Well, it finally happened. My blog was taken down because I have not been able to come up with the $107 it would take to bring it back again this year. Not yet, anyhow.

I really do not want to pay it given how FatCow has treated me over this issue. Once I can cash my GST, I will have the cash to do it, although that will take most of it and I had planned to use that money to pay Joe back for my room at VancouFur. And spending that much of it will leave me pretty well entirely broke until the 25th, once I take out the $40 I had to borrow from Joe just in order to get this far into the month.

I am not mad at FatCow for taking the site down, although the sudden shock of not having it there was like icy fingernails across my heart. It would have been nice if they had said “Pay by this day or you are cut off”, so I could be ready. I could have warned my reader(s) that I would not be visibly updating until I got things sorted out. That would have been easier to take.

But regardless, I do not blame them for taking my site down, after all, you do not get what you do not pay for. I would do the same in their shoes.

No, what pisses me off is how asshole like they have been by not letting me pay by the month or even quarterly. It has to be the whole year, or nothing, and that just fucking sucks. I mean, what kind of bullshit is that? I have been a good customer for five years, and they could not give me even that little bit of slack. That is why I am pissed off at them.

So what I really want to do is switch companies. There are all kinds of web hosting companies out there that still let you pay by the month or the quarter, and a lot of them are also willing to give me a really sweet rate in order to get my business.

But if I switch, I am worried that I will not be able to transfer files from the old account to the new one because I am locked out of the old account and there is no reason they should let me at my files without me paying them first. And if I have to pay them, why switch?

Maybe that is why they do not give you a specific time when they will shut you off. This way, they can hold my files ransom and there is nothing I can do about it.

So then the choice becomes, do I pay them despite how I have been treated, or do I simply accept that I have to start my blog anew and lose all those blog entries I made since the Million Word Year?

Given how incredibly painful it is for a writer to lose anything he has written, odds are pretty good that I will cave in and bow to the forces of evil. I don’t want to, but I would be losing at least two years’ worth of writing if I do not.

And trust me, that would hurt like a bitch.

On the other hand, I could just say “Screw this private web hosting crap, I will just host the blog on Tumblr from now on and save myself the hassle and expense. “

And that is damned tempting on many levels. Maybe I would come up with the $20 to have my own private domain name, maybe not. My blog would have a unique URL either way, it just would have “tumblr.com” after it if I chose not to bother.

What I really wish (stupid hindsight) is that I had thought to back up my blog to my hard drive once I realized I was in hot water with FatCow. It is very easy to do, and if I had done that, I would be able to just tell FatCow to go fuck itself, gotten new hosting, uploaded my blog to it, and kept on going exactly as before without a problem.

But it is too late for that now. Lesson learned. I will try not to beat myself up over it. After all, what with the whole Zombie Finger incident, I have had a lot of my mind lately. I can be forgiven for imperfect perspicacity on that score.

Finger is doing fine, by the way. The area of the incision is still a little nasty looking, and the rest f the fingertip is still a little reddish and raw. I have Band-Aid over it currently, but that is just for cosmetic reasons. People do not want to see that.

Anyhow, right now, I dunno. It is not like I have thousands of readers and they will all be pissed off and confused if I switch to Tumblr without warning them. I can email the two people I know for sure are readers of mine and give them the new URL, and no real harm done.

And at least I have the Million Words backed up. And in PDF form, no less. Plus, I have all my fiction backed up as well. So while I would lose writing, I would not lose my short stories, which are what I hold most precious.

I have also written some essays I am fairly proud of, though, and I would be sacrificing those if I took the “clean break” route. Plus, of course, all my day to day ramblings, musings, navel-gazings, and therapeutic belly aching. That is something to consider.

Oh well. I will not be able to cash my check until Tuesday anyhow, and so I do not have to make up my mind about it until then.

Until then, I will be readable on LiveJounral and Tumblr at least.

Hope I will see you there, folks.