Sites down – frustrating Godaddy experience [update – resolved !]

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UPDATE:   Thanks to what looks like some personal attention from Bob Parsons, CEO of Godaddy [his comment is below] all my issues appear resolved now, sites are back up, and they are on a stronger server system that can take the extra traffic that appears to have caused the problem where my sites were shut off.

I want to thank Bob and his staff for the remarkable attention starting last night – I think after a tweet to him about this.

 

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Although I appreciate GoDaddy’s very low prices and generally good support they have really messed me up for the next few days.

My modest ad campaign to boost the traffic at my new Medical Traveling blog overloaded the (older style) server so they moved me to a new one to “diagnose the problem”, which means up to 72 hours of downtime depending on DNS propagation.     I assumed – wrongly – that a surge in traffic would not be a problem given their hype about load balancing and world class data centers, etc.    I think the Godaddy marketing is once again out of whack with what you are getting.       But I do take some responsibility here for naively thinking I’d have “world class hosting” at very low cost.    I also give their Tech team kudos for at least calling me up when this happened so I could start explaining to people why my sites are down.

As is often the case CEO Bob Parsons is busy dreaming up provocative commercials rather than innovating for his customers.   Simple fix for this would have been to FORWARD traffic to a temporarty website rather than move them without forwarding.     I think I can configure this myself but now it may interfere with getting the DNS worked out at the new location.    This should have been done as part of the migration process – it’s a no brainer and could have been automated.

Very frustrating Godaddy, and you may have cost me the trip to Thailand that was a reason I was working  on Medical Traveling blog in the first place.

As is often the case with narrow minded IT approaches they did not anticipate the very negative consequences when heavy traffic (a GOOD THING) crashes the website.   They  solved their  problem and left me hanging out to dry.

The Duck Doctrine … !

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My friend Rob and my online pal Ellen asked me to clarify some of my earlier ideas about spending items and cultural sophistication vs weaponry.   Ellen called it the “Duck Doctrine”  (ha!).

Can anybody seriously believe we need to spend trillions to keep the US safe?  Of course we do not!

By cultural sophistication I mean that defense dep’t needs to know other nations much better, especially before and after we make them our enemy or start wars. In Iraq I understand there were a remarkably low number of arabic speaking analysts involved, and even if there had been Cheney and Bush would have proceeded to implement the Perl / Wolfowitz PNAC world viewhttp://www.newamericancentury.org/ I agree with some of the PNAC stuff but also feel traditional conservatives naively think that people left to their own devices will choose freedom and democracy over fighting. I don’t agree and think we are very much the products of evolutionary pressures that favored short term, fairly narrow thinking.

Lest I be confused with a Tea Party guy I thought I better respond fast.   I’m a real conservative thank you, not those fake ones who overspend on military and advocate for American theocracy.   I want the founders back in charge and that means  a Govt that governs best governs least, small military, entrepreneurial capitalism, and big personal freedom.   Neither Republicans nor Democrats advocate that approach and that failure continues to our great peril.

We foolishly squander defense spending building weapons and paying for too many soldiers when we should be approaching things more cleverly and strategically, cutting big weapons systems in favor of clever infrastructure campaigns (building schools and clinics) that are followed with marketing to show how nice we are.    Our military campaigns are generally “self fulfilling militarily” in that our approach is so aggressive and lacking in cultural know-how that the locals don’t have time to see we are the good guys. (and our guys are almost always the good guys even though many on the left don’t get that obvious point).     Our intentions are good, our execution is bad, our military expense account is WAY too large.

It’s $12,000 to build a school in Pakistan where it’s $ 20,000 for one JDAM “smart bomb”. … and by bomb standards JDAMS are incredibly cheap – the military has non-nukes that cost over 400,000 per bomb.     The point is that we should be much more proactive about building infrastructure and good will.    There’s a big perceived difference between building and bombing.    If the Taliban destroys the school the next month we’ve won a moral victory, but if we bomb and kill 10 bad guys and 1 good guy we’ve often lost moral ground in these regions.   This simple, negative equation is going on all the time and it’s why the USA has so much trouble extricating ourselves from international conflicts.

Is Defense waste the only spending issue?   Of course not.    We are a land of reckless entitlements.   Most getting social security do NOT need the money and did not contribute to the extent they are getting paid.    Politically it’s very hard to reign in spending – we foolishly reward our politicians for their spending sprees, forgetting that overspending in “our” state or district is magnified a hundredfold all over the nation.     Balanced budget is a no-brainer.   In fact it should be a declining budget.     Ben Franklin suggested that revolution might be called for if taxes went above 10%.     Franklin frugality is the kind of fiscal responsibility we need, and note that Franklin was a super progressive guy back in the day!

More about defense spending: https://joeduck.com/2007/12/03/make-ads-not-war/

Medical Travel and Tourism – the logo is … in!

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Medical Tourism Blog

The rumors are true – Medical Travel and Tourism, my new blog about that very interesting industry, is now complete.     I’m always very happy with the great logos I get at   GotLogos.com.

The inspiration for finally getting a Medical Travel blog going came from Thailand’s travel / medical blog contest which is in the process of choosing twelve folks to go on a “fam tour” of the Thailand Medical Tourism industry.    I’m one of 68 entries and they are only picking 12 to go, so fingers remain crossed until the announcement on November 8th.     I’d miss Thanksgiving in favor of reporting on colonoscopies, plastic surgery, and great Thai Food and hospitality but hey, isn’t that what blogging is all about?     This would also give me a chance to add Thailand to the Online Highways country list.

The good news is that even if I don’t get to go I’m *still* going to get great food and travel adventures in Vietnam when we head over there for most of February, as well as build out a country website for Online Highways.

Do you prefer death by Pirates or Malaria?

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Today the naively misguided Dr. Phil show featured the emotional tragedy of pirates attacking tourists.    Now, I’m no fan of pirates and as a frequent traveller I’m hoping not to get attacked by pirates anytime soon [especially when I visit Hue, Vietnam area in February], but the weepy nonsense featured on talk shows to suck in the naively misguided emotions of we in the rich world really, REALLY bothers me.     When I scoffed at the Dr. Phil pirate nonsense as trivial compared to malaria somebody even told me I was not being compassionate enough!

Why do these stories interfere with solutions?   They distract us from the real tragedies at hand – many of which we can actually do something about.  Hey, Dr. Phil – here’s a solution provider we’ll never see on your show :  http://www.rbm.who.int/donate.html

There is a proverbial bloodbath in terms of lives lost from disease in the developing world, yet we simply don’t want to hear about that.     Given that it’s much more within our control than, say, Pirates in the Caribbean, I think we should pay a lot more attention.

A child dies of malarial disease every 30 seconds.     Pirate deaths may be very interesting and get viewers excited, but our attention to this stuff isn’t going to change much in the world.

So, am I a hypocrite for not doing more than a few donations per year to fight malaria and intestinal disease?    Yes I am, and I encourage everybody to write about why.    Like most people I struggle to provide less talk and more action when it comes to charity.  However at least I recognize the foolish hypocrisy of fretting over nonsense vs substance.     That’s an important first step, because without it we’ll continue to squander billions of hours and dollars fighting fake demons while the real killers remain.   Adding yours to the growing voice in favor of sweeping global health care initiatives may not save us from any pirates, but it’ll save millions of children from a horrible deaths.


Malaria No More
The Global Fund
Against Malaria Foundation

SurfAid
Nets for Life
Nothing But Nets

Malaria Consortium
Global Business Coalition web site
Global Business Coalition web site
Medicines for Malaria Venture
Medicines for Malaria Venture		 PATH Malaria Vaccine Initiative
PATH Malaria Vaccine Initiative

Dear President Obama …

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Dear Mr. President, here’s the deal as I see it:  Most of the country – and I know I –  voted for you to *change* the course from an America that was too fueled by anger and intolerance and too little support for the disadvantaged.

We knew you’d bring a great deal of intelligence and leadership within the context of the country we all think is a great and powerful experiment in economics, freedom, and well-being for those of us fortunate enough to live here.

However most of us really did NOT want to bring in even more big government and “overly sensitive” left wing sensibilities.   We hoped you’d stem the tide of polarization and bureaucratic nonsense that has plagued the congress for some time.   For the most part we did not support the agendas of the new congress which was too reckless with our tax dollars and too quick to bring changes that would have unintended consequences.

That’s why folks are now voting in the Republicans – not so much because they think they have better answers, but to say “stop” to the current set of reckless congressional pork barrel politics.

The moral of the story?  One of the parties needs to get smarter, which means to adopt the basic founding principles (SMALL Military, SMALL Government, BIG Freedoms)  that fueled the economic and intellectual and cultural powerhouse we call the USA.

Founding  principles does NOT mean the agenda of the Tea Party, plagued by silly cultural conservatism, too many irrational thinkers, and an aversion to “true” conservative values like cutting military spending and common sense control of guns.   True conservatism (which we’ll all need very soon or we’ll break the bank)  will mean major cuts in both entitlements and defense.    And by “major cuts” I don’t mean the pussy footing drops in the bucket both Democrats and Republicans are proposing – I mean 20-30% across the board.    Ironically if the government cut spending people would NOT expect their taxes to be cut immediately.   Most of us understand the economic mess will take years to unwind, but we want government to be a lot smarter and a lot leaner … now.

A high percentage of  social service spending isn’t needed at all, and smarter defense policies that substitute infrastructure aid, cultural sophistication, and clever international marketing could save hundreds of billions annually.

Do that, and you’ll see support flow back to you faster than any of us can say   “CHANGE”.

Top TV Salaries – WoW!

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Here, from TV Guide, are salaries for many TV stars:

The top earners, by category:

Drama (per episode)

Hugh Laurie (House) $400,000+
Christopher Meloni & Mariska Hargitay (Law & Order: SVU) $395,000 (each)
David Caruso (CSI: Miami) $375,000
Marg Helgenberger (CSI) $375,000
Mark Harmon (NCIS) $375,000
Laurence Fishburne (CSI) $350,000
Kyra Sedgwick (The Closer) $350,000
Denis Leary (Rescue Me) $350,000
Gary Sinise (CSI: NY ) $275,000
Patrick Dempsey (Grey’s Anatomy) $250,000
David Boreanaz (Bones) $200,000
Jeffrey Donovan (Burn Notice) $200,000
Julianna Margulies (The Good Wife ) $175,000
Dana Delany (Body of Proof ) $150,000
Lauren Graham (Parenthood) $150,000
Jada Pinkett Smith (HawthoRNe) $150,000
Jimmy Smits (Outlaw) $150,000
LL Cool J (NCIS: Los Angeles) $125,000
Chris O’Donnell (NCIS: Los Angeles) $125,000
Mark Feuerstein (Royal Pains) $125,000
Jason Lee (Memphis Beat) $125,000
Joe Mantegna (Criminal Minds) $125,000
Tom Selleck (Blue Bloods) $125,000
Michael Weatherly (NCIS) $125,000
Matt Bomer (White Collar) $100,000
Nathan Fillion (Castle) $100,000
Thomas Gibson (Criminal Minds) $100,000
Jon Hamm (Mad Men) $100,000
Cole Hauser (Chase) $100,000
Alex O’Loughlin (Hawaii Five-0) $100,000
Timothy Olyphant (Justified ) $100,000
Scott Caan (Hawaii Five-0) $80,000
Angie Harmon (Rizzoli & Isles) $75,000
Anna Paquin (True Blood) $75,000
Blair Underwood (The Event) $75,000
Zachary Levi (Chuck) $60,000
Ian Somerhalder (The Vampire Diaries) $40,000
Shailene Woodley (The Secret Life of the American Teenager) $40,000
Ashley Tisdale (Hellcats) $30,000

Late Night/Talk Syndication (per year)

Oprah Winfrey $315 million
Judge Judy Sheindlin $45 million
David Letterman (The Late Show) $28 million
Jay Leno (The Tonight Show) $25 million
Conan O’Brien (The Conan O’Brien Show) $10 million
Ellen DeGeneres (The Ellen DeGeneres Show) $8 million
Jimmy Kimmel (Jimmy Kimmel Live) $6 million
Chelsea Handler (Chelsea Lately) $3.5 million
George Lopez (Lopez Tonight) $3.5 million

Reality (per year)

Ryan Seacrest (American Idol) $15 million
Joel McHale (The Soup) $2 million
Piers Morgan (America’s Got Talent) $2 million
Kate Gosselin (Kate Plus 8) $250,000 per episode
Nicole “Snooki” Polizzi (Jersey Shore) $30,000 per episode

Comedy (per episode)

Charlie Sheen (Two and a Half Men) $1.25 million
Jon Cryer (Two and a Half Men) $550,000
Marcia Cross (Desperate Housewives) $400,000
Teri Hatcher (Desperate Housewives) $400,000
Felicity Huffman (Desperate Housewives) $400,000
Eva Longoria Parker (Desperate Housewives) $400,000
Dan Castellaneta (The Simpsons) $400,000
Julie Kavner (The Simpsons) $400,000
Tina Fey (30 Rock) $350,000
Jeremy Piven (Entourage) $350,000
Steve Carell (The Office) $297,000
Angus T. Jones (Two and a Half Men) $250,000
David Duchovny (Californication) $200,000
Kevin Dillon (Entourage) $200,000
Adrian Grenier (Entourage) $200,000
Miranda Cosgrove (iCarly) $180,000
Edie Falco (Nurse Jackie) $175,000
William Shatner ($#*! My Dad Says) $150,000
David Spade (Rules of Engagement) $150,000
Ed O’Neill (Modern Family) $100,000
Patrick Warburton (Rules of Engagement) $85,000
Betty White (Hot in Cleveland) $75,000
Kaley Cuoco (The Big Bang Theory) $60,000
Johnny Galecki (The Big Bang Theory) $60,000
Ty Burrell (Modern Family) $50,000
Jane Lynch (Glee) $50,000
Jim Parsons (The Big Bang Theory) $40,000
Matthew Morrison (Glee) $30,000
Selena Gomez (Wizards of Waverly Place) $30,000
Dylan and Cole Sprouse (The Suite Life of Zack and Cody) $20,000 (each)
Rico Rodriguez (Modern Family) $15,000

News (per year)

Matt Lauer (Today)  $16 million +
Katie Couric (CBS) $15 million
Brian Williams (NBC) $12.5 million
Diane Sawyer (ABC) $12 million
Meredith Vieira (Today) $11 million
Bill O’Reilly (Fox News) $10 million
George Stephanopoulos (ABC) $8 million
Keith Olbermann (MSNBC) $7 million
Shepard Smith (Fox News) $7 million
Wolf Blitzer (CNN) $3 million
Christiane Amanpour (ABC) $2 million
Lawrence O’Donnell (MSNBC) $2 million
Eliot Spitzer (CNN) $500,000

Wikipedia has some old info from 2007 here but note that salaries change with every season and depend on a lot of factors such as producer status, syndication, etc.

Day 180 of the Davies’ Happy Meal Project

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Day 180, 2010 Sally Davies Happy Meal Project

Originally uploaded by sally davies photo

Sally Davies took pictures of a MacDonald’s burger and fries for 6 months. Most viewing these, and I’m guessing Sally, would suggest this shows something about the unhealthiness of MacDonald’s food.

The problem with that “logic” is that the same approach using, say, a Big Mac and a Coke – a far less healthy meal than this reasonable meat and potato meal – would be a nasty mess.

Michael Pollan, crusader against fast food for both reasonable and silly reasons, has suggested that rotting food is a good sign of healthy food, and I think this test may have been inspired by that somewhat twisted logic.

A natural foods challenge that is not discussed nearly enough is that while unprocessed, unpreserved foods often offer the nutritional benefits of complexity, protein balancing, and more, they also
generally carry a greater risk of spoilage and in that case can harbor some very nasty bacteria.

Moderation, in all things …

Medical Tourism

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Medical Tourism – where folks travel to other countries to obtain medical care  – has always intrigued me both as an economic and travel subject.    I’ve generally heard glowing reports about folks who have travelled to Thailand for procedures like lasik and colonoscopies which  are done there for a fraction of US costs in hospitals that are like resort hotels.    As US health costs continue to skyrocket and continue to be far more than the cost of comparable care in other countries, the idea of combining fun and health becomes more and more appealing.     I’m even considering this idea for my trip to Vietnam in January.

Surprising to me was this report about the Medical Travel Industry which suggested how common it is for folks to travel to the USA for care.    The report also suggested that currently there may be some exaggeration of the number of people travelling overseas for care since some statistics include emergency and expatriat care in foreign hospitals.

Thanks to a blogging contest sponsored by the good folks at the Tourism Authority of Thailand I’m going to put some time into this topic, hoping to get better informed and maybe even be chosen to participate in the “fam tour” where bloggers will travel to Thailand to see several cities and facilities that represent this new and rapidly growing approach to medical care.

I’m starting a new page called “Medical Tourism” and will be adding to that content over the next few months.

Update:   Who needs a page when you can start a NEW Medical Tourism blog?     I’ve done that here.

History of the Oregon Coast

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* Note below why part of this post is NOT about “History of the Oregon Coast”.

We’ve got a brief treatment of “History of the Oregon Coast” over at the site Oregon Coast Travel.

Here is that History of the Oregon Coast from the Oregon Coast Travel website, along with some relevant wikipedia entries and other Oregon Coast link references:

Homo Sapiens first arrived on the Oregon coast approximately 400 generations ago, to subsist in the coast’s generous waters and forests. They fashioned canoes to paddle along the coastline, estuaries, and rivers, where they pursued salmon, seals, and ducks. They also gathered such seafood as clams. Inland, they hunted for game and gathered such foods as roots. On the whole, it was successful subsistence living. That was their lifeway for thousands of years, and as generations came and went, bands coalesced into tribes. The Oregon coast’s principal tribes were the Siletz and Tillamook on the north coast, Alsea and Siuslaw, central coast, and Coquille and Coos on the south coast, among others. The cultures of those tribes were similar.

European exploration of the Oregon coast emerged in the 18th century when Spanish mariners sailed north from Mexico to explore and eventually stake claims to the region. The British soon followed, and the years 1774-1795 in particular became a period of sharp contention between the Spanish and the British for claims to the northwest coast. However, neither side was able to successfully gain hegemony over the region.

In the meantime, Captain Robert Gray, an American, visited the Oregon coast by sea in 1788 and 1792, and returned with fur pelts. Following the Louisiana Purchase, Lewis and Clark reached the Oregon Coast in 1804 and laid claim to the territory for the U.S. They also returned with furs, and that prompted one John Jacob Astor to establish the first permanent white trading post in Oregon. The post, Astoria, lay at the mouth of the Columbia River. However, the venture did not prove as successful as Astor had hoped, and the British North West Company bought out Astoria. Both Britain and the United States continued to claim the territory.

On a voyage commissioned by the U.S. Congress, Charles Wilkes landed on the coast in 1838 and planted the American flag. Later, a flood of Americans arriving on the Oregon Trail established de facto the United States’ claim to the land.

From: History of the Oregon Coast

* We interrupted this blog for yet another in our ongoing series of search optimization experiments, trying to figure out what the heck the Google algorithm likes to see, so we can do Google’s bidding.

Of course the great folks at Google always say  “The search algorithm likes to see user-centric, quality content” and that’s true to some extent, but not true enough to make online publishing an easy living.   If that WERE true the search landscape would change dramatically, and you’d see good stuff where you now see fair to poor stuff, which we admit with some shame is some of … our stuff … even though we do have really good stuff sometimes.

Bill Gates on Climate Change as a priority

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I just found the “Gates Notes“, a great online resource reflecting the travels, thoughts, and priorities of Bill Gates.     You can also contact Gates from that address.

Here’s a nice piece about why Global Warming should not be a priority for the Gates Foundation:

A question from a businessman in India

You say that you want to help all people to live healthy, productive lives, but you don’t seem to be doing anything about global warming, which clearly threatens our very existence. How come you don’t care about this issue?

Bill

Energy and climate change is an issue I’ve been spending a lot of time reading about and trying to understand a bit better. I’ve been lucky enough to get time with some real experts, and there’s a lot of great stuff that’s been written that provides some understanding.

In my work at the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, I think about energy in terms of how it can help the poorest people. If you can have cheap energy where people live, then you can have fertilizer, transportation, and clean water, along with the ability to assume that there’s electricity for a medical clinic. Among other things, that means you can keep vaccines refrigerated.

From this point of view, energy is a huge issue. Understanding how we’re going to change things so it will help the people who are the worst off is extremely important and it is a very interesting and difficult challenge.

I’m a believer that whenever markets can work, that’s where you will find the best answers because you’ll get entrepreneurs from all over the world who can pursue thousands and thousands of ideas in parallel. Depending on how you measure it, energy is probably the biggest market in the world. That means somebody can make a risky bet and try it, and you have clear metrics of success. So if you have a promising idea about sequestering carbon, or a cheap nuclear plant, or solar photovoltaic, you can get the capital to build plants, to hire people, and to demonstrate whether it works at scale.

This is perfect for the marketplace. But it’s not something any foundation should try to do. In the areas that the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation focuses on, it’s where you have diseases that don’t exist in the rich world and so the research dollars aren’t there because there’s no market-driven opportunity.