Halffull.org

The Problem

An older post about asmallorange said that I was happy with their web hosting. Support tickets were resolved quickly, the team was courteous and friendly, and I really got a sense of professional respect.

Unfortunately, I can no longer give that recommendation. Several problems surfaced over the two years in which Halffull was hosted at asmallorange.

First - persistent server slows and downtime. At first, pages loaded quickly and reliably. This lasted from about August 2005 to May 2006, with one exception in December 2005. From June 2006 to May 2007, my sites had repeated and consistent downtime. Any site on the server having a spike in bandwidth would cause the whole server to choke due to poor capacity management.

Second - lack of communication. The server status forums dried up and we were left with no way of knowing why the site was down. There were no status feeds or emails. In combination with support issues, this meant that we had no recourse until the site came back up. Frustrating.

Third, and most important - deteriorating support. In two years, I submitted 20 support tickets. The majority of these were in the early days when I was still dealing with setup issues. From July 2005 to June 2006, tickets were handled fairly well, including ones for the early cases of downtime. From June 2006 to May 2007, however, I started having to pass through several layers of indirection and poorly-qualified technicians to come to any kind of a solution, and it was usually a poor one.

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If you have back pain, and you normally carry your wallet in your back pocket, you have three options.

1. Get a thinner wallet.
2. Carry your wallet in a front pocket. (Or in a European carry-all)
3. Both.

And boy have I got the answer for you. Enter the SlimSlimmy wallet by Koyono. As the name implies, it’s very thin, and it’s designed to be carried in your front pocket.

There are no money clips to waste space. There are no picture holders. There are no tri-fold wallet wings. There is not one tench of an ounce more material than is required to carry your essentials. There are just three slots into which you tuck your valuables.

It makes you reconsider what you take with you every day. That’s a good thing.

Consider what’s in your wallet right now. Do you have any receipts? Any credit cards you haven’t used in a while? More than one credit card, for that matter? Any pictures? Any coupons? Any hard candy? How is any of this helping you in the daily grind?

It’s not helping you one bit. What it is doing, however, is putting your spine off kilter. You may not notice it, but your spine is slightly curved because you’re sitting on a big hunk of leather with half your ass. It’s not good for you. In fact, the American Chiropractic Association says that wallets can cause back pain if kept in the back pocket.

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