It turned out that a feng shui consultant in San Francisco, named “Roberto Tani” procured the domain. (Back then grace periods were not as generous). Fair enough: I dropped the ball.

After enduring nearly six years of ribbing by my friends for being a doofus, and checking every year for the domain’s expiration (Mr. Tani always renewed at the very last possible moment), I managed to get it back.

I don’t know what happened to Mr. Roberto Tani this year, though I hope he is well. I imagine that he simply forgot this time, like I did, guessing “The odds of another guy named ‘Roberto Tani’ getting this domain name is pretty low… I’ll just renew when I get back from vacation.”

(Footnote: Googling his name suggests his surname is Brazilian/Portugese or Italian, though it is also a Japanese one, like mine. He may also be Japanese-Brazilian).

If you’re shopping around for a hosting provider, I strongly discourage TextDrive (or whatever Joyent calls it).

I try not to complain openly, but my experience was bad enough to warrant sharing this information with those who are shopping for a web hosting provider.

So… why did I cancel my Joyent/TextDrive account?

1. My Server Settings Changed Without Notice: Without any warning, my email settings were changed, and not by me. They were also changed in a way that did not bounce these misdirected emails. I am certain that account security was not compromised; my conclusion is that an internal process on their end caused the problem.
2. Very Slow Administrator Tools: When I wanted to diagnose/fix my email problem, running my account and server management tools were terribly slow. How slow? On average, it took 1.5 minutes to load any web admin page, and three to five minutes for form posts to complete, not including several page timeouts.
3. Difficulty Finding Administrator Tools: Joyent purchased TextDrive well over a year ago, and their web interface has yet to clearly present their web hosting services. It seemed like they were obscuring this information by design. Visting www.texdrive.com redirected me to www.joyent.com, with no clear delineation of “web hosting.” This resulted in navigating a confusing maze of links and using Google search to find the correct area, which turned up as a sub-product of “Connector for Teams.”
4. I Lost Important Correspondence: This downtime has led to at least one lost business transaction.

Granted, my tech support person was cordial, but I got the impression that he was as much out of control of the situation as I was, and so I decided to switch my hosting provider.

A few more minutes of digging around showed that I am not alone, and that Joyent’s problems go beyond their web hosting services:

• Data Center Knowledge: Joyent Backup Services Down for Three Days
• Robbie Allen: Joyent’s problems continue.
• The much more famous Twitter also dumped Joyent as their hosting provider back in January, however from what I’ve read, it seems that they have other problems of their own.

During a recent conversation with former Yahoo! colleague, fellow raconteur, and soon-to-be author Dustin, we discussed the awesomeness of the idea for a technical pop-up book.

Said popup book would need to have at least one pop-up of… pop-up windows. It’s the kind of keen self-referential metaphysical reference one finds in Cosmo Kramer’s Coffee Table Book about Coffee Tables..

Sa-weet.