i'm back. of course, in my view, i shouldn't ever have been gone.

basically, my server - the one that has been giving me email trouble and takes 2 or 3 days to respond to tech support emails - disabled my account while they investigated smtp abuse. they gave me no warning, didn't ask me if i was doing anything, didn't even send an email after the fact to tell me what was going on. one moment i had a domain, the next it was gone. the blank page left in its place didn't even say the account had been disabled - just gave a "forbidden" message. and, of course, they didn't respond to the email i sent at NOON the 15th until almost 4pm today. when they DID respond, it was a simple: "this account was disabled while we investigate for smtp abuse." that's it. no apologies, no explanations as to what triggered the damn thing, nothing. not even a clue as to how long the account would be down.

in the mean time i spent time trying to hunt these suckers down. the phone number for their domain owner and support is bogus. the company claims to be located in houston, austin, san antonio, and dallas texas as well as to have a san diego, california office. if they do, they have absolutely no offices and no phones - 411 national didn't find any such monster by their name in any of these cities. i'm in a complete panic because my site isn't completely backed up (43+ entries gone in dreaming, at least 1 or 2 entries gone in ink - not much when you consider the size of the site, but those dreaming entries are important to me and cover the last month of progress), i have no idea why the site has disappeared, and it looks like the damn host has completely disappeared off the face of the planet.

i need to thank rayna who has rescued me in this situation. all i wanted was a shoulder to cry on and an idea of what to do next since i was totally clueless about what was going on and not only did she give me ideas on how to look for a phone number, she has also kindly bailed me out of the whole situation. and the new server so far is absolutely wonderfully. i'm still figuring things out, but it's so fast! and she's being patient with my "yes, i should know what i'm doing, but it's a new server" questions. i really do appreciate all her wonderful help!

so, my only regret now is the cgi-bin. i have asked them to either put it where i can get to it or to zip it and email it to me. i don't think that's going to happen. that means there are sites missing from my rings (the last back up was 2 weeks ago), and pages missing from dreaming and ink. it also means the ring system is down as well as almost all my other journals until i go through and re-chmod the files and deal with any issues there may be as a result of the move (you know, real paths, server paths, all that config stuff).

the kicker? i was actually considering backing the site up the night before this freaking fiasco but was heading to bed so figured it could wait until i was up the next day.