February 2006

It’s official.  My techno career just received a nice boost.  I’m now an employee of Hewlett-Packard.

I had a lot of fun on Saturday at the Sci-Fi convention, and yes, I even broadcasted scenes from the lobby to WriterCam.com. I wish I’d gone all three days, but I had other things I had to get done. One thing for sure, I’m going to FenCon this year one way or another. If I can manage it, I’m going to try to get to the World Fantasy Convention which is in Austin this year.

I’m getting ready for work right now, and I’m a bit nervous because of a big change going down today which I’m not sure I can reveal to the world right now … non disclosure agreements, etc. But if all goes well, I’m going to have a new employer.

Speaking of non disclosures, here’s a big disclosure: Because of the dramatic and “interesting” things going on in my life right now, I’ve begun to record it in novel form … I’m actually writing a book about my life as I go, a kind of high-level blog on paper. So everyone, you’re on notice. If you interact with me during the next year or so, you may appear in my new book.

I’m going to be wandering around ConDFW this weekend with my buddies from Future Classics. I’m even thinking I might bring my computer and set up my webcam to broadcast live on WriterCam.com.

I’m thinking I’ll be there primarily on Saturday.  Maybe I’ll see you there?

Q: Why does life throw challenges and setbacks into your path?

1. To make you miserable?
2. To keep you off balance and alert?
3. So that you learn and grow?

The correct answer is: #3

During the last two weeks I have learned a lot about Internet domains. As I reported in my last post, something mysterious happened to my former web hosting service, which shut down both of my main web sites. I still don’t know what really happened, but here’s what I have learned:

Most of the Internet web hosting sites out there, as well as the places that sell domain names, are only little companies who are reselling for large companies. They get reseller accounts with large web hosts and domain clearing houses and set themselves up to sell, sell, sell. Well, that’s fine. They’re acting as the sales departments for these big companies. But, if something goes wrong, do they know how to fix it?

No.

All they know how to do is sell it.

The servers aren’t sitting in their back room, or even in their garage. They don’t have wires and cables running around the building. They probably don’t even have a building. It’s just some guy and his mom, and a friend of theirs, and the office is a run down shack on the bad side of town with a cheapo, peeling vinyl sign on the back of their broken down SUV.

You call them up and say your Drupal is going kablooey and demand to know why, and you stump them, so they bluff and say, “I’ll have to elevate that to 2nd Tier Support!” Then you never hear back from them again, because all they have is a website where they resold you someone else’s web space, and don’t have a clue about why the Drupal is going kablooey.

This, ladies and gentlemen, is the Fly By Night Web Hosting and Domain Corporation.

Slowly but surely, and without their help whatsoever, I’ve been able to edge my way around their inert abilities and stone cold dead customer service and find out who is really running the show, which is a company called “eNom,” and now it looks like GroovyMojo.com will be making a comeback.

In the meantime, I worked my way into a beta-testing account at the new Microsoft Office Live web site, and got myself a free GroovyMojo.net (though it still not ready to go live quite yet).

Meanwhile — and completely unrelated to any of this — congratulations to my good friend Bill for his pro sci-fi story sale! Way to go Bill!

Okay, my blog is back.

My former web hosting provider, Hello & Co. of Plano, Texas, pulled a disappearing act. I’m not going to bash them too hard because I still don’t know what happened. My two domains with them, this one and GroovyMojo.com, simply stopped working, and Hello & Co. has not responded to any emails, phone calls, support tickets — or anything! — in over a week and a half. So either someone died, or they left town, or were abducted by aliens. I don’t know. They’re simply not talking to anyone.

I managed to get this site moved to a new hosting provider, but I lost a lot in the process, including my old blog entries. I can still dig them up, but I ask… why bother? Why don’t I just start fresh?

In the mean time, GroovyMojo.com is still stuck at Hello & Co., and I can’t move it (even though it’s mine) because they have it domain locked, and still no one responds to requests to have it unlocked. So it remains down and probably will remain so for the foreseeable future.

Oh, and because of all this, you’ll have to re-register to leave comments here.  Sorry ’bout that!