I read the discussion on Miss Snark, the literary agent about Sock Puppets and I’m saddened to see puppets once again taking a bashing.

Back in the early days of the blog I’d surf around the net to see what people were saying about me. One of the recurring themes I found both hilarious and strange was “she comments on her own blog anonymously” and “she makes up letters”. I wondered what kind of total nitwit would do that, let alone what double nitwit would think I had to make up anything.

Wellllllllllll, come to find out there’s a term, sock puppet, for aliases people use who comment on their own blogs, or defend themselves on their own blogs.

At least, in this case, the analogy is a fairly apt one. Sock puppets are usually made by someone sitting around at home. They usually are crudely constructed and monodimensional, often badly manipulated. But not always. Still, it’s better than the standard use of “puppet” as a metaphor. It’s at least specific as to the type of puppet.

Well. If you usually use my ohp address to contact me, you might have noticed that I’ve been silent for a while. edatarack.com has taken my company website offline without telling me. I don’t know how long it’s been down because I don’t go look at it every day and the email normally forwards into another account. Needless to say, I am frustrated and angry.

Update: I wrote to the billing department and got this response.

Your account no longer pinged to our network and your account expiration date was 9-21-06. The account was removed from our server due to 1-week of consistent network inactivity.

I don’t know what they mean that it no longer pinged to their network. It’s still got edatarack listed as the nameservers. And it apparently went away weeks before the end date. What’s up with that? I wrote to ask.

What do you mean it no longer pinged to your network? I hadn’t moved it. Whois still shows edatarack as the name servers. When was it removed?

edatarack wrote back:

I really could not say.

And yes. That is the entirity of the message. My jaw dropped when I read it. I mean, it’s so blatantly rude and don’t give a shit. If they had any hope of keeping my business, they just lost it.

I’ve written back, but don’t expect a civil answer:

Excuse me? You wrote “Your account no longer pinged to our network and your account expiration date was 9-21-06. The account was removed from our server due to 1-week of consistent network inactivity.”

I would like that to be clarified. I do not understand “pinged.”

When was it removed?

Update: I have moved the website to bluehost and email is working again. It may take twenty-four hours for the website to show up in your neck of the woods.