Gone [Postal]

[Lots of bills]
This is the kind of things that probably makes postal workers, uh... go postal.

All right, it was a stupid stunt.

So i was looking for a new domain to replace abyssal.com. i started searching for common words that were available, but it was really tedious.

Then i somehow came across zipper.com. Looks like somebody else had the same problem, so he wrote some nifty scripts that do a whois against the entire dictionary (plus maybe the jargon file? i mean really, "clustergeeking"?). Well, i started going through the list of all English words still available as .com domain names, but even though it had been generated on a Saturday, by Sunday night, i found that several of the names had already been registered by somebody else!

i noticed that more than a few of these names had been registered by the same couple of people.

But the interesting thing was... they didn't even maintain their own nameservers! And in fact, doing a nslookup using the nameservers they _say_ are doing DNS for them finds that they aren't!

My theory is that they're just sending in the registration form for the domain, using servers they _don't_ really have access to, and then, when the bill comes after 30 days, if they couldn't milk $5000 out of some sucker, they just don't pay the $70, and try and re-register it again, for free. And they're not the only ones doing this.

Man, back in the old days, at least domain name brokers invested $70 per domain speculating on what domain names might become valuable later.

So, i said, hey, why don't i get in on this burgeoning business opportunity? >:-}

Well, not really. Personally, i find this hoarding of domain names reprehensible, but at the same time, i had no idea what i really wanted for my new domain name, and i didn't want to get swooped by the aforementioned sharks, so uh... i registered 129 domain names.

i know. Really bad. But hey, at least i _really did_ set up DNS for these domains on my own server.

And since i was going to do that, why not set up a web page for them?

But i figured i'd be a good guy. If somebody wanted one of my domains, i'd just tell them to wait 30 days or so for it to be free again.

But then somebody asked me about one of the domains. It was just an individual. i told her to just wait until i didn't pay the bill and the domain becomes available again. Or... i could register it (to insure that the aforementioned sharks didn't get it in the downtime), and just resell it to her.

To my surprise, she was willing to pay, and even a small bit of overhead (for actually dealing with paying for the bill and then

Cool. And now somebody else, possibly a business, is interested in another domain.

Yeah, i'm being a hypocrite, but hey, i'm not charging $2000! Heck, after all the trouble of actually setting up DNS for all those domains (remember kids, 'foreach' and 'sed' are your friends) and the website, (and then having to transfer the domain name to the owner) i think what i'm charging is quite reasonable.

My friend Louis thinks i should have registered potcallingkettleblack.com.

Aaaah, so anyways, i'll be out of the domain name business in about 30 days or so. Feel free to e-mail me and tell me i'm a slimeball. :-}

And sorry, Mr. Postman (or woman). (The picture at the top of this page is the 129 bills that had to be stuffed into my mailbox today. i could barely pull them out!)

i guess i should also say sorry, Mr. Tree.


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