Where’d Everything Go …

As someone who feels they are technically inclined, the one thing that still bugs the hell out of me is when something doesn’t work like it’s supposed to. Like, say, a website. It should be easy. You have a server that has the data on it, and you have a domain name that forwards to that server. As easy and simple as it sounds, as complex as it is.

Sometime Monday, my DNS went down. I think it was a combination of both the DNS server that I use and the client application on my server that screwed everything up … thus, if you came here in the last 24 hours or so, you got a blank screen. No websites, no email.

Seems that the DNS host had a major server failure sometime Monday … which happens to be the same day that my IP number changes at my internet provider. All those changes meant that everything got screwed up and left me without server funtions for about 24 hours.

What compounded my frustration was the fact that I can’t do a damn thing about it because I have to be at work. At least at home I can do the troubleshooting and have it back up and running within a few hours, but at work, there’s really nothing I can do. So, I have to sit and wait until lunchtime, where I fixed the problem within fifteen minutes by manually changing my IP number at the DNS server and upgrading my client software. Badabing-badaboom.

It’s just frustrating that it happened in the first place. The reason I started hosting my own sites was because my previous host always had problems. Since I’ve been hosting at home, the only problems I’ve had have to do with my outside vendors — the internet service provider or the DNS provider. Ugh. I need to be totally independent from it all … but then I’d also need to be totally loaded. Other than frustration, it’s really not worth it financially to be independent because the sites I run are mostly just for fun anyhow. If I were a big corporation making buckets of dough … then I’d be looking at being independent.

For now I’ll just come on here and gripe about it. At least I’ve got email and a website again.