The Shaman and the Buddist Mandala

Yikes. I went to visit here early in the week, just checking in. I’ve invested 19 years and 4 months into this booger, and it contains the sum total of not only the bulk of what I’ve written about the outdoors, but the details of every hunt we’ve had at the farm from 2001 until present. 1200 posts. 4000 pics. It was gone, vanished. All I had got was a dreaded 403-error. I went in through the back door to see what was going on. It was not corrupted, but it was gone. There were no files in the folders. Don’t worry. The fact that you can read this post is proof of a happy ending.

I called up support for the host provider, and the tech support mooch could not explain anything and asked the dreaded question “Do you have a backup?”

I changed hosts back in October. The new host had backups in their list of benefits. While I was transferring the site, there was a major snafu, and I asked for a restore. In 24hours, it was back the way it should be. I didn’t know I shouldn’t expect that kind of service in the future.

Luckily, I had continued to do regular backups of the site. I have a backup horizon stretching back 10 years. I spent 40 years in the biz. I know what can happen. I was still doing my own backups, but had figured if the site ever went toes-up, I’d rely on the host’s backups. I never tested the restores. I know that’s hugely irresponsible, but I’d had enough interaction with the guys who wrote my backup software that I knew it was pretty much bullet-proof, and the rigamarole of doing a full restore was not worth the cost and hassle.

Ooops.

Okay. I uploaded the last backup to the host, and they went to work.

Then came the agony: I’m in CHAT with tech mooch, and mooch comes back with “What are all these zip files?”

“They’re my backup.”

“You expect me to unpack all that stuff?”

Well. . . yeah!?

There was a tense silence in the chat. I think the guy was weighing what it might be like having a 280lb berserker come through the screen or having his supervisor’s phone ring with me on the other end. I don’t know. There was just this really long wait (heck, maybe he went to the
bathroom)

Then finally, he wrote back: “I am restoring the files now.”

Within 2 hours, Genesis 9:2-4 Ministries was back. But how did this happen??? This didn’t smell like a hack. It smelled like somebody on the inside kicking the cable loose.

As I said, I had transferred hosts in October. Before that, the site was down on a regular basis, and if I published something that was popular, it would crash the server. I finally had enough. The tech suggested I transfer to their parent company. They’d been bought out a year or so previously, and come to find out, I’d been operating way outside my guaranteed service levels for years. No one had ever mentioned it. The old company just stopped being able to handle the size of the site or its traffic volume. They were pushing all but the entry-level customers away. I contacted the parent company and was out the door as fast as I could type. I left the account active with the old host. I just wanted to make sure I had everything off. After 1/1/, I decided the deal was done, and told the old company to turn me off.

The OOOPS came when the old company did what I ask them to do and that was turn off everything I had with them. The old company found my sites on the new guy’s servers and blasted them. I said turn off everything, and they did.

I had about an hour of thinking about the Buddhist monks who make mandalas in the sand. I’ve still got to find out what the F— happened to the backups the host was supposed to be doing, but that’s a minor issue. It could have been me. I might not have checked a box.