Well, the cobbler’s kids and all that – last week my website went down.

I’ve been going through a process throughout the last year of consolidating some various web properties I own, shutting down experiment sites, consolidating blog posts, setting up new hosting, and transferring domains. Kind of a year long housecleaning project that I have placed on myself.

Well, that is all well and good, except that last week I really screwed up something. I forgot to renew brianwyrick.com.

It seems stupid, it seems obvious, and believe me, I swore at myself many times that day, but here is how it happened.

1) e-Mail

I have not used brianwyrick.com for email in quite some time – I have however, traditionally had a catch all address for this domain that I monitored and let SPAM fall into. I registered brianwyrick.com almost 10 years ago – when I registered it, lord knows what email address I used. During my cleaning, I moved the DNS for this site to my shiny new DreamHost account. When I logged in back in May, I noticed that I still had some time on my registration, but my intent would be to move the registration at a later date. I should have moved it then.

After deciding to move the DNS to DreamHost, I opted to set up a Google Apps account for all mail going to @brianwyrick.com – at my old host I had an in-box set up and mail was forwarded to my main address, and I had just completed moving all of the leftover mail to that account.

Now, here is where the first problem arises – in order to complete the gMail set up, I must prove I own the domain – in order to prove I own the domain, I must upload a file to the site – I do that, but realize my DNS is still propagating, and Google is not catching the new site yet – so I decide to come back later and do that. The only problem? I don’t.

Since I don’t really use brianwyrick.com for email, I don’t really mind not getting all of the SPAM – I realized later that I have yet to complete that, so I do (If memory serves, there was an account I needed to adjust that was using brianwyrick.com) I finish the Google Apps set up and set my forward and life goes on, hunky dory.

I don’t remember when all of this happened, and I don’t know if it they really did, but I will give Register.com the benefit of the doubt that this entire time they were sending renewal emails to an email address at brianwyrick.com.

2) Register.com Lets me down – hard.

It was my fault – I assume they where sending me emails. I didn’t get them. I didn’t renew my domain. It expired. I didn’t notice until I when to my site and it was gone. I will admit that, but here is what I wish would have happened.

Register.com had to get a message back saying the email had failed. They have other ways to contact me. I wish they would have called or sent a letter. If they has sent a letter, it honestly would have went to the wrong address, since my information was so out of date. I would have gladly updated that, had they attempted at any time in the past few years to get in touch about updating it.  I realize that it isn’t their fault they had bad information, but I would think they would want to attempt to keep it current. Hell, they could have just checked brianwyrick.com and found a million ways to contact me.

3) The chat

I’ll admit a bit of a panic fell over me when I saw my site was down – I immediately attempted to transfer to DreamHost. A few minutes later, when my wits came about me, it occurred to me that I would not be able to do that, so I logged into Register.com to renew.

I forgot how expensive they are. Goodness.

I logged into the chat to talk to a sales rep and asked directly if I could be waived the 25 dollar reinstatement fee and if I could register my domain for 9.95 instead of 35 dollars. I also asked if I could get free private registration, since that was the deal at DreamHost. I was told no.

I pressed until I got the domain for 35, without the reinstatement fee and opted for no private registration (I will be transferring to DreamHost when I can). Now my site is up and running again and and all is well, or so I thought.

4) Google results gone.

I’ve had my site since before I cared about search – but for the past 5 or so years, I have used my name and Google as a play ground for SEO. Today I searched for my name and found that my site was already blown away and gone. This was terribly disappointing, and I am glad that google has already re-indexed my site – but as you can see from the screen shot above, all was not well over the weekend.

The Lesson

This has been a great way to get down to the root of the problem I had, and honestly a great experiment in what happens when sites fail, and how fast search positions can be lost and (hopefully) be re-gained. I would still like to know why it takes Google so long to re-index 301 re-directs though. Anyone know?

In 2008, I went to the State Fair.

I saw many things.

I saw many things I wanted to post to Twitter.

I had intended these to be tweets from the state fair, but things where happening too rapidly, so I spoke them into Jott.  Now it is 2009, and another trip has been made.  This year I was too busy witnessing the sheer joy of a 4 year old on the Tilt a Whirl to pay any attention to the other ridiculousness, so I will share my observations from the past.

Anyway, here we go, love ‘em or leave ‘em.

“Hey fair band – we don’t need the bios of the whole band, save it for your Wikipedia page” – This actually turned into a funny idea for my wife’s “Save it for your blog” shirts.

“Fat kids at the fair.” - Enough Said.

“Favorite part of the fair? They guy yelling “HEY!” at a crowd of thousands of people and expecting his friend to respond.”

“I am so glad that we picked High School Cheerleader day to come to the fair.”

“A lady just referred to the giant pig in the pig barn as “some sausage”"

“Excuse me sir, you weigh 450 lbs, easy. Maybe the Mountain Dew isn’t such a good idea.”

“High School kids are playing the pick up the duck game… and they don’t get it. Pick up a duck. Pick out a prize. It is for 3 year olds.”

Next year I will try to be a bit quicker on the draw. I did manage to tweet out that MC Hammer was playing though.

“I had this brief dream last night that made me wake up laughing.

All it was, was a picture of a guy that had coke bottle glasses so thick you couldn’t see his eyes and he looked like teen-wolf’s dad. On his lap was a monkey that looked exactly like his owner.

At the bottom of the picture it said, “Gerald with a feather beard, and his monkey with exact beard”.

Here is some great insight into Rick-rolling, which, I wasn’t aware of until a month or so ago, and I found out more true information about that in five minutes of web surfing than this reporter did in what I can imagine were days of interviewing the co-producer of Rick Astley’s hit. It is worth a watch to see him dancing alone.

http://www.cnn.com/video/#/video/showbiz/2008/04/11/west.uk.rick.rolling.itn 

And of course, the Cheney sunglasses. Listen to the way these people talk. It makes me want to collapse into a coma. Why are they even reporting on it? Oh, they are reporting on it because “the blogs” are writing about it.

“…has been checking the blooooogs this morning.. whaddyagot? … Well, if you goooooogle dick cheney sunglasses, you’ll get like 100,000 hits….”

Come on, this isn’t even news, it’s stupid.

http://www.cnn.com/video/#/video/offbeat/2008/04/11/delacruz.vp.cheney.glasses.cnn

The best part is, I am perpetuating it by blogging about it.

SpongBob Squarepants Thermometer

I don’t have much to say that the guys at Gizmodo haven’t already mentioned, but this is hilarious.

But not nearly as ridiculous as this:

The Jesus Switch
Wow. I really did LOL. Seriously, it says “Honor thy Father and Mother” on it.

Next to that you will find the most gratuitous use of “lower price” signs I have ever seen. Thank you Marsh Supermarkets.

You sure suckered me with that uPromise “No Shipping” deal and the kick back to my child’s college savings plan. I sure do appreciate it. But you know what? I would much rather have put the fifty dollars I gave you into the account directly, since you charged me shipping anyway, only delivered part of my wife’s valentine’s day gift, your customer service line disconnects me today when I call, and oh yeah your website is down too so I can’t even email you.

Thanks for nothing, I am assuming that I am not the only one that pillaged on Valentine’s Day. Oh, and by the way, Valentine’s Day is over, so I hope since your ENTIRE website is now down it is because your really savvy webteam has taken it down so they can update the images that say “Get it by Valentine’s Day” on the front.

I do appreciate you sending me the email last night at 11:30 PM letting me know that my order has shipped via DHL, and sending me a tracking number that doesn’t work.

Sincerly,

Brian

The ultimate accessory!

I actually go to this particular one because it has a drive through, but I rarely use it, as the cars are always backed up way too far, and I enjoy testing my awakeness by attempting to speak with the baristas.

Entering the coffee shop involves me passing an Indianapolis Star newspaper box on most mornings, and I am now starting to make a habit of it, purely for the WTF headlines that somehow make it past the eye of the editor.

Exhibit A:

Exhibit B:

Don’t get me wrong, I’m not saying that the quotes aren’t true, or the information is incorrect, but those are some of the tackiest headlines I have seen in a long time. I’ll admit though, I have thought more about the Indianapolis Star in the past two weeks than I have in the past two years, and I am right now contributing to their brand, although I’m not sure if it is a plus or minus.

It seems to me that there is an obvious push for some shock factor going on right now. I wonder, though… is it selling papers?

I actually go to this particular one because it has a drive through, but I rarely use it, as the cars are always backed up way too far, and I enjoy testing my awakeness by attempting to speak with the baristas.

Entering the coffee shop involves me passing an Indianapolis Star newspaper box on most mornings, and I am now starting to make a habit of it, purely for the WTF headlines that somehow make it past the eye of the editor.

Exhibit A:

Exhibit B:

Don’t get me wrong, I’m not saying that the quotes aren’t true, or the information is incorrect, but those are some of the tackiest headlines I have seen in a long time. I’ll admit though, I have thought more about the Indianapolis Star in the past two weeks than I have in the past two years, and I am right now contributing to their brand, although I’m not sure if it is a plus or minus.

It seems to me that there is an obvious push for some shock factor going on right now. I wonder, though… is it selling papers?