Tech

Two big “ouches” that may be affecting the site due to my upcoming move — a $300 fee I hadn’t expected, and a possible downtime of as much as 2 months (worst case scenario). I was afraid this might happen….

All that’s going on is when you sign up for a DSL account with Speakeasy, you sign on for a 12-month contract. Should you cancel your service within that 12 months, you’re subject to a $300 cancellation fee. Since the DSL line is hooked up in co-operation with the phone service provider (Qwest, in my case), it can’t be simply tossed onto another number…even when changing apartments, it’s a process of closing one account and opening another. On the bright side, though, if you re-open your account at the new address within 90 days of cancelling your account at the old address, that $300 is refunded. Still, I have to spend it in the first place, which hurts.

The last downside — because I’ll be starting the connection process over, my website could be down for as much as close to 2 months. Speakeasy asks to allow up to two weeks for the connection to take place (from placing the order to the signal coming up and online), and they can’t start the process until after you’ve had a working phone at the address for a month.

I’ll see what I can do with creative juggling to make the transition as easy as possible, though. Melvin just told me I’ll be able to move into the apartment on March 15th. I’ll be paid up at my old apartment through the end of March. So, figure I leave my webserver at the old apartment until the very last possible day — that will have my website up and running through the end of March. If I start my phone service at the new apartment on the 15th of March, then I’ll be able to place my DSL order on April 15th, and the new DSL line will be up and running by the end of April, with about a month of downtime. If I’m really lucky, Melvin will allow me to place the order to start phone service to that apartment at the beginning of March, before I officially move in, and I’ll just leave that number unused until I actually start living there mid-March — if I can do that, then that could move all pertinent reconnect dates up by two weeks, giving me only two weeks of downtime for the website. I’ll see what I can do.

I should still be able to get online for e-mail and such the entire time, though, as I’ve got modems in both of my computers now — so at least I won’t be going through the same ‘net-less existence I was when I first moved into my place.

More updates on all this nonsense will appear as I nail down the details.