You might have noticed that my Web site went down for a few days earlier this
week.  Well, I simply forgot to renew the domain registration.  Quite
silly of me.

That being said, Network Solutions is partly to blame for this as well. 
They have had outdated contact information about me for years and the couple of
attempts I made to change these records (it has to be done by fax with a copy of
your driver’s license) have failed.  I didn’t try to fix this problem very
hard, so it fell off my radar.  I assume that they tried to notify me that
my domain was about to expire but sure enough, they are using an old email
address from an ex employer that obliterates your email account on the very day
you leave the company.  So no luck there.

I thought it would be a good opportunity to move to a registrar that doesn’t
charge $35 a year to register a domain, such as
pairnic (I have been a pair user for years
now and I only have praises about their service).  Unfortunately, they
can’t transfer an expired domain, so I am stuck with Network Solutions for
another year.  It serves me right.  But be assured that I won’t make
this mistake again next year.

Any domain registrar that charges more than $20 a year deserves to go out of
business.