X-piration Date: Today.

One might think that a person like me - who keeps a ton of lists and reminders would know when his domain subscription was about to expire. Well, sorry but it appears that I definately dropped the ball there. Let me tell you what happened:

I have only one complaint about the company that hosts my domain - it just happens to be a long one. They did not send me any type of reminder when my subscription was about to expire. This caused a major interruption in the space-time continuum that is perotheus dot com.

From what I understand, the company that hosts me changed companies with whom they are hosted. This means that upon re-regsistering my domain name, and renewing my subscription, I had to also attempt to transfer the domain to their new servers. Somehow this sounded much easier in writing on their website than it actuallly was.

24 January 2003 - I followed the 'instructions', telling me click here - and then here. and then there. For whatever reason, it would not get past a certain point in this process. It allowed me to pay the 'refundable upon completion' $25.00 registration fee, and then somewhere during one of the next three steps it would fail. So I called them.

Their technical support referred me to sales. Sales had a voice recording announcing that this is not the line for technical support, and instructing me to dial a different number if I needed technical support. It further stated that if I was needing to speak to someone in sales, to stay on the line. This dreadful message repeated itself three times in ten minutes, and was followed by silence. The voice then returned, only with a slightly more annoyed tone, declared that the "peak hours were Monday through Friday, between nine a.m and six p.m Eastern time, 'good bye!'" and disconnected the call.

How rude is that?

When I did finally reach someone in Sales, they referred me to billing.

27 January 2003 - My site was still coming up expired when URL accessed. I tried repeatedly to contact ANYBODY on any of the numbers for this company, only to have the recorded voice rudely hang up on me. This was getting nowhere and I was becoming extremely impatient.

Since my schedule at work conflicted with their 'peak hours of Monday through Friday, between nine a.m and six p.m Eastern time-- goodbye!", my buddy, Tim called them for me and finally found out from Sales that Billing is having telephone line problems. They did manage to secure my domain... or at least got it to a point where the purchase/renew website had it listed as a 'completed transaction'. It took three and a half days to get this far.

Now all I had to do is wait for those bastards to process the order. Apparently, they had a large amount of these expired subscriptions. You would think they would prefer to avoid all of this extra work - along with having to listen to people like me complain about the hassle of the renew/resubscribe/transfer issues and just pay some guy to send out e-mail to persons who have a domain about to expire. Surely they could get an intern or someone to do that.

Included in my fun filled weekend was an interruption in my e-mail services. To add to my list of things to worry about - I worried about losing readers who come by once and because it is simply gone and replaced by about a hundred and forty seven pop up ads... not come back again. I appreciate those of you who did check back - I'd not desert you without at least an explanation.

29-31 January 2003- Once I did everything their ALL CAPITAL LETTER email instructed me to do, I was given the URL to get to the control panel, where I can play web adimn and manage my files. This allowed me to post a temporary index page so that something that looks remotely like my site comes up to let people know I was working on my big comeback. (Rather than getting fourteen popup windows with ads and banners and a large 'pero didn't pay his bill' domain is expired window.")

01 February 2003 - Tried repeatedly to contact tech support. No such luck. Tried calling billing again - closed on weekends. So I tried to call sales, in hopes that they can in the very least look to see if the domain was properly transferred. This to me seemed like the only viable reason that my URL would still have the aforementioned popups declaring that I dropped the ball on my paperwork and billing instead of my site. I was told that it was still pointing to the registrar and not to my domain (gee, really?) and the guy was kind enough to transfer this for me. Hopefully - if things work the way he says they should - you are reading this by 3rd February 2003 (allowing that Sunday it won't be done due to it being the day God rested and assuming they plan to do the same).

05 February 2003 - The domain works. E-mail does not. Comments do not work on my weblog but that is no fault of my host. (that one is all me).

I'm still alive. I'm still writing. For this I aplogize. (grin). In the near future I have a brand new look, as well as new features that will be added (as I soon as complete them). I only wish that I had more time to dedicate to getting these things expidited faster.

Thank you all for your continued support.