This graph shows what relying on GoDaddy.com as my domain registrar did for my business.

This week the internet's dominant domain registrar, GoDaddy, angered the online community with its support for SOPA, a badly flawed piece of legislation that is being opposed by nearly every reputable online firm of any size.

I won't go into the many flaws of the laws Congress is considering, or the trail of entertainment industry money that's leading straight to the campaign coffers of Congresscritters. Interested parties can find that elsewhere.

What I want to do here is give my own first-hand account as to why you shouldn't do business with GoDaddy, above and beyond it's long track record of unethical behavior and tendency for in-your-face marketing practices.

Back in late February 2011, I had an issue with the Plesk administration software I was leasing that was running on my firm's dedicated server that couldn't be resolved by even the software's vendor. This necessitated a switch of servers, something I had to accomplish on the double-quick or incur hefty charges. (I no longer do business with Parallels, makers of Plesk, either, for what it's worth, but that's another post for another day.)

I use several .IT domains for my business, one of which was, at the time, had the master DNS nameservers for my entire business. At the end of the process of migrating all my clients' sites, data, and accounts to this new machine, I needed to switch my .IT domains over from old to new. These .IT domains registered with GoDaddy, and I went into their control panel and updated the IPs, and it looked like it worked as expected, and so I went to bed after a very, very long day.

I woke up the next morning to a bombardment of phone calls from folks asking why their sites were down. (I have a monitoring service, but it didn't peep because it was still monitoring the old server!)

Glancing at various online tools, I learned that the DNS transfer had not, in fact, taken place, and so to the rest of the internet, it appeared as though my entire little firm and all my clients had disappeared without a trace.

I figured that, as tired as I'd been, I must have messed up and put in the wrong IP addresses. So, I logged into GoDaddy and checked. No, the IPs were correct.

Thus began what became a SIX WEEK run of every-two-days communications with GoDaddy's reps, trying to get something VERY simple accomplished. And each time I called, I was reassured after hours on the phone, that THIS TIME, they saw what happened, and THIS TIME, things really would be fixed in 24-48 hours. And EACH time, it wasn't. I wish I had compiled the hilarious string of different excuses GoDaddy's reps offered me as the reason this very simple thing couldn't be accomplished; some of them were real doozies.

(For the uninitiated, I waited as long as I did because the process of transferring a domain away from a registrar can take days, or in extreme cases, even longer.)

By the end of the first week, I'd lost thousands of dollars' worth of business, and had migrated my remaining clients to nameservers on one of my old .com domains, leaving my own domains as the only ones still "down". But obviously, I still wanted to get my primary business identity back online, and felt trapped into working through GoDaddy's preposterously undertrained CSRs to make it happen. But after six weeks, and THOUSANDS in losses, I finally had nothing left to lose by "risking" even more downtime. So I initiated a transfer away from GoDaddy. Since my usual registrar, NetEarthOne, doesn't handle .IT domains, so I found a firm called Internet.BS (BS is the country code for the Bahamas.)

To my astonishment, the transfer was completed in less than two hours.

To my delight, the DNS push that GoDaddy couldn't accomplish in six weeks was accomplished in less than five minutes. My business was back online at last, but I had already lost a very large percentage of my business to the entire debacle.

As a postscript to the story, GoDaddy later spent HOURS fighting with me over late fees on the single remaining .IT domain that I couldn't transfer away because I'd been too busy trying to get my entire business back online.

You see, GoDaddy abuses the "Redemption Period", a period established as a consumer-friendly policy by ICANN, which manages internet domain names and sets policies for registrars. During the Redemption Period, you can reclaim your expired domain for a nominal extra fee plus your registration costs. GoDaddy abuses it, and turns it into a profit center, by ratcheting up the "nominal fee" to $80-100 on a $10 .com domain, and they will throw your domain into their "Domain Aftermarket" for resale to domain squatters or other registrants if you refuse to or simply cannot pay up.

They showed ZERO remorse, and basically only discounted those late fees because I showed I was committed to calling and tarring them on social media non-stop until they let me re-register the domain at-cost and transfer it away. We literally fought over that $80 for hours; me as a matter of principle, them just out of sheer chutzpah. We finally negotiated it down to a $6 redemption fee plus the cost of registration, and that domain, too, was soon on its way.

So there's the GoDaddy horror story of one small web development firm. I am just now starting to get in position to start growing again. My decision to go with GoDaddy "because they were the industry leader" and "they were the cheapest" turned out to be an incredibly costly decision. And if they'll do that to a guy like me, who had at one time more than 50 domains with GoDaddy, they'll do it to you, too.

But hey, don't take my word for it: Go see for yourself why where are more than 196,000 Google results for "GoDaddy Sucks".

Make sure you've added jquery.cycle to your libraries, as seen here.

My understanding based on Adobe's public commentary is that third parties will be distributing derivatives of the AIR program that will be available on Linux. In the meantime, I'll make my X64 copy of the Debian/Ubuntu .deb file for the 2.6 version available here.

Much thanks to Ronny Roethof for his entry on converting the 32-bit .deb to X64.

As another installment in my infinity-long series of things I've known and forgotten about Drupal, and thus am posting here for posterity, it turns out that Views 3 (presently in Alpha) has this functionality built in, so you don't need to employ any hooks or external modules or anything else.

Almost as an aside, I have no idea why merlinofchaos regards this as "alpha" quality. Works *great* on my install.

The great thing about quitting smoking is that you can walk out of the store with $50 in chemical-laden junk food and when the clerk sees the patch, he's like, "Good for you, you're not getting cance....wait. You won't have a heart att....YOU'RE MAKING PROGRESS!"

I applied SERGEANT'S GOLD SQUEEZE-ON to my cats about 24 hours ago from the time of this writing, and here's my report, which I'm posting after finding countless horror stories about the side effects of this and other similar products on the internet concerning this and similar over-the-counter flea control products, such as those marketed by Hartz under the UltraGuard brand.

FIRST, BEFORE I GET STARTED: if your cat or dog is foaming at the mouth, vomiting, or stumbling more than a little bit, or exhibiting any other weird/aberrant/abhorrent behaviors, STOP RIGHT NOW, TURN OFF THE COMPUTER, AND GET YOUR PET[S] TO A QUALIFIED VETERINARIAN IMMEDIATELY. FULL STOP.

THE EARLIER A VET GETS THEIR HANDS ON YOUR PET AND CAN BEGIN TREATMENT, THE MORE LIKELY YOUR PET IS TO SURVIVE. YOU CAN COUNT ON A BILL IN EXCESS OF $1000; SAVE YOUR SERGEANT'S GOLD OR OTHER PRODUCT PACKAGING BECAUSE THERE MAY OR MAY NOT BE A COMPANY POLICY WITH REGARDS TO REFUNDS AND/OR DAMAGES IN THE CASE OF THE DEATH OF YOUR PET THAT THEY WILL WELSH ON IF YOU CANNOT PROVE YOU BOUGHT IT.

That said, here's my experience in detail...

As of this writing, it appears I was lucky; my cats have had bad reactions, but look like they're going to be OK. Your results may vary, and while only a small percentage of pets seem to have truly bad reactions, that's still far too many given the long and well-documented history of such adverse reactions. There will be website links at the end of this report at which you may read more Hartz UltraGuard and Sergeant's Gold horror stories, as well as get natural alternatives that may work for you, depending on how pervasive/persistent fleas are in your area.

I applied this product to my pets about 24 hours ago. They immediately started itching and scratching to an extreme degree; I took this to be a sign that the product was working, and the fleas were just going nuts on account of, well, dying.

As day wore into night, both cats were eating less than normal and acting very lethargic. And still itching like crazy. Still further into the night, the cats started trying to get my attention by meowing, and repeatedly jumping on me and showing degraded coordination while doing so.

I started researching this on the internet, and was ALARMED at what I found. THESE PRODUCTS HAVE BEEN RESPONSIBLE FOR THE DEATHS OF CATS AND DOGS ALL OVER THE UNITED STATES. So much so, in fact, that in Hartz's case, they "re-formulated" their original pyrethrin formula with a VERY similar, but less-potent pyrethroid chemical, cynically trying to lower the number of deaths below some arbitrary cost threshold of consumer liability, rather than removing the products from the market altogether, as would be the responsible approach.

I immediately bathed my cats; twelve hours later, they were improving, but still showing symptoms, so I've just bathed them again. They are slowly returning to normal, but the one cat (white fur, fair skin) has reddened noticeably beneath where the Sergeant's Gold Squeeze-On was applied. He is the one that is most symptomatic, and is still showing decreased physical coordination.

Make sure your pets have plenty of water, and a warm place that feels safe to them to dry off after their bath. And, again, if your pet[s] are showing symptoms markedly worse than mine, or as described above, stop right now and get your pets to a vet. The clock's already ticking. If you have not applied this product to your pets yet, DON'T. IT IS A POISON. Finally, DEFINITELY DO NOT use the "canine" formulation on your cats, or even vice-versa.

FRONTLINE PLUS, whose active ingredient is Fipronil, is well-regarded and better-tested, since in many jurisdictions, it is a prescription medication available only from licensed veterinarians. If you can't obtain any from a veterinarian for any reason, you can order it at 1800PetMeds.com.

The Hartz Mountain and Sergeant's companies have evidently decided, after consulting their spreadsheets, that they're below some arbitrary percentage on their accounting spreadsheets to where they can afford to pay off selected cases, and hide behind company policies and a small army of "damage controllers" that seem to frequently patrol the internet and pretend to "respond" to pet owners' concerns. You can see on this link just how cynical Sergeant's is about it, deploying a stock-photo veterinarian to provide calm reassurance. Don't buy into it. There's a lengthy history of pet deaths behind these two companies. You may learn more about this history at www.HartzVictims.org.

Finally, depending on how pervasive/persistent fleas are in your area or region, here is a list of natural, organic remedies that may work for you.

RELATED KEYWORDS: Sargeant's Gold, Sargeant's Silver, Sergeant's Silver, UltraGuard

I'm watching "Casino Royale" this evening. There's a part near the end where James Bond sends a one-line e-mail to M "terminating his employment with immediate effect", on a super-secret MI6 laptop and sails off into the sunset of the movie's final act.

And I laugh at that, every time.

Pretty sure MI6, like any large organization, has exit interviews, asset check-ins. He'd need to turn in his keycards and photo IDs. Clean out his desk. He'd have a line of people wanting to settle bets in the office pool, and another line of people coveting his office furniture and cubicle supplies.

Short version: truth is stranger than fiction.

Editor's note: I came across a post on Reddit today where the user was asking for the usual newbie advice for how to go about getting up to speed in Drupal, especially with regards to Drush, Git, development environments, and getting support. I decided to supply my advice, intending to stick to the above topics, but quickly decided just to give a fuller, more comprehensive set of tips. I've duplicated them here for posterity, with some minor grammar/composition tweaks.

You want to use drush, period.

Drush is a shell command-line utility for common admin tasks. Not only is it useful in a 1:1 CLI kind of sense, where you just need to do some task or thing, and want to do it a bit quicker than the "click menu option, wait, set options" sense, but it's also part of what makes things like Aegir possible. Get it at drush.ws or drupal.org/project/drush.

If you set up your dev environment on Debian/Ubuntu, there's a package for drush; on other distros, you'll probably have to compile from source, but it's not hugely difficult.

You want to work with Git

That's what Drupal itself and most of the shops/agencies that work with it are moving to, or already have moved to.

There is no "One True Way" to handle the "dev-staging-production" conundrum

This is aimed more at smaller shops or corporate users; bigger shops and corporations will inevitably have firm, set procedures with regards to moving code from staging to production. But, at the low end of the scale, you can pretty much do what works best for the context at hand.

Note, however, that using Git helps you get things to where you're checking-in/checking-out the sites themselves, with or without databases, such that if a buggy contrib module messes up your site, you can easily restore.

Here's one suggested approach, if you Google around, you'll find others.

(My own method is a cheat: I just develop it in-place on my server by editing my hosts file to re-point the domain on my desktops, then repoint the actual domain at the actual registrar later. I've been working on transitioning to Git, though, for the aforementioned reasons.)

IRC is the Drupal watercooler, followed closely by Twitter and Drupal.org itself.

You'll find lots of actionable info, or at the very least, lots of good conversation, in the various Drupal IRC channels on Freenode. On IRC, start in #drupal-support, and start joining the other channels as you get your sea legs. On Twitter, sort your Drupal people into a single list so you can get at-a-glance Drupal conversation and info.

Getting Help: (Remember, Nearly Everyone's a Volunteer)

On IRC, and especially in #drupal-support, remember that folks are volunteering their time, and such people are always more open to helping those who try to help themselves first. When folks mistake you for a support leech, it's hard to get help sometimes, but if you demonstrate that you've tried to self-help, and are confused or looking at seemingly contradictory support/documentation assets, you'll generally find people more willing to be more helpful.

There are LOTS of video tutorial assets floating around, both free and paid. I found Mustard Seed Media's videos particularly useful, since they're short, focused, and free. (Bear in mind that all those videos are for D6. The MSM folks, like myself, haven't made the jump to D7 yet for the reasons below.)

Get Organized (Because sometimes Drupal.org really isn't.)

I recommend using delicious or some other bookmark manager, and being religious about bookmarking anything potentially useful, because you're going to be constantly running across little docs or modules that aren't pertinent "now", but will be later or in another context.

Get involved

Joining a working group is not only a good way to learn how the project works, but also a good way to get acquainted with Drupal people.

Drupal Camps or Drupalcons are going on virtually constantly all over the world, so start watching for one in your area. Similarly, there's Drupal user groups just about everywhere, too.

JOIN THE DRUPAL ASSOCIATION. It's cheap, and gets you immediate credibility inside and outside the project, plus you get some freebies/discounts and the warm-fuzzies of knowing you're supporting a serious, enterprise-grade project with genuine momentum, populated by some of the best folks I've met or worked with in the F/OSS world.

For non-Drupal folks reading this....I came to Drupal from other projects, and the Drupal community is, by far, the most professional, egalitarian, and welcoming I've experienced.

It still blows my mind sometimes just how functional and friendly the Drupal community is. In my case, I came for the CMS, since I'd decided to move on from less-powerful PHP platforms, and I wasn't keen on changing my whole server environment around to optimize for Python or Ruby.

But I stayed for the community. There's some great people and some real characters out there bleeding Drupal blue.

Environment/Servers/Distros/Profiles/Technical

Servers: There's a lot of folks that run Drupal on nginx and lighttp, but running it on Apache is best from a "getting support" perspective.

"Distros" or "Profiles": There's a lot of Drupal "distros" or "profiles", most notably the Acquia one, but from my experience, better you start out with plain vanilla, and switch to one of those, if appropriate, after you better understand the CMS.

(I've never seen a situation, aside from the "subscription" modules in Acquia Drupal, where you can't get the same functionality by manually putting things together, and relying on a distro/profile too early stunts your growth by encouraging blind reliance on things you'll want to understand later. I personally started with Acquia's distro, but have transitioned to plain-vanilla Drupal.)

As a sub-note to that last item, you may want to pull down a copy of Commons and play with it, too, because it'll help jump-start your understanding of how the various modules interact, and is something your clients might find useful in its own right.

Being technologically current:

One thing you'll find that's a bit different about Drupal is the way older releases are still supported long after being out of currency. There are still plenty of major production sites running on Drupal 4.7 and 5.X.

As it pertains to this exact moment, the transition from Drupal 6 to 7 is still very much ongoing in terms of the ecosphere of contribued modules. While there is, oftentimes, a D7 analogue for a D6 module you might be waiting for, there will be cases where a module that's a deal maker or breaker just hasn't been ported to 7 yet. So, I would personally counsel not being fussy about the 6/7 distinction at this exact juncture. Use whichever one you need to meet the use-case at hand.

For those whose biggest draw to D7 is the "more user friendly admin panel", there are admin themes for D6, such as Rubik and RootCandy to help pretty up the back end.

That said, I would counsel continuing to check your needs every month or two, because obviously, Drupal 7 is the future, and with Drupal 8 already in pipeline, you don't want to be running too far behind, as that will make migration a bigger pain down the road.

Theming/Customization:

Get to know some of the "base themes": popular ones include Zen, Fusion, and the new Omega, which is based in part on Fusion.

You'll find various video tutorials online, but be aware that the Omega docs are in-flux and you'll get better support on IRC. I personally prefer to code my own themes from scratch, and another great thing about Drupal is that it's much more standardized, making it much easier to compile lists of selectors and classes that can be ported from site to site and changed to suit the design.

But if you do agency work, or have to work on sites somebody else created, you'll run into those three base themes, and a few others, pretty often.

I hope this helps some new folks starting out.

It's nice to see US Secretary of Defense Robert Gates using the fact that he's soon due to retire to good advantage. In wide-ranging comments on NATO today, Gates threw down the gauntlet, and made clear that an "alliance" that, in practice, has really meant "reliance" on US power is not a formula for a sustainable long-term mutual-security arrangement.

"The blunt reality is that there will be dwindling appetite and patience in the U.S. Congress — and in the American body politic writ large — to expend increasingly precious funds on behalf of nations that are apparently unwilling to devote the necessary resources or make the necessary changes to be serious and capable partners in their own defense," he said.

My personal take: Gates' comments are spot-on, not only on the surface of it --the American public isn't going to tolerate being "stepped forward" by virtue of our allies' stepping backward forever-- but also in light of the "multi-lateral" world that every politician and policymaker claims to want.

The bottom line is that the realpolitik Golden Rule applies, that being that if you have one country spending the bulk of the gold, you can't cry when that country also wants to make the rules.

If you're tired of dealing with the obnoxious "Alarm Level Changed" e-mails that Plesk's Health Monitoring puts out, you can simply remove the package.

From shell:
rpm -e psa-health-monitor

After all, it's not like there aren't a billion better packages out there. (I recommend the stuff that R-fx Networks puts out, personally.)