.

As you can clearly see from my well thought-out arguments, the construction of a new IMAX theater in El Paso is a horrible idea. I’d like to ask City Council to add Proposition 4 (The Construction of a New IMAX Theater) to the ballot in November so the citizens of El Paso can decide if they want the new theater. We’ve waited years for a IMAX theater. Why can’t we wait six more weeks to decide?

Update: This blog post has taken on a life of its own. Thank you to everyone who has read, shared, and commented. Just to be clear, my post is a satire on the arguments presented by opponents to the ballpark plan. I fully support the ballpark plan, the quality of life bonds, the IMAX Theater, and anything else that makes the city of El Paso a better place to live, work, and raise a family. My post was meant to generate discussion by both sides, and it sure has generated a lot of discussion!

Update #2: Gary Moore, CEO of Premiere Companies, sent me the following email in response to my blog:

Hysterical IMAX post Brandon, love it. But there’s another reason to oppose IMAX coming to El Paso, the building alone necessary to accommodate a 6-story screen will have the undesirable effect of altogether blocking your view of the mountains, a major downer for anyone standing directly behind it wanting to see them.

Huge thanks to Gary for allowing me to post his email. Gary understands satire!

An Event Apart Austin and The Cab Driver

I was lucky enough to attend my first An Event Apart conference last week in Austin, Texas. I always enjoy the smaller web conferences better than the craziness that is SXSW, and An Event Apart was no exception. The twelve speakers were phenomenal, and I can say that I learned something new and took away something important from each presentation. A huge thank you goes out to Jeffrey Zeldman, Eric Meyer, and the rest of the An Event Apart team for organizing and putting on a great three day event.

After the conference, I arrived back in El Paso inspired and motivated from everything that I learned. But I also gained extra inspiration and motivation from an unexpected source right after the conference wrapped up.

Luke Wroblewski’s exceptional “Designing for Mobile and Beyond” session ended at 4:00, so Octavio (my good friend / fellow web designer) and I went to the hotel lobby to catch a cab to the airport. We shared a cab with three other An Event Apart attendees. If you’ve ever been to Austin, you know that rush hour traffic is an absolute nightmare, so I was prepared for a long, slow cab ride.

After the cab driver loaded up his van with our luggage and we were in our seats, he gave us a proposition. He said that if we were able to guess what country in Africa he was from, he would take us to the airport for free. But if we guessed wrong, he would double our fare. I’m not sure if he could even legally do that, but our group politely declined the offer. He gave us a hint about where he was from (something about an Eddie Murphy movie), and someone in our group correctly guessed that he was from Cameroon. We could have had a free ride to the airport!

As we were slowly making our way to the airport in stop-and-go traffic, our cab driver then asked if we wanted to play a game. He said there were 52 countries in Africa, and if we could name at least 46 of them, we could add our names to his cab’s “roof of fame.” Anyone who had accomplished this feat wrote their name in permanent marker on the roof of the cab. Our group showed our lack of African geography knowledge by naming only about 20 countries, but our cab driver gave us hints about the other countries and we had fun trying to decipher his clues.

He then moved on to asking us about United States and Texas trivia. We learned that William Taft is the only US President to later serve as Chief Justice of the Supreme Court, and that four states in the US have the same first letter as their capital city (Delaware, Hawaii, Indiana, and Oklahoma.) After learning a few more interesting trivia facts, we arrived at the airport and our cab ride had ended. Our fare was $33, and our group pooled together $50 to give to the driver. He earned every penny of his $17 tip.

Being a cab driver is not the best job in the world. You sit around in a car for at least eight hours a day and drive complete strangers around to random locations throughout a city, usually in bad traffic. It has to get extremely monotonous, boring, and frustrating. However, it seemed like our cab driver decided at some point a long time ago that if he was going to be a cab driver, he was going to be the best damn cab driver he could be. He was friendly, outgoing, entertaining, and made a forty minute cab ride in rush hour traffic go by in the blink of an eye. The experience was inspiring and eye-opening.

Being a web designer and business owner has its up and downs. It’s easy to feel overwhelmed with the fast-paced nature of the web design industry, and dealing with clients can be both rewarding and challenging. It’s also very easy to let your business run you instead of you running your business, which can be a killer of motivation and productivity.

Before An Event Apart, I was feeling a bit unfocused and unmotivated, but the conference and the cab driver gave me the spark I needed to get excited about web design again. The twelve wonderful speakers at An Event Apart motivated me to become a better web designer and business owner, but the cab driver motivated me to be the best damn web designer and business owner I could be.