pardner

Compounding the issue of irresponsibly scheduling maintenance for US zones mid-day in the US, they ALSO broke ability to scale worker processes to zero, so there was literally NO way to wind your app down and prevent worker jobs from firing off.

When the platform started getting wonky we shut off our worker dynos so the system would not fire off emails while the system is in a known-screwed-up state.

The console said workers were set to zero.

But... in our logs we watched the (supposedly off) workers continue to fire off.

Nice FUBAR all around, Heroku.

We found Godaddy's free dns service was causing a noticeable number of random "website not found" errors. While it might have been mitigated by adding a secondary dns provider we decided to find a more robust primary dns solution plus a secondary dns provider.

I looked at easyDNS couple of years ago, at that time did not allow reverse lookups for PTR records, but it looks like they do now. Worth a look for sure, thanks.

got a new note from zerigo support saying they will refund after cancel: "If you are on an annual or quarterly plan and do not wish to continue with Zerigo service, you are eligible for a pro-rated refund after you cancel your service."

Looking hard at dnsmadeeasy... Anyone using them as primary DNS? Basic specs look good: $60/YR for 25 domains ... supports zone imports... uptime guarantee.

Only DynDns top-tier products allow zone file importing (one of the features that sold us on Zerigo in the first place since we have 50 domains). And those packages start at $300/mo AND have a 1 year non-refundable contract.

Hitting ramen profitability and being able to click the "donate" button on many of the gems and plugins that helped us get there.

The note I got from support says: "A pro-rated credit will be applied for any unused portion of your existing plan towards the new service."

That said, since they are choosing to break a pre-paid annual agreement I presume one can demand and get a pro-rated refund.

Sad thing is, I'd actually stick with them if they were grandfathering pre-paid plans. Not doing so is mind-blowingly arrogant.

snap!

Unfortunate that Zerigo did not (apparently) bother to deploy ddos protection after the event a year ago, and waited until this event to do so. This is part of their auto-reply to any emails to support:

"Zerigo has procedured DDOS mitigation services from Verisign and is in the process of integrating them into our network to prevent such attacks from compromising our DNS services in the future."

If Route53 ever supports Primary/Secondary DNS Zone Transfers (AXFR/IXFR) it will be a no brainer for us, too. Even with Amazon, we just can't have all our DNS eggs in one basket.

That is, in fact, one badass list. Nice work, great resource.

Implementing secondary DNS servers is essential, and has kept our primary site up and running.

That said, it is UNFORGIVABLE (imo) that Zerigo failed to send ANY type of notification to its DNS customers... they have apparently been having ddos trouble for about 24 hours.

afaik they do not offer any type of text or email alerts when they are experiencing trouble (such as the SMS messages I get from Heroku).

So, while I like their tools, and the ddos hasn't affected our website that have secondary DNS, we will "walk" to another provider that cares enough about their customers to offer proactive alerts.

Thank goodness for secondary DNS servers (dnsunlimited in our case)... the sites we implemented secondary DNS for are running fine.

One of my companies sends a lot of email. When we updated some templates, ipads and iphones seriously messed up the email (all recipients saw was a gray screen... IF they scrolled down they saw a "partially downloaded' message.)

This IOS bug persists even in current model ipads and iphones. The website article explains the fix -- basically, add dummy stuff your your <head> tag until it contains at least 1019 characters.

OP is right about not using regex, but wrong about the "just send it" solution (for reasons outlined by several other posters).

We use this clever (and well-explained) solution from http://my.rails-royce.org/2010/07/21/email-validation-in-rub...

Highly recommend HyperPDF addon. PDF creation has been non-trivial (or very expensive) for Heroku apps. My company found out about and started using this Heroku add-on last weekend, and went straightaway into production with a valuable new feature yesterday. Very easy to setup and use. Exceptionally responsive tech support. One thing that sold us was that the top tier allows unlimited number of PDF docs/month, whereas the other alternative on Heroku doesn't have an "all you can eat" alternative.

tl;dr

I spent $3.14 (USD) on a latte this morning.

That's irrational, sorry.

I concur with everything I've read by Bruce Schneier re: "security theater" as practiced by the TSA, and I think the TSA could/should backtrack a lot further than merely re-allowing small knives.

Post-9/11, a small knife is not a threat to airline safety if for no other reason than (a) the policies are explicit that threatening a hostage will never again result in control of the plane, and (b) the bad guys know that.

Statistically speaking, a web startup can safely not invest in TDD. For precisely same reason that a daily Russian Roulette player can safely not invest in health insurance.

But for the minority who miraculously dodge the bullet, the extra investment will eventually become a lifesaver.

I spent the better part of high school with a copy of Lancaster's TTL Cookbook in hand (still have my dog-eared copy). Then as an undergrad in 78 I re-read this primer for success. While I was more inclined towards the 'enterprise' track, this book nonetheless helped shape my attitude about money, time, and purpose. I can't recall another book that combined (good) advice regarding cashflow, always giving customers something extra, working with your body's natural cycles of energy, retirement funding, and "modifying a television set for a better money machine" (by cutting the cord and throwing it away). Still a worthwhile read, IMO.

There are two common json gems, one if which is NOT updated when you update rails. json_pure does not seem to be updated to 1.7.7 automatically by 'bundle update rails' so if your Gemfile.lock shows your app uses json_pure (via some other gem's dependency in my case), you also need to run 'bundle update json_pure'

Thx for correcting that... have used that screen a million times without realizing they lumped dev apps and prod+dev workflow together. 3 columns would eliminate any confusion (Production Apps, Development Apps, Development Workflow) but might not look at clean.

I don't think that is correct. AFAIK the 'development' side of the heroku status panel is not related to developing, per se, it's the status for apps that are not running on production-level resources... for example, single-dyno apps, or apps not running with production flavor of database.

Seems odd, however, that status.heroku.com lists the issue only on the development side, suggesting production apps are not affected? http://screencast.com/t/L36Hpx5dx

From a manager perspective, this sort of alert (as well as recent Heroku emails telling you specifically which app(s) needed patching for the recent Rails CVE issues) is a great example of one of the extra benefits of Heroku. A team of engineers 'watching your back' at no extra charge is a good thing.

We've very heavy voice users, so needed lots of minutes/month. We've had great luck with Boost Mobile... I particularly like their retention policy which is NOT to lock you up on a 2 yr contract, but rather, to reduce your bill after N months of on-time payments. (Started at 60/mo, and after about a year we're paying 45/mo for unlimited voice+data+text.) On the other hand their customer support sucks if you need any help beyond the self-help on their website. AFAIK they do NOT have any live support.