comments broken

Thanks to reader MrGrumpyDrawers, I have discovered that the security code images used for posting comments have just up and vanished. Rather embarrassing, really, as I've been promoting this approach to fighting comment spam.

I think it's a server-side problem, and have asked for help from the good folks at Hosting Matters. In the meantime, I won't be getting any spambot comments.

But then again, none from humans either. Apologies to those who have unsuccessfully tried to post.

UPDATE. I submitted my ticket request Saturday night around 6:00 pm. By 8:30, support at Hosting Matters had both identified the problem and moved the site to a new server. Seems to be a faster one, to boot.

I chose Hosting Matters after reading recommendations from Glenn Reynolds and numerous others. Reynolds is of course a rock star amongst bloggers. Which I am not: but the HM people accord even $10/month accounts the same level of service. Thanks in particular to Annette, who also helped track down a POPmail problem that in the end turned out to be my own oversight.

Oh, and comments now work.

Moderator test.

Anthony - I love the aesthetics of your site. Unsurpassed.

Little personal story for what it is worth. Our younger son is serving in Afghanistan. He had two weeks' furlough which ended on Nov. 3 and he wanted to spend it in the UK, especially to see Wales. We went over to meet him there, arriving a few days before and staying a few days after. (His exact dates were fluid.) On election night the results didn't start coming in until about 11:00 PM GMT so we went to bed early with the outcome up in the air since we had to get up at 3:00 AM so I could drive him to Heathrow to catch his flight to Frankfurt and thence eastward. Consider also, that the coverage was via the BBC which appeared to be taking its feed directly from the DNC press room. I woke up at midnight with a fright and started thinking what a total military disaster would ensue if Kerry became president: imminent chaos in our own military at the prospect of a CinC despised and distrusted by a huge percentage of both officers and men; our allies in Iraq would bolt; Kerry would engineer a Viet Nam style bug-out; civil war In Iraq; Zarqawi and his cut-throats would next be swarming into Afghanistan in huge numbers; bug-out from Afghanistan; an abandoned Musharraf faced with an Islamist horde demanding nuclear weapons. Those hours from midnight to 3:00 were perhaps the longest three hours of my life.
As we drove to Heathrow, it gradually became apparent that Kerry would be defeated. My son returned to his unit with his mission intact and several days later we returned to what a friend termed "The Reprieved States of America".
BTW - we did see Wales, and though LOTR was filmed in New Zealand, I'm convinced that Wales was the original Middle Earth.

Thank you for the kind words, and the anecdote.

Considering that I cleared my schedule on Election Day to monitor results, I'm very, very glad that the Beeb wasn't my primary news source. (Reading about the exit polls online was bad enough.) Of course, you perhaps had the greater sense of schadenfreude upon hearing the British smugness turn to dismay.

Yes, Wales is beautiful: I've had the opportunity to visit there once, if only briefly. Tolkien may or may not have had that landscape in mind for elements of his Middle-earth. But he did model one of his Elvish languages after Welsh, so presumably he was familiar with that corner of Britain.

I pray that God keeps your son safe during his deployment.