Site News
The Change I Should Have Made
Many
people have asked my why my primary domain name is fastie.net
instead of fastie.com and why my
business site is a sub-domain of fastie.net.
It's a long story. Sad, too.
Way, way back, when I was first contemplating a Web presence, I went off in search of domain names. Fastie.com was available but I wasn't sure if I wanted to commit to the recurring expenses associated with a site, including my time to create and maintain it. I hesitated. Every so often I'd take a peek to see if fastie.com was still available as a domain name.
Suddenly it wasn't.
When I say "way, way back," I mean about 1997. In those days it was possible and, I learned, quite common for bulk domain name buyers to scoop up domains when they discovered interest. How did they know there was interest? Simple - they spied on the only domain name registrar at the time, Network Solutions. They watched network traffic to the Network Solutions site and when they saw repeated queries about a name with no ensuing purchase, they added the name to their list for their next purchase.
Within seconds of discovering that my name had been hijacked, I signed up for fastie.net. Shortly thereafter I was online and fastie.net became my primary (and only) domain.
During the ensuing years fastie.com changed hands several times. Each time, the new owner would send me an email offering the domain for sale. The first asking price was $3,500. Over time the price kept dropping but remained outlandish. I watched the registrations and what transpired near the expiration dates. But I ignored all these offers; I did not respond to any of the emails or give any suggestion that I was interested.
One day I received an email with an asking price of $85. Immediately suspicious because of the low price (the previous offer had been $800), I armed myself with my American Express card and visited Network Solutions. Sure enough, the site was finally available. I signed up on the spot for a ten year term.
So why did I get this email if the sender did not own the site? A very careful reading of the email revealed that the sender was offering a "registration service" for $85. They would sign me up for one year. This was obviously a bulk buyer who decided that I was never going to buy and therefore did not want to invest in yet another year of domain ownership. Instead, they gambled on a service fee deal. I figure they could have made a profit of about $70, not bad for one email and five minutes of work. Of course, I ignored this offer just as I had all the others.
It was a relief to finally own the primary domain name I wanted. Even so, I continued with fastie.net as the primary. A short time ago my friend Danny slapped me upside the head (via email but it still stung) about this stupid arrangement. Jolted back to reality, I decided to fix it, finally.
Starting today and over the next few months, my sites will probably experience some disruption as I move to fastie.com as the primary and make other changes. I could bore you with the technical details but it boils down to years of sloppiness. A housecleaning is in order and it won't be pretty - I'll need a dumpster and an industrial-strength vacuum. Chalk this up to my knowing a lot more about Web development now than I did ten years ago and having a clearer picture of what I want to do with my online presence.
Along with the housecleaning, I'm painting the house. My good friends at Brink Media in Tucson are designing my new look, which I hope will be finished in the next few weeks. The little graphic above is a sneak preview of the design concept; it's not quite done but it's coming along. Once the graphic work is done I'll start building the site. You'll probably see a mix of old and new pages both here and at my personal sites during the process, for which I beg your indulgence.
I'm happy to be making these changes after so long, and I'm thrilled to have world-class designers working on that paint job. Stay tuned.
September 27, 2009