I first purchased a pro account at flickr in May of 2006. I needed to upload more than 200MB and wanted to have more than three sets. Well sometime in June of 2006 they gifted me a month for free "to say sorry". Then I renewed my pro account in June 2007 and in June 2007 they gave me a total of three free months a two month gift and a one month gift both "to say thanks". I had been thinking it was coming up/past on time for me to renew which is why i checked my order history, but I've still got another month and change left. Woo.

I'm not sure what they were thanking me for, but I'm thankful for their thankfulness. I'm also not sure why they were sorr, I can take a couple guesses as to why, as I have ranted a couple times when they have gone down.

To flickr's credit they have been much more stable and now when they have problems it may be site wide but it's not the whole thing is done for hours. It is usually just you can't get to some images or sometimes just larger versions of some images. I'm sure the design and time that went into the overhauls to make such a system scalable, functional and distributed would blow my mind, but it is working for them...