Is This What Adam Sandler Felt Like In "Anger Management"?

I am livid.

LIV-ID.

Okay, so here's the deal. Long time readers will know that I started out on Blogger, transferred to Wordpress after the first year, then recently made the switch back to Blogger for sheer simplicity of blog management. I'm now about to enter into the third year of Lizzie's Home.

When I was shopping around for a webhost for my dot com last year, I didn't have a lot of money to spend. In fact, it was an uphill battle getting Talented Hubby to allow me to spend any money on something that I had been doing quite well for free on Blogger. I eventually convinced him about the merits of the change to Wordpress and he then relented. Or I wore him down with my whining. Either way!

I chose a company I heard mentioned on a (then) big name blogger's website. As in, "go here, I personally recommend these companies." I was debating mentioning the name of this organization but after a day to stew about the situation I have come to the point where I honestly don't care anymore - the company is Very Commerce. Don't bother searching for a website. You'll understand why in a minute.

The plan was only $4 US per month prepaid (at $48) for a year. Thinking this was quite reasonable, I paid and had no problems at all for the entire year. In fact, I did not need to contact the company again after those initial couple of weeks of set-up, me being the green newbie and all.

In December, I was contacted by both Very Commerce and GoDaddy about the upcoming hosting and domain name expirations. I was also sent repeat reminder emails for the next two months, more so from GoDaddy for the domain registration but there were two or three from Very Comerce regarding the hosting as well. I knew I had until the end of February to make a final decision so I flagged these emails and pretty much ignored them while I considered my options.

Obviously I decided to switch back to Blogger and have been slowly manually uploading my posts back here for the last couple of months. I knew I was getting close to the wire with several months' worth still left to bring over so I logged on to lizzieshome.com yesterday, or tried to, to do a bit of a catch up session.

Hmmm, that's strange, I thought. Why can't I log into the dot com? Why am I being redirected to a Google results page for "lizzies home" instead? Must be my computer - it has been a bit temperamental of late. I'll check back later.

Later...

Still not working? Well this is odd. I wonder if Sarah is online?

I then log on to Messenger to find that yes, Sarah is online and willing to try to log on to lizzieshome.com from her end. She can't get in either.

Oh dear. I wonder if they've cut my hosting plan off two days early? Or maybe I got my dates wrong and everything expires on the twenty-sixth, not the twenty-eighth? Checking my email history I find that no, neither expires until the 28th so I should be good to go.

I am, by this stage, starting to hyperventilate.

I quickly typed up an email to Very Commerce querying the situation. I mean, if they're having major technical issues then that's at least something I can't control so I can relax a little while they fix it. To check that I had their current email address, I tried logging on to verycommerce.com, their main site. Nothing. No, not nothing. I was getting the same Google results page as when I tried logging in to my own site, except this time, obviously, the listed results were for "very commerce" instead.

Then I notice the first entry in the list of results Google threw up. It's for Very Commerce. Their main site. The same one I just typed into the address bar. The very same one that redirected me to the results page instead:

Attention: January 21, 2009. Very Commerce is going out of business. ... If you have questions regarding this matter send them to verycommerce@...

Ruh-row.

Nooooooo. NO NO NO NO NO!

I am not concerned with money, because I haven't lost any. I paid upfront last March for a year's worth of blog hosting on their economy plan, and I got that. Losing money is not the issue here.

What I'm extremely upset about is the fact that I (and I imagine, all their other customers) were given NO warning of the impending business closure. No grace period. Nothing. If I'd known Very Commerce was going belly-up I would have gone crackerjack on moving those old blog posts over. Did whatever I could so I didn't lose any content.

I did receive an email in January asking if I was intending to renew for 2009. It was a stock-standard mass mailout and it mentioned NOTHING about an imminent closure. I am checking the dates for that email (I can't access it right now with my computer issues, but soon) but there might be a chance it was sent AFTER the date mentioned above, January 21. If that is the case, then they were still soliciting business while going under. Not cool.

What happened to the customers who, unlike me, did pre-pay for another year recently before finding out Very Commerce was no longer operational? Do they get their money back?

I sent my email to Very Commerce yesterday, right before midday. I asked for a swift response because irrespective of the current hoopla I do still get (rightly) cut off from my blog on the 28th. At 8:57am precisely, according to Very Commerce. I'm thinking with the time difference between the US and here I might have until late evening on (my) 28th. To be safe, I'm giving myself until just lunchtime.

Or, in other words, approximately TWENTY-FOUR to THIRTY-SIX HOURS to rectify the problem.

As it stands now, lizzieshome.com is off the radar - prematurely and forcibly, I should point out. The hosting company going out of business meant (I guess) the servers running the show aren't supporting the site. I suspect they were hosting their OWN site on their own servers so the fact I can't get into their site either is a bit of a red flag. I cannot access any of my old content. Nearly 100 posts have gone KAPOOF! There were still SEVEN full months of posts to transfer - and as I said before, had I known the disaster that was about to occur, there's no way I would have been resting on my laurels with the transferring.

This is Not. My. Fault.

As far as Very Commerce is concerned, I could have changed my mind about re-hosting in 2009 at the 11th hour. If my measly $48 per year (which, by the way, was more like $60 AUD at the time) was considered chicken feed and therefore I was a disposable customer, then they need to consider that for all they knew, I was about to pay for their most premium hosting package. I might have been about to pay them a boatload of money. They didn't know! Haven't they ever seen Pretty Woman (and specifically this part)? And yes, I just referenced an 18 year old movie. Roll with it!

Contractually, they still owe me two days of blog hosting and clearly, I'm FIRED UP.

Why is there not protection in place for customers in situations like this? Why wasn't a warning email sent out? Gosh, even 24 hours notice would have been better than nothing. Why, if they knew on January 21 that they were going out of business, was I not immediately contacted, along with all their other customers, warning us that we needed to move our content ASAP? I haven't checked lizzieshome.com daily for a while but I sure as heck have been there within the last two weeks and I had no problem getting in until yesterday.

What if my old site was a BUSINESS? What if my source of income had suddenly been removed with no warning or chance to switch webhosts, or to let my customers know before it impacted on my business? What kind of money might I have lost had I been relying on Very Commerce then?

What might have happened had I been waiting until the very last moment to switch back to Blogger and hadn't even informed my readers I was moving yet? They'd be cut off and my blog would have disappeared entirely! Bloggers don't recover from that! As it is, my move back to Blogger has seriously impacted my subscriber numbers and page hits.

At this stage, I've had no contact with Very Commerce - and yes, I do EXPECT an email within 24 hours given the serious time implications of this. 24 hours is just about up now. As of this moment, I am still a paying customer.

The whole situation is completely, utterly ludicrous and I just want to scream. Like, really, REALLY loudly. I can't understand how I can go from absolutely no complaints about their service (I never even had a downtime all year long) to wanting to bang my head against a wall until my ears bleed, I just can't.

If this serves as ANY warning at all to you, please let it be that you never, ever go with a smaller webhost. Stick with the hosting packages offered with GoDaddy or other seriously-large companies - ones that are less likely to go out of business. I was too eager to save a few bucks (there's not really that much difference between GoDaddy and Very Commerce) and though I have not had cause to complain about their service until now, at the very last moment, the dog's breakfast they've made out of things now all but negates that entire year of calm.

It also makes me wonder what their response time would be had I been a Moosh In Indy, Scribbit or Pensieve. I've never wanted to be a big name blogger and kick some hosting butt more than I do right now!

I need chocolate.

WHERE'S THE DARN CHOCOLATE!!!

Oh My Goodness! Tomorrow Is The Twenty-Fourth!

Auuugh.

Four days left to transfer old blog posts.

I really hope I didn't get my dates wrong!

Why Normally Non Fizzy Drinking People Should Not Buy Pepsi On Sale

Auuugh. A couple of weeks ago I sent Talented Hubby out to the supermarket to get something dull and boring, like perhaps milk or bread or potatoes. He probably came home with those things (and twelve other items no doubt) but he also came home with an on-sale carton of Pepsi.

The Pepsi? 'Tis evil in a can.

If we don't have 'the fizz' in the house, I don't tend to crave it. We are not totally angelic in this area and might pick up a 1 litre bottle of Coke every couple of weeks (which is promptly dealt with and forgotten in the space of 24 hours) but except for a few rare occasions in all our years of marriage (eight years tomorrow!), we are not really people who are One With The Multi-Pack.

It turns out that having Pepsi (an inferior brand, in my humble opinion, but that's what you get when you marry a frugal man and Coke isn't on sale) on tap is not such a smart idea. For starters, knowing its there sets the tastebuds a-salivating. Then I can't think of anything else that could possibly ever quench my thirst and so I crack open a can. The first mouthful tastes wonderful. Then it's gross. But I drink it anyway. Because we bought it on sale and darn it, I'm in frugal mode this week so wasting it would be a crime.

The result of such a spike in caffeine consumption (I don't drink coffee and have dropped my tea drinking right back over these warmer months) has been dramatic. I'm Flubber-izing off the walls for about half an hour then I'm blech. And meh. And auugh. All in together. Until the headache hits.

I know. I'm a slow learner.

In other news this week, Jay (I have come to the conclusion that 'Master J' is too tedious to type and just 'J' doesn't fit in alongside 'Boof' and 'Moo' very aesthetically - hence J will now be creatively known as 'Jay'. I know. I'm all about the fan-cee) has been given a new responsibility. Since he wakes up at the butt-crack of dawn every single day of the year, including school holidays, he is now responsible for letting the dog out.

Problems which immediately sprung to mind when hatching this plan (hereafter known as Operation Mama-Needs-More-Than-Two-Hours-Sleep) included, but were not limited to, the following:

Jay is not known for this direction-understanding qualities.
Jay gets distracted easily in the mornings, especially when confronted with 'the pants-wearing sponge man'.
Charlie is spending his nights barricaded into the laundry room, creatively holed up using the toy box lid across the doorway. Jay would need to slide this out of the way.
Jay would then need to walk immediately to the back door, ensuring Charlie follows him because the dog has a wake-to-wee bladder capacity of approximately seventeen seconds.
If Jay forgets to take the dog outside, and just lets him out into the (mercifully tiled) family room, wee-city.
Once the dog is outside and has done his business, Jay needs to remember to leave the screen door slightly open so Charlie can get back in again.
If Daddy leaves for work during this time, Jay needs to be responsible for keeping the dog inside while Dad backs out and rolls the garage door down again, then open the screen door again (he forgot yesterday - I woke up to Moo in my face crying because her bum was wet. When I asked her what happened, she said Charlie had whizzed on the floor and she'd slipped and sat in it. A second child had also stepped in it. Instead of calling out to Mum from where they were, they walked through the house - 'nuff said).
Did I mention Jay is autistic?

Actually, he's doing an okay job, considering. I still have to leave him a note on the kitchen table reminding him of each step of the process (what cements in a regular kid's brain, takes that extra bit longer with Jay) but apart from yesterday's mix up, so far, so good. It gives me 30-60 mins extra sleep each morning - sorely needed because, um, this caffeine? IT IS KEEPING ME AWAKE AT NIGHT.

Ooooh, but a side effect of all this night-time energy has finally culminated in a project I've been wanting to tackle for, I don't know, FOREVER, and I'm especially tickled pink because this version has actually worked where the others have failed dismally. I won't keep you in suspense for very much longer, but I do still need to take a few photos and write up the jumbled Pepsi-fueled bullet points in my brain into a cohesive post.

Oops, nearly late for the school run!

Things That Scare, Bother and Annoy Me

In the true spirit of bloggy disclosure - and also because I've been a slacker this week and ignored my blog totally - here is a by-no-means-exhaustive list of the things that I find disturbing (the level of disturbance varies greatly, as does whether I consider these things to be fears or annoyances, LOL, so make your own call):

• Tiny snakes (I can see the big ones in time)
• The garage door hitting me in the head when I'm lifting it (the door opener isn't working, so its the modern-day equivalent to 'opening the farm gate' for us at the moment)
• White-knuckling it through air turbulence. I can count the number of plane trips I've done on one hand (and that includes the return journeys - I am so, so sheltered) but darn it, I've seen my fair share of Plane Crash Investigation episodes.
• Children (like, 5 year olds) drinking Coke (possible exception at McDonald's, but only because I can't be sure their cups don't actually contain water or juice).
• My 10 and 8 year old niece and nephew on Facebook. Yeah.
• Yo Gabba Gabba, Teletubbies, In The Night Garden, and Boobah. When did children's television get stupid? Even Sesame Street always made you use your brain!
• Catching the 'school bus' (the public transport system here usually designates one run each weekday afternoon - around 3:30 or so - as a 'school run'. Here in the city there aren't so many school-specific buses so students catch the regular public transport en masse). Had to do this yesterday and I have never been on a bus with brattier teens in my life - and the students were from a Catholic private school to boot.
• People who continue to drive and use a hand-held mobile phone at the same time, despite it being illegal. I count at least five people doing this every time I leave the house.
• The fact that my old blog hosting plan runs out on February 28 and I still have seven months of posts to transfer back here.
• People daring to have babies I can't cuddle! I mean really. How selfish! (this little pink bundle was the recipient of these!)
• Dogs who chew (I'm looking at YOU Charlie...grrr)
• Not being able to go 'op-shopping' (thrifting) at the moment.
• Children's 'walking harnesses'. Just a personal thing.
• Mobile phones for five year olds. You're not allowed to have them in class at our (primary) school, so you leave them at the front office and pick them up at the end of the day. What's the point? If Mum's late picking you up, what's wrong with going to the office and having the ladies there call home? Are you ever that far away from your kids that they need a phone before they can read? (Exceptions, obviously, are older primary kids, say 11 or 12 years old, who regularly walk home by themselves. There are hardly any phone boxes around anymore so calling home is difficult).
• Man-eating chimps.
• This. For SO MANY REASONS, least of all the fact that her parents regularly allowed boys to sleep over, and she's already had six different partners and a kid with dubious paternity by the age of 15. Where were her parents!!! (and yes, I'm aware there's a whole side issue regarding the parents and what they wanted to get out of the situation - comments on that link not censored or kind, be warned).
• This entire debacle. No further comment.

And finally, and perhaps most importantly:

• McD's forgetting my barbecue sauce!

I have an exciting post in the works for you for sometime next week - something really useful and practical. Stay tuned...

Health, Whole Foods and Peeing Dogs

I love that feeling you get on the flip side of being sick. You know the one - your brain has stopped exploding, you can breathe without falling into a crumpled mess, and extra fluid (usually in the form of phlegm, but clearly not restricted to that, auugh) stops leaking from various orifices.

The world stops spinning and you actually begin to feel somewhat normal for a change.

I'm always shocked when I get sick, because it doesn't happen all that often. I'm usually the one wiping feverish brows or cleaning up vomit spills, not the one laid up on the couch watching bad, bad daytime television and wishing I was dead. Honestly, does anyone actually watch Dr Phil anymore? (Shudder).

So life is normalising, and for that I am overjoyed. But my energy level is DEAD IN THE WATER. I mean seriously, undeniably, dead. It-hurts-to-hang-out-the-laundry kind of exhausted. I was kind of expecting that, to a degree. After all, it's not all that often one gets pneumonia - and the doctor did warn me I would not be my usual peppy self for several weeks. But this puts a serious spanner in the household routines.

I pretty much avoided housework completely for two weeks. Which should tell you something about the state of things at the moment. And then we got a dog. Who poops and widdles and requires a garden trowel-toting yard patrol about twice a day (and I've never been more grateful for a small yard since the day we moved in). But my point is, dogs, especially new puppies, are a lot of work. The bulk of which has fallen on my shoulders. And between Charlie-dog and just maintaining the 'household equilibrium' so to speak, I'm beat. I keep looking around the house, wishing I had the muscle tone to lift the broom and get at those cobwebs in the corner of the family room (yeah, I've got cobwebs, don't judge me). And then I sigh and lay back down on the couch where I promptly fall asleep until Charlie licks my hand to tell me to get his dinner. Thankfully he is the only one of the mammals in this house who does that, otherwise I'd be getting some strange looks from the other mums in the shopping centre food court, that's for sure.

And does anyone else do this? I keep getting wild thoughts floating through my head, leading me 'down the rabbit hole'. I read a post (well okay, many over the last year or two) referencing the book Nourishing Traditions, so I went looking for it at my local library. Hoo-eee, that book is popular. I had to get on a queue and only just picked it up this week after booking my place before Christmas. I'm also restricted to a 2-week loan, since there are ten other people on the list after me. Okay, so this little 'rabbit trail' actually originated well before I got sick, but after I picked the book a few days ago I got it in my head to begin researching the NT method of eating.

First thing that sprung to mind? Like within the first chapter? Not for us. If my very conservatively-eating husband so much as let a sip of Kombucha or Kefir pass his lips I would pass out. However there are many principles that did make sense (the kidney and liver-eating parts? Not so much) so off I went, researching a more general 'whole foods' diet and what that would encompass. Apparently I am meant to be grinding my own wheat (which I'd actually love to try), baking bread (which I don't do), drinking only whole milk (that part's easy - it's the 'raw, unpasteurized, non-homogenized' part that freaks me out, not to mention not having even a hint of a source for this), eating only butter (I checked the supermarket today - short of making my own, there's not even a butter that hasn't had something added to it), eating organic fruit and vegetables (sigh...I know its better for you, but it would double our produce budget in an instant) and chowing down on grass-fed-only beef and free-range organic eggs.

How do people manage all that when they don't have ready-access to farmers' markets, a Whole Foods store (apparently this is something I also need access to - pity there aren't any down here) or know someone who raises cattle on grass? And for that matter, Australia's in a drought! My lawn is yellow - where is all the grass these cows are meant to be eating!

Okay, I'm making light of the situation, and there are many points that truly are valid, such as the notion that foods that are as close to their natural state as possible would be the healthiest choice. But the practicalities of implementing all of that is phenomenal. I live in a suburban area, with access to two supermarkets within walking distance (I don't drive - ten points to Lizzie from a global warming standpoint, LOL) and a third a short bus ride away. I can get regular ol' beef, the grain-feed type and the supermarket does a good free-range egg, but organic vegetables are extremely expensive and we don't live close enough to a market to make a trip worthwhile. About the best I can hope for is a monthly (or so) trip to a stand-alone fruit and veg store with better prices than the supermarket. And I'm usually crazy-ecstatic about saving those few bucks. And don't even get me started on whole wheat berries - I'd have to mail order them. I can just see the look on Talented Hubby's face - who would promptly march down to the supermarket and buy me perfectly acceptable regular flour just to save everyone the hassle (and expense!)

How does one change their mindset from 'good generally healthy foods (not organic) at cheap to moderate prices' to 'this is going to cost me an absolute BOMB but I can tick the eco-friendly box now'?

Charlie needs to pee. More on this subject later...(isn't that just the most awesome subject-ender ever? LOL)