I have to admit I'm something of a gadget freak.  I can rarely stay with any one device or service long before I begin feeling that the technological grass is greener in another vendor's pasture.  Until about a year and a half ago, that held true for web hosting companies, as well.  I tried a lot of them, mostly cheap, but then found one I was fairly happy with and stayed with them for some time.

Until they started messing with my friends and family.

After six or eight months with this host I felt safe recommending them to one of my friends as well as my father.  I'm nearly 40 - I should know better than to ever make such a recommendation, but one of my many weaknesses is an almost compulsive desire to help out, so I tend to do dumb things like suggest "good" web hosts.

Needless to say, both my friend and my father had bad experiences with the host, and neither is with them any longer.  That fact alone would not be sufficient to make me move, but I have had a glimpse at the way in which my father was treated during the period of time during which he was still interested in salvaging his relationship with the host.  Their behavior was very unprofessional and, at times, rude.  That attitude surprises me, since my father was calmly trying to get them to do a few simple things, like stop double-charging his credit card for their service.

Since I consider myself a man of action (sort of) I resolved to leave the current host even though they had not done anything untoward to me, personally.  In principal they had offended me righteously, and I would not stand for it.

I decided to take the opportunity to investigate the virtual private server (VPS) side of web hosting, and found prices had fallen precipitously since I had last looked.  I did a few hours' research, and decided to try a VPN for myself.  I won't name the company until I have formed an opinion of their service, but so far I am adequately pleased.  The support turnaround could be faster, but it could also be a lot slower or less competent.  The ability to completely control my web server is great, however, and I think I'm going ot really enjoy the "private server" world.

More as developments arise...

I've been doing a little reading lately on Erlang.  It's a functional language that offers a nifty set of abstractions useful for parallel programming, among other things and, while I can immediately appreciate its power, I'm reluctant to get too far into it because it represents a kind of significant departure for me in terms of both syntax and supported platforms (Erlang heavily favors Unix, although there is a runtime port for Windows, and Eclipse offers some IDE support to Windows users).  Additionally, Erlang is *extremely* strict about evaluation and assignment, disallowing any global state or multiple assignment to registers.  While I appreciate the purity of its intent, it's a little too much for me in everyday practice.  Of course, I'll keep playing with it anyway...

At the same time, I've been reading about the Parallel Extensions for .Net (Framework 3.5) and the activity on F# (a managed functional language similar in some respects to Erlang).  Between the Parallel Extensions' message-based task system and excellent additions like PLINQ (parallel LINQ), and F#'s functional approach, I think there may be something worth investigating further here.

I don't have all the details yet - very few, in fact - but I've seen enough to spend a little more time learning about this stuff.  More as the story unfolds.