there's something to be said about being lazy

And it's not all bad. After the ups and downs of my last hosting provider, I had grown a bit weary of dealing with their inability to respond to even the most simple of emails (like, "why has my site been down for the last 3 days?"). I did some snooping, found a phone number, called it, and got an out of service tone. A bit more looking showed me that it was for a pet store in the Bronx. Needless to say, I wasn't the happiest customer they had.

So I jumped ship, got a full archive of my site, and found a new provider. They've been faster, more reliable, a thousand times more responsive (the longest a support ticket of mine has gone untouched was 4 hours, on a holiday weekend), and generally ass-kick-alicious. Then something happened.

They were hacked.

If they had been my previous hosting provider, I'd expect denials, double-billings, and blame. Not these guys. As soon as something looked wrong, I got an email letting em know something was up. Soon after, there was a big mea culpa. Looks like they lost all my data (and that of several hundred other customers. No denail here. They apologized, were honest, and made sure that if any customer wanted to leave, they'd be free to, with a full refund. Those of us that stayed would be credited for a free month.

I stayed. I figure, reward the good companies, punish the bad. We all get caught with out pants down at one time or another (figuratively or otherwise), and they did the best they could. Sure I lost all my data, but at the end of the day, it wasn't a big loss. I had backups elsewhere of anything really important, and the few missing emails were resent.

What's that got to do with anything? Well, remember my vague threat to redesign the site. That happened. It's funny, you lose everything and it's much easier to rebuild. No sorting through old cruft, figuring out what to keep. A bit like Zen and tea cups.

So rather than try and remake the old, olny to redesign it, I took the easy way (that's why there's the little Blogger button in the bottom corner of the site. Since Blogger is now a part of Google it goes along with my supporting good companies.

Oh, and if anyone else wants a GMail invite, let me know. I've got a few.