what happened?

[Jason]

So what happened to the old board? I was moving when it went down and didn't have net access.

[Jonathan]

For full-on badass description, see http://www.livejournal.com/users/dwindlehop/

For partial description:

So what happened? My account provider, myrmid.com, subcontracts out the actual physical hosting to some chump outfit. Let's call them Chump International. So last week Chump Intl. has a hardware problem with their server. It crashes and refuses to reboot. After doing whatever fiddly bits they cared to do, they determined an OS reinstall was in order. Fine. Vaguely silly, but not really incompetent.

Chump Intl. reinstalls Red Hat on this box and brings it to some semblance of working order. Then they contact Myrmid with the bad news. All the account info, all the files, all the databases from that machine are completely gone. Utterly wiped out. Myrmid should now begin setting things up once more. Bye bye, now. This is mind-numbingly poor. Completely incompetent. Borders on the negligent.

Myrmid scrambles to get something put together. They reinstate our accounts on the machine so we can log in and upload files. Myrmid also furiously writes to Chump Intl., demanding some sort of restoration from backup. Meanwhile, Myrmid seeks alternate hosting from someone besides Chump Intl., someone with half a clue and some semblance of support.

With this in mind, I determine that I don't really want to futz with Chump Intl.'s machine anymore. I'm just as happy waiting until I have an account on the new machine serviced by the new host so I don't have to set up my website twice within a week. So I wait. Several days pass.

It seems I was right to do nothing, as Chump Intl.'s newly installed machine has problems. Furthermore, things are set up with the new service provider and Myrmid has contacted me with details. So jonathan.pearce.name should be up, or at least Mohtalim should be up, within a few days. I do intend to rework my static pages, as they don't display properly on my Hiptop. I will produce something suitably snazzy in a week or two.

The final remaining problem is that my DNS contact info is out of reach. Unfortunately, I had my contact info set to my CMU email, CMU address, and CMU credit card. With one of those items updated, I could have updated the rest, but I neglected all of them. Bottom line is I no longer get email forwarded from dwindlehop@cmu.edu so I can't update my DNS info. This means jonathan.pearce.name will point to Chump Intl.'s box for a while longer, even after I resurrect my website. I have faxed my registrar the appropriate form and hope to get that matter resolved this week. Perhaps. Maybe. If I'm lucky.