h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

I got up feeling rough. Most of the afternoon was spent trying to figure out how to recreate a complex menu system from scratch, while I was unable to think clearly due to the continual bass beat throbbing up from my downstairs neighbour.

Then, I came on to hootoo - my page had reverted to black text on a white background. I was just on the verge of filing a bug report when I thought to check out the CSS file on my webspace to see if it had been overwritten. My website was gone.

I phoned Portland to see what had happened. Twice, I sat through a string of "Your call is important to us, please don't habg up!" messages before being dumped onto an answering machine after ten minutes or so. I suspect the support line is a premium rate number, which is why the calls are so "important" to them...

Then I got through, and was told that my domain name had been "detagged" last night because I had ignored a month's worth of renewal reminders... I asked them where they had been sending these "reminders" - apparently they had bounced 30-odd messages to "[email protected]", a non-existent address. In fact I had gone out of my way when I signed up to impress upon them that none of the "[email protected]" addresses were monitored in any way, and had specifically given them a different contact address for this sort of situation. They said they "might" be able to recover it, but it would cost me over £37 to renew it through them for two years. I said "I can get a two year renewal for £9.99"; they said "Yesterday you could have, but now it's been detagged you have to renew it through us or you run a real chance of losing the domain forever." <tantrum> I paid up, but apparently that doesn't actually guarantee I'll get my domain back. Only time will tell.

Having singularly failed to finish my planned work on the AOPL menu system, my friend Gordon dragged me over to his house about 7:30, because "his Windows wasn't booting". It took 1 minute to discover that he'd overwritten his Windows 98 files with Windows 95 OSR2, then done an "upgrade" over that with another copy of Windows 98SE. He'd done this in an attempt to solve some booting problems earlier in the week, and had tinkered about quite a bit in the interim. By 10:30pm I was ready to throw in the , and pronounced his OS dead. I installed a new, minimalist copy of Windows in a seperate directory and got "Nero" running by 11pm, so he can spend tomorrow backing up all his valuable files onto a DVD+R before wiping the whole ing thing and starting over.

And that's where the day finally had an upside... My "fee" for coming out was for Gordon to take me to the supermarket on the way home. We hit the 24-hour "Asda" near his house, and I was pretty much able to fill the boot of his car for just over £30, just finishing before the tills reset themselves at midnight.

I now have an overstuffed 'fridge, a moderately full freezer and a bulging store cupboard, (plus a dozen toilet rolls! ) just in time for my Winter hibernation...

poor Peet.The new job looks like it will be hard work but enjoyable and I've mentioned your idea about the co-op doing the website..they are going to discuss it with the boss in the near future so you might hear something!,I'll keep working on them.

Peet have you any idea what's happened to Tango?
Has the lad been arrested or what?
regards Oetz

He *has* been suspiciously quiet, hasn't he...

You've got me worried, now...

( )

While I cannot relate to your filthy day (many more of the same to follow, you'll be happy to hear), I do admire your seemingly uninhibited, up-front, in-your-face, wide open to all and sundry, (momentary, dare I say it) -- vulnerability.

Watch it. Freedom enslaves.

What an Orwellian outlook, Trowellian...