3 days ago servage did it again(i just didn’t have time to post it up). None of my websites were loading, or they loaded and a 404(Not found) Error message popped up. Well this pissed me off and i almost started swearing, but kept it pretty cool.

Here’s my support ticket:

2008-07-07 10:39 Customer

Subject:How on earth can you be so incompetents? (wanted to put such..but because i was very pissed i put “so”)

okay this really does it, for more than a hour either my websites aren’t loading or

Not Found
The requested URL was not found on this server.
Servage.net Clustered Webhosting running enhanced Apache Webserver

appears

look, there’s a limit to everything and you can say that i endured quite much from servage’s messups(the most important one being servage hacked and not letting customers know about it, i had to read on a forum that the passwords were in fact reset due to a hack, and that the nice trojans that were popping up on my websites occurred also because of the same thing)

so, in max 30minutes i want to see my websites up and running without any issue

In about 2 hours i got a reply(yeah, they are bragging about 30minute support reply. the support is getting worse day by day just as the services do):

2008-07-07 12:20 Support - John

Please check it now. Your sites are loading fine now.

Kind Regards
John, Support
Servage Hosting

Yeah..this pretty much drew the line, as soon as my hosting package expires i’m getting out of there.

__________________

Check out some other “cool” posts about servage:

Some incompetents work @ servage? - April 16th, 2008

Servage has some really incompetent employees - February 22nd, 2008

Servage upgrades accounts to 510GB space and 5010GB bandwidth, but forgets about a “tiny” problem -  January 13th, 2008

SH*T Happens - servage - December 9th, 2007

Servage hosting - Problems over problems -  October 23rd, 2007

The july coupon just appeared and as usual it provides 0.88$ OFF on new domain registration (doesn’t work for renewals)

The coupon code is: GLOWINGSKY

The coupon will reduce the price of a newly registered domain from 9.29$ to 8.41$.

Also, when buying a new domain or renewing/transfering a domain you can get a FREE PositiveSSL Certificate(Limited offer)

Taking a quick look at the logo you can notice that templates.com combines fun with professionalism. Maybe this is why i like it more than TemplateMonster. Template Monster focuses way too much on seriosity and always jumps directly to the point, while Templates captures its customers by using fun elements in its design.

Templates.com has a great variety of products you can choose from, starting from  templates to 3D Models they got ‘em all.

Purchasing goes on a credit basis, 1 credit = 1$, this means that if a template costs 66 Credits than the price in $ is 66 USD.

Templates.com offers full customization of any template to make it fit your website like a glove. Sure it costs some extra $, but you know that you have a perfectly working template personalized just for you, and which will most likely attract new customers. By this way your template won’t be “just an ordinary theme”, it will be YOUR template.

Okay, remember that the title of the post says: “Templates.com - One of the best premium and free templates & resources site” . I always like to leave the best to the end(it’s like when you eat, you leave desert last, and not eat it before the soup).

Templates.com has lots of premium freebies which can be downloaded at no cost, just by registering an account after which you can go ahead and start downloading Free 3D Models , Free Web templates , Free Wallpapers , Free Illustrations .

There’s a reason why i bolded the Free Web templates link. Although they only have 3 free templates the quality of them compensates the quantity. Trust me, you will find that high-quality templates on very few websites on the web.

Simply add the free items to your cart and proceed to checkout. After checking out your downloades will be activated within seconds and you can instantly download them from your Account Download panel.

(click to enlarge)

I noticed that many of the free resources have lots of views and few downloads, for example  a very high-quality free template has like 1900 views and 87 downloads. using some basic maths we can calculate that only 4.57% of those who viewed the template also downloaded it. Maybe they are afraid of registering an account or i don’t know what, but here’s my advice: don’t make the same mistake!

I got this email yesterday which pissed me off, and pretty much ruined my good mood for a while:

Dear Sirs/Madam:

Good Morning.  I am writing you this message today, because it appears that the website(s): http://www.perfectlovestories.com; http://www.thaslayer.com; and http://wpthemesfree.com are harassing me online; and using my own name to advertise their website: www.perfectlovestories.com at all major search engines to get a high ranking for them.

Go to google, and see what they have done to me:  put in my name: bonnieviatorlaux

That is a terrible think to do to anyone.  That is an unhuman thing to do to an another human being…don’t you think so…who are you, and why are you harassing me????.

What have I done to you all…?  I do not understand your reasonings, so I am contacting the police to assist me in this problem with you….  They will be in touch with you for ruining me online with my online business!

Thank you for your time.  If you are not involved with harassing me, then the website: www.loveperfectstories.com is.  Your website is shown below on this person’s website, so that is why I have contact you today.

Thank you for your help in this matter; and to stop the harassment from this individual.  I have not done this person any harm to be harming me in this way…..over and over again!

May God Bless You, and help, whoever is involved in harrassing me…..

Regards,
Bonnie Viator Laux

At first I taught that its some regular spam message of notification that i won 60 mill $ on a lottery, where from more than 100 mill people i got picked,  but after reading it i noticed that its not spam.

I rewrote my reply email like 3 times, because in the 1st one i used indecent sentences, in the second indecent word, and i finally got the 3rd one written in a clean manner, lol.

Here’s My reply:

What? i’m harassing you online?

do you realize what you just said below?

i RELEASE FREE WORDPRESS THEMES -> http://www.thaslayer.com/free-themes/ which can be downloaded and used by anyone

my wordpress themes have a link back to my blog in the footer

the wpthemesfree link is added by wpthemesfree for distribuiting my theme

http://www.perfectlovestories.com is using my free Loveblog template, you can notice the footer:

“using LoveBlog theme by ThaSlayer.”

as said above anyone can download my themes and use them freely, if you have an issue with the owner of http://www.perfectlovestories.com go ahead and contact him

so, before you start making accusations make sure you mail the right guy

- Tom

In a short while the very much harassed Bonnie Viator Laux got back to me:

No, sir, I don’t know, what I did at your website, except write you a message for help…I am not familiar with word themes…..???  I don’t know how they work; please explain to me??  What did I do…??

Sorry to bother you, again; but I don’t know how to contact the owner to http://www.perfectlovestories.com   It is a mystery, as to where they are….???

I saw your website name on the bottom of their website: http://www.perfectlovestories.com ; so, I hoped that you could help me, somehow….; I am trying everything to contact them with no good results; you were my last hope….

I am very sorry, if I harmed anything in any way; I did not mean to do that; I was only trying to get in touch with the person that owns: http://www.perfectlovestories.com; and I told you that on my message, and; I thought that you would/could direct me…??  That is my only motive…

Can you help me, sir…?  I don’t think for sure….; I didn’t say that you were harassing me….; I did not know for sure, so I was covering all basis, and; I said that to you in my email message to you…that’s all!

I am a good person, and I don’t know why www.perfectlovestories.com is harassing me??  I don’t know who they are…thought that you might - could help me…that’s all…

Sorry for the bother.  If I was truly trying to do someone harm; I would not leave my email address.  The is why I can’t get in touch with http://www.perfectlovestories.com ; they are not leaving contact information on their website….

May God Bless You, Sir/Madam!

Regards,
Bonnie Laux

Okay, now really what the fuck is wrong with these kind  of people? They see a link to a website on an other website and they suddenly contact every website owner which has a link back from a specific site. Also, does she think that she’s the only Bonnie Viator Laux in the whole wide world? Jeez, these people make me sick.

I blacklisted her email:this means good bye and fair well.

I’ve been avoiding this for a long time, but on monday a friend of mine came over with some Movie DVDs and guess what? all 5 DVDs were the Harry Potter Movies.

I said to myself:“blah it can’t be worst than some crappy movies that i saw” so i watched all 5 this week.

The First Movie - Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone was pretty good:

A young kid who lives with his uncle because his parents died finds out that he’s a wizard and goes to Hogwarts Wizard academy where he will find his 2 best friends during all the movies: Ron and Hermione.

He fights Lord Voldemord who will be killed(sort of), and the movie will end with the triumph of the  Gryffindor group.

The Second Movie - Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets was pretty boring because it contained lots of useless elements which were there just to lenghten the movie:

Harry Potter finds out that the Chamber of Secrets was reopened again, he finds the journal of Tom Riddlemore of who we will find out that he’s actually Lord Voldemord. A big snake is loose in Hogwarts petrifying students, but luckaly Harry Potter(damn it’s so typical that always the main character figures out stuff) will find the entrance to the Chamber of Secrets and he will kill the giant basilisk(snake thingy) and kill Voldermord(again).

The Third Movie is called Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban - pretty good movie because new characters are introduced and has a great ending:

Hogwarts is on full alert because Syrius Black escaped from Azkaban. Harry has a new teacher in defense against dark magic. Harry thinks that Syrius was the traitor of who his parents died. The contrary will be proven in the end, and he will find out that Syrius was his fathers best friend, and that his new professor in defense against dark magic is a werewolf.

Harry discovers his true mighty power and gets rid of lots and lots of nasty dementors(normally a guy can hardly banish ONE dementor, but because he’s the main character he pwnes all of them at once!)

Big family reunion, but syrius has to leave because he’s still wanted.

The Forth Movie - Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire , now this was my favorite movie, this really kept me in front of the screen till the end of it.

In this part even more new characters are introduced because the tournament of the 3 Wizards is held at Hogwarts. In the tournament 4 wizards will participate(Harry being the 4th, special kid again) and of course Harry will win the competition and do couragious deeds and saves a bunch of other people also.

He gets trapped, and by this way thanks to his blood(special again) Voldermord returns to start the domination again.

He escapes, but one of his competitors(who became his friend) dies so all the characters in the scene start crying. He wants to revenge his friend but can’t because he isn’t strong enough.

The Fifth Movie -Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix , in this movie Harry gets into a Top secret wizard organization(like CIA in the real world) who fight against evil.

Voldermord breaks out some deadly prisoners from Azkaban and builds his army to start dominating. Harry teaches some guys and girls from his class advanced magic skills and they are building their own army against Voldermord.

Syrius gets killed, but in this battle the good will triumph. The war isn’t over yet and will continue in the next movie.

__________________

As i read 3 more movies are coming out: - Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince , Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows: Part I , Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows: Part II (holy crap…3 more movies to endure, good thing my girlfriend thinks the same about it as i do).These guys really don’t know when its time to stop.

The overal conclusion is that compared to Lord Of the Rings Harry Potter is crap, i have no idea how so many people are “so in love” with the series.

My Advice is: Don’t watch the series unless you got nothing better to do wasting your time.

It all started with a Template sale thread on DP which i checked out and accessed the template preview website, everything loaded fine, Kaspersky didn’t pop up blocking the page.

After a while i saw dangys’s post:

Avg 8.0 Picked up multiple virus

I noticed from his screen shot that he’s using IE, so i jumped up in defense of Kaspersky:

strange…i’m using firefox and Kaspersky 7 and nothing popped up, most probably it’s an IE exploit(yet an other reason to switch to firefox)

Than Astroman gave the final stroke:

I’m using Firefox, it has nothing to do with the browser.

This determined me to ask a few of my friends to check the page(i asked 3 friends, they were all using AVG Internet security), and they all told me that their AV goes crazy when they access the page.

There was a similar issue back a month ago when Servage got hacked and almost all clusters got infected with some trojan. Luckaly BETng4U noticed it with AVG and told me about it so i got rid of it as quicky as possible(trust me you don’t want to get on stopbadware.org’s  list because than you can kiss good bye to your visitors.

Today i formatted, reinstalled Windows and installed AVG Internet Security, so far it looks great, i’m looking forward to its prestation.

When your using payment processors like paypal than you can never be too safe. It’s better to be safe than sorry, trust me on this.

I got quite a few friends who have bigger/smaller companies and some of them complain about some of their employees. They say that when they are now in a room with them but in their office some of the employees don’t work, they surf the web, download stuffs, and chat on Instant Messengers.

Now these are the employees who cause loss of profit and  decrease the productivity. The only way to get back on the right track is to get proof that they aren’t working and kick them out from the company.

My friend Julia owns a small company and has 12 employees. She didn’t have any complaints so today i went over and setup a cool application named StaffCop to do a little test.

Take a look at StaffCop’s features:

Staffcop has lots and lots of features that can really benefit the employer and help him make up his decision on kicking out someone from his company or not.

Real Time screen capture

Staffcop can capture screenshots as often as you wish just by pressing the View Information button, this means that if you press the button 30times a minute 30 new screenshots will be captured. While your away from your company you can schedule reports by email.

I setup the program on Mihai’s PC, a kid who works at Julia’s company as a support representative. He’s 18 years old and a really big Counter-Strike player. I went into Julia’s office, waited about 40minutes and BAM! i cought Mihai in the act playing counter strike.

I showed Julia the images, and she said: “It’s 3PM, it is his lunch time now, he can spend it as he wants” For me it felt both good and both bad when she told me this. Bad: i didn’t catch an employee in the act, Good: I now know that her employee is working as he should.

View of open programs

You can take a good look the the applications that are currently running on your employee’s PC. The application display list is well ordered and structured, and by this way your job gets a lot easier.

Monitor Open websites and Instant Messengers

Check the date and time when your employee accessed a certain website and take a closer look at his instant messenger logs.

Staffcop also acts as a keylogger so all keystrokes in instant messengers are logged and available for you to see.

Fully Featured Keylogger

Did i say above that it logs only keystrokes in instant messenger? I meant that it logs ALL KEY STROKES! Key strokes are also organized and their functions are displayed in the list.

File changes and events Logging

Staffcop can record the file changes made by your employee(opening/editing/deleting/modifying files) and create advanced event logs.

Phew, the above features are just a part of the features that are available in StaffCop. For a full Feature List visit the StaffCop Homepage.

This is what i like about it. It’s small, lightweight yet effective and configuring and setting it up is an easy job even for a newbie in computers.

It’s nice to hear that other good things are happening to the world besides em going on a trip to greece on 11th July.

Apple announced today that the new iPhone 3G will be released on 11th July!

3G Implementation

The brand new iPhone 3G has some super sleek advanced features that will surely grab your attention!

For this occasion Apple setup a guided tour of their new product, which you can watch online. There are 3 types of streams(small/medium/large) so that even a guy with dial up can take the tour. - Note that you have to install Quicktime player in order to take the tour.

With the new 3G system incorporated you will be able to reach speeds way higher(almost double) than on 2G EDGE networks!  Now multitasking is taken to a brand new level, thanks to the advancement of 3G which allows both voice and data transfer in same time.

More About the 3G feature ->

Access to App Store

The new iPhone will give you access to the upcoming App Store from where you will be able to enhance your iphone by downloading(buying) applications or games for it.

More about the App Store ->

The best business phone

The guys at Apple taught about the businessman also, and now iPhone supports Microsoft Exchange ActiveSync, giving you the possibility to organize your contacts, send mails, manage your meetings with enhanced security.

The email client can read HTML and has support for Microsoft Word, Excel, and PowerPoint, PDF, JPEG, and now iWork files.

More about the Enterprise features ->

GPS Mapping

iPhone 3G gives you the possibility to determine your exact location and get directions just as  a fully featured GPS system. The maps are grabbed from Google Maps and they are displayed in a high-quality. Just as at Google Maps you will be able to switch between 3 types of views: map view, satellite view, and a hybrid view of both.

More about GPS Mapping ->

Above i’ve presented you he shiny new features of the upcoming iPhone 3G. The only thing that will determine you to buy or not buy the product will be its price(a small tip: try to resist the temptation for a few months because its price will probably drop).

Do you know what day is it today? It’s prize give away day!

Although the digicam’s box got a bit dusty the camera is in excellent shape, and with the warranty seal intat on it of course(the warranty applies world wide, because it’s offered by the producer(BENQ) and you will get all reciepts and legally signed stuff that i got from the store with it)

A total Number of 1771 IDs were gathered and they were all entered in the draw, but there can be only one winner which is gh0ul_1@[email hidden].com

I’ve sent him a mail about 5 minutes ago, and as soon as he replies i will edit my post with more details on him.

Here’s an actual print screen of the draw:

His ID number is 155, for some reason most of the IDs in the top 25 were IDs with digits between 0 and 180, most of the 1000+ IDs got to the middle of the randomly ordered list.

I would like to thank everyone for participating, and keep heads up because in about 3 weeks when i get back home from Greece(i’m leaving on the 11th) a new contest will start!

I don’t think that there’s someone among website owners who hasn’t heard of TemplateMonster. With the ellections coming up they decided to make a holiday lottery.

Details about the lottery

The 4th of July Special consists in the official Template Monster Ballot, meaning that there are presented 2 template candidates for America-the-beautiful. All you have to do is enter your name, email address and cast your vote on the theme that you like.

Both templates are animated templates. The first one has a  Swish animated part(an application similar to Flash, which can create cross platform presentations and after the presentation is ready you can save it in .swf format) and the second one is a FULL Flash site.

By voting your email address will be recorded, and once the elections are over those who voted for the winning template will participate in the lottery. You have till 9th of July to cast your vote, and trust me it’s worth it(read  a bit below).

I voted for the first one. That swirling flag really got my attention, also i prefer darker colors over bright ones. The other template looked a bit too standard with all the gray used by the author.

Also during the period of June 26th - July 9th 2008 you have 20% discount on both themes, and all the themes that are in the Patriotic Templates Category.

Getting to the fun part…

TemplateMonster wants to show its appreciation for the voters, meaning that everyone who votes will get the Patriotic Iconset for FREE.

Now trust me on this, this isn’t something that you want to miss out, because the Patriotic Iconset costs 55$! It’s like getting free candy. All you have to do is cast your vote which can be done in about 60 seconds(considering the time for previewing the templates).

The icons will be instantly mailed to you and they come in .PSD(photoshop source) and .PNG(fireworks source).

I don’t think that it would be very wise to say no to 55$ which you can get for a minute of your time