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Relatively minor?! They failed to do what they said they would. They destroyed data and borked up the backups. If it wasn't Jeff Atwood but me, would it be mor

Relatively minor?! They failed to do what they said they would. They destroyed data and borked up the backups. If it wasn't Jeff Atwood but me, would it be more their fault? Or would I just be less disingenuous? Nobody's calling them names, or threatening to take business elsewhere or anything. But it's good to get sunlight in there, show them consequences, when they fail you. When a company providing you with service fails, you're allowed to scream it from the rooftops if you feel like it.

pvg 17y ago
Their role in making him look foolish (what I said, incidentally) is indeed quite minor. If he'd actually done the things he advocated and, frankly, implied that he'd done, he'd still have his images, his downtime would have been close to zero and he'd probably get to write a triumphant article about the value of following his own sage advice. Someone else pointed out in another comment, there's a good analogy to be drawn to Atwood's own words here: http://www.codinghorror.com/blog/archives/001079.html http://www.codinghorror.com/blog/archives/001079.html
- akkartik 17y ago
  "Their role in making him look foolish (what I said, incidentally) is indeed quite minor." Fair enough. But he's not complaining about looking foolish (nor is grandparent as far as I can see). He's complaining about losing data. In that link he isn't saying "it's your fault no matter what the world throws at you, suck it up." He's saying, "look harder at yourself before you decide somebody else is to blame." Not an issue here; can we agree it is their fault?
  - pvg 17y ago
    for the record, I blame 50% hosting provider, 50% myself Is his tweet. Sounds like blaming to me. I suppose it's a matter of personal taste but if you write about how you're serving your images off S3 and how everyone should be making redundant backups and then get bitten by the fact you somehow wrote about these things but didn't actually do them, you're not looking very hard at yourself. My simple point is - if you're an advice-giver who's been shown to not follow his own advice on backups, don't compound it by being an advice giver who doesn't follow his own advice on humility.
    - akkartik 17y ago
      "Sounds like blaming to me." I thought we were arguing about whether he cares about looking foolish. Of course he's blaming them. There's reason to blame them. Regardless of what he did or didn't do, they screwed up. In fact I think he's being very restrained and humble taking 50% of the blame. I'd be fucking pissed if that happened to me. Even if I restored from backups in 30 minutes (extremely optimistic). "if you're an advice-giver who's been shown to not follow his own advice on backups, don't compound it by being an advice giver who doesn't follow his own advice on humility." Again, the humility he was referring to was to assume first that it was your fault until you determine otherwise for sure. What's that got to do with them screwing up? You're basically saying: if I act holier-than-thou and advocate backups, then Slicehost or Amazon can give me crappy service because I'm not allowed to 'blame' them or mention how they suck. Which is really weird. (I feel for the guy. I'm sitting here yakking because I can't connect to my EC2 slice for the last n hours.)
      - pvg 17y ago
        Heh, we are absolutely going to validate the 'comment value drops exponentially with nesting' rule. I didn't say he deserves crappy service or that his provider didn't screw up by firing his VM into Neptune. What I'm saying is (in 17 different ways, at this point) - if you are a vocal advocate but don't actually practice or believe what you preach, you're not really an advocate or useful commentator but a hack. When circumstances (that incidentally and in part happen to be someone else's fault) expose you as somewhat of a hack, it's a little uncouth to be pointing fingers at others for their much more minor screw-ups. Being a hack is bigger screw-up than accidentally (or through negligence) firing someone's VM into Neptune, that's all.

pvg 17y ago

Their role in making him look foolish (what I said, incidentally) is indeed quite minor. If he'd actually done the things he advocated and, frankly, implied that he'd done, he'd still have his images, his downtime would have been close to zero and he'd probably get to write a triumphant article about the value of following his own sage advice. Someone else pointed out in another comment, there's a good analogy to be drawn to Atwood's own words here: http://www.codinghorror.com/blog/archives/001079.html http://www.codinghorror.com/blog/archives/001079.html

akkartik 17y ago
"Their role in making him look foolish (what I said, incidentally) is indeed quite minor." Fair enough. But he's not complaining about looking foolish (nor is grandparent as far as I can see). He's complaining about losing data. In that link he isn't saying "it's your fault no matter what the world throws at you, suck it up." He's saying, "look harder at yourself before you decide somebody else is to blame." Not an issue here; can we agree it is their fault?
- pvg 17y ago
  for the record, I blame 50% hosting provider, 50% myself Is his tweet. Sounds like blaming to me. I suppose it's a matter of personal taste but if you write about how you're serving your images off S3 and how everyone should be making redundant backups and then get bitten by the fact you somehow wrote about these things but didn't actually do them, you're not looking very hard at yourself. My simple point is - if you're an advice-giver who's been shown to not follow his own advice on backups, don't compound it by being an advice giver who doesn't follow his own advice on humility.
  - akkartik 17y ago
    "Sounds like blaming to me." I thought we were arguing about whether he cares about looking foolish. Of course he's blaming them. There's reason to blame them. Regardless of what he did or didn't do, they screwed up. In fact I think he's being very restrained and humble taking 50% of the blame. I'd be fucking pissed if that happened to me. Even if I restored from backups in 30 minutes (extremely optimistic). "if you're an advice-giver who's been shown to not follow his own advice on backups, don't compound it by being an advice giver who doesn't follow his own advice on humility." Again, the humility he was referring to was to assume first that it was your fault until you determine otherwise for sure. What's that got to do with them screwing up? You're basically saying: if I act holier-than-thou and advocate backups, then Slicehost or Amazon can give me crappy service because I'm not allowed to 'blame' them or mention how they suck. Which is really weird. (I feel for the guy. I'm sitting here yakking because I can't connect to my EC2 slice for the last n hours.)
    - pvg 17y ago
      Heh, we are absolutely going to validate the 'comment value drops exponentially with nesting' rule. I didn't say he deserves crappy service or that his provider didn't screw up by firing his VM into Neptune. What I'm saying is (in 17 different ways, at this point) - if you are a vocal advocate but don't actually practice or believe what you preach, you're not really an advocate or useful commentator but a hack. When circumstances (that incidentally and in part happen to be someone else's fault) expose you as somewhat of a hack, it's a little uncouth to be pointing fingers at others for their much more minor screw-ups. Being a hack is bigger screw-up than accidentally (or through negligence) firing someone's VM into Neptune, that's all.