I got a similar note recently—early in the month I was told that I had exceeded 100% of my available bandwidth memory, which sounded to me like volume-kilograms. Anyway, I figured I would then plaster every square inch of my site with ads, put up a call for $80,000, and then take the month off, but then the bill came and it was like 4 bucks. Still! I should probably do something official like switch hosts, too.

About your new site design, could you explain something to me? Mozilla is all fun and good, but I frequent a number of computers around campus over which I do not have administrator privledges and am thus forced to use IE. So could you tell me what it is about your site that makes it so clunky to non-mozilla browsers? And I don't want to hear any mumbo-jumbo about data caching or whatever... what sort of aesthetic benefit does your site now have that it didn't before? Is it that snow-covered tree? I mean, I'm no code warrior, but I think I could rig up a website with a picture of a tree that works in IE and mozilla at the same time.

hey tommy, do you think having a site on your RSS reader means it hits that server up for more pages all the time, or does it only download pages when you choose to view them. If it only downloads the index I imagine that is pretty small but depending on how frequently it checks it might become appreciable.

Jeff: it's primarily 1) the transparent tiling GIFs and 2) and the large graphic in the sidebar (which is a continuous background from one box to the next -- no one seems to notice it though). I should do something about the sidebar bg graphic. That might improve things, but I'm lazy. Other people have complained about the site, too (Catherine among them). I tend to get hostile in response, but I really do want things to be usable. I'll look into it. You might want to try the "dialup" option at the bottom of the sidebar when you're on IE.

The design is intended to be flexible, but so far I haven't found a good substitute for the tree. I'll get on that, though. Certainly with spring rolling around it's got to be changed.

Jon: RSS readers just look up an individual file repeatedly (index.rdf, in our case). They don't load the whole page. The size of the file varies depending on what's in it, but at the moment it's only 12kb, so I don't think RSS use it's what's pushed us over the edge. Our 5GB limit was relatively low by most hosts' standards, and this is the first time we've received a notice (which just told us we had hit 80% usage, about 75% of the way through february).

It's a problem we're happy to have. Besides, we were going to need more storage space for photos soon, anyway.

Dear Tom,

Your page is completely unbearable to view (even in dialup mode) in internet explorer. Though I encourage your efforts to drive everyone away from IE, it's damn annoying. On the matter of the background or side graphic, I think you should steal from the wizznutzz and put up that picture of Kwame Brown as Jesus. It is perhaps the greatest thing I have ever seen.