Earthlink seems to be dying more and more

I've had cable internet service through Earthlink, in conjunction with Time Warner, now Spectrum, since I moved into this house in 2007. At $41.95 a month, it was cheaper than getting service directly through Time Warner/Spectrum. Before that, I had Earthlink over DSL at the old house. (This house didn't get DSL, so that wasn't an option here.)

This is the last snapshot that the Wayback Machine has, from 2016/10/04, of the cable internet plans that Earthlink offered via Time Warner, Brighthouse, and Spectrum:
https://web.archive.org/web/20161004151417/http://www.earthlink.net/access/cable_offer.faces

Somewhen in the last few years, I read that that signing up for Earthlink service through Time Warner was no longer available for new customers. I had been looking to see if my mom could get it. This is the only page now that I can find that mentions it:
https://stopthecap.com/2017/12/27/earthlink-charter-spectrum-dead-no-new-customers-allowed/

In 2017, Windstream bought Earthlink:
https://www.wsj.com/articles/windstream-earthlink-to-combine-in-673-million-all-stock-deal-1478523397
http://fortune.com/2016/11/07/windstream-holdings-earthlink/

Now in 2019, Windstream sold Earthlink to a private equity firm:
https://www.lightwaveonline.com/articles/2019/01/windstream-sells-earthlink-consumer-unit-to-trive-capital.html

I only found out about the latter because I was wondering why my website hasn't been working for the last month or two. (Based on my browser history, the last time I was able to access it was on Feb. 16 of this year. Since then it's been showing "Sorry. It looks like there isn.t a page on our website at the address you requested (or it may be temporarily unavailable)."

I'm still able to login to my Earthlink account, and apparently the email address still works (though I never used it because initially it got so much spam).

Then I found this page, last modified on April 12, 2019:
https://support.earthlink.net/articles/web-hosting/free-webspace-faq.php

which gives a number that I can call, to potentially get my website up and working again.
But then it says:

How can I make changes to my WebSpace?
You are unable to edit your WebSpace. Your website will remain as is until March 31, 2020 at which time it will be permanently removed.

What does EarthLink plan to do with the WebSpace platform?
EarthLink will be decommissioning the WebSpace platform on March 31, 2020. At that time, all websites will be removed and the information will no longer be available.


So even if I got my site restored, I wouldn't be able to make any changes to it. And it would be gone next year anyway. Meh, so much for that. You would think they'd have at least notified their customers about this before-hand. They didn't.

A few other people have complained about it (the comments by "John of Oceanside, CA" and "Stacey of Fort Lauderdale, FL"):
https://www.consumeraffairs.com/internet/earthlink.htm

I have all my website files saved off locally, so I haven't lost anything. I'll be putting them back up at a different URL.

sleepiness and non-sleepiness

On Wednesday, I was very sleepy and tired in the evening. I had come home early to mow the lawn before it got dark. After that, I trimmed some bushes and pulled some weeds before it got too dark to continue. Then I ate dinner and got back on my work laptop to finish up my 7 hours of work-work for the day. Finished around 11pm. I thought the tiredness was from the extra exertion of the yard work.

I got to bed at 1:10am, which is fairly early for me, and got 7 hours of sleep.

Thursday night, I didn't feel particularly tired. I stayed up til 2:40am and got 5.5 hours sleep.

(Our 8am Skype meetings for work are on a temporary hiatus, or I'd have gotten even less sleep.)

Last night (Friday), I was again very sleepy & tired in the evening. Of the sort where I have to fight to stay awake, and where I feel myself falling asleep for a split second and waking back up. I had already started feeling tired and slow around when I left work at 7pm, and then I still went grocery shopping. I got to bed by 1:40am, which is very early for me on the weekend. If I hadn't been wanting to get some things done, I'd have gone to bed before midnight.

Usually, even getting only 5 hours sleep the night before doesn't have such a strong effect on me. It'll make me tired in the morning, but not so much the next night. It seems odd to me to get that strong sleepy feeling twice in one week, yet on alternating days. Today, Saturday night, I was again not particularly tired, as you can see by the time of this post.

Kinetic Derby Day

The 2nd annual Kinetic Derby Day was held in West Columbia yesterday.

I heard a brief mention of it at the start of the local news last night as Qiao was flipping channels, and looked it up as I hadn't heard of such a thing before.

From above website:
Always wanted to be in the Parade?
Have a Quirky Creative side just fighting to get out?
Need a thrill to stir your inner child?
..
The day begins with the kinetic sculpture parade. Local and regional artists showcase human-powered, handmade floats that use gravity and kinetic energy to move along the parade route. The themes range from flying monsters to bizarre satire. Following the parade, soapbox cars take over the massive hill on Meeting Street to race in adult and children divisions.


I didn't find any videos posted yet of this year's event*, but found some from last year, and similar events in a few other locales. It looks so awesome, like so much fun! Much more so than other parades I've seen. (I seem to be emotional at the moment, as watching them is bringing tears to my eyes today.)

*There are no video clips of it even on the local news sites. I can never understand why the full local news shows aren't made available online after they are aired. The websites usually only have a few assorted clips. If I'd known it wouldn't be online, I'd have told Qiao to flip back to the news so I could watch whatever they were going to show. But I didn't because it was only one of several things mentioned in the "coming up during the next half hour" promo, meaning we might need to sit through 25 minutes of other stuff before getting maybe 30 seconds of what I'd been curious about.

"Kinetic Derby Day 2018 West Columbia, SC, Soapbox Derby Race, Parade, and Festival" (Watch on YouTube)

Video title: Kinetic Derby Day 2018 West Columbia, SC, Soapbox Derby Race, Parade, and Festival
Posted by: Blake M
URL: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nmOktOIi_vI

"Kensington Kinetic Sculpture Derby 2013" (Watch on YouTube)

Video title: Kensington Kinetic Sculpture Derby 2013
Posted by: Ed Yother
URL: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AzNpD_1l95s

"Kensington Kinetic Sculpture Derby 2017" (Watch on YouTube)

Video title: Kensington Kinetic Sculpture Derby 2017
Posted by: Fran Blanche
URL: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=83j8JGpe_-k


More: https://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=kinetic+parade