How to handle a potential sudden huge traffic load tonight?
bill_mcgonigle: Does Dreamhost let you configure apache mod_cache on your account?  You might get some wins there.  Watch out for artificial limits like database connection counts.  But unless they're really awful you should be fine, a decent linux box can throw out huge amounts of traffic.   S3 is a good idea, not merely for traffic capability but to avoid getting your account suspended for being 'over-transfer'.