Archives for April, 2007

This is taking a bit longer than I thought. But: I received a metric ton’s worth of wonderful e-mails offering hosting services and/or advice. I finally decided to settle on the good folks at Domenca. They were kind, generous and immediately ready to help. I never thought I’d live to see the day when Slovenes could outperform Americans in customer service… but here we are. Miracles do happen.

But now there’s a zettatonne of stuff to do like: upgrading wordpress, fixing the archives, doing some urgently-needed site modifications, getting sloshed for May Day. My plate is full.

Luckily for everyone (especially me) some major-league hitters will be stepping in to help, including Vidmar, Matija, and my good friend Mitja. It’s like some kind of dream team, so I think it will go well. Please just bear with me a little bit longer. I should be back in the swing of things after the May Day holidays.

Sincerely,

Mikey Mike and the Funky Bunch

Don’t believe some of the gushing things you read about Media Temple: they just fleeced the hell out of me and treated me like a jerk for the whole ride.

Here’s the story, morning glory: They’ve been my host for two years now and during that time I’ve never had reason to complain. They occasionally had some downtime but it was never bad enough to make me want to leave. If you look closely, you can even find their logo at the bottom of this page. I was especially happy with their enormous bandwidth limits because I thought I wouldn’t have to worry about “too much traffic” or any other such nonsense. I was wrong.

Last week I got a whopping bill for some mysterious “GPU overage” — something I hadn’t even heard of until recently. I had no idea what hit me but assumed that we could work something out. I guess I was expecting them to be interested in solving the problem, or doing something other than say: “Yeah, and?”

But they weren’t. What they were interested in was treating me like some unwashed leprous asshole with SuperAIDS. When I tried figuring out what the problem was, their technical support guessed that it “could be some Wordpress misconfiguration.” When I called them up and asked them if there was any way to slam the brakes on the (currently-still-ticking) meter, they curtly said no. I had been punk’d.

Searching around online, I then found out that, like John Lennon: I’m not the only one. Media Temple apparently makes a nice little business out of doing this. (To give you an idea of how much: My total GPU overage fee is nearly 25% more than an entire year’s worth of hosting. Awesome, huh?)

A call to their billing department was equally hostile. For a company that regularly flouts how much fun they are, they all seemed to be monosyllabic cranks. When I told them I would probably have to end my service, the guy indifferently told me to “go do it online.” Not that I would expect him to cry or anything, but I expected at least some effort to convince me to stay.

A case in point: I remember a few years ago I had a problem with Amazon. It was partly my fault and partly theirs but they sent me an e-mail apologizing and offered to make things right. I’ve been deeply loyal to them ever since.

Media Temple, on the other hand, has something more akin to Iron-Curtain-era customer service. The fact that they seem to enjoy sending big-ass surprise bills to customers means that they’re not the right service for me. Or for anyone who doesn’t like nasty surprises for that matter.

So in the coming days I’ll be scrambling to find a new and decent host; let me say thanks to everyone so far who’s offered some help or advice to that end, and apologies to everyone for this whole mess.

If everything goes well, I’ll be able to scratch off the red MT logo by the end of this month.

“Got a little knot here.”

First, thanks to everyone who wrote in with suggestions and offers of help. It was encouraging.

My current host wrote that my problem “could be some misconfiguration in Wordpress” and advised me to “track it down and stop it.” Considering that they’ve already billed me for my misfortune and are threatening to continue, I guess I don’t really have a choice. I’ll try and settle this as soon as I can.

And if I can’t, there’s always this.

Some selected quotes from O Brother, Where Art Thou?

Damn, I’m in a tight spot. I got a notification yesterday from my host saying that I’m way over my GPU limit. And why? I don’t know. According to their GPU FAQ, it’s exceedingly rare:

Based on the analysis of over 10,000 random sites, we emphatically show that the vast majority of sites (99.97%) run perfectly fine, even under serious traffic, and never exceed their GPU allocation.

Not only did I exceed it, I exceeded it by 150%. I’m currently communicating with them and will try to beg for amnesty and find out what went wrong. My guess is that some script is causing the problem or perhaps a Wordpress plug-in. It’s true that I had a major surge in traffic this month — thanks to him — but the additional million hits in March didn’t put a dent in, say, my bandwidth limit. In fact, it’s because of my high bandwidth limit (500 GB/month) that I thought my days of worrying were over. That’s partly why I was so surprised by this notification. Suddenly I’m in a tight spot.

To make matters worse, I recently lost my prized webmaster and consigliere Don Heck, who is on sick leave. So I turn to you:

1) Can anyone recommend a good host, in case things go sour with my current one?
2) Can anyone recommend a web-genius, who can help do some technical fixes to this site? There are some major malfunctions that still need to be sorted out.

If you like, you can also write me an e-mail. The address is on the about page.

Damn, I’m in a tight spot.

Have a great weekend!

Some Rutar price tags are full of conflicting information.

Here’s a tip for Austrian retailer Rutar: Invest in some permanent markers. You know the black ones? The ones you can use to cover up the original price of something you’ve marked up? Those.

We bought a mosquito net there yesterday (don’t ask) and the price tag on the outside said €16.99. According to the tag (see above) it had been marked down from €19.99, meaning a 15% discount. Fine and dandy. But as soon as we got home and opened it we discovered the original price tag packed inside and lo it was €12. In other words: it was actually a 30% mark-up disguised as a discount.

I’m not saying I’m shocked or anything. I just expect companies to at least keep up appearances. I mean come on. I feel stupid enough buying something crazy like a mosquito net — don’t make me feel even dumber by letting me discover just how much I’ve just been fleeced.

Like I said: A simple black marker would be enough to redact the €12 and make it the perfect crime. Brazenly letting me see it — I don’t know. It’s like Jack the Ripper sending his victim’s kidneys to Scotland Yard. It’s just pointless taunting.

The dragon just got evicted from the castle for failure to make rent.

I recently heard a story about a woman here in Maribor who tried to sell her house and buy an apartment in Ljubljana. After searching for a few weeks she gave up, realizing that she couldn’t afford to move there.

The horror stories from Ljubljana’s real estate market have been steadily increasing since I came here. And with property prices in Slovenia said to be increasing by 10% to 30% annually, I’m sure I’ll hear many more of them in the years to come.

I found this list of property prices in European cities (thanks pirano!) to be a bit shocking. Specifically, I’m surprised that Ljubljana is approaching the likes of Vienna and Berlin. And here it’s important to keep in mind that metropolitan Vienna is bigger than all of Slovenia combined. And it’s especially important to remember that Slovenian wages are about a third of those in Germany.

It’s a problem that’s not just haunting Ljubljana, but the whole country. As some researchers at Maribor University recently pointed out:

Slovenians are paid significantly less than Germans and Italians but are forced to pay only a little less for their goods and services… The convergence of Slovenian prices to those of Germany and Italy is much greater than the convergence of wages.

In other words, Slovenia’s got the worst of both worlds: Western European prices and Eastern European wages. I suppose it’s what the tourist board means when they talk about Slovenia being at “the crossroads of Europe.”

Also worth mentioning: Last year, Channel 4 picked Slovenia as one of the best places to invest in real estate. To be fair, there are indeed some great and generously priced places to be found here. But I wonder if any of them are left in Ljubljana.

Original image altered to better reflect reality.

I’ve decided to devote some attention to the WMD that is the Slovenian language. Other bloggers, like cookie and Alcessa, have already written up Slovenian lessons on their sites. I want to try a different approach: To focus on the horrors that prevent almost every foreigner from mastering it.

I say “almost every” because apparently there was one lady who learned it once. I don’t know her name but people sometimes tell me about her. She’s like a Slovenian version of bigfoot: some mythical creature that arrived here and now speaks flawless, perfectly accented Slovene. But Slovenian sasquatches aside, most foreigners here are lousy with the language. They either speak a few rudimentary phrases despite years of living here (”One beer please”) or (like me) they butcher the language with incorrect grammar and then taint it even further with a local dialect. (The last time I was in Ljubljana, David laughed a lot at my Styrian-corroded Slovene.)

At any rate, here’s my first installment of why you will never learn Slovene.

#1) Singular and Plural

And no, this isn’t going to be what you think. Slovene is famously difficult for its “dual” case, but I don’t have any major problem with it. Basically, if there are two objects they take a different verb and the nouns conjugate differently. It’s a lot of work, but fine. Let’s do some counting and see where the problem is:

Tukaj je stol.
(Here’s a chair)

Tukaj sta dva stola.
(Here are two chairs — Note that we’ve added an “a” at the end of stol (chair) because there are two. The verb has also changed to sta a dual form of “are”. So far so good, yes?)

Tukaj so trije stoli
(Here are three chairs — Now we’re into plural. Note again that the chairs now have an “i” ending to reflect plural. The verb has also gone to plural: so is used for “are”)

But this is where things get interesting, because even if you don’t speak Slovene you should have a pretty decent chance of continuing. Especially if I reveal this to you:

Tukaj so Å¡tirje stoli
(Here are four chairs)

Now. If I told you that the word for five is pet, what would you guess is next? Maybe this?

Tukaj so petje stoli
(Here are five chairs)

That’s what I would guess. That’s what any sane person would guess. But of course that’s not the case, because for reasons that are beyond comprehension: while three and four are plural, five and above suddenly and inexplicably revert to singular! Correct is this:

Tukaj je pet stolov
(Here is five chairs — Note the new ending, too: it’s now -ov)

So, here’s a very simplified summary:

Oh, the horror. The horror.

But keep this in mind: This goes for masculine Slovene nouns only. And there are various cases as well. There are also feminine and neutral nouns, each with their own endings. And each of them boast their own endings for any preceding adjectives. Unlike in English, where “five” is always “five” — in Slovene nouns are always altered. Even proper names. A movie with Jack Nicholson is “z Jackom Nicholsonom.” Don’t even ask me what it would be if the movie starred five Jack Nicholsons. Because all I know is that I will never know.

Kill da wabbit?

Easter in Slovenia involves two losing propositions, either 1) eating the ten kilos of ham that your host has optimistically calculated you will eat, or 2) Not eating an entire mountain of meat. The first involves you stuffing yourself to the point where your esophagus is completely airtight. You only stop eating because it’s physically impossible to continue. But even then your host will ask to take “one more piece” because he was cooking all morning and maybe if you push hard enough you can stuff it in somehow.

The second proposition — to refuse to eat meat, as suggested by the country’s one and only vegan: the President — is the equivalent of saying to your host: “Fuck you and your family and fuck Easter.”

In short, it’s a lose-lose situation and this year, unsurprisingly, I lost again.

Happy Easter!

Another round-up of some good stuff from Slovenian bloggers:

—> Nina Osenar - Moment Like This Video (Reader request)
The new music video from Slovenia’s most-searched-for persona.

—> Bulb burnout
Sandor smashes ten light bulbs, turns them on, and photographs the cool result.

—> Eat the Nigga
The Pizzeria Africa offers a pizza called “The last bushman.”

—> A video tour of Slovenia’s new “smoking booths” (scroll down)
Smoking in public is set to be banned; Mare takes you inside one of the new cages booths for smokers.

The front page of VeÄ?er imagined what the planned skyscraper might look like.

Earlier this year, news leaked that Maribor wants to build the country’s biggest skyscraper. It would clock in at 40-50 stories, which is just half the size of the Empire State Building in New York, but which would nevertheless dwarf pretty much everything else in the city. (Not to mention the region and country.)

The local newspaper VeÄ?er released their imagined sketch of this thing, showing a huge black tower that looks suspiciously like the monolith from 2001: A Space Odyssey. Everything is still very premature, though.

I think a lot of people are skeptical. They worry that it will be a giant eyesore, or that it’s overly ambitious and doomed to be Slovenia’s own version of the ill-fated Ryugyong Hotel. But not me. I love massive construction projects and would love to see this thing built. Whether or not it makes sense is quite inconsequential.

What’s also interesting is that if it does get built, it has a strong chance of becoming the symbol of Maribor, because the city’s skyline will be impossible to imagine without it. And you’ll all be able to bore young whippersnappers with long-winded stories about how “I remember Maribor before they put up the monolith…”