So...

Or at least it was...

If the missing images on this blogspot page and the fact that websurfnicaragua.com now leads to random advertising haven't tipped you off, strange and terrible things have been afoot with my internet websitery provider. After a couple of attempts to pay for hosting with no "thanks for your payment" or "dude, you haven't paid us" emails, I get an email from the guy that runs the place, telling me that my card (which was full of money at the time) was rejected and that I need to call. So I call like a hundred thousand times and never get through, and the site gets taken down, prompting me to call a few hundred thousand more times, and still just get prompted to leave a message, and I don't, because I'm weird about not just leaving a message in matters of serious bidness. Anyway, I said to hell with it and tried to pay through the company's website again, this time with an actual credit card, as opposed to debit, and a couple weeks later no charges have appeared on there. I guess the next course of action, if I ever manage any sort of contact with these people again (Oddly enough, I'm not sure if they can actually contact me now, because none of the websurfnicaragua.com email addresses seem to work) is to just warp back to 1987 and send a check, and see what happens.


Anyway, I'm going to try to not be a dick about the whole thing, because a lot of this could have been avoided by me actually checking my email more than once a week or sending one from time to time. Then again, ALL of this could have been avoided if my host (who I'm not going to name in a post as bitchy as this one, because I really am trying to not be a dick here) ran things the way every even semi-professional website of any kind has been running since everyone noticed that the internet existed, probably sometime around 1996 or so. So far, only one website I've ever encountered that sold a good or service of any kind has had a payment system set up where not only do credit/debit card payments not go through instantaneously, but they can take weeks or even months to be processed. Hell, in that time, I can actually forget that I made an attempt to pay earlier - Especially because when a card gets rejected, as was apparently the case with me, whatever system may or may not be in place never told me. I didn't know of any card rejections until months and months and months had passed, and the host owner just emailed me himself. (Which was actually kind of cool of him to do, for the record) Seriously. Go to any commercial-type website out there and try to buy something, but intentionally fudge up something like the expiration date or security code and see what happens. Half a second later, (or longer if you're on dial-up, all putting the phone receiver on a cradle, watching some VHS tapes on your black-and-white TV while it connects) you'll get a message telling you that your card won't work. So yeah, the system in place here is not so good. I'd jokingly say that their online credit card payment system is just a regular old email form that someone has to check and then enter manually somewhere else, but I can't do that jokingly, because I'm pretty sure that's how it actually works. Once again, I am trying so hard to not be a dick, because the rare actual contact I've had with company has been pleasant as hell, but Jesus, just go get a PayPal merchant account or something.

If it's on a bus, you know it's secure.

Anyway, I'm going to find some way to actually get these people the $60-something I owe them, but after that, I think I'm going to just wash my hands of the situation and start afresh somewhere else, once situations in real-life world calm down enough for me to type words for the internet on the regular. New place, new time, new host, new address, new everything. This blog is still going to be here in the meantime, and I'll probably throw something up as sporadically as I've been doing, but nothing major, probably for a while. I'll keep you people that I don't know in person who actually remembered to bookmark the Blogspot address updated on any developments, and if you care about freedom and therefore football, it'll mostly still be business as usual over at Armchair Linebacker. (NFL labor dispute aside) But yeah, all good things must come to an end, but unfortunately for Web Surf Nicaragua, that rule also applies to somewhat above-average things. "Death is but a door. Time is but a window. I'll be back."

R.I.P. October 27, 1998 - May 19, 2011