friday i had a to present an intranet design to my groups' primary client. all went well but the two-hour affair left me a touch on the spent side. so i left work a little early as to get a small nap in before the girls got home, only upon arriving home i found that my dsl provider severed my internet connection a full 10 days before they were supposed to as part of an 'upgrade' they are mandating on all customers.
16 hours later i was able to raise a web page again. i then went to check my mail only to find it equally disabled. i called them next. it would seem some moron was trying to send me a 260mb email. after further investigation it was discovered that that moron was me. at the end of every month i have my monthly logfile detailing this site's web activity emailed to me. this file is usually around 15mb, but after being linked to by
jason kottke,
metafilter,
usa today and a
south dakota 10 o'clock news show, this single text file came in at 260mb, which in itself exceeds my full web space allocation. and this does not even account for the rest of my site. ultimately this single large-ass item was rendering my mail file completely impotent. after 8 calls to my host, 6 attempts to kill the individual message, and three full deletions of my mail file, i can again receive mail.
the bad news is anyone who sent me any mail between friday afternoon and sunday evening will have to resend it should they want me to see it. the worse news is because of that mail fiasco which turned my 30mb mail file into a 1.5gb frankenstein, i have 25 days to get a 1.8gb daily space average down to under 250mb or else my usual $25.00 hosting fee will more resemble a meager $1800. and, i hope it goes without saying that the everyman prizes next year may suck worse than this weekend if i don't get that squared away on the quick.
and, i have a favor to ask of someone. if i prove unable to reduce this billing amount, i need someone to tell marty for me. someone who is big and strong and can run like the wind. a lesser man may not survive the deed.
