[sf-lug] In conclusion (aka The Sounds of Silence)

[Rick Moen]

To sum, since late last night when I caught up on back postings, 
I figured out the omnishambles that occurred to sf-lug.com/org 
around July 2nd, explained why the current public whois data looks the
way it does, speculated about the chain of failure that lead to that,
and urgently recommended Jim take _immediate_ action with NetSol if he
wants to keep owning either of those domains -- as they are, indeed,
newly _expired_.

I'm just a little surprised to have seen exactly this so far, in this
space, in response to my efforts to help:

{crickets}

Should I be surprised?  (Cue Simon & Garfunkel background music)



Right.  Clock's ticking on NetSol's probable-but-not-guaranteed grace period. 
Act if you care; don't act if you don't.  One or more of y'all might
also say 'Thank you for going to all that trouble, Rick' if so moved.


One last thing:  Certain registrars but not others permit _any_ party to
renew a domain.  When I last checked, for example, Joker.com was good in
that way.  (However, this third-party trick is less likely to work for
domains techically past expiration.  Rules tend to be stricter for
those.)

I was curious whether NetSol permitted third-party renewals.  So I did:

1.  Load https://www.networksolutions.com/ 
2.  Find 'Renew Services' on navbar.  Select that.  Takes you to 
    https://www.networksolutions.com/manage-it/bulk-renewal.jsp, 
    where you can 'enter your domain name(s) and click 'Get Started'.
    You'll then see all your domains and their associated services that
    you can renew.'
3.  Enter 'sf-lug.org [newline] sf-lug.com'.  Push the button.

Returns a dialogue:

  sf-lug.org
  We're sorry, but the domain name you entered is not available for online
  renewal. Please contact Customer Support for assistance at
  1-888-642-9675.

  sf-lug.com
  We're sorry, but the domain name you entered is not available for online
  renewal. Please contact Customer Support for assistance at
  1-888-642-9675.

Not surprising, because expired.

Someone who wants to open his/her wallet and save this situation can 
do exactly that.  The longer the delay, the less likely such a call will
succeed, but I expect it will _this_ week.

It might be that NetSol will accept payment only from Jim, but if you
think about it, it's in their interest to accept payment from any person
because, basically... money.  So, I expect that anyone can do that.
Could be wrong.  Someone who wants to _also_ help could call and ask.


If it turns out nobody cares about lifting a finger to save sf-lug.com 
or sf-lug.org, then y'all are perfectly welcome to switch to using
sf-lug.linuxmafia.com , which will continue to be valid and available.  
Yr. welcome.