The above screenshot is what happened today as a result of many of MediaTemple's customers being hacked (actually it's a result of the way they fixed the hacked sites). This is a bummer because I have just posted links to my work in order to get a show, that now lead to error pages. It's also a bummer because it's delaying me from getting a cookie in my belly by an hour so far. They tell me it's my fault and that I probably have "old code" or an "old theme file" but I honestly keep my stuff up to date and I'm certainly more vigilant about it than I was 2 years ago.

People ask me all the time who I recommend for hosting. I'll attempt to further confuse those people here. While on DreamHost for several years I experienced some slow performance and a couple cases of downtime. These things didn't really didn't cause me too much pain but I thought life would be better with MT especially one day when llama paintings hit the bigtime.

6 months ago or so I "upgraded" to MediaTemple from DreamHost thinking it would help me out when my site started getting more traffic. MT costs 10 times more and I've prepaid for a year in order to get a small discount. At least 8 times over the past 6 months I've noticed my site not functioning properly due to a server being down or hacked. Tech support has always been knowledgeable and friendly to me, but I have never needed to call tech support this much! If it's all my fault as they say, I wonder why I didn't have these problems before. My nerd friends who manage their own hosting on shell accounts have also looked into it and they tell me it's BS.

I'm sure no host is perfect, but from what others are telling me, MediaTemple is not as dependable as they were 5 years ago.

~ The Host ~
By Stephenie Meyer

* Preview:
Our world has been invaded by an unseen enemy. Humans become hosts for these invaders, their minds taken over while their bodies remain intact and continue their lives apparently unchanged. Most of humanity has succumbed.

When Melanie, one of the few remaining "wild" humans is captured, she is certain it is her end. Wanderer, the invading "soul" who has been given Melanie's body, was warned about the challenges of living inside a human: the overwhelming emotions, the glut of senses, the too vivid memories. But there was one difficulty Wanderer didn't expect: the former tenant of her body refusing to relinquish possession of her mind.

Wanderer probes Melanie's thoughts, hoping to discover the whereabouts of the remaining human resistance. Instead, Melanie fills Wanderer's mind with visions of the man Melanie loves—Jared, a human who still lives in hiding. Unable to separate herself from her body's desires, Wanderer begins to yearn for a man she has been tasked with exposing. When outside forces make Wanderer and Melanie unwilling allies, they set off on a dangerous and uncertain search for the man they both love.

The Host

"Stephenie Meyer is an amazing phenomenon—out of the brightness of her mind and spirit comes the illuminated darkness of her stories. For no matter how much pain her characters suffer, Meyer infuses the tales with light and hope." —Orson Scott Card, author of the Ender Saga

"A fantastic, inventive, thoughtful, and powerful novel. The Host will keep you reading well into the wee hours of night, and keep you thinking, deeply, hauntingly, well after the final word." —Ridley Pearson, author of Killer Weekend