I've read the official announcement a few times now, and near as I can gather, Rackspace is not offering the kind of support I'm looking for. That support announcement appears to be helping me to fanatically use the Rackspace API's, rather than really partnering with me to use their infrastructure to do my work.

I guess what I'm looking for is just general consulting, with people who are smart and know what they're doing. Maybe what I'm looking for is comrades, fellow hackers, or a consulting service. I live in the Bay Area, so you'd think I'd be neighbors with these people.

Any of you out there: if you know of IRC channels, forums, or anything like that where people help each other with this sort of thing, let me know, I want to be part of it. I could totally help people with the kinds of problems I've been through. My wife suggested I talk to HN about the problem I was having, and I had to explain to her that this isn't that kind of community-- we talk about articles and issues, not specific problems usually. If any of you know about a community or consulting service like that or have ideas and suggestions, I'd love to hear about it.