I am a: Quirky sysadmin. Geek. Gamer. Comic fangirl. My little space, my home on the interwebs. I blog about personal stuffs, work, various coding projects, and anything else I feel like.

I’ve accomplished a lot this summer. I got a job I thought I had a snowball’s chance in Hell of getting, and have quite enjoyed it. I am bettering my relationship with my mother. I have grown even closer to my daughter. I fired my webhost. And now I’m about to move on to another job I thought I (yet again) had a snowball’s chance of getting.

Back in April, I had been hired on at KnownHost as a tech support operator, doing Linux web hosting support. Honestly, I was shocked that they even wanted me. It’s not that I thought I couldn’t handle it … I had been rejected so many times for a myriad of things, I couldn’t see what I had to offer them. It had been years since I’d touched a Linux box, but had applied to their ad anyways thinking, “What could it hurt? Maybe they’ll talk to me?”

A couple days later I met the guys in charge, took the test required for the job, and was offered a position the very next day. I was floored!

The schedule took some getting used to, but this job has been very rewarding. Though my time there has been brief, I’ve been fortunate to work with a great group of guys. I quickly brushed up on my Linux skills, and learned a lot about the ins and outs of webhosting.

Working for KnownHost also lead me to fire my webhost: Lunarpages. I’d been a LP customer for about 10 years. I’d had a few little troubles off and on over the years, but nothing major until about two years ago. My site would go down and would stay down for days. It was an issue that persisted despite multiple promises that it was “resolved” and would “never happen again.”

Yeah, when the issue happened every couple of months, I’d get that same promise. It got old REALLY quickly!

I endured 2 years of that mess, plus lack of support, and never really getting an answer as to what the actual cause was. I had originally planned to post the entire ugly ticket history here, but honestly I’ve given them enough attention. Despite reaching out to their customer service department several times, I had the distinct impression that Lunarpages did not care that I was unhappy. So, I set out to find a new host. I had considered getting a larger hosting package with a competitor, but family and job issues kept creeping up, putting my websites’ issues on the backburner.

After working at KnownHost, it dawned on me that they were doing right everything that Lunarpages had been doing wrong. I was working for a web hosting company that actually cared if a customer was upset. Client tickets received an initial response in minutes instead of hours. Resolutions are quick, and usually followed with an explanation of what went wrong and how it was fixed. There’s no fingerpointing at other staff, EVER. That’s something that LP was quick to do if they were at fault. If KnownHost staff is in the wrong, they’ll quickly admit it and seek to make it right by all means necessary.

Seriously, they go above and beyond when it comes to pleasing customers. Things that other hosts will simply shrug off as “no, that’s not supported,” KnownHost will say “let’s try it; if it doesn’t work, we have a backup!”

I was impressed … so I became a customer. I’m the proud owner of my own VPS running WHM/cPanel on CentOS. I migrated my cPanel account over from Lunarpages about a month ago and have since re-arranged my sites, manually moving all of my addon domains to their own cPanel accounts, cleaned out my parked domains, and went about learning how to better monitor the services on my server.

Though I’ll no longer be an employee, KnownHost has gained a loyal customer in me.

I will be starting a new position at IBML on Monday as a Business Systems Administrator. “What is that?” Fancy talk for Jack of all trades. Or, in my case, Jill of all trades. :)

I’ll be reuniting with some old MACESS employees and I’m pretty excited!

It’s been a year since my life was turned upside down and I feel that things are finally starting to move in the direct I’d like. I am looking forward to getting back on my feet financially and working towards goals that I have set for myself.

I am talking to my mother a lot more, and try to spend time with her as much as work allows. Jessie is doing well. She’s studying for her driver’s license and enjoying high school. I’m reading anything and everything I can get my hands on, and with the downloadable ebooks and audiobooks that the JeffCo library system is offering now, I can load my iPad up with books and read during my lunches and whatever downtime I get at home.

Bruce has grown up beautifully. I’m going to try to post to his site more often, as well as my other blogs. Though I’m busier than ever, I want to start posting more and it’s one of my goals for the remainder of this year and into the next. For now, I’m happier, feeling better, and looking forward to good things.

It’s happened, folks. I am starting to feel like me again …