Hello everybody,

This post is sponsored by PayPerPost

Over this past week I've experienced a few minutes of downtime on my website. At first thoughts a few minutes doesn't sound like a lot of time, but if your website is mission-critical – such as the main store front for a business – then you can't risk losing even one visitor.

Quite often downtime is experienced because a site is receiving a DDoS attack. You can actually prevent these attacks by using ProxyShield DDoS Protection. The cool thing about this is that you don't have to change anything on your host or website, you just redirect your DNS settings to their server, and they filter the traffic before it hits your site. They must have enormous bandwidth to be able to do this!

Since I joined Hostgator near the beginning of this year, I've been quite happy with the service. There has been almost no downtime whatsoever, and the speed and support is always excellent.

However, I've read in some forums that a few people who have tried to get them to honor their uptime guarantee have had a hard time, and given up. HostGator has a 99.9% uptime guarantee, with a full month's refund if that isn't met. That means if you even have 44 minutes of logged downtime, you qualify. 44 minutes! That's not very much!

I just wanted to write quickly and say that they do indeed honor their guarantee. I had just over an hour of downtime for the first time, ever. I wrote support, they fixed the problem. I asked if I'd be receiving a refund, and shortly thereafter I received an email from Billing, stating that my account had been credited for one month's worth of hosting. I am a happy camper, and plan to stay with HostGator!

This post is sponsored by PayPerPost
Since I joined PayPerPost, I've run into a few situations where I had questions, and they didn't seem to be answered in the FAQ. So I did some digging, and I found that the two other most useful resources are the PayPerPost forum, and their blog.

For those that aren't aware of what I'm talking about, PayPerPost is an excellent service that allows advertisers to pay for unbiased content and links from blogs. As a blogger, this allows you and I to have a nice little bit of income from our otherwise fruitless writing endeavor, and a little added incentive to blog more regularly!

If you join PayPerPost, you'll see that their blog is a great resource for finding out about upcoming changes, company updates, and some random nonsensical videos. Oh, and if you do join, tell them that frankcow referred you!

Here's a fun flash/shockwave Ping Pong game for you to play free!
You can also download mac games here.

1. Control your paddle by using your mouse. The speed and direction of your mouse movements determine the action of your paddle.
2. Press and hold the "Ctrl" key to put more spin on the ball.
3. Press and hold the "Shift" key to lob the ball.
Please see the full instructions by clicking "Help" in the game.

This is the flash version of the classic QBasic game! We used to play 2D Tank Wars when we were kids, and now you can play it online!
Post your score in the comments field below!

Instructions:
Blast your opponent tank as soon as possible, before your opponent gets you. There are over 12 different types of artillery to choose from, from scatter bombs to air strikes and realistic features like tank fuel, engine sizes etc.

Play against up to 4 humans, or up to 4 computer controlled opponents, or try a mixture of both. From Hot dessert terrains to Snow packed mountains.

This is a flash pool game. The objective of the game is to clear the pool table in the shortest time possible.
Post your score in the comments field below!

Instructions
Use your mouse to position and aim the pool cue, and left click to hit the ball.
Keep an eye on the PINK ball, and be careful about potting the white ball as a scratch is -50 points.

In Fish Hunter 2 Flash version of the NES game, you have 30 spears to use to hunt fish. The number of the spears increase each time you catch a fish. You have 2 minutes for your hunting.

In this Nintendo game, some of the fish have poison on them, and if you touch them you'll go crazy (so avoid the dangerous fishes!!!).
Post your score in the comments field below!

This post is sponsored by NCNatural.com

I am a firm believer in saving money whenever possible. I like to buy high quality products, but at the same time I like to know that I've gotten the best deal possible on them. That's the reason why I love (and visit frequently) sites that offer Online Coupon codes.

The link mentioned there is to an excellent repository of coupons for online shopping, that's updated on a daily basis. When you think about it, it really only makes sense to take the few extra minutes when shopping online to check and see if there's a coupon offered for the retailer you're buying from. For example, if you're buying a new Dell laptop, you'll want to check out their Dell coupons, or if you're looking for cheap replacement ink cartridges, you can check out their 123Inkjets coupon codes.

The one area of potential improvement for the site would be to offer an RSS feed of latest deals, so that those of us with readers and/or personalized homepages could easily be notified of all the latest deals.

The classic NES game MegaMan has been ported to Flash! You can control this online Nintendo game with the arrow keys, and shoot with the spacebar.
Post your score in the comments field below!