In April 2007, oddculture.com and related sites went down. We were blamed by ServerFly.com (stay far away from them) as the “problem”. Perhaps our scripts were dragging the server down, we don’t know. But serverfly’s support was abysmal. There’s no excuse for keeping our site down for days and days while we wait and wait and wait for support.

Then we went to DSTinternet.

Out of the frying pan and into the fire.

Saturday, oddculture and its sister sites were down completely. Traceroutes never succeeded. But dstinternet.com itself was down. Their phone number is out of service.

And with the following “problems”:

traceroute dstinternet.com
dstinternet.com: Temporary failure in name resolution

Whois:

Registrant:
InteliChoice Data Group

Registered through: GoDaddy.com, Inc. (http://www.godaddy.com)
Domain Name: DSTINTERNET.COM

Domain servers in listed order:
NS1.DSTINTERNET.COM
NS2.DSTINTERNET.COM

admin and technical Contacts:
InteliChoice Data Group
1301 E Debbie Lane
Suite 102-109 Mansfield, TX 76063

Hmm. Well, my original nameservers were v102a.dnsmark.net & v102B.dnsmark.net. Let’s take a look at DNSMARK.NET:
Retrieving DNS records for dnsmark.net…

DNS servers
ns2.dnsmark.net [72.249.1.101]
ns1.dnsmark.net [72.249.1.100]
Query for DNS records for dnsmark.net failed: Timed out

From GoDaddy:

Administrative Contact:
Manager, DNS admin@dnsmark.net
Global DNS Management Center
1301 E Debbie LN
Suite 102-19
Mansfield, Texas 76063
United States
12672957986 Fax — 12672957986

Hmm. My original welcome email was from a Sean Shehan. Let’s google him:

Sean Shehan serves as Senior Vice President of Operations for eDataRack.com, Inc. which provides high quality, reliable hosting solutions at prices everyone can afford. eDataRack.com, Inc. was established in 2002 to meet market demand for high performance, reliable and affordable web hosting services. We have consistently strived over the past 4 years to deliver high quality services at the lowest price possible for our customers.

Oh great. Let’s look at “edatarack.com”:

Administrative Contact:
Zakhem, Salim domain_admin@surfbest.net
Trip.net, Inc.
P.O. Box 5328
Katy, Texas 77491-5328
United States
2816757300

Hmm, what happens when we google “Salim Zakhem” ?

Wait, this isn’t the same guy, is it??

Zakhem Construction hasn’t been there in two and a half years.The project was supposed include construction of a four-way street. 11 News found Zakhem Construction and an unexpected story.
Away from the television camera, Salim Zakhem told 11 News the city of Houston caused delays and stopped paying him, creating a financial strain on the company.

and from here?

Look at edatarack’s website:

eDataRack.com operates its own servers, located at our own Data Center in the heart of Houston, TX in which we have full control and employee a team of system administrators 24/7.

Our Data Center utilizes one of the world’s most expansive IP Networks, which provides connectivity in over 100 countries and operates at speeds up to OC-768, the fastest available in today’s market. We have recently upgraded our Data Center with dual 100 MB BGP4 routed Fiber Optic termination directly inside our Internet POP. Our customer router is 1 Hop from the Internet backbone.

Hmm, that sounds familiar:

DSTinternet is a true Internet Presence Provider and not a reseller. DSTinternet operates its own servers, located in our own 28,000 square foot Data Center in the heart of Dallas, TX in which we have full control and employee a team of system administrators 24/7/365.
Our Data Center utilizes one of the world’s most expansive IP Networks, which provides connectivity in over 200 countries and operates at speeds up to OC-768, the fastest available in today’s market. We have recently upgraded our Data Center with dual GigEs from both Internap and Level3 with BGP4 routed Fiber Optic termination directly inside our Internet POP. Our customer router is 1 Hop from the Internet backbone.

Oh, right!
Except that the data center that belongs to “them” really doesn’t. It’s Colo4Dallas.

By the way, 1301 E Debbie Lane Suites 102-119 cover various businesses like starbucks, a nail salon, a dentist, etc.

So what we’ve got here are two assholes who have been around fucking people over since at least 2002.

And in the words of Al Pacino, I think they should go straight to fucking jail.

So to anybody who is thinking of associating themselves with any of these names:

dstinternet.com
dnsmarker.com
edatarack.com
dnsmark.net
surfbest.net
Sean Shehan
InteliChoice Data Group
Salim Zakhem

DONT.

You’ll get screwed.