Output Stream of Consciousness

As you can tell, I'm back online, after my domain departed from me briefly.

It's not a very long story, but for those of you who want to know what happened, here's the scoop.

I started off hosting my web site on DR2.NET, a very nice, relatively cheap spot for web-hosting run by a good crew. Since they weren't offering domain registrations, they recommended FarcieRT.

They've both been fine.

However, a spate of recent mergers and takeovers ended up with DR2.NET being taken over by Mesopia, and FarcieRT getting folded into HostDime.

There were a few things they forgot to do in the process.

• They failed to transfer over the login accounts (though they transferred the website/domain

HostDime in particular forgot:

• To inform me of the actual transfer
• To take down FarcieRT while they were at it
• To not leave an somewhat broken entry for my domain at FarcieRT

Mesopia still needs to get me login access through their site for management purposes. I was set up for automatic billing, though, and that seemed to work, so no problem there.

On the domain side, here's what I encountered:

• I got a renewal notice from FarcieRT
• When I went to attempt renewing, Renew would give a "not all fields are filled in" error
  (There was only a drop-down and a radio button to choose from)
• Attempting to manage the domain gave "Communication error" in such a manner as to make it look temporary
• I then started getting renewal notices from HostDime (at the time, I'm thinking, "who the hell are these guys"
• After doing my due diligence, and finding out these guys were actually now the owners of my domain registration, I proceed to try renewing my domain with them.
• My login doesn't seem to be working, so I try "Lost Password" just in case
• After clicking to send the lost password, it comes up with a completely blank window, regardless of whether I use Internet Explorer or Firefox
• After not receiving any password, and not getting any response from Mesopia on whether I could transfer my domain through them, I set up a new account on HostDime, with not much time left for renewal
• I ask HostDime support to put my domain on that account which, to their credit, they do (actually, I'm pretty impressed with HostDime's support
• I renew
• Unfortunately, I found out, it languishes in "Pending Registrar Completion"
• Asking HostDime support again (they seem a separate entity from the folks who do their domain registration), they get the domain side to finish their part
• ...and I'm back up!

Kudos to Jason and Josh at HostDime for the quick service.

And there you have it!

Tragedy not quite averted, but not quite fatal :)