Temporarily hosted

I signed on to a short contract with GoDaddy last night so hopefully the sites will be relocated and updated this time next week. I'm still reading the Jatol thread at Webhostingtalk.com, hoping to see if anyone will say what actually happened. I'm nosy, and if the owner died and didn't pay his bills, I want to know. (Inquiring minds, you understand).

There has been one guy posting almost since the start, and he's not American. I don't know where he's from, but I'm guessing he's also not British. His English is remarkably good; the syntax is what gives him away. He spells better than a lot of Americans I know! I have to laugh, though, because he always ends his posts with "Greetings. OK." In my mind, those words are spoken in the cheerleader voice, and the next thing into my twisted little brain is a scene from Judging Amy. Her daughter (who was about 6) had been chosen for a cheerleading squad, which horrified Amy as much as it thrilled Lauren. The episode ends with little Lauren in her cheerleading uniform and pom poms, cheering, "Ready? OK! We got spirit, yes we do! We got spirit! How 'bout you?"

So how about this? "Greetings! OK! Jatol screwed us, yes they did! Jatol's gone, get over it!"

I'd post this at Webhostingtalk, but the IT guys wouldn't get it. :-)

Overthinking

I'm trying to decide on a new web host. I've looked at a couple that seem promising and have similar pricing. G0Daddy is the least expensive, and they're having a 15% off sale (which will save me a whopping fifteen cents) and they'll let me go month to month. The others I've looked at all want a year contract, which I'm leery of since Jatol folded.

On the other hand, in reading about the Jatol debacle, I've seen mention of buying domain names in one place and hosting in another, just in case the web host goes under. That's making me lean toward Bluehost.

I know it's not rocket science. My sites are still up but it's a matter of time before they're not. As far as pricing, we're talking about $12-$15 a year difference. I make that in tips working one party. Any thoughts?

Toes up

For anyone interested, it's going to be a while longer before I can update Dragonsroost.net. First, we have a hardware issue. Something in the computer got fried with the modem. The secondary issue is that my web host, Jatol, has also gone toes up with no notice. I didn't even know about it until I checked Holly Lisle's blog this morning. The site is still up, for now, or at least it was as of two hours ago. I'm leaning toward changing my domains to GoDaddy for the short term. I can go month to month with them, giving me time to research more permanent options.

There are a lot of people really ticked about Jatol. I doesn't affect me a whole lot. I have all my files backed up here, and I think I was at the end of my billing cycle anyway. I was annoyed with some lack of support, but not enough to research other options. Guess I don't have much choice now. Just goes to show that if you procrastinate long enough, someone else will make the choice for you!

Next generation of SPAM

I just got an unsolicited stock tip texted to my cell phone. I thought that was illegal, especially since my phone is on the Do Not Call list. Anyone know anything about that?

Regrouping

There was a time, not so very long ago, that the word 'regrouping' made my heart race and my palms sweat. Teaching math was not my favorite part of homeschooling. (Old folks, like me, learned the same concept with the words 'borrowing' and 'carrying'; Alex learned it as 'regrouping' in second or third grade, I guess, before our homeschooling era.)

This regrouping, thankfully, doesn't have as much to do with math. It's cooler now, so I can think clearly again about writing. The numbers for July and August were abysmal, but I recorded them for posterity in my Excel spreadsheet. Then I did a little research and added a column for the average temperature for each month, and what I found was that my most productive months were between 50* and 80*F. Right now it's just raw data, but I'll keep tracking it to see if my theory holds water. What it might boil down to (hah!) is that September 1 deadlines could be a very bad thing, especially if they're tight. If I have to do serious writing in the summer, I might have to go to Val's and pitch a tent! Hmm, my aunt has a cabin in northern Michigan, too.

Moving forward, I do have clear goals for the next couple of months. Based on the advice of Scott's NYT Bestselling Author friend, I've started the outline for my NaNo novel. Since I need to be ready to run with that on November 1, I have to finish my current project* by Halloween. I'm maybe a third into that, so it's time to kick it into gear. That will put me in a place to start the edit in December so I can *gasp* start agent hunting and/or submissions, in theory, early next year. I wonder what it is about cooler temperatures that make me start acting like an author?


*The working title for this Christian fiction is Meg, which is the main character's first name. I have a hard time with titles and most of the time I'm more than half-way through the manuscript before the title comes to me. I'm considering "Big, Beautiful Things" or "Out Of The Valley" for this one, but it may end up being something different.