John Kehayias writes for Vice:

“Self-hosting” is a practice that pretty much describes itself: running your own internet services, typically on hardware you own and have at home. This contrasts with relying on products from large tech companies, which the user has no direct involvement in. A self-hoster controls it all, from the hardware used to the configuration of the software.

I need to look into this. Maybe I should start hosting my websites from my basement.

Jenny Liao shares her personal history in the New Yorker:

The struggle to retain my first language feels isolating but isn’t unique; it’s a shared pain common among first- and second-generation immigrants. This phenomenon is known as first-language attrition, the process of forgetting a first or native language.

Unlike Jenny who was born in New York City, I came to the U.S. when I was 11. At that age, I have learned a good deal of Vietnamese. I spoke Vietnamese with my mom at home, but I had to put the first language aside to learn English. As a result, my Vietnamese was slipping away from me. I misspelled almost every other word when I write. With Vietnamese books from the Fairfax public libraries and my blog, I read and practice writing Vietnamese again. It is such a joy to be reconnected with my first language.

I rode the quarter pipe yesterday on rollerblades, slipped, fell, and sprained my knee a bit. Every time I straighten or fold my leg, I get a sharp pain. It is so annoying.

The day before yesterday, I got into a huge verbal combat with my wife. Yesterday we argued some more, but made up last night. With my sprained knee, I was in no mood to fight.

I was going to spend more time skating over the long weekend, but I am spending time in bed instead. I need to catch up on my readings since I haven’t read much.

I was thinking of registering for figure skating lessons next week, but I won’t be able to because of my knee injury. I checked the website last night and only two students signed up. They’ll cancel the class if they can’t get five students.

The kids started school for two weeks. I need to be more proactive with checking on their assignments and homework. I don’t want any surprises when their first reports come out. They spent way too much time playing video games. I am losing them over video games and it frustrated me.

I think of my mom often. I cried remembering the time we lived together in Poughkeepsie. I drove home from work at noon each day to have lunch with her. I took her to the Asian grocery store a few times a week. Life was slow but beautiful. I miss her dearly.

I need to reach out to family and friends more, especially during this challenge time dealing with Covid. I keep telling myself to do it, but I keep putting it off. OK, I am going to end this post so I can make some calls.

Xin lỗi về bài viết ngày hôm qua đã khiến mọi người lo lắng. Vì câu chuyện có liên quan đến người khác nên tôi tạm thời không thể tiết lộ chi tiết. Vì người ấy có ảnh hưởng lớn với tôi nên tôi đã xúc động với những gì người ấy chia sẻ với tôi. Và tôi đã viết xuống cảm xúc của mình khi mọi chuyện vẫn chưa được công bố.

Khuyết điểm lớn nhất của tôi là đặt nặng cảm tình của mình vào những người có liên quan đến cuộc sống của mình. Không hẳn là tình cảm hay tình thương mà chỉ cần sự tôn trọng tôi dành cho họ. Tôi chỉ quan tâm đến họ trong thầm lặng mà không hề biểu lộ trong phần giao tiếp với họ. Tôi vui cho họ tuy biết được những ngày tháng sắp tới của tôi sẽ bị ảnh hưởng.

Mọi người hãy an tâm. Mọi chuyện vẫn yên ổn. Có thể mọi chuyện sẽ yên ổn chứ không rối loạn như tôi tưởng tượng. Có lẽ tôi đã suy nghĩ quá xa vời. Tôi không sao cả. Gia đình vẫn ồn ào nhưng êm ấm. Tôi vẫn là tôi và tôi sẽ vượt qua mọi thử thách trong cuộc sống. Xin chân thành cảm ơn sự quan tâm của mọi người.

Thôi rồi còn chi đâu Doanh ơi… Việc khiến tôi lo âu nhiều năm qua rồi cũng đến. Chỉ không ngờ nó lại đến đột ngột như thế. Cuộc sống là vậy không có chuyện gì tồn tại mãi, nhất là những chuyện tốt đẹp. Đổi thay trong đời sống là chuyện đương nhiên. Phải chấp nhận thôi. Không chịu nóng thì đừng vào nhà bếp. Không muốn ướt thì đừng đi mưa. Không muốn cháy thì đừng thử lửa.

Không biết tương lai rồi sẽ ra sao. Thôi thì đến đâu hay đến đó. Có phiền muộn cũng không làm được gì. Có lo âu cũng chỉ thêm âu lo. Mọi chuyện rồi cũng sẽ qua dù tốt hay xấu. Giờ đây chỉ biết chuẩn bị tinh thần để đối diện với những gì sắp đến. Muốn được an nhàn thì phải trải qua sóng gió. Tôi cũng đã từng phải vật lộn với những cơn bão lớn để tìm đến những giây phút êm đềm. Đến tận đường cùng tôi mới tìm ra lối thoát. Lần này chắc cũng không ngoại lệ.

Dù quá mệt mỏi và chỉ muốn tìm chỗ nghỉ ngơi nhưng cuộc đời này vẫn còn dài và vẫn còn nhiều chông gai. Dù có khó khăn đến đâu tôi cũng sẽ vượt qua. Trên đôi vai tôi còn gánh nhiều trách nhiệm. Tôi không thể nào bỏ cuộc vì không còn được lựa chọn nào khác. Chỉ hy vọng một cánh cửa đóng lại sẽ có một cánh cửa khác rộng mở.

After careful consideration, I decided to pull the plug on Đạo’s and Xuân’s ice skating private lessons. It was a hard decision to make because I deeply wanted them to excel in ice skating. Unfortunately, that’s not what they wanted. They don’t want to compete. They just want to skate for fun. They still wanted to take private lessons, but they didn’t want to practice. With just a half-an-hour session each week, they won’t get anywhere if they don’t practice. After six weeks of private lessons, they couldn’t move beyond basic crossovers.

Over the weekend, I asked the kids to go to the rink to practice and all of them said no. Because they had a cousin sleeping over, they rather spent time playing video games than skating. I could have made them go to the rink, but it would be pointless if their hearts weren’t into it. I feel bad if I force them to go and I feel even worse if I go alone. I could spend three or four hours a day on ice practicing because I love ice skating. I offered them the same opportunity, but they didn’t want to take it. If they could just spend three or hours a week practicing, they could have a chance to go further. Unfortunately, they resisted every single time I asked them to go. These practicing sessions aren’t free either. I am not going to waste our money if they don’t put their efforts into it.

With private lessons and ice time fees, I paid almost $100 an hour. That’s not cheap. I can’t afford that type of money to skate for fun. If they just want to have fun, they can take group lessons. Group lessons are much more affordable and they also come with practice sessions. Maybe we can go back to taking group lessons again just for fun like the good old times before I went over my head thinking they could go further. What I wanted isn’t what my kids wanted. I wish I was given the opportunity when I was a kid like they have now, but I probably would have taken it for granted like they do now. Then again, ice skating is more enjoyable if they don’t have to worry about competing or take it too seriously.

Nhạc sĩ Đức Trí đánh thử vọng cổ theo giai điệu jazz swing. Nghe cũng hấp dẫn lắm. Các bạn nghe thử nhé.

The following exchange between myself and an account manager at HostPapa had prompted me to migrate all my sites off HostPapa. If you are in a similar situation, you can take our sites elsewhere. I also hope that
HostPapa will back off its up-saling strategy. I am not revealing the account manager’s name because I don’t want to get them in trouble.

Hello Donny,

My name is GB from the HostPapa’s Solutions Team. I’m contacting you concerning the email storage of your web hosting plan.

As you know, LunarPages was acquired by HostPapa a year ago. All hosting accounts originally purchased with LunarPages have been migrated to our HostPapa servers. It now shares the same resources as all of our other shared plans.

As a hosting company, it is our main priority to provide a stable and secure server environment and make sure that the hosting accounts provided by us are not used for data archiving. To help you with the transition, we have provided you with a higher storage limit than our most basic shared hosting plans for the past year. However, because storing large volumes of email on your account has a negative effect on your account and the server, it is not feasible for us to continue providing unlimited storage for your email accounts.

That being said, our system administrators notified me that one or more of your email accounts has exceeded that limit allocated to your plan by using 1GB or more per account. You can learn more about the limits we have for our shared hosting plans here.

Please reply to this email with the best way to reach you (email/phone), so we can find a way to resolve this quickly and find a more suitable solution for your needs.

I look forward to hearing from you!

My respond:

Hi G,

Thanks for reaching out to me about my email usage. I actually don’t use any hosting email. I only use email forwarding; therefore, there shouldn’t be any issue with usage storage. If there’s mail on the server, please let me know how I can delete them.

Thanks,

GB replied:

Dear Donny,

Thank you for your reply. Our administrators have detected that the website regularly receives CPU faults and I / O faults (see below).

It can be due to many reasons, malware / viruses / bots / unoptimized scripts / heavy images etc.

When these spikes occur, it means that your visitors cannot access the website properly (for example, they may experience huge load times or a complete inability to open the site). It also destabilizes the system and may endanger other users.

In this regard, it is extremely important that we resolve the issue as soon as possible.

Option 1:

You can try to optimize your website scripts and traffic as much as possible to reduce your account’s resource usage and try to bring it back below the limits of your hosting plan. (1) Make sure your apps are updated to the latest version, (2) Remove unnecessary plugins and themes, (3) Review your traffic through AWStats and block IP addresses you deem illegitimate through IP Blocker.

How to minimize the use of your shared web-hosting server

Option 2:

If you prefer to deal with this issue transparently, I can also offer you a solution that will resolve your issues immediately, without you having to spend time reducing your account’s resource usage. Time is the most precious resource we all have, so if you want to go with a solution that ensures long-term sustainability, you can upgrade to a Business Pro plan that will better meet your project requirements. A Business Pro will provide dedicated resources, removing any limitations you face in our shared hosting environment.

I personally recommend an upgrade to Business PRO if you are looking for a long term solution that will provide you with the power and flexibility to grow your business. I have worked with clients who have faced similar issues in the past and they have found it to cost them more (short term patchwork) to regularly optimize their site than to upgrade to Business Pro.

Please let me know if you have any questions or need further help with this. If you are interested in upgrading to a BP, I would be happy to send you more detailed information on the pricing terms available and calculate the credit you would receive for the unused portion of your current plan.

Kind Regards,

I replied:

Hi G,

Thank you for following up on the issue. Is the email storage limit still an issue?

I use CloudFlare to help with the bandwidth. I only use a couple of plugins for WordPress. I am not sure where the spike comes from.

I am on vacation at the moment. I will take a look to see what I can do with option 1. As for option 2, I cannot afford a Business Pro plan because I only run a small personal blog and a few small personal projects.

Thanks once again,

GB responded:

Dear Donny,

Thank you for getting back to me.

I apologise about the confusion, the email storage is not an issue with your account.

The only issue is the resource usage.

Please look into the potential optimisations and I will scan the account afterwards.

The reason I’ve recommend the upgrade to BP is because it is similarly priced to your current plan.

You are currently paying $155 per year (or $465 for 3 years), while with the BP if you were to prepay the 3 year term, the price would be $466.20.

It would be roughly the same as you are paying right now, but with the benefit that it will provide you with more resources.

I look forward ot hearing back from you and if any questions arise along the way, I am here to help!

Kind Regards,

GB followed up:

Dear Donny,

I hope you’re doing well!

Have you had a chance to evaluate the situation and decide how you’d like to resolve this issue?

I wish you a great day and I look forward to hearing back from you!

Kind Regards,

I replied:

Hi G,

Thank you for following up with me. I have decided to move my sites to cloud hosting.

I paid HostPapa until January 2022. Do I get a refund on it?

GB replied:

Dear Donny,

I hope you’ve had a great weekend!

Unfortunately, a refund is not available, as it can only be acquired in the first 30 days after the purchase.

If you don’t mind me asking, why have you decided to move your websites to cloud hosting?

Kind Regards,

My last respond:

Hi G,

I understand about the refund not available. Would you please make sure that I won’t be charged automatically in January 2022?

As for my decision to move my websites to the cloud, I was concerned with the constant up-sale from HostPapa. I hosted my sites with Lunarpages since 2003 and I was satisfied with it until HostPapa acquired Lunarpages in 2019. My plan was increased from $8.99 to $14.99. Since two years with HostPapa, I had been asked to upgrade. With the recent spike of CPU and I/O usage, I was asked to upgrade to $23.99 a month. With the pattern of up-saling, I worried that I will be asked to be upgrading again in the future.

I tried to to solve the CPU and I/O usage by deleting all the mails on the server, compressed all my files, prevented hot-linking to my images, deactivated my WordPress plugins. Nothing seemed to bring down to 1G of CPU limit and 1MB/s of I/O limit; therefore, I think it was time to move on. Furthermore, my decision to migrate away from HostPapa was reaffirmed after reading similar complaints from numerous ex-Lunarpagers.

You have been patience and responsive and I respect that, but I can no longer be hosting with HostPapa.

Regards,

Today I washed all the windows for the first time after living in this house for 12 years. I started at 10 am and finished around 6 pm. Removing the windows was easier than I expected. I was also surprised that the windows weren’t as dirty as I thought.

Although washing windows was such a mundane task, it felt good to accomplish something. I still don’t like doing home maintenance, but I can’t afford hiring someone else to do it. A man knocked on my door and gave me a quote for $2,800 to fix my driveway. I am not going to spend almost three grants just to park my cars. I’ll patch it up myself. So that will be my next project.

Now that the kids aren’t into ice skating anymore, I might as well spend more time maintaining our home. I still enjoy rollerblading in skate parks. I am not sure if I will continue ice skating lessons. Will see.

Over the summer, I enrolled Đạo and Xuân to private lessons for ice skating. I wanted to see how they do with one-on-one coaching. From what I have observed, they have a lot to relearn. Their coach is detail-oriented and meticulous. She takes the time correcting their footwork and their posture. They spent five weeks working on basic crossovers, which they had learned in group lessons a year ago.

Despite the repetitiveness, they still wanted to do private lessons. The problem is that they don’t want to practice. When I wanted to take them to practice, they resisted and moaned. If they don’t practice they won’t get anywhere in this sport. If they don’t want to practice, they don’t have the passion for the sport. I am fine if they just want to do ice skating for fun. They can go skating once in a while or take group lessons.

Between the coach’s fees and the freestyle ice rink sessions, the private lessons are pricey. I wouldn’t mind paying if they put their heart into it. I do not want to pressure them into it. I want to offer them the opportunity. If they decided to quit, I would honor their decision. I asked both of them again and again, they both said yes that they wanted to continue private lessons. Maybe they do want to continue. Let’s keep them going for a bit longer to see how they do. Will they be able to compete?