I still host a couple web-sites at dreamhost.com for projects not directly related to my primary business. So, while the sites are not really critical to me they are critical to the businesses they support. It looks like the two sites will be down for the better part of two days. All I can think is pretty much unreal!
If you are thinking about hosting with them because they talk about being a ‘democratic workplace’ and being all happy and ‘green’ I would strongly suggest you look elsewhere. This is not the first time these sites have been down for an extended period of time and it’s why ColorMetrix.com, JimRaffel.com and ProofPass.com now all reside with a real hosting company.
So, for this current outage I guess the super geeks at dreamhost need to run extended hardware tests on file servers that my hosting plan depends upon. OK, makes sense….switch over to redundant hardware and restore from backups! Oh, that would require you to be a real hosting company and worry more about continuous service than how green or democratic your workplace is.
As you may have guessed, when my schedule allows these last two sites will move from dreamhost and I will be a happy man again. 
If I save one person the frustration of dealing with dream(nightmares are a kind of dream)host.com this post will have been worthwhile.
As I have traveled and worked the phones this Summer, many of my regular readers have asked why I have not been posting here. The answer is pretty simple, here at ColorMetrix in spite of all the gloom and doom reporting in the news media about our economy being so bad we are awfully darn busy. Like many organizations in the printing industry these days, ColorMetrix has become a leaner and more focused company over the last 12-18 months. This means that my business partner, Michael Litscher, and a I both keep pretty busy doing more with less, and growing the company at the same time. It has been a fun and challenging year getting ColorMetrix from where it was 12 months ago to where it is today (in great shape by all business measurement metrics I am aware of).
So, I have a couple Golden Nugget topics in the works (really just raw thoughts on paper and in my head right now); I was able to attend the IRgA conference several weeks ago, and have some interesting perspectives I have been meaning to share with you; and our ProofPass.com [Virtual] module has a multi-location monitor verification and control story worth sharing.
As for thoughts and commentary about DRUPA, I chose not to go this time around so there will be no commentary. We are very focused on our GraphExpo(look for booth 5418) presence across the aisle from our friends at X-Rite.
Until I have more time to write, I wish everyone a happy and safe Summer. I know I will be spending more time with family and friends while we have warm sunny weather here in the Midwest.