Giving New Meaning to the Term “Offline”

I’ve talked about being a little more disconnected; having the desire to walk away from the computer and not worry about what was going on out there in the land of cyber space and focusing on me, my family, and what was here… offline.

And, for the most part, over the last few months, I’ve done just that.  While I thought that I would go through withdraws or would be climbing the ceilings, I didn’t.  But then again, circumstances beyond my control diminished my desire to write, or for that matter, to even look at the computer screen.  If it weren’t for the fact that I work from home and need the computer and internet to do my job, I can’t be certain that I wouldn’t have turned the thing off and left it be.

But, I disconnected and I dealt with stuff and I started to come back and things were happening and I would think, “Hey!  I should blog about this!”

It felt good.

Actually, it felt more than good.  I was starting to feel a little more like me again.  I’ve been through a bunch of crap the last few months, which seriously?  I would love to tell you about.  You would get the BIGGEST kick out of it all, you would see the countless ways that God showed up in my life; how He stood by me, protected me, loved me; and how strong of a person I really am (which, I have to tell you, I’m a lot stronger than I thought I was), but, I have boundaries.  And talking about these personal events in my life, no matter how true, spiritual, or comical would not be prudent.  (And I so just saw George, Sr. say that…)

So, that brings me to today.

I posted a blog entry.  It’s now almost two weeks later.  Last Sunday through Tuesday I had come up with some things that I WANTED to write about and some reviews that I wanted to post… and the first part of the week was busy and up in the air and I didn’t get to it.  No big, right?

WRONG.

Last Wednesday, my host, Dreamhost (and I’m so not worried about linking and/or telling this story because I’m Pissed — with a capital P even!) changed my server unexpectedly. I got a nice little note saying they were sorry, shouldn’t affect anything, blah blah blah.

No big, right?

WRONG.

Within hours, all of my sites were gone.  Not down, as in the file are there but it can’t connect, but GONE.  There were no files… AT ALL.

Poor Cathy thought it was something she had done and once I assessed the situation and calmed her down, we started figuring out what to do.

You see, Cathy has been in the process of moving every one from the current host (about 50 sites) to the new host that I signed up with.  But that takes time and there were about 4 more sites that needed to be moved, before I started on mine.

Had the sites just been down, it would’ve been no big deal… we would’ve just busted tail, moved them and been done with it — causing minimal down time… but did I mention the files were GONE?

As in they didn’t exist?

They didn’t.

We contacted Tech Support twice Wednesday night and nothing…

Seriously.  It was like they didn’t care.  Or at least that’s how I felt.

I finally figured out that the files were still on the old server, so we started moving what we could.

Why couldn’t they take two seconds to tell me that?

Finally, almost a week later, the sites are all back online… either at the new host or the old one.  And do you know what they offered me for my trouble?

Unlimited bandwidth and space for life…

Gee thanks.  But seeings how I was only using 4% of what I had, I’m thinking it’s no big deal.

So then they said, ok, we’ll credit your account $19.90.

What?

$19.90.

Seriously?

Because do you know how much money I lost because of this fiasco, in addition to the troubles I’ve been having for the last two months?

Almost $1,000

And they’re going to try to make it better with $19.90.

Customer service?

I think not.

Anywho, everything seems to be functioning properly again.  ::crossing fingers::

And I should be back to the normal I was trying to create soon.

(But my mom’s coming tonight and I’m making dinner and folding laundry and oh.my.gosh. I out did myself with the spaghetti sauce.)

So…

Until next time..