On pins and needles. Have you ever tried to backorder a domain? It's a jungle out there. I desperately want to snap up the domain name of a rival business of my husband's. Of course I understand that competition is fair, but these people played very dirty and made it very personal. Being the vindictive soul that I am, I would like nothing better than to grab their domain and on it put a link to a bad review of their business, a link to my husband's business, and maybe a special offer for any customers of the rivals who happen to click on.  MMEEEHAAAA, sinister laughter. Just so you don't think that I'm really a shark, my husband's business could easily sell to our new karate dojo, but in a year and a half, I have not said a word. If there happy with their supplier, then fine, I'm not going to go after somebody else's business and neither is my husband. Thank God he doesn't need to. If someone ever asks my husband what he does, or if he happens to hear that they are in a bind getting something that he could do for them, and it turns out that they want to buy from him, fine. I'd still feel guilty taking someone's customers. Part of me feels bad because I know he could save them money, but I'm not the type to try to sell people stuff.

Of course, one has to wonder why they let their domain expire anyway  The site had been inactive. It's funny, but on the day they activated their stunt, my husband and his employees went through their site's photo gallery and solicited the clients they could identify. He snapped up a huge account--the people had been looking to change suppliers anyway. This rival lady insists on ordering from the Market Day site that I run, showing up, and making my BLOOD BOIL!!  Maybe someday I will write about what they did, but it is too painful. Anyway, I could see that she had ordered from the Market Day sale, so I wore one of the new client's t-shirts that my husband had procured as a trophy for me. She did a rubber-neck double take! She also has her daughter in this cheerleader program (people in this business have been known to sign their kids up for all sorts of things in the hopes of making a sale) so the 5 yr. old walks in with glitter eye-make up and the whole shabang. Looked like a tiny hooker. Ugh!

So, there site had been parked for a long time. I looked it up and it was due to expire, fittingly, on my birthday. I backordered it. I could have sworn they renewed a few days after the expiration date; their was even an expiration date of a year later,  but then in a month, GoDaddy notified me that it's status had changed. The status changed again, to Pendingdelete, which meant in five days, it would be on the market. Luckily, antsy me did a search of  domain terms and found an amazing post. This person, the now proud owner of www.dailytemplate.com said that his backorder capture failed. In the next couple of days he was notified of status changes of the site, and then he got a message saying that the capture was successful. People snap up tons of  domains every day. Domains can be 'returned' free of charge within five days of acquisition. So, when they see that it does not have a healthy traffic pattern, they give it up. I was so sure I'd get mine. I will post the name up if I get it, it's nothing special at all. If I hadn't read that forum, I would have been beyond crushed when the capture failed. Sure enough, over the weekend, I got a change of status note. I haven't told my husband a thing, although if he knew the domain had expired, he'd certainly take a trip over there to see what's going on. When I think about how I would react if they went out of business, I think aboug DutchBoy's quote about strutting around the henhouse. My husband said that they were spending so much time trying to take the one account from him, a minor and troublesome one at that, that they weren't paying attention to the other aspects of their business. My ten-year-old son is the only person I've told and thankfully he is keeping it underwraps. I wonder if  I could give my husband the domain name as a gift...like a head on a platter. It would be kind of a coup. Our anniversary is coming up....

Other battles:

1. The dirty double crossing karate instructor: I know his ebay id. I checked it and it seems that he bought a book on pickup lines that help you "get the best women". I'm copied the listing and that baby is going up all over the 'net. I probably should print fliers and leave them by his school. Yes, spending four years and thousands of dollars for nothing, makes me a wee bit vindictive.

2. Another MAJOR HORRIFIC CRISIS: Our local Jewel foodstore has stopped carrying my ultimate favorite beverage; Fairfield's White Port. Look out for fireworks!