As far as your side note, I can also give high praise for Hurricane Electric.

I've hosted three different accounts with them and always found them to be very helpful. Plus you can get away for $10 a month with 25M of storage.

In addition I've called up at 2am on a Saturday and the tech ( who was apparently bored ) managed to help me get a script running that wasn't. ;)

Some people fall from grace. I prefer a running start...