Once upon a time, people communicated with each other in complete sentences.  Or at least, I assume people used to communicate with each other in complete sentences.  Then along came the technology that spawned the phenomenon of communicating via text.  This effectively butchered the English language.  At least we thought so, at the time.  Then along came IRC and Instant Messaging which thus took language into depths of fail that were never before imaginable.  OMG, LOL!

Instant Messaging is one of the primary means of communication within, and between, HostGator offices.  This leads to much butchering of the English language internally, whilst (hopefully) maintaining proper grammar within the LiveChats with Customers; this occurs simultaneously, behind the scenes.  I’m not going to reveal too much of the inter-office shenanigans, but there are various conference rooms utilized by various departments to effectively communicate as a group with one another.  This is a snippet of a conversation that took place in one of these conference rooms:

(05:38:01 AM) Preston: bacon are desireable
(05:38:06 AM) Preston: i want some bacon
(05:38:43 AM) Adam: proper spelling is desirable.
(05:38:49 AM) Adam: i want some proper spelling.
(05:38:53 AM) Adam: wrapped in bacon.
(05:38:56 AM) Preston: then read a book
(05:38:58 AM) Preston: this is the internet
(05:39:07 AM) Adam: I WANT THE INTERNET WRAPPED IN BACON

It was the above exchange specifically that prompted the creation of this blog post.  It got me thinking about how we have truncated our language to make it far more immediate, far more bite-sized… far more streamlined, or far more primitive?  TLAs, or “Three-Letter Acronyms” have become the norm.  The aforementioned OMG and LOL, also: SMH, BRB, BRT, BFF, AFK… even the dreaded twosome of WTF and FML.  This is clearly by no means an exhaustive list of TLAs.

There is no way to know the manner in which language will evolve in the future, but if Future Man looks back at the HostGator conference room logs and compares them with the LiveChat logs of the same people having Customer interactions, he may very well think that two completely separate languages are being spoken… and perhaps that is relatively true.  What’s interesting is the two gentlemen quoted above are both highly intelligent and articulate individuals, which you may not necessarily be able to infer based on the snippet presented.

This all begs the question, should we consciously continue down this path of effectively disassembling language down to it’s most basic and minimally-communicative parts, or do we purposely not do that in order to maintain the present arc of lingual evolution, so to speak?  As always, when the future becomes the present, the victors will have written the history, amirite?  ZOMG, fosho!  LOL.

Anyone who has ever watched the discovery channel for an extended period of time can tell you that if there’s one thing a gator is ill prepared to handle, it’s an ice storm. Due to the recent arctic cold fronts arrival here in Houston the HG staff got to experience first hand what a Texas ice storm is all about.

Leading up to the storm the mood around southeast Texas was very lively at the prospect of ultra-rare snowfall. Kids & parents alike were giddy with the notion of baking sheet sled rides, snow angels and of course the always highly anticipated snowball warfare. Unfortunately, that’s not what the residents of Houston received.

Instead, Houston got a nice healthy dose of Black Ice (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Black_ice). Anyone who has ever driven on or around a Houston freeway can tell you that the fearless army of amateur demolition derby drivers that regularly patrol the cities roads need no help in creating a hazardous mess on a daily basis. The heavy coat of ice on all the overpasses and onramps that morning greatly increased their effectiveness.

Here’s a view of Houston’s transtar traffic map from 2/4/11. The red exclamation mark diamonds indicate either hazardous ice or wrecks:

Needless to say the management here at HostGator were shaking in our boots at the prospect of our entire Houston support staff being quarantined to their neighborhoods by ice slicked roads. Fortuntely the Houston gators sheer determination along with fairer weather conditions at our Austin location allowed us to keep our support volumes manageable. …

Here at HostGator, we are all about our clients. We continually strive to provide the very best support and newest hardware and technologies available, as well as provide informative and entertaining content  to our blog readers and forum members. With that being said, we would like your input.

How are we doing? What would you like to see more of? What type of content are you most interested in seeing in our blog? As most of you may already know, our blog is filled with mostly entertaining and comical posts. We would like your input so that we may continue to evolve and gravitate even closer to our customers. Would you like to see more informative/technology related posts? Do you prefer the more tongue in cheek posts? Are you happy with how things are currently?

We would like our customers to become more involved and active in our continued growth and evolution as a company, so here is your chance to speak out and voice your opinion on things. We welcome any and all input, and your opinions of our current social media content, as well as where you would like to see it in the future. So go ahead and leave us your opinions and suggestions, they just might be implemented!

Ready, set, go!

A HostGator office is not exactly your run of the mill workplace. On any given day a normal HostGator employee usually encounters several things a normal office might consider ‘out of the ordinary’.

A prime example of such an instance are the elevators HG employees use on a daily basis. Both our Houston & Austin locations are very nice offices, however both locations feature elevators which we’re fairly sure were originally assembled in Da Vinci’s workshop out of spare legos a few million years ago.

Usually when you step into the elevator in Houston you make it to work on time. Usually…

Getting a new office branch up and running is a lot of hard work. So much work in fact that founder Brent Oxley & customer service guru Daniel Collette have decided to bunk down on site. Here’s a quick tour of Daniel’s original HostGator Austin digs:

Upon watching this video, founder Brent Oxley and I became concerned. Daniel is actually a personal friend of ours (you might recognize him and his tattoo), so naturally we were worried about his general health & happiness.

It didn’t seem to us that Daniel was providing himself with an adequate den to thrive in. This was unacceptable. …

Wednesday, August 5, 2009 started out as a normal day at HostGator’s Houston headquarters. Around 4:00 PM CT, a major power surge that occurred as the result of a transformer near our office blowing up made the day anything but ordinary.

Lights flickered, battery backups beeped, fire alarms went off, and Internet signals all died down almost immediately. People began to wait for the building’s $200,000 hurricane-ready generator to start up, but it didn’t.

In the mean time, one of the three major “legs” of power that feeds the building with the power it needs to function was out because of exploded transformer. The building was underpowered and the higher voltage motors and equipment started burning out from the heat and stress of running without the adequate amounts of power. Expensive equipment continued to get damaged.

A compressor on the air conditioning burnt out (cost: $35,000), air handlers got destroyed (cost: $5,000), an elevator motor got fried (cost: $10,000) and lots of other equipment in the building’s mechanical room still isn’t working correctly (cost: unknown). The total cost of the damages is expected to be upwards of $60,000.

As the building’s systems started to go down and the people in charge of HostGator’s office began calling in electricians, power companies, and repairmen, the rest of the management team began going into what we refer to internally as “hurricane mode.”

• Twitter updates started to go out informing customers of a power problem in the building and possible service delays.
• Employees were rallied and were sent to the other employees’ homes.
• Our phone number was redirected (our VOIP system is housed in our office) and the message on our phone system was updated to inform customers of the outage.
• Our support site was updated with an emergency notice.
• A forum post was made with additional details.

…

HostGator has a history and tradition of giving back. In the last year, we’ve donated over $125,000 to charity, actively worked towards offsetting and reversing our environmental impact, and given free or
discounted web hosting to a countless number of web sites.

Today, we’re moving forward with our commitment to the communities and the people we serve with the launch of the HostGator Technology Grant.

Recipients of the HostGator Technology Grant will receive one year of completely free web hosting with our Swamp Plan, which offers 1,000 GB of space and unlimited bandwidth. If the Swamp plan does not fit the needs of the particular recipient, they can opt to take the grant as a $180 service credit to any other HostGator product or service. After the one year of free service, grant recipients can re-apply and if accepted again, continue to use HostGator web hosting completely free.

The HostGator Technology Grant’s goal is simple and straightforward: provide free web hosting to organizations and projects that serve the greater good.

Obtaining legitimately free web hosting for nonprofits can be an arduous process. Organizations should be spending their time doing what they believe in and what they set out to do, not hunting for
affordable and quality web hosting. …

Well, its that time to give you some more great news! We have prepared another type of program for you besides that of just referring persons to host with us. We are pleased to let you know that you can now refer potential employees to us, and if they are hired you can make some nice cash. Take a look at the referral program, and you will notice that the payout is pretty generous. The payout is up to $2500 dollars for a referral. Thats right, I said $2,500 US dollars. So let me explain why we have decided to add this program.

HostGator is growing at a phenomenal rate. With the growth of more customers, this means that we need more qualified web hosting support technicians. With this in mind we have put together a system that will help us to build upon the current HostGator team as well as provide an incentive for persons like yourself that can help us find the right people for the job. Everybody wins here. An employee for us, cash for you, and a new job for someone in a fun working environment.

Let me tell you a little about how it is working at HostGator so you can have some good information to provide your referrals. HostGator is a fast paced but relaxed environment. We had a previous post called “Office Tour“, which gives you a little bit of an idea of what things look like inside the HostGator building. There is a Pool table, workout room, Air Hockey, and Ping pong table which is my favorite! We also have company paid events regularly, and free food for employees as well throughout the week. Full time employees receive full health benefit options as well after 90 days of employment.

Ok, so now that I have given you the details about the great perks of working here, now would be a really good time for you to think of anyone you may know that has some of the skills we are looking for, and have them fill out a job application with us. The requirements for the employee referral are very short and simple, so here below are the few requirements.

1. They must be able to legally work in our Houston Headquarters.
2. They must be employed for 90 days in order to be paid.
3. You must fill out the below referral form before their first interview.
4. You cannot refer yourself.

If you didnt pick up the link earlier on this post, click HERE to get started with your referral program and make some extra cash! …