I have the opportunity in May to change my web hosting provider since the contract I have with my current provider is running out. I’ve enjoyed ICDSoft so far. It only costs $5 a month, I get 500 MB of space and 7 GB per month for data transfer. They’ve got PHP and most of the other things I need. They’re very rarely down. Best of all, their support people always respond to me within 15 minutes with a very authoritative answer. So I can’t say I dislike being hosted with them.

But sometimes I want more. I see some places have crontab access, shell access, QuickTime streaming, and WebDAV. I begin to drool slightly when I think of these things.

So here’s my question: if you have a website, who’s your host? How have they been? Make me want to change hosts!

Don’t worry, if you have a blog on my server, I’ll take care of all that for you.

This evening I accidentally discovered the existence of the International Headache Society. No, really. It was founded in 1981. Its website (Ow! My head!) proudly proclaims, “This site is open to everyone with an interest in headache.” So apparently the disease of headache is singular, like cancer (e.g. “Did you hear about George? He has headache. I know, what a shock! And he has three kids, too. Those poor things.”).

Topic for discussion: let’s hear some submissions for “Top Ten Things Overheard at the Annual International Headache Society Conference”.

I had a very memorable dream last night. It was full of odd images.

Stephanie and I lived in a house at the bottom of a large, grassy valley, with a huge black mountain on one side, and a long, gradual grassy slope up to a highway and gas station on the other side. It was so flat it almost looked like a football field (but bigger) at the bottom. The house was old and dusty, and needed repair.

One day, while Steph was taking a nap, our landlord knocked on the door, and somehow through conversing with her, I discovered that she wanted to kill Stephanie and me. She wasn’t angry with us for anything related to the property. It turned out she had been in disguise since we first met her, and she was some kind of psycho demon, intent on carrying out her nefarious plans! She then transformed into a gigantic flying snake-dragon and began to swoop over the valley. Her scales were black, she had a huge rattlesnake’s tail, and her eyes were bulging and yellow.

(At this point, my dream got all Tolkien on me.)

I grabbed a bow and some arrows, and ran outside with someone else to fight the snake-dragon. I never saw who was with me, but I knew there was someone else there, off to my right. The first time it swooped down at me, I discovered that it had the ability to become mostly-invisible for a second or two just before it reached me. When it was a few feet away, only its huge yellow eyes were visible, and even then, only barely. To add to the effect, once it passed me, I could turn my head and see it clearly only a foot or two away as it passed. And each time it passed, as it was near me it would shake its rattlesnake tail, taunting me, and circle back around for another dive. It passed several times, and wasn’t able to hurt me, but I couldn’t get a good shot at it.

(After this point, my dream went from interesting to flat-out bizarre. I think one of the lesser-known Hollywood directors had taken over right about here, and tried to turn it into a big-budget blockbuster, but it didn’t end cohesively.)

Some other people who were on my side showed up. I don’t know who they were, but I remember wondering when Gandalf would arrive. We had created an army of magical grizzly bears which were fighting an army of wolves (possibly also magical) which had come down from the black mountain. At this point, one of the people I was with pulled out something that looked like, get this, an old American flag. It didn’t have the right stars on it, but it was red, white, and blue. It was, of course, magical, and it unfolded to be a huge black sheet several square miles in size. It was sentient, too, and could fight anything that stood on it, so some of the enemy’s armies were on the sheet, and the sheet was rising up and punching and smashing them.

At this point, I went to the gas station on the other side of the valley. I wanted to get some Gatorade before the ensuing battle. (Apparently they’ve purchased some product placement in my dreams.) As I was looking for Gatorade, I noticed the gas station attendant had an odd, glazed-over look on his face, and I realized that he was about to turn into one of the enemy’s evil horde (e.g. The Matrix) and I ran out of the store, sans Gatorade.

Then my alarm went off and I woke up.

Lesson learned: if you have the chance, buy your home, don’t rent.

We’re relaxing this afternoon, playing volleyball with friends. Henson came too.