The guest poster is Skooter. Here go.
Ten seconds or less of observation at any one of my fraternity's exec meetings, and you'll realize that competence, attention span, and forethought are spread thin throughout. More importantly, you'll realize that only one person (myself) actually has the capacity to charitably give a flying fuck. (I do, most of the time)
So, a whole bunch of years ago (like a decade or some Greek shit word) a bunch of previous members of my fraternity purchased a domain name and have operated and maintained a website up until about a year ago. Exactly one yearish ago, someone....dropped the fucking ball. And it was heavy, and damaged the floor, and the vinyl needed to be replaced, and it was this whole thing.
Anyway, the person with the information to login to our GoDaddy site decided that none of that information was worth writing down, or sharing with anyone, or carving into stone tablets, or even committing to memory, or ANY OTHER FORM OF TANGIBLE OR INTANGIBLE MEDIA. And after the year passed with no one logging into our GoDaddy, the credit card expired and we were no longer able to be charged for our domain rental. Which we found out when our email and Google drives and everything else that used the domain as its server LEFT US HANGING. No email. No Google drive. No fun.
After staring at the sun until they could see a little dark circle in their retinas, and trying to follow it to treasure for an hour and a half, one of the exec members mentioned the issue to me. So, pulling out my handy dandy bag of fucks, I pulled yet another out to give that no one else wanted to. And called GoDaddy.
Now, GoDaddy was more than accomodating, and completely understood the situation. "These things happen, we understand that." said the nice man on the other end of the line. "You've been with us so long, this isn't a normal behavior for you as a client, so we're even going to waive the re-activation fees." Alright, that's cool. Won't argue with special treatment. I gave him an updated credit card, repurchased the domain, and pat myself on the back for totally saving the day and being like a super rad dude.
Or so I thought. But this is my life, and nothing can ever work ever.
I quickly realize our email and other server functions aren't working still, and at that moment, I log back into GoDaddy to be all "What's going on, eh?". I nearly rocket-thrust shit myself through the ceiling of the room and into the upper floor when I realized that the salesman had sold me a .com, instead of the .org that we had been using. So everything was still broken like it was Y2fuckingK.
I call GoDaddy back and, being certain I said ".org" requested they change the subscription after only one day. The nice man on the other end, being just as understanding, agrees. Then, the no longer nice man corrected himself and left me to hang with "Oh. OOOHHH. Uh oh....." to which, I responded "Huh." as he explained the situation. Because our account had made activity, and had NOT renewed the .org site, GoDaddy concluded that we must not want that domain back, and sold it to the next person on the waiting list for it. "We can get it back for you." offered the man of varying niceties, depending on the minute. "....Yea, do that." I replied, with just the slightest bit of vinegar. "There's no guarantee," OK. "And we take a small percent of the purchase price." OK. "And the starting rate is $90 to attempt." Oh, kindly step back, because you don't know me like that. I can yell and scream for WAY less than $90.
So I run a whois.com search, and find out who bought our domain. We'll call him CAL. CAL owns over 42,000 websites, I came to find out, as I stalked him like a high school freshman girl looking at the totes adorbs boy that sits next to her in English 101 and is the starting quarterback and sooooooooooo cute.
Fuck. He owns 42,000 sites, Which means either A) He uses them for work and needs them or B) He buys and sells them for profit. Neither of those are in my favor to get this domain back relatively quickly or cheaply. Oh, and the little tiny bird that is point C) HE LIVES IN ROMANIA. AND BARELY SPEAKS ENGLISH.
I decided calling and essentially saying "I'm an American frat boy, I need my website back" was probably a bad way to go about this. I then decided having someone call, in Romanian, and explain that the domain belonged to a non-profit for the past decade, and we can't afford to setup the system again on a new server (which is all technically true) he might be a little more accommodating.
BEGIN WIKI "ROMANIA"
Ok, so very few people speak Romanian, no one learns it for fun, and no other language is close. I found a single teacher at my university, conveniently known as incredibly bitchy, who was fluent.
Fuck.
So I ran downstairs to the kid in my fraternity that moved from Poland, and we had the following exchange:
Me: "Do you speak Romanian?"
Him: "I speak Polish."
Me: "Do you speak Romanian?"
Him: "I speak Polish."
Me: "CAN YOU FUCKING FAKE ROMANIAN?"
Him: "No, it doesn't work like that. It's a romantic language, and the closest thing is Hungarian. And no, I can't fake Hungarian."
Double fuck.
My pledge son, from this point on SON, was also in the room watching my brain try to figure out the fastest way to end its own existence. He laughed appropriately at my futile attempts to yell someone into fluency of a language I couldn't even write.
I sat down on his couch, and contemplated if the fall from the roof (head first of course) would be enough to kill me the first time, or if I'd need to climb up twice.
*Enter pledges for an independent reason*
Pledge 1: "Where's-"
SON: "SHUT THE FUCK UP, DO YOU SPEAK ROMANIAN?"
Pledge 2: "No."
Pledge 1: "I was born there. I'm fluent."
Me: "ARE YOU FUCKING WITH ME, ARE YOU BEING SERIOUS. I SWEAR TO GOD, IF YOU DON'T ACTUALLY SPEAK THE LANGUAGE I'M GOING TO CASTRATE YOU WITH SOMETHING VERY VERY VERY DULL AND RUSTY."
Pledge 1: "Nah, I'm actually fluent."
In the heat of it all, I realized I was holding the kids collar and possibly raising my voice a bit, and maybe I'm too close to his face. I back up, calm myself, and explain the situation.
Pledge 1: "So I have to call Romania, and tell this guy stuff, and we're buying our website back?"
Me: "Exactly. I'll buy you pizza. Romanian speakers are hard to come by apparently."
Pledge 1: "Fuck it, let's do it."
After setting up Google voice, this kid sits down and turns into the Romanian equivalent of Barry Manilow, smooth talking CAL like he was working his way into the bedroom.
After two days to think about it, Pledge 1 was able to haggle CAL down from $500 to $90, because Romanian Barry Manilow don't pay more than the love is worth.
The kid ROCKED it. We got our website and server functions back, I bought pizza for the team of international businessmen (because that's totally what it was, and I'm putting it on me resume), and the day was saved.
Out-of-Context Quotes From Just Errywhere
"Dude, I'm so into this gun thing."
"I have learned the hard way that the black rock holds down the poopies."
Fuck.
So I ran downstairs to the kid in my fraternity that moved from Poland, and we had the following exchange:
Me: "Do you speak Romanian?"
Him: "I speak Polish."
Me: "Do you speak Romanian?"
Him: "I speak Polish."
Me: "CAN YOU FUCKING FAKE ROMANIAN?"
Him: "No, it doesn't work like that. It's a romantic language, and the closest thing is Hungarian. And no, I can't fake Hungarian."
Double fuck.
My pledge son, from this point on SON, was also in the room watching my brain try to figure out the fastest way to end its own existence. He laughed appropriately at my futile attempts to yell someone into fluency of a language I couldn't even write.
I sat down on his couch, and contemplated if the fall from the roof (head first of course) would be enough to kill me the first time, or if I'd need to climb up twice.
*Enter pledges for an independent reason*
Pledge 1: "Where's-"
SON: "SHUT THE FUCK UP, DO YOU SPEAK ROMANIAN?"
Pledge 2: "No."
Pledge 1: "I was born there. I'm fluent."
Me: "ARE YOU FUCKING WITH ME, ARE YOU BEING SERIOUS. I SWEAR TO GOD, IF YOU DON'T ACTUALLY SPEAK THE LANGUAGE I'M GOING TO CASTRATE YOU WITH SOMETHING VERY VERY VERY DULL AND RUSTY."
Pledge 1: "Nah, I'm actually fluent."
In the heat of it all, I realized I was holding the kids collar and possibly raising my voice a bit, and maybe I'm too close to his face. I back up, calm myself, and explain the situation.
Pledge 1: "So I have to call Romania, and tell this guy stuff, and we're buying our website back?"
Me: "Exactly. I'll buy you pizza. Romanian speakers are hard to come by apparently."
Pledge 1: "Fuck it, let's do it."
After setting up Google voice, this kid sits down and turns into the Romanian equivalent of Barry Manilow, smooth talking CAL like he was working his way into the bedroom.
After two days to think about it, Pledge 1 was able to haggle CAL down from $500 to $90, because Romanian Barry Manilow don't pay more than the love is worth.
The kid ROCKED it. We got our website and server functions back, I bought pizza for the team of international businessmen (because that's totally what it was, and I'm putting it on me resume), and the day was saved.
Out-of-Context Quotes From Just Errywhere
"Dude, I'm so into this gun thing."
"I have learned the hard way that the black rock holds down the poopies."
