Over the last couple days my various web sites have seen far more downtime than normal. My hosting provide, Radical Vision has apparently been having issues with the MySQL server that powers not only this blog, but even their support system.

Yep, you heard me right, the support system that you have to use to contact them about any issues relies on MySQL, the very same instance that everybody else uses. The same one that was down for several hours today. What’s the point of a support system if you can’t report issues?

Yesterday’s outage was blamed on a bad script being ran by another user, as for today, I’ve yet to hear a word.

When I opened my account with RadicalV almost three years ago, you could simply email a support address and expect a response within a couple of minutes. Then, “to provide better support” they disabled this simple support system and replaced it with a web page. Now, this is easy to use, and I’m sure that it makes their lives easier, but what about the life of the customers on days like today?

Now, I still firmly believe that RadicalV is the best hosting service I’ve used, and I’m still impressed with the support. Where many hosting services respond to support questions within a day, RadicalV typically responds within an hour or two. I guess like all good companies, they grow up and change focus. The days of the 5 minute support response are over.

It’s too bad, and if the downtime continues as it for the last month or two, perhaps my $35 a month will go to someone else.