Difficult Technicalities. Please Stand By.

screenshot of disabled site: Site temporarily unavailable
Ooops.

So, uh, this site suffered an unintended outage. I tried to access my journal last night to make an entry and got this. I was disturbed that I couldn’t use my site. So I went to the website control panel to see what the trouble was, and my login was rejected. Perturbed, I raised the alarms and sent an email to the support team at my host provider, Prohosting, asking to know why I could not use my website.

After that email, I checked my ancient email account at Juno to see if Prohosting sent me anything there like a technical notice of a planned service outage. I’ve had this Juno account since ’97 and I keep it around as my backup technical contact for both my website and my domain name registrations, should something happen with either. It can be said that I never, ever use my Juno account, so I typically log in once every, eh, six months just to clear out the Juno-sponsored spam.

What I found among all the nonsense was a string of automated emails from Prohosting’s billing department declaring that my credit card had been declined. Declined. The first of these messages was back in February, followed by notes stating that my account would be disabled in March, immediately proceeded by a handful of other automated messages reiterating the fact that my credit card had been declined by my bank and that the past-due amount was indeed rising. I was incensed.

I have had this particular credit card for a good year and a half. When I last got a new number, I dutifully updated the billing info. This card does not expire until next year, yet Prohosting’s support team said my card was declined due to my card being past its expiration date. Somewhere, someone screwed up; whether it was one of them or all of me, I still had a locked website and something had to be done.

The only thing to do was to send a second message to the support team, with a copy to the billing department, revealing the evidence gathered from my investigation. My hat was in my hand. As soon as I clicked “Send”, I went to the credit card update form, submitted the details, and hoped for the best.

Support unlocked my site intact by morning, and billing had charged the past due, dropping the penalty fees, to my updated card info. $108 dollars later, here we are.

My wish, my regret in this, is that in none of that time did Prohosting try alternate avenues to contact me. I have an administrative email address at this domain that I check regularly; I have the option to use this address in my profile as my technical and billing contact. But for the sake of safety, should something go wrong with my domain registration, my webhost’s email system, or (as in this case) billing, I would not be able to contact them for problem resolution. So that’s why I still keep my Juno account around. Just in case.

And there it is, the problem. The problem is one of neglect. Neglect on my part because I don’t regularly check my administrative accounts. Neglect on their part because any human operator would have seen the contact form on this site and attempted to alert me. I have been with Prohosting for over nine years, since I first started this website, and I think it is for that reason alone they let me slide for so long. I’ll hold that to their credit.

…Lives to Work Another Day

Well, I remain, at least for the near duration, employed. I survived my 24-month anniversary.

Getting to work this morning was an uphill battle, naturally. I didn’t want to get out of bed. Dragged my feet getting out the door. Blanked out on the drive to work, dreading the day’s potential unfoldings. I arrived, walked through the lobby, and approached the locked door to my lab. I swiped my contractor badge at the card reader and cringed, hoping the light would turn green. With a modicum of relief, I was granted access.

According to my manager, he and his manager are working to get an employment position open for me, hopefully before the end of this quarter. The more I talk to them, the more I believe it. At this point, I have no option but to believe and cling to that hope. And since they’re going the extra miles to bring me on board, I’m hoping that I can live up to their expectations. I come from a short line of “oh, don’t trouble yourself over me, I’ll be fine”, so you can kinda see my trepidations.

With all the stress of not knowing if I’m going to finish out another paycheck without it being my final one, I’ve been all amped up and somber in preparation for the worst, with a short list of contingency plans should the worst actually happen. Luckily, it hasn’t happened, but time will tell. HR may have a dirty trick up their sleeve.

Take a Picture. Hope It Lasts Longer.

It’s been a while since I wrote something here. Let’s see…I went to see Nine Inch Nails and Jane’s Addiction at the Erwin Center a few weeks ago. I had bad seats, but the show was good regardless. The extreme strobelights on stage during the NIN set were unbelievable, and sorta gave me a headache. I’m just glad I’m not an epileptic with a floor seat. The venue site said cameras were allowed, so I took mine. Tons of people took theirs. I shot a ton of pictures; a handful are even what some would consider “good”. Amazing.

My problem with cameras — and I’ve discovered this the past few shows I’ve taken my camera to — is that my attention ends up getting split between my camera (and the technical and aesthetic aspects thereof) and the actual show itself. I don’t remember some of the show because I was too focused on my camera, and some of the joy of being there is diminished. As a further injury, almost everyone has cameras, and almost everyone is taking pictures of the exact same thing I am…so my pictures are close to worthless to anyone but me. Do a search on Flickr for Austin NIN|JA and you’ll find at least 100 photostreams with shots 100 times better than mine.

I had a great time, but the camera thing gets to be too much. Does that make any sense?

So, what else? It’s Memorial Day weekend, which means I have three days off. Three unpaid days off. Life as a permanent contractor has its downside. I don’t get paid sick leave. I haven’t had a vacation in three years (and I wouldn’t even call that a vacation…I went to Texarkana for that trip). If I don’t work, I don’t get paid. It’s that simple. After the paycut I got a few months ago, I’m living just below my means, so I can’t really afford to not go to work.

That being said, this Wednesday the 27th is my 24-month anniversary as a contractor at AMD. This is important to me, and scary for certain reasons. AMD’s human resources rules state that contractors cannot work beyond 24 months, unless certain conditions apply. At such a time, the contractor should’ve already been converted to a permanent employee, or they’re walked out the door. Luckily, I have a certain condition, but it is my hope that HR will continue to let it apply: back in February, I got a six-month extension on my contract, which puts me three months beyond my anniversary. Which means I’m done after August 27 if I’m not converted already.

My hope, my prayer if you will, is that I am not unceremoniously walked out the door this Wednesday. I’m kinda in-between projects, and it would make sense if they did, but my managers keep talking about future projects. The contract I’m working under isn’t between me and AMD…it’s between AMD and Volt Technical Services, the company I actually work for. Whenever HR deems, they can end Volt’s contract for my services, and that is perhaps the shittiest part of contracting. I am not an employee – I am a capital expense.

O’er the Years That Have Mov’d Me

For the most part, the trip home was ok. Saw my family. Drove for 13 hours total. The drive up was wet; when it wasn’t raining, it was foggy. The return trip was faster than expected (ssssh), but I was heading straight into the heart of the sun for most of the voyage. Saturday was soggy, but we still had a cookout at my mother’s place; grilled hot dogs with saurkraut, pasta salad, potato salad, baked beans. Good eats.

Headed out for a drive around town Saturday night; seems the construction progress has slowed down a bit. Saw only two brand new churches. God Boxes. Cruised by the houses where a few of my best friends in high school lived; it was strange to see the houses without the original families inside. Things change, I guess. People move on. I have; I’m nowhere near where I was, or who I was, back then.

As agnostic (and as atheistic) as I have been in the past 2 decades, I’ve been thinking more about the supernatural, about higher levels of existence. The Big Thoughts, the kind of stuff that used to keep me drunk in the 80’s. I haven’t asked questions of faith in a decade. Three weeks ago, ABC’s Nightline program hosted a panel about Satan, and the four panelists presented four completely different views on the Red One.

The most notable panelist was author and philosopher Deepak Chopra. Of the four, I agreed with him the most. His point is that the existence of Satan is an extension of our desire to push off blame for our actions onto an outside party, and that it takes an amount of self-delusion to believe such an entity exists. I agree with this. After my fall from faith in ’93, the one realization I found that hit me the hardest was that once I take God out of the equation, the entire Devil complex falls flat like a cardboard box. Poof, gone.

What the show did, eventually, was get me thinking about the invisible again. Since then, I’ve looked at notes on Gnosticism, Buddhism, stuff about spiritual awakening. I don’t believe anything…yet. But it’s got me thinking, and remembering back to a time when I felt something higher and bigger than myself. It was a fire that kept me warm. It was a wind that drove me. And I pushed, and produced, and felt something. I haven’t done that in years, and now, after this spark, I’m burning to write again.

Leave to Hello

So I’m getting ready to begin the start of my prepping for my departure to Texarkana tomorrow. I would already be all packed and loaded, but this coffee won’t drink itself. Besides, it’s my life, it’s my time.

Not really. It’s work, coffee, Ruby on Rails. Sleep. Rinse and repeat.

I really should’ve had this Ruby on Rails project finished long before now. It’s supposed to be simple with RoR. Shit simple. But I keep making it difficult. Keep adding stuff like “secure database queries” and “input validation”…and I’m not even started on the Posts models yet! One of these days, I’ll do a proper writeup of my RoR experiences, but there’s no time for that, what with my staring dumbfaced at code and drifting off to play minesweeper for 3 hours before bed.

I need a break. Really, I need a break. I guess part of my fascination with the latest U2 album is that the band sequestered themselves to a villa in Fez, Morocco while they wrote the album. It’s the idea of being someplace else for a while and finding my voice again that appeals to me. I don’t travel, and I typically don’t make plans to leave town for the weekend. So I end up being here, doing the same ol’, for months on end, with little variations in the pattern. It’s no wonder I’ve grown old and inflexible.

I feel like leaving for a while, but going to Texarkana this weekend for 48 hours will have to do, I guess. I won’t have the time, energy, or space to throw myself to the muses; trips home aren’t for that. Travel isn’t for me; that’s my feeling. Travel is for people who have accrued vacation time and have managerial approval to spend it. Travel is for the unemployed who have friends in distant cities. Travel is for people who don’t have to worry about supporting themselves or paying rent on a place to store their stuff. Working stiff contractors like me can’t travel. Time worked is time paid, and I am running broke.

Maybe I should just sell all my stuff and roam. Eh, I’m too old for that. At my age, that kind of behavior is just two steps away from being a homeless bum. I dunno, maybe it’ll be therapeutic, or maybe if I throw myself at the bottom hard enough I’ll bounce up higher than I am now. Maybe I actually flourish in the face of change. Who’s to know?