JegBeg

The JegBeg party bus returned from our adventure in sunshine state on Saturday. Altogether we had a fantastic time, even despite weather conditions that were, at times, adverse. We enjoyed ourselves so much, in fact, that I, for one, can’t help but fantasize about packing up and moving to a location closer to the coast.

Highlights of the trip included an amazing rental house (complete with tiki bar, jacuzzi, and pool), relaxing poolside, soaking up rays at the beach, a side trip to Universal Studios Islands of Adventure, and an incredible meal prepared by our resident chef, Aaron.  Check the slide show after the jump. Full photo coverage can be found at http://picasaweb.google.com/jeff.stalnaker/CocoaBeach and  http://picasaweb.google.com/crescentfresh.lisa/CocoaBeachVacation/

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It’s come the time of the year when I just have to get out in the world, away from the office and the daily grind to have some fun. This year, we’ve departed from tradition and foregone Bonnaroo for a trip to the beach. We’re loading up the entire JegBeg crew in a motor home and setting sail for Merritt Island (see Cocoa Beach) Florida where we’ve rented a house for a week. I’m looking forward to trying my luck on a surfboard, enjoying a few cocktails poolside, and getting some much needed downtime. While down there, I’ll do my best to post pics and updates. Follow me, Lisa, or Brandan on Twitter for more frequent updates.

Cheers,

J

Dear Twitter,

Seriously, you’ve got to get your shit together. Like many others, I love your concept. You fill a niche in the social web that no one else before you even addressed. You’re adding new users everyday. Some of us have come to rely on you as a quick and easy way to spread news, stay in contact with our friends, and even remind us to water our plants and turn off the lights.

Despite all of this goodness, you’re really starting to disappoint me. I am now trying to wait out your third outage this week.

So far, I’ve tried my best to be understanding. Your user base and popularity are growing at a pace that baffles the mind. As a developer, I can understand scalability problems and how difficult they can be to solve. But, you had to know that you were onto something when you launched and that rapid growth was inevitable. You should have planned accordingly and had a scaling strategy that could accommodate this kind of growth. You choose Ruby on Rails probably so that you could be agile and push out new features and bug fixes quickly, a decision I understand and respect, however it seems to be failing you now.  I won’t slam you for things you did in the past that you can not change now, but I will hold you at fault for not addressing problems when they arise.

This scalability problem is getting out of hand. The outages are starting to turn people off and now you have competitors to worry about. If you can’t stabilize yourself your most dedicated users will start abandoning you for other services that may lack your features but are at least available consistently. If you can’t handle any more growth, maybe you should stop accepting new accounts. I doubt this would help you long term, but perhaps it would stop the bleeding long enough to solve the problem and prevent an exodus of your users.

I’ve even considered leaving. The only thing keeping me around is the fact that I invested a considerable amount of time convincing my friends to jump on your bandwagon and I don’t want have to explain to them why they need to switch to something else (a affair I already went through when I moved from MySpace to Facebook).

Consider this your intervention. I love you enough to keep using you and want you to stick around. Please, Please, Please don’t me regret making you a part of my online life. If you do, I’ll never forgive you.

Cheers,

J

Update: Even before I finished writing this, it seems you’re back up. Maybe you are doing something to combat this problem

Yesterday, we added a couple of new contributors to the site. With that in mind, this site is becoming a community blog rather than a personal site. As such, we’re changing our name. You may have noticed in the header we are now JegBeg. With this change, we are also changing our domain name to http://jegbeg.com. Update your links and subscriptions.

As we are now a community, we are opening our doors for more contributors. If you’d like to write for JegBeg and have some basic writing skills, contact us through the Contact link at the top. We’ll get back to as soon as we can and hopefully you’ll be up and ready to post in a matter of hours.

Be on the lookout for more changes coming soon!

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Now playing: Jose Padilla - Strolling
via FoxyTunes
Cheers,

J

I know I’m not the best at keeping things updated around here, so I’ve decided to employ some help. One of my best friends, Brandan, and my wife, Lisa have joined the site as contributors. Brandan is sure to keep you up to date with tech news and a few how-tos for the geeky. Lisa is a great source for human interest and environmental news / stories. Join me in making them feel welcome and appreciated.

Cheers,

J

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Now playing: Radiohead - All I Need
via FoxyTunes