All in all, it was a good Christmas. Mark was gone pretty much the entire month of December, a victim of year-end accounting at work. That sort of sucked, but we had our romantic rendezvous on the 23rd when I flew into San Francisco. Despite all my dread over flying at the holidays, the whole process was much more tolerable than I’d expected, thanks to a series of happy coincidences that resulted in very favorable seat assignments.
A few hours after I arrived in SF, we were on the way to Fresno to spend the holidays with his family. It wasn’t really any warmer in Fresno than it had been in Winston-Salem when I left, but it was quite a bit foggier. That made me happy.
There was Christmas Eve breakfast at the Chicken Pie Shop and random Christmas shopping before dinner at the home of the sister-in-law and family. I’m not showing pictures of our niece here, just because I think it might (understandably) creep out her mom a bit, but she’s adorable — trust me on this — and she also shared her crayons with me.
There was more food and family on Christmas day, and then we departed on the 26th for a quick one-night stand in San Mateo, where we had dinner with Dan, Jamie, and Eugene at Pancho Villa and then wandered around downtown and made the staff at Draeger’s nervous before bedding down in preparation for my really early flight the next day. The return flight, alas, was not nearly so pleasant as the westbound one had been.
The cool thing, of course, is that we got to have Christmas again when we got home: twice. The first was the traditional “fire in the basement” Christmas at home, where we gave each other our loot. For the record, I got a turntable (we’re now a two-turntable household), and lots of cool books and videos, among other things. We also got a quite wonderful vintage phone from Sister Betty and the happenin’ tiki lamp from Jamie.
And then, we got to go to Greensboro and do it all over again with my parents. Despite the picture, my mom really did have her eyes open through most of it, which we all appreciated.
Mark left this morning, and I have to take down all the decorations this afternoon. So I guess it’s over now, and it’s time for me to get back to the daily grind.
Maybe some day soon, I’ll even post pictures from the last two road trips. Right now, though, there’s a whole slew of exciting new shows on The CW and My Network TV that are just dying to be promoted online. And there’s a certain university bureaucracy that needs a cattle prod jammed up its ass. But that’s another story…
There’s this crazy lady at work. I’ll call her “Agnes” even though that’s not her real name. Agnes is about sixty years old, and is a recent migrant from upstate New York.
Agnes is all about gloom and doom, and can convince you that the most benign ailment or medication will undoubtedly be fatal. She also has an (ill-informed) opinion on nearly everything, and loves to rant, on subjects ranging from the natural superiority of northerners over southerners to the way that lazy immigrants or assorted minorities all try to get something for nothing. Of course, she uses cloaked terminology to show that she’s no racist. Interestingly, she also never hesitates to pad her own time card when the opportunity arises, but that’s another story, I guess.
Yesterday, Agnes was in a political mood. Somehow, we got on the subject of the national drinking age. Agnes, interestingly enough, believed that 18-year-olds should be allowed to buy alcohol, and I agree. However, Agnes doesn’t think they should be allowed to vote. Her rationale? They haven’t had time to learn how hard their parents had to work to earn money and they “don’t know their asses from a hole in the ground”. They need, she asserts, to experience the “real world”.
No, I didn’t really get the connection, either.
Ignorance is most definitely not limited to the young. And most 18-year-olds spend those essential years between 18 and 20 in college — not exactly the “real world” by Agnes’ standards nor anyone else’s. I’m also unaware of any Constitutional requirement that voters exhibit any particular level of financial maturity. There’s certainly no similar requirement that the candidates exhibit such maturity.
When I pressed, Agnes went into a tirade about all the problems Clinton caused when he “allowed all the 18-year-olds to vote back in the 1990s”. I calmly informed her that (a) an American President does not have the power to “allow” anyone to vote or not vote, (b) that a Constitutional amendment was required to change the voting age, and (c) that this amendment had been passed in 1971, two decades prior to the Clinton administration. Apparently, I knew more about the Constitution at age 18 than she knows at age 60. Sort of throws her argument out the window, doesn’t it?
I mention this not because Agnes is a blowhard and a bit of an idiot, which she is. I mention it because her lack of knowledge about how government works and her complete absence of critical thinking skills are, alas, not particularly uncommon. Like so many people who don’t want to engage in intellectual exercise, she believes what she believes no matter how faulty her premises. Facts are not going to change her mind. Clinton is the antichrist. Immigrants are evil drains on our economy, language, and culture. No one is “allowed” any fundamental liberty she finds distasteful — but no one better deny her right to do anything, since all her personal pursuits are completely pure and moral. Agnes prides herself on being patriotic, but she doesn’t know a damned thing about the Constitution, and probably has never even read it. Flag-waving nationalism and a little bit of dogma with a Bill O’Reilly chaser is apparently enough for her.
Unfortunately, Agnes is America: intellectually lazy, uninformed, and too willing to be told what to think. I don’t say this because her views are “conservative.” There are just as many, if not more, left-leaning lemmings about (witness San Francisco). In fact, I’d argue that a majority of the most vocally opinionated folks in the country have absolutely no intellectual basis for most of their very closely-held opinions. It’s a lot easier, after all, not having to do the work of thinking for yourself, and never stopping to ponder why you believe something.
Most people take the easy way out. Give them an “Obama is a Muslim terrorist” email message, or a “Proctor and Gamble is owned by devil worshippers” form letter and most will either not care or just be too fucking stupid or ignorant to evaluate the source and context. And most politicians are quite aware of this. Explains a lot, doesn’t it?
Me. Christmas morning. Thirty years ago. I’m not sure which item would be more valuable now: the stereo with 8-track player/recorder, the groovy alarm clock, the Trans Am model, or the Cheryl Ladd poster. In case you’re wondering, I’m wearing Miami Dolphins pajamas. I have no idea why.
By the way, I’m still using that dresser in the top left corner.
Some thoughts after a little road trip surrounded by lots of Christmas music on the radio:
First, I could listed to the hippopotamus song all day long. Really.
Second, if I ever again have to sit through the goddamned song about the kid who wants to buy his dying mama some new shoes “in case she meets Jesus tonight”, OR the monologue where Santa breaks down and cries upon finding himself in some soldier’s depressing, dingy apartment, I will probably end up ripping my ears from my head while simultaneously vomiting all over everything in sight. Which probably won’t be pleasant for me nor for anyone else in the vicinity.
That said, this one’s still the best.
More about the actual road trip soon, but the picture above is where I had dinner Wednesday night. Any guesses where I was?
For the first time in recent memory, I have no papers to write, no pile of reading to do, and not even any client deadlines looming.
What exactly was it that I used to do in this situation?
Earlier this month, two of my sites went down due to negligence (and perhaps even fraud) on the part of Dotmaniac.com, a part of the Interlink Network Group.
Despite having taken my money to renew these domains and confirming to me that they had been renewed, Dotmaniac never processed the registrations, and the domains stopped resolving when the old expiration dates hit. Dotmaniac seems to have disappeared from the face of the earth; they no longer answer phone calls or tech support email requests at all. There’s no voice mail or anything; the phone just keeps ringing. Their website, however, lives on, still accepting registrations and renewals, although its security certificate seems to have expired.
The problem with a dead or otherwise unresponsive registration provider, though, is not the money you spent (which should be recoverable through a credit card dispute) but the fact that you’re sort of screwed in general. Moving your domain to another registrar requires cooperation from the one you’re leaving, so what do you do when the old registrar disappears?
Thanks to incompetence, negligence, orjust plain fraud on the part of Dotmaniac.com, I’ve wasted countless hours, lost a fair amount of ad revenue (and a good chunk of my hard-won search engine placement) at Groceteria, and become a big screaming ball of stress at a time when I didn’t really need it.
I’ve also discovered that you should be realy careful where you register your domains, because there’s almost no oversight over the process, and you could find yourself at the mercy of a shady operator like Dotmaniac.com. These slimy sacks of shit are a part of the Interlink Network Group, located in Vancouver WA. If they ever answered their phones, you could call them up and tell them what you thought of them at 888.888.1051 or 877.744.6638. You could, if so inclined, also send them a fax at 360.571.4538. However, if you actually do business with them, you’re taking a terrible risk.
Chronology:
19 October: I renewed Groceteria.com and Otherstream.com on Dotmaniac’s website.
24 October: Despite being renewed, Groceteria.com “expired”, with its status changed to something called “clientHold”, which — I later found out — means that it has expired and will no longer resolve.
25-26 October: I spent the bigger pasrt of both days trying to contact anyone who could help me. Dotmaniac never answered their phone: no voice mail, no nothing. I also tried contacting Tucows, the back-end registrar (Dotmaniac is a reseller), and got no response from them either. Groceteria had been offline for at least 36 hours when I had to leave town on Thursday, and I was pretty sure Otherstream would be gone by the time I got back on Sunday.
28 October: I was right. By Sunday, there was no Groceteria, no Otherstream, and no email. Needless to say, no one at Tucows or Dotmaniac had gotten back to me either.
29 October: More contact attempts, more frustration. Early this afternoon, a friend of Mark’s suggested a method that might at least get the sites back online, and it seems to have worked. I’m now trying to get all the domains transferred to a different registrar. I also filed a complaints with ICANN, the BBB, and Tucows compliance office.
Solutions:
I’m not entirely sure which technique worked, but here’s what I did to get out of this black hole. At some point after doing all three of these things, my sites came back online and I was able to move my domains to a different registrar:
Final Note:
If you’ve been victimized as well, you have my sympathies. Based on the email I’ve received, I’m not the only one this has happened to. What you see on this page is all the information I have. I can’t give you any more, but feel free to check back for updates. I’m still waiting to see the results of my credit card dispute, and will post them when I have something.
More Domains Associated with Dotmaniac/Interlink Network Group:
The last one’s an ISP in Vancouver WA, apparently. They don’t ever answer their phones either. If I were you, I’d avoid doing business with any of these sites.
Random thoughts for a Wednesday afternoon:
Speaking of anniversaries, my parents are having their fifty-eighth today. Which is pretty damned amazing. And it got lost in the shuffle, but Mark and I had our sixth a couple of weeks ago as well:
I love that boy. And our anniversary itself didn’t really get lost in the shuffle, only my post about it. And that’s because I haven’t yet had the chance to put up our exciting anniversary road trip pictures yet.
At the rate I’m going, it might not happen before Christmas…
Happy anniversary to me and my Groceteria. My child is eight years old today, more or less. It’s brought me more fame (and fortune, oddly enough) than any of my other sites have. It’s my primary creative outlet and my most popular site ever, by far. It’s gotten me interviewed all over the county, provides me more monthly income now than some of my freelance clients have over the years (thank you, Google AdSense), and even got me my very first paid writing gig. On some level, it actually even got me a husband, since part of the fateful Fresno trip where I met him was devoted to research for the site.
Grocery stores been very, very good to me…
