I've seen this error quite a few times when trying to access my site lately.  Basically, it means that the MySQL server went down and needs to be rebooted (I think), though the rest of the web server is fine.  This wouldn't be a problem if my site didn't rely on MySQL, but since it's powered by WordPress, it's a big problem.  I've had some server problems in the past, but I thought things got fixed.  While I love my free web host, I'm not a fan of downtime.  And I can't really blame JD (the owner/admin/guru) because this isn't his full-time job.  Heck, this isn't his job at all.  He does it for free.  He was a full-time law student for a while, though he just graduated.  So I can't really get mad when the server goes down. 

And that's why I'm moving to a paid host.  I started thinking about it a while ago, but decided against it because I felt I could handle a little downtime in exchange for a free service.  But several times recently, my site has been down, and it's been down for hours at a time.  And if it's down when I check it (during the day, middle of the week), it could be down at night or over the weekend and I would have no idea.  And ironically, as I submitted a payment for hosting this morning, I tried to access my site and it was down.  So while I like free stuff, I feel the need to move on.  And like all things, this will be another experiment to see how things go.  If I don't like it or if I don't like paying, I'll probably change things around again. 

So as I move everything to a new server, you really shouldn't notice anything different, except that there won't be much (if any) downtime.  That's the plan anyway.  And for my future reference, check out MySiteSpace or TotalChoice if Dreamhost isn't good.