I’ve learned a very valuable and mildly expensive lesson this week: never let my domain registration expire.

I was trying to upload a file for someone on October 31st, Halloween, when my FTP decided to throw the ghastly error “host not found”. I said to myself, “Self, how is that possible?”. I host my own servers, run my own DNS and generally keep track of everything myself. The sinking feeling in my gut told me this wasn’t good and boy was it right. My domain registration had lapsed.

Unfortunately, I had neglected to update the contact information on my domain. My registrar’s plea for more money fell on deaf ears so to speak; the out-of-date email address listed as my primary method of contact was beyond my reach. When I realized that the domain had expired, it had been more than a month. My registrar, Register.com (who I hate with a passion), had released the name back to the dot org registry, forcing me to not only pay their $35 yearly registration fee, but an additional $200 to “recover” the name. I could risk letting it be released to the public and re-register it at GoDaddy, but it was schedule for release on December 5th, when I would be in New Zealand. Not only that, but all of my personal email was bouncing and the thought of all of that unreached spam made me sad.

So now I’m back, for better or worse. Did you miss me?