Two years ago, the company I work for moved to a new office. We used to do most of our domain name registrations through Network Solutions, mainly out of habit from when they were the only registrar, and accounts were of two types:

  1. Contacts. This involved a person or role and contact information.
  2. Domain names. This involved the person or company who registered the domain name, and links to three contacts (admin, technical, and billing).

So I had a contact account for any registrations we did on our clients’ behalf. We moved – again, this was two years ago – and I updated the address.

Network Solutions has restructured their entire account system into something immensely complicated. Somehow this single contact account has been split into three separate accounts, none of which had the password I started with, and all of which had the old address.

Yes, all three redundant accounts showed the address and phone number that I deleted two years ago.

We used to have people lose their domain names (or at least get them put on hold) because they never gave NS their new address when they moved, and they wouldn’t get the renewal notice. I guess these days it doesn’t really matter. Even if you do update your address, they’ll revert it anyway.

Last weekend we got a pile of mail sent to former residents of our apartment. I was looking through the list of names, including several we didn’t recognize, and was just getting ready to start writing “Not at this address” on all of them, when I noticed the postmarks. They were all from between 1997 and 2000!

I guess the Post Office must have found a box or two of lost mail, and just decided to deliver it. There were things that looked like they were from banks or collection agencies, and one that looked like a greeting card with “Happy Birthday Late” written on the back of the envelope.

Later than you thought…

Time to introduce a new feature! I’ve been having a lot of muse attacks lately, and darn it, I can’t wait until I have a finished product to put some stuff up for feedback. I can always read aloud to Kelson, but I’d really like more than one opinion for a change. (Not a dig at Kelson–I just like to widen my audience.) So here goes.

This is a bit from the infamous original-sequence story #6 (jeez, that sounds like a menu item). I don’t consider any of it spoilerish, but in case someone does, I’ve relegated it to the next page. Leave a comment and let me know if you think I should keep it as is, change it, or toss it.

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