Blip.fm is like Twitter.com, only you post a song along with your short missive. I just discovered it a day or so ago, and I’m surprised how few people seem to know about it – hence this post. Yeah, I said “hence”.

The Sinister Visions Banner Exchange data files were severely damaged in The Great Crash of January 9th. If your site is a member of the SVBX, please go to http://www.sinistervisions.net/bp/ and rejoin. If it tells you your username is in use, then that means your account is fine; if you are able to register, then you'll need to replace the code on your site with the new account HTML code you're given.

Sorry for the trouble!

Desktop PCs have been a regular part of life for over a decade, yet manufacturers still build them as if nobody will ever need to access their innards. I am literally having to completely deconstruct my dead HP Pavillion to get to the hard drive. This is ridiculous.

So the second weekend of 2009, I lost my desktop computer and my web hosting server within 24 hours.

Suck.

I lost all the posts from this blog and a great deal of content on my other sites.

Double suck.

I have to thank Twitter, Digsby, Gmail, Archive.org and my external backup hard drive. Friends on Twitter/Digsby offered great advice & support; Gmail archives all email on its server; Archive.org lets you access content from websites from years ago and the backup drive saved all my critical data.

This last week has been a blur, and somewhat exhausting. Add to the mad scramble to recover files, data and get close to 200 websites back up and running the fact that it’s snowed almost every night since the 9th, making it dangerous and stupid to try to go anywhere that’s not necessary. So there’s the cabin fever. I haven’t left the house in 9 days. We haven’t received mail (that includes much-needed paychecks) since Wednesday because of the snow, and tomorrow is MLK Day, so no mail ’til Tuesday. Unless it snows some more, I guess.

Bleah. Can we get a 2009 do-over?

ADDENDUM: I also need to thank Rock Star Energy Drink, Lifehacker.com and Pumpkin the Puppy. Rock Star for… well, that’s obvious; Lifehacker is an indispensable info source and Pumpkin is always ready with puppy lovin’ when I get stressed out. Never underestimate puppy lovin’.

I'm surprised by the number of site owners who have not moved to update their site info and/or not responded to my notification emails from Sunday/Monday. Most of those who have are already back online. The rebuilding continues apace.

On Friday, January 8, Sinister Prime, the workhorse desktop computer that was the heart of the daily work of Sinister Visions inc., unexpectedly shut down with no warning or indication that anything was wrong. It has not started since, locking up at the boot screen after 2 recovery attempts ended in failure.

On Saturday, January 9, SinisterHosting.net, the dedicated server leased from HostGator.com, did effectively the same thing. After 9 hours of tech support emails and phone calls, HostGator.com informed me that the server was dead and they "would not" attempt data recovery.

So my computer and hosting server are dead. The odds of these 2 events happening less than 24 hours from each other are staggering, but happen they have.

Sinister Visions inc. is what I do for a living, all day, every day. To say that this sucks or is a setback would be a serious understatement, for both myself and my web hosting clients.

Now, having said that, I'm not an idiot. I backed up Sinister Prime every night and, thanks to that, I haven't lost any critical files. I have a powerful laptop that I bought last summer (THANK GOD). While it will take some time, I'll get all the sites back up and running, although in many cases it'll be like starting from scratch.

I will be in direct contact with hosting clients on a site-by-site/case-by-case basis to make new hosting arrangements.

I'm posting this to answer the inevitable questions that something like this will generate, and also to say that Sinister Visions will use this setback, in the long run, to make improvements and upgrades across the board. SVi is still very much open for business.

The last few weeks have seen some heartbreaking tragedies in the lives of many of my friends and colleagues; in spite of the last 48 hours, I count myself lucky that the problems I'm experiencing are with equipment and not loved ones.

Chad Savage

The primary desktop computer for Sinister Visions experienced an as-yet unidentified system failure today shortly after noon, and all attempts to start or diagnose it are failing. Thankfully, I back up all my client data and resources religiously, but I now have to (a) migrate fully over to my laptop while (b) trying to repair and revive the desktop. Please bear with me for the next couple of days - this is a serious setback if I can't get it figured out and fixed sooner rather than later. :(