Maybe by the time you see this it won’t look like this anymore. This is what a default WordPress theme looks like.

You may have noticed this blog was offline the last few days. Well, hooray, it’s back, but at a cost. I’ve lost my theme and now it looks like some default WordPress blog–which is exactly what it is. For the time being.

It all started on Sunday when I sat down to write my post for Monday. I could not get to the blog. All that happened when I clicked on the link is that a dialog box came up asking where I wanted to save the file to. What? I tried on different computers, using different browsers, but same result each time. Fine, I would wait till Monday morning and see if the problem fixed itself.

It did not. So I made a call to my web host, HostGator. I had moved the site to HostGator, which is in Austin, Texas, after having issues with my previous web host. One of the things I found most appealing about HostGator was that all its tech support people were right there in Austin and were all native English speakers. I’ve got nothing against people for whom English is not their native language, but I really don’t like it when I have a very hard time communicating with someone on an important issue. So I’ve been very happy with HostGator.

Until the last time I needed help and called and got someone who was not a native English speaker. We managed, but I was concerned.

This time I called and the tech support person was a non-native English speaker. OK, let’s just get this issue addressed. This guy did some checking and he told me it appeared I had some malware on the blog and he would need to do scan to see how many files were infected. He told me he would call me back in about an hour. He did not. This was Monday. On Tuesday I called HostGator again.

On this second call I reached a tech who was a native English speaker. Great. He pulled up my account and saw that a scan had been done and it found no malware. The problem, he said, was that I was running some out of date software. I knew this, and I had spoken just recently to someone about updating my site but he told me it was working, updating would be a huge issue, and if I could live with the nag messages I get so frequently I should just go ahead as normal. Obviously that advice reached its expiration date.

So the tech told me he would need to pass me over to more technical tech support and I was handed off. I heard one ring tone and then silence. Minutes ticked by and finally I hung up and called again. I again got an English-speaking person on the line. I told him the story and he transferred me to tech support, making sure I got transferred. I did and found myself talking to a woman who was not a native English speaker. Fine, as long as we can communicate and she can fix things.

She started digging in and found one of the issues, which I had told her about because I had received an email from WordPress telling me they had spotted the issue. She put me on hold several times while she took care of things but then as she was going to put me on hold again I told her I had an appointment I needed to get to and could she continue without me. She said yes and she would send me an email telling me what she had done.

I never received an email from her and when I tried to reach the blog I still got one of the two error messages I had received before.

On Wednesday I called again. I got a non-native English speaker who basically solved the problem but did so in a blunt object, meat cleaver manner. He just updated everything to the most current default theme, and all my design be damned. At that point I was more interested in getting the blog back online even if it didn’t look so good any more. So that’s what you see now.

I contacted my brother, who did the original design but who no longer does WordPress work and he said he would see if he could at least resurrect some of the previous design. If it does not now look the way it did in the photo above you know he has been at work.

Maybe next week I can get back to writing about riding motorcycles. At least I can offer a quote.

Biker Quote for Today

Ride paranoid. It has always kept me away from crazy cagers and scary roadside animals. — CVBruce

Let me apologize up front that this post has nothing to do with motorcycles.

I’m a little aggravated this morning. Maybe you noticed–this site was down for 1 hour and 29 minutes. And that’s not the first time recently the site has been down, although that’s the longest time by far. I filed a trouble ticket with my web host and asked what the hell is going on, but have yet to hear anything from them. If they respond as they have in the past I’ll get some message such as “We’re sorry your site was down, it’s back up now.” No shit?

It’s enough to push me a lot farther along the way to going to a new web host. I’ve been growing increasing dissatisfied with NetPivotal for quite awhile now and this may be what pushes me over the edge.

If I do move to a new host, it will make a clean third strike for today. First I went over to my bank, Wells Fargo, to ask about some unexpected charges that showed up on our statements. Seems they have added a bunch of fees, and when I said that was not acceptable the reply was essentially, “Too bad.” Judy has wanted to dump Wells Fargo for a long time so I came home and emailed her a message saying “Let’s do it.” We’ll be moving our accounts to First Bank.

Then I went over to my gym, Bally Fitness. Yesterday the Aurora club moved into a new location and this was my first time there. Their card reader would not accept my card. The manager told me my membership is not valid at the new location, despite my having asked that exact question as soon as they announced they would be making the move. I told him that was all I needed to know and came home and canceled my automatic renewal. When my membership runs out in April I’ll join 24-Hour Fitness.

Don’t anybody mess with me today, I’m on a roll.

Recent from National Motorcycle Examiner
More motorcycle companies report increasing sales

Biker Quote for Today

If I can’t pass at a reasonable speed I do it unreasonably.

My apologies to anyone who tried in vain to reach this blog or website in the last 36 hours. A fire at what is reportedly the largest web server facility in the world, in Houston, put thousands of servers and tens of thousands of websites — including this one — out of commission for a day and a half. Here’s the notice my web host put up:

Server Issues:
We would like to make our customers aware that we are currently have some issues with our NS1.NETPIVOTAL.COM Primary nameserver and the Rose.netpivotal.com server. On Saturday evening at 4:55 in the Houston data centre where the two servers are located, an electrical gear shorted, creating an explosion and fire that knocked down three walls surrounding our electrical equipment room. Thankfully, no one was injured. In addition, no servers were damaged or lost and the data is still safely on the server. There is no impact in any of our other servers.

So if you were inconvenienced, I’m very sorry. But I’m glad you’ve returned.

It was a really bad time for this to happen because I know from the statistics that this is the busiest time of year for this website. You may recall just two months ago that I was crowing that the website had had 3,000 unique visitors in one month for the first time ever. Well, just two months later we hit 4,000 unique visitors.

Now, this is really exciting for me but let me put it in perspective for you. This website went live in November of 2005. The first month it had 1,000 unique visitors was July of 2006. It was then June 2007 when it first had 2,000 unique visitors in one month. The 3,000 mark was hit then in March 2008 and now, May 2008, it already hit 4,000! And the very next morning the servers went out and everything was offline for 36 hours!

So welcome back, and now maybe we can get back to discussing important things, like motorcycles.

Biker Quote for Today

If you can’t get it going with bungee cords and electrician’s tape, it’s serious.