Can't Things Just WORK?!
I thought, last Thursday, that I was caught up. HAHAHAHAHAHAHA!!!!! So what happens?! KeenSpace, the host of my site, goes down. I couldn't ftp anything to the site, couldn't get to the forum scripts, and the site itself was totally inaccessible over most of the weekend. I'm not even sure if this update will go through, as I've been trying to update since last week, and none of it has gone through. If this shows up, I will faint from utter surprise.
People keep asking me, "Why don't you find another host?" The simple answer is, "I can't afford one." This site makes no money, other than the occasional donation to the art supply fund (and I'm extremely grateful for those!!), therefore I can't justify spending money on a host. I don't have hundreds of dollars to spare, to cover the cost of basic hosting and bandwidth charges. It already costs me a good deal of money just for the art supplies I have to buy each month, to do the comic. Having the domain name costs money. I can't afford to put any more money into it. So, I suppose that means I'm just stuck. My choices are A.) keep dealing with the downtimes on this free host and whine and complain all the time, or B.) quit posting my comics online. I really don't like either of those choices, but I'm at a loss on what to do about the problem.
It's compounded by the fact that I like the folks who run KeenSpace and KeenSpot. I like what they're trying to do, and I want to give them a chance, because I think the idea of a community host just for cartoonists is basically a good one. I want to be a part of the community. At the same time, I only have so much patience, and I'm being stressed out to my limit over this stuff. Sigh...I'm really having a tug-of-war inside my head, now, over what I should do about these continual problems. It doesn't help that I still feel crummy, from being ill, last week.
To make things worse, a new comic has popped up on the Funny Papers list and rolled in with an impossible number of votes. Something like 2,000 in ONE DAY. The new star of the list has pushed us down to number 10, which means we could easily fall off the top ten, at any time. It's very discouraging to see this sort of thing happen, especially when so many of you have told me you have voted and your vote wasn't counted. My point in all this is, should I stay on this list, when it is seemingly unfair and not counting, properly? I do get a good number of visits from it--although, I only get good traffic from it if I can stay in the top ten. So I'm torn about what to do on this problem, as well. In any case, I will not use this rant, again, to ask for votes. It seems like a waste to ask you to vote, when your votes are not being counted. I'll leave the button on the site, for now, and you can vote if you want to. I may start a discussion on it in the forum, if I can get in there, later today.
Please forgive me for sounding down. I'm really trying to stay up, but it's just not working, this week. I'm just too tired. Signing off, going back to bed, and hoping this #%*@ing update will go through...
(^-^)
Kaichi
