Sunday, December 14, 2003
That means my blog and Movable Type installation.
You see, apparently, they were experiencing some sort of attack and needed to apply some critical updates, which they did. Well that's a great idea. The server is under attack, so let's delete it ourselves.
Look, I understand. Mistakes happen. I knew they'd tell me that I was responsible for backing up my data, and I have, although the last backup of my entries is about three weeks behind, which means I will need to import all the entries since then one-by-one, and will lose most comments left since then. Fortunately, I have my templates saved.
The short of it is and without going into any more detail, I know I share some responsibility for the amount of time this is going to take to get going again, and the fact that I do not have the technical know-how to back up a MySQL database, but it would have been nice had they acknowledged that maybe, just perhaps, they share a wee bit of responsibility for doing the basic bone-head move of patching a piece of software and not backing up their customer's data first. Hell, I'd still be annoyed if I had a complete backup from last night.
Well, they didn't. They just stuck with the legalistic, "We require our customers to back up their data, etc..." and that's all. That annoyed me.
So, all of this is the long way of saying that I probably won't be updating for a few days as I CHANGE HOSTS and re-import and re-assemble all of my entries, which will leave links from other folks dangling, as the file-names of individual entries will change, but what can I do?
Thank you for your patience, and I hope to see everyone when I start posting again - which won't be more than a few days...I hope.
That's what I posted last Thursday when my hosting company, Parcom decided to patch/purge their servers without first making a backup. I was considering whether I would name the company or not, and based it purely on whether they apologized in any of their emails. They didn't. They stuck to the "We require our customers to keep backups..." Well of course, but if I sign a release saying I won't hold you responsible for any injuries I sustain while...riding your carnival ride, for instance, it doesn't give you the right to punch me in the face. Likewise, I should be able to expect some level of professionalism from a hosting service - at least to the extent of expecting an apology. Instead, I'm sitting here fixing things up and getting more angry.
ANYWAY, I'm now switched over to a new host and am slowly recovering after getting the domain shifted, re-installing Movable Type (the software that runs the blog) and re-importing all my entries. Sadly, this will take another day at least before I start blogging again in earnest.
And such an historic day!
Stay tuned, and I hope folks are still around when I'm done. I'm just too obssessive about the site not to get everything in place first before I start posting new entries again.
Oh, and if you've sent me any email that bounced, feel free to send again.
