H.I.T.S.
If any of you tried to visit our H.I.T.S. column archives over the weekend and was frustrated and confused by not being able to find us online, please accept my apologies — though it was beyond my control. We fell victim to a situation that rarely occurs.
As background, let me quickly explain some brief details about the Web site that may answer some questions you’ve had regarding sites in general.
First, my actual Web site resides online at the Apple servers (in California, I believe).
I bought Web space there in the form of a yearly Mac account. I did this so that I could use the Apple software called iWeb, a super-simple (even for a old guy) site-building program.
Apple, being as savvy as they are, kind of restricts you to publishing your Web site to its server, although that’s changed a bit recently, and you can now save your Web site to a folder on your computer and then upload it to someone else’s server.
If you choose to do this, not all of the features that are included in iWeb can be used on your site. I guess that you really can’t blame Apple, as the firm is in business to make money.
Anyway, I created my site and then published it with a simple click of a button. That left me with a huge annoying address that people have to type in to get to the site. I had decided a while back to buy my “bloodylimey” domain name. This was mainly due to so many people saying to me, “How are you, you bloody Limey?”
I bought the bloody limey name and had another company called lowesthosting.com do all the “paperwork.”
I also have lowesthosting redirect anyone who goes to ‘bloodylimey.com’ to my actual site at begin www.hugelongnamethatsannoyingtotype@mac.com www.hugelongnamethatsannoyingtotype@mac.com end
(see what I mean about the huge address?).
Anyway, it’s worked well for ages — with few minor glitches.
Over the past weekend, however, I tried to visit the site and my Safari browser just hung and hung. Initially, I didn’t panic, but, instead, tried again later, with the same result. At this point, it occurred to me that maybe lowesthosting.com had gone out of business. This was an unpleasant thought, to say the least.
I then Googled “lowesthosting out of business,” which immediately brought up about five Web pages from other users who were totally irate.
Apparently, this problem had started on Friday night.
Some of the people were complaining that they had up to 12 Web sites through this company.
If you have some kind of online store or any kind of online business, this can really be not only annoying, but it could also cost you a lot of money.
Further reading revealed that another company that lowesthosting uses to get their clients on the Web had had a transformer fire at their location in Houston.
They were promising to be back online within a few hours, but it actually took four days.
On Wednesday, I received an e-mail (along with everybody else, I’m sure) apologizing for the downtime and promising a $5 reduction off my next renewal.
I just wish now that Apple would handle the whole thing and that I could use bloodylimey direct from the Apple server.
I think one of the biggest lessons to be learned is, if you have any questions regarding the status of just about anything, you can go online to sites like Google and get an answer pretty quickly.
Another recent example of this was my son, Graham, who had a problem with the engine on a 1998 Ford truck.
It was going to be very expensive to repair and, due to rising gas costs, I advised him not to spend the $3,000 quoted to fix it, but to buy a smaller, more fuel-efficient vehicle.
After some discussion, he mentioned an import.”
In my own experience doing foreign-car repair, I’d found them to be not as reliable as Asian imports and expensive to repair.
Kids being kids, he ignored my advice and bought a used auto, only to call me a couple of days later, saying maybe I was right.
His car had about an inch and a half of water in it when he came outside to go to work.
While on the phone with him, I did an Internet search of his model and year and came up with dozens of complaints about the same problem — water leaking into the car.
In fact, there were even complaints from owners in England. I also went to a href=”http://www.nhtsa.dot.gov/ http://www.nhtsa.dot.gov/ end
, the National Transport Safety Association, which always has a wealth of data about issues with vehicles and consumer complaints.
It’s always good to do some online research before buying a car (or, in fact, anything) as you can bet somebody will have posted a horror story about their experiences.
Obviously, you have to take the complaints with a grain of salt and use your common sense because there are some people who just can’t be satisfied and will complain about anything.
With a resource as powerful as the Internet, though, it’s silly not to use it to try to prevent irritating things from happening to you that leave you saying, “If only I’d have known.”
It’s time to leap off my soapbox, for now, so have a great week, and, until next time, it’s cheerio!