It's true, "good help is hard to find," and it gets harder everyday. The incompetence of some people completely astounds me. In the last few weeks I have been treated to a healthy dose of incompetence from one of my hosting vendors. This particular vendor, who I'll keep nameless, provides once of my dedicated servers which I administer myself. A few weeks ago this hosting company decides to do maintenance on my email server, they didn't tell me that they planned on doing this work, which would have been fine if they totally didn't blotch the entire operation. Not only did they mess my email server's configuration, they didn't even bring it back on-line after doing their work! It took these "experts" three days to "fix" what they broke. "Fixed," because it still isn't quite right... but at least my email is working again.

The second dose of incompetence occurred earlier this week when my server was completely off-line for a couple hours Monday through Wednesday. I was told that electrical maintenance was being performed. Huh? Maintenance on an electrical system that contains both UPS and Diesel generators should not cause the systems to go entirely off-line. I'm through with this hosting company; I've already leased a replacement server from a company that I've had good experiences with, Datarealm. Datarealm's staff IS competent, and I recommend them to anybody looking for a reliable hosting provider.

There is only one good thing that comes from this constantly raising level of incompetence, and it is that these people make me look good! Clients of mine are almost in disbelieve when I deliver a finished product that was completed on time and in 100% working order. I believe this disbelieve is caused by having to deal with bad help on a daily basis.