“Hey, Carrie — what’s going on with your website?”
Over the past few months, this question would pop up from one of my friends every now and again — the server that was hosting my site seemed to be having more and more problems staying online. I had plans to switch but life always had me doing something else first.
“Hey Carrie…what happened to your domain?”
Hmm, must be down again. I’ve got to change servers. I head over to crunchythoughts to see what’s up and . . . ARGGGGHHH!!! I’ve been highjacked by tulip-loving, inspirational quote collectors! WHERE’S MY STUFF??? STEVEN — HELP!
Thus began our month-long journey of discovery on the way to re-establishing crunchythoughts. My hosting provider had not renewed my domain registration despite my records showing they were supposed to automatically do so, hence the tulip-loving inspirational quote collectors.
After we probed a little deeper we find that these people actually have forgotten to bill me for the hosting fee since about last April, yet I’ve still had the service. Brilliant recordkeeping. Once a few emails went unanswered we figured ye olde hosting provider had fallen off the face of the earth, and this was proven a few days later when their own web page suffered the same fate as mine.
No love lost, really — the only problem was they still had my crunchythoughts name by the bits, as it were. Now, I don’t really understand this part much, but the gist of it is other bigger, mightier companies really, REALLY own domain names — so Steven and Steven’s dad got in contact with them about crunchythoughts, explained the situation, and a deal was made so I could have it back in exchange for my firstborn or a scan of my driver’s license. After they saw a picture of Renton, they went for the license.
Then the internet has to talk with itself for a while to let itself know that crunchythoughts is back but with different numbers and it assures itself that everything’s okay. Lastly, Steven had to re-upload all my stuff, which he just did just 30 minutes ago.
That’s what it took for me to get back here because some jokers out of Douglasville, Georgia thought it would be a good idea a few years ago to get into the internet hosting business.
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The worst part about all of this is except for those first few days . . . I couldn’t curse about it. I still can’t. I have given up cursing for Lent. Yeah. And I mean any and all cursing — no words used in an exclamative manner whatsoever, no matter what word. That includes, ‘boogers.’ It’s been tough, especially lately now that spring’s coming which makes for busy times at work.
Poor Steven, though — he has given up meat! Next year I don’t think either of us are going to push ourselves quite so hard. We’re both counting down the days till Easter.
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I’m also irritated about this whole Website Screw-Up because it messed up my streak. Since I started writing, I’ve posted in every month . . . until last February. I hadn’t posted that month yet before the website was highjacked by tulips, so there will forever be that blip, that lack of posts for that month, in all the months I’ve been doing this. Oh, if I could only curse . . .
But I shall make up for it by posting more stuff now. A lot has been going on but I just can’t think of all of it right now and I don’t want to bore you with too much at once anyway. Rest assured, there is firm control now on the crunchythoughts name and hosting service isn’t being provided by a couple of dingbats.
Things are looking up.
Glad your back.
Sorry you couldn’t make it to have lunch with me and mom. we missed you.
Congrats on your promotion and good luck!
Good to see you’re back. And so is Jason M! Now, if we could only get Daniel L back to regular blogging, my efforts at goofing off during work would be so much easier!