It's been another troubling, trying day in Durango World. As you can see in the picture looking out the gloomy window to the gloomy west, it is another gray, stereotypical Pacific Northwest winter day here, in October, in Texas.
My one longtime reader may recall that I signed up with a new webhost yesterday. The new webhost was based in Provo, Utah. I like Utah. Mormons seem like real nice people. The Provo webhost called itself Bluehost. Why? I don't know. It soon made me blue dealing with them.
Within minutes of setting up the account I got email telling me my temporary URL and other necessary info, so that files could be uploaded.
None of the info I was sent worked. Last night I had had enough and was not going to talk to any more tech people. It could wait til morning.
I called about 8, after going swimming. I got a male tech guy. I prefer the female tech people. First off, they are easier to understand and always seem competent. The Bluehost tech guy had such a bad speaking voice and he spoke so fast, I had a lot of trouble understanding him. He didn't seem to understand the problem and kept being 2 steps behind. After an hour or so of making very little progress he became fixated on finding the help info I'd used to set up extensions. Here I was, pointing the tech guy to info on his website.
I gave up. I told him I'm over it. I want to cancel the account. He said he'd transfer me. I waited on hold, listening to the same awful annoying music all phone systems seem to use, and hung up.
I thought there'd be an easy way to cancel, on their website. There wasn't. So, I called back. After about 10 more minutes of annoying music a billing guy answered. He was perfectly pleasant, listened to my complaints as to why I was bailing. It was my first opportunity to vent about the frustrating experience. So, credit card got credited back.
Now I had to find another webhost. This time I looked a bit harder. One called HostGator had a lot of positive reviews. I called customer service to ask a few questions. The wait listening to the annoying music was not too long. A guy answered. I don't remember his name.
I decided to go with HostGator. Something seemed familiar about them. What sealed the deal was the answer guy told me they were headquartered in Houston and the server banks were in Dallas. This is the closest I've lived to a server bank that I was using. My first one was in Seattle, used that one for 2 years after I moved to Texas, then I got my durangotexas.com domain and had it on a server in Hollywood. I thought Hollywood, California for a long time, but turned out to be the Hollywood in Florida. After Florida I moved to Manhattan in New York City. That one did not work out. The next move was to the one I'm getting rid of. They were based in a bomb shelter in Hopkinsville, Kentucky, then they moved to Columbus, Ohio, or was it Cleveland?
Anyway, I hope this works out with HostGator. I just mentioned to someone via my cell phone mobile talking device that I was now trying HostGator. The party to whom I was speaking said he'd just driven by a HostGator billboard. Then I remember why HostGator seemed familiar. I see that billboard anytime I'm heading back here from some place north, like the airport.
So, there you have the gory details of my miserable day. I forgot to mention, my therapist, Dr. L.C., told me she believes I must be mentally unhinged to be swimming in these frigid temperatures. She may have worded it differently.
