Somebody Kicked Over My Tombstone

Columnist Michael Ventura was finally persuaded to publish a web site archiving much of his writing. Ventura calls it his tombstone.

The use of the word tombstone suggests some form of permanence. Fuhgeddaboudit! Four years ago, I decided to set up a web site as a base for my blog. Convenience dictated my eventual use of Blogger, so the web site became a repository for some of my freelance writing which was available online. Waning to save money, I published my web page with Tripod, one of the last remnants of the dot com boom where everything internetty was somehow going to be provided to us free of charge.

A few days ago, I clicked on the link to my site and got a message telling me it could not be found. I tried logging in to my account, only to be told that he account was locked due to user abuse. I emailed Lycos's customer support, and was told that my page had been mistakenly blocked in their attempt to combat hackers. "Bill" informed me that my account has been restored.

Well, it hasn't and I suppose it won't. I still can't access my page and a follow-up message produced another courteous response but no restoration of my account.

I anticipated this and reconstructed my page using the free site space offered by my current ISP. But any illusions of permanence I had are gone.

Check your web site often if you want it to stick around.