Today the MINI USA owners lounge correctly showed my new MINIs color (previously it was still showing the “spec” color – dark silver!)
Most MINI owners know already but for those that don’t – one of the great things about ordering a MINI is tracking its build. As soon as you have a production number, you can log in to the owners lounge and check its spec and build status.
(for more order tracking info, see this MINI2 FAQ)
Regular readers will not be surprised … a comment in GBMINIs specification back in 2003 (would have liked to order a Chili Red MINI with red interior) and other hints posted more recently … so today is the day that I committed to replacing GBMINI#2.
With another MINI of course:
I have been debating this almost since the ’05s came out and allowed a red interior on the MCS. For a while I wondered about a convertible – but for some unexplained reason you cannot have red seats on the convertible in USA (although you can in England!)
Today I had Scott at MINI Peabody cost out the parts to upgrade the seating and at an estimated $3K+ I abandoned that idea.
With nothing much else to decide, I placed an order with Joel and got a production number – with luck, GBMINI#3 will arrive in time for my birthday in early April.
Here are GBMINI#3 specifications …
2005 MINI Cooper S, Chili Red, Black Roof
Red/Black cloth/leather interior, Anthracite headliner, body color trim
Chrome exterior & interior
MFSW, manual a/c, on-board computer (no sunroof)
DSC, xenon headlamps, front & rear foglamps, 16″ wheels
Cold weather package (heated seats, mirrors & washer jets)
Dimming rearview mirror, rain sensing wipers, auto headlamps
Automatic transmission
I debated forever about the transmission – no doubt there will be dissenting comments but I drive very lazily and I still don’t shift as smoothly as I would like with the “wrong” hand in this country; I have not driven an auto but feedback from the techs at MINI Peabody (thanks Bob & Dave) indicates I won’t be disappointed. Thanks also to Keith for reassurance this afternoon.
So if anyone wants a nice 2003 Indi Blue MCS with many upgrades including JCW, let me know 😉
So I recently wrote all about how this website is maintained, and sang the praises of 1and1 (masses of storage, 10 times more bandwidth than I need, and all the features I am ever likely to need).
So of course they immediately respond by failing a total of three times in January for many hours at a time! Down enough that at least two people (apart from me) noticed and commented on it.
1and1 has no support/status page – you can send an email if you wish; each time I did that I got a reply (typically the next day) saying “all is well now”. No explanation of what was wrong …
You can also phone their support line (a recent innovation for them); the last time I did that I was on hold for more than half an hour and when I finally got through, my web site had just recovered so I got the same “all is well” response. I ranted, and was told something about a raid failure – but that was the same excuse used a week earlier to cover a six+ hour failure.
So I won’t put up with it any more. After some research, I am switching to PowWeb (the same hosting company used by Gabe Bridgers MotoringFile); this company makes a feature of their technology which ensures your website will experience virtually no downtime ….
There is also a PowWeb forum where issues can be discussed – apparently there is no censoring by PowWeb; indeed there are announcements of issues and ongoing maintenance & improvements.
Of course (refer to the subject of this post), last night when I was testing everything I started to get lots of “500 Internal Server Error” messages on php web pages – but I realised it was not my own mistake when I saw the same on MotoringFile and on another PowWeb hosted site … a quick use of their online chat confirmed that PowWeb had a problem, but were working on it (all is well again today).
So it seems that I will never find a reliable web hosting company – but I prefer one that admits problems to one that cannot be contacted.
