ScatteredGenius.com

Huff your own excrement fermentation, poke pooping butts, talk on IRC using flash, learn about nerdy programming stuff, and draw in flash. Butts and flash, basically.
(Continued)

I was walking around the IGF games, looking and playing a few. I peek my head one of the monitors, and watch someone play Flipside for a bit. It’s a silly game, and it was making some loud noises. People were interviewing the creators of Iron Dukes, and asked us to turn it down. I botched my roll in intelligence and dexterity and pressed the contrast lower button on the monitor to try to turn down the volume, which brought up a menu dialog on the screen. When really I should have just turned the knob down on the speakers. I got all embarrassed and looked at the person playing and was like ‘oops, sorry..’ when my heart stopped. Who was playing the game?

GABE NEWELL.

He was giving the game a shot, because it’s a HL2 mod. I just froze and choked.

He stopped playing and turned to the creator of the game, shook the guys hand and said “Hi, I’m Gabe Newell.”

…the person had no idea who that was, and just replied with a bored “Hi.” Perhaps he didn’t know who he was, because he was Danish? Delicious.

“Everyone at Valve has been talking about it,” says Gabe. Still, crickets.

“Cool.” Wow. No idea. How funny is that…

So after Gabe walked away, I had to say something so I chased him down. Aaron walked up right at that moment. I stopped Gabe and introduced myself, and explained about EndgameRadio. I told him about the incident where Urban was in HL2. (THE PIX ARE DOWN, URB, MAKE IT WORK AHURR HURRRRRR :_:) and then also where we all deemed him the sexiest man alive. He was a good sport and said we should talk to Lombardi and get some interviews with Valve employees. I made sure to thank him for being radical and doing radical things. I didn’t want to take up too much of his time, so we let him go check out more games. For as big a deal as we’ve made him, and as much as I thought I’d be star struck upon ever actually getting to meet him, I was somewhat surprised I grew balls and talked to him.

It was kind of one of the most awesome things that happened to me ever. In all seriousness, it was really awesome to be able to tell him how rad I think he is, despite the teasing we gave him in the past.

So as you may or may not know, I run all of my websites through dreamhost.com. I’ve used them for many years, and even came back to them after leaving for a few years to cheaper pastures.

Well, this morning I got a billing email from them:

This is just a notice that your DreamHost Account #_____
(”____’s Account”) has a balance of $380.87 (including any charges not
due until 2009-01-14), with $340.97 due (since 2008-12-14).

You also have $321.02 past due (owed since 2008-11-14), and if
by 2009-01-14 you do not pay at least the $321.02 part, your
account will be automatically suspended until payment is received.

Ok, that’s confusing… WTF, I ask myself. Looking farther into things…

WHAT DO YOU OWE MONEY FOR?

We have the last payment on this account to be $12.46 on 2008-01-15 06:48:38.

Since then the following charges have been made to the account:

2008-01-18 - $19.95 for “CODE MONSTER!” through 2008-02-17.

2008-01-18 - $19.95 for “CODE MONSTER!” through 2008-02-17.

2008-02-18 - $19.95 for “CODE MONSTER!” through 2008-03-17.

2008-02-18 - $19.95 for “CODE MONSTER!” through 2008-03-17.

2008-03-18 - $19.95 for “CODE MONSTER!” through 2008-04-17.

2008-03-18 - $19.95 for “CODE MONSTER!” through 2008-04-17.

2008-04-18 - $19.95 for “CODE MONSTER!” through 2008-05-17.

2008-04-18 - $19.95 for “CODE MONSTER!” through 2008-05-17.

2008-05-18 - $19.95 for “CODE MONSTER!” through 2008-06-17.

2008-05-18 - $19.95 for “CODE MONSTER!” through 2008-06-17.

2008-06-18 - $19.95 for “CODE MONSTER!” through 2008-07-17.

2008-06-18 - $19.95 for “CODE MONSTER!” through 2008-07-17.

2008-07-18 - $19.95 for “CODE MONSTER!” through 2008-08-17.

2008-07-18 - $19.95 for “CODE MONSTER!” through 2008-08-17.

2008-08-18 - $19.95 for “CODE MONSTER!” through 2008-09-17.

2008-08-18 - $19.95 for “CODE MONSTER!” through 2008-09-17.

2008-09-18 - $19.95 for “CODE MONSTER!” through 2008-10-17.

2008-09-18 - $19.95 for “CODE MONSTER!” through 2008-10-17.

2008-10-18 - $19.95 for “CODE MONSTER!” through 2008-11-17.

2008-10-18 - $19.95 for “CODE MONSTER!” through 2008-11-17.

2008-11-18 - $19.95 for “CODE MONSTER!” through 2008-12-17.

2008-12-18 - $19.95 for “CODE MONSTER!” through 2009-01-17.

2008-12-18 - $19.95 for “CODE MONSTER!” through 2009-01-17.

Notice anything odd? I did too. Why am I getting billed for the future? That’s not how things work. Something is wrong. I reply to the email with a simple:

“Is this some kind of mistake?”

And then immediate head over to DreamhostStatus.com, which immediately reveals the problem:

We are currently aware of some billing inaccuracies which we will be resolving later today. All of these issues will be resolved, and any billing errors corrected. We sincerely apologize for any hassle this has created.

Another link in there reveals a more informal explaination of the problem:

We had a teensy eensy weensy little billing error last night… my first clue something was up when I saw this morning’s daily billing report (so far): $7,500,000.

It turns out due to my excessively fat fingers, nearly every one of our customers has been seriously over-billed in the last 12 hours.

Seven Point Five Milluyun Dollars.

They say they are fixing it and you can act like it never happened, but from reading some of the angry comments on the blog, peoples lives got a bit messed up. To the tune of lots of overdrawn accounts, empty bank accounts and moneyless lunchtimes, all the way to having bounced mortgage payments which of course screws up credit. I guess we’ll never know the full story with some of these angry situations, but let’s hope they do something to compensate for this big messup =P

That being said, they have generally been an awesome shared host, the only problems being related to shared hostey-type stuff, like bottlenecks and the like.

As a programmer by trade, I can completely relate to fat-finger-fuckups but something involving money needs to be treated with the utmost of sanctity.

So good!