Originally Posted by Alky (Post 17258872)

Why would it be a old backup? The host probably took an image of the drive before the cleaned it off.

Originally Posted by will76 (Post 17254626)

If you (or anyone else reading that may fall into the same trap) can learn anything from this, it is....

don't spend money as fast as you can make it. It is everyone's natural tendency to spend more as they make more. It is very damaging for several reasons.

1. Most people that start making "mad money" all of a sudden, it rarely lasts long. Easy come, easy go.. while maybe not the best expression because you were working hard, it does play out pretty much that way.

2. When people start making more money they dig themselves into a hole. They go buy that nice car but instead of paying cash for it, they put a little money down and finance the rest. SO what it has a $750 a month note, hell they making that now in 1 day. Then when the money runs dry they can't afford $750 a month so they lose the car, lose the little money they put into it, and destroy their credit and now have no vehicle ( <- worse then they started). You can substitute house for car in the same scenario. People also run up lots of credit card debt as they make more money because they think " I will pay it off next month" etc... Which never happens and then when the monthly payments get high right about the same time their income tanks.

3. People neglect their business and spend the money on bullshit. Like in your case you put no money aside for your future business expenses. You should have built up a reserve of at least 12 months for hosting, etc... to cover your business expenses before you started blowing money on buying expensive christmas presents. You need to have money for bad stretches to get you through them to the next good run. When you blow all of your money on bullshit and then you hit a bad stretch you wind up not being able to pay for hosting and you got out of business.

4. People make bad investments when money is flowing in. (this one I have been victim of). When you making 30K a week you get a lot more risky with your money, so what if I blow 30K on a new project, that is just one weeks check. Make stupid mistakes and lose money left and right on bad projects, when you start making a lot less you will have wished you were more safe with your business decisions. It is good to diversify and reinvest into your business, but people get so risky and carefree they almost always blow it. You need to make decisions like that is the last bit of money you have to your name, not that it was just 1 week's check if it doesn't work oh well I will make more.


if nothing else learn from your mistakes.

Originally Posted by Nicky (Post 17249442)

Don't your host have a backup?

Originally Posted by Emil (Post 17263562)

Never trust your host when it comes to backups. I learned it the hard way.

Originally Posted by Angry Jew Cat (Post 17249485)

It's all my own damn fault for keeping shitty backups, and getting abehind on a payment. Amerinoc switched to their new payment ticket system, I kept sending in my payments directly, which apparently means they weren't tracked in the system. I always pay by eCheck which added and extra 6-8 days for payment to clear. Used to get a lot of leeway with Phatservers and hosted with them for a long time. If I got behind a month, I just doubled up the next month and it was never problem. Now you get automatically wiped after 45 days overdue by the system with no human review. Combine my month behind, with the pyment not tracked by the system and my eCheck setting me back, I surpassed their threshhold and everything got shitcanned. Apparently there's some old backups kicking around, not sure I even care at this point, but I'll see what's left over.

I got a solid $80k/year job right now doing track inspection for CN. I only planned on working til the end of summer, but with this turn I think I might just bite the bullet and kiss the net goodbye and run with it.

I dunno. Pretty much put the nail int he coffin of my internet career though. I haven't even started totaling the total value of what I've lost.

If anyone followed what I was saying about my poor money management at the end of last year, they'd know I made a lot of money in a short period doing some mainstream stuff, and spent it all very poorly on investments which were left half finished and unusable until they were finished. Pretty sure all that is gone, along with a lot of other stuff. I have rough backups kicking around for a lot of stuff, but it will take a lot of time to put it all back together and get things back in order. Don't know if I care to do it.

Poor management on my part sunk the ship.