Online internet community, CasaJP.com, burns down due to cable modem provider negligence

By Bird, STAFF WRITER

San Diego, Sunday, March 19--In a baffling combination of corporate myopia and gross negligence, Cox @Home (a partnership of Excite's @Home broadbrand service and Cox Cable) summarily obliterated a global online community, two-years in the making, with members stretching from London to Buenos Aires--all because the site's webmaster, JP The Bird, decided to become a homeowner.

In an unusual contradiction to the very decentralized nature of the Internet, Cox @Home's policy of resetting user names, webspaces and IP addresses when a user physically changes addresses, baffled CasaJP webmaster J.P., known simply as "Bird" on the community, when he woke up Saturday morning to update the site, and found that there was nothing there.

"It's like the site never existed," said a stunned J.P., the man responsible for originally setting CasaJP in motion.

www.casajp.com started out as a pet project by JP to showcase his and others' irreverent and sometimes nonsensical stories and illustrations, as well as to keep family, friends and strangers alike abreast of the non-events in the lives JP and his community of misfits and malcontents, geographically dispersed across the globe.

The site evolved to include travel journals, which consisted of correspondents who, while travelling, would send in updates and photos of their travels, in the hopes of inspiring (or discouraging) others to visit the same places. Locales included Laos, Venezuela, Italy, London, Prague, Buenos Aires, the Bahamas, Mexico City, Monterrey (Mexico), Amsterdam, Costa Rica, Upper Volta, The Dominican Republic and Switzerland.

The site also featured original content written by a staff of writers from Los Angeles to New York, ranging from short stories to Music Reviews to Celebrity Sightings to Humor. Additionally, the Peanut Gallery, also commonly referred to as "the 'nut," a virtual community bulletin board, managed to keep community members from around the globe in contact with each other on a daily, and sometimes hourly basis. It all tied together almost weekly with a summary of recent goings on in the community, penned by J.P.

"All those hours of me sitting at the computer like some no-life power-loser... all for nothing," he said, choking back tears. An equally-distraught Dubs added "that's f---g great, just when he was starting to spend more time with me, those Cox have to go and screw things up for me."

J.P. and "the dubs," his wife of six months and girlfriend of seven years, had recently purchased a home together in Central San Diego, and had just moved from their apartment in Ocean Beach. It was then that JP realized that the last 2 years of his life (and his community's) had been swiped due to an inane policy and a grave error on the part of Cox @Home.

According to Cox @Home customer support, the policy requires that when a customer moves to a new address, their account be terminated at the prior location and then a new account be opened up at the new location. In doing so, any files, whether email, usernames or webspace, are immediately and irreversibly deleted. The policy also requires that the user be notified of this before the fact.

Unfortunately, due to negligence and shortsightedness on Cox @Home's part, J.P. was never notified.

"I spoke with Cox Customer Support at least four times last week, to get my service setup at the new place. Not once did they mention that they would summarily erase all my work, the hard way" asserted a frustrated J.P.

In a misguided effort to rectify the situation, Cox @Home offered JP first, half a month, then a full month, of Internet service for free, which amounts to just under fifty dollars. This, to JP, was tantamount to "a kick in the pills," and refused the offer.

"This shows a complete cluelessness with regards to how the Internet works. People don't just go on the Internet these days. They have communities, places where people with like interest go, families and whatnot... it's not just an email address and an ability to download porn. We're talking true interactivity here. Two-way communication, for the love of sweet Vishnu!"

Chuck Coddles (also known as CocoPuffs), a frequent visitor and contributor to CasaJP, as well as its spokesperson, said in a interview late Sunday night, "this is a tremendous setback to all of us who have put our sweat and blood into this community. It will be difficult to recreate what we had... but we will do it. It will take some time, but we will build it back bigger, better and stronger." CocoPuffs, also the community relations director of CasaJP, plans on sending out a weekly newsletter to CasaJP regulars to update them on the progress in rebuilding the "casa" and the ultimate grand re-opening. He also plans to coordinate getting previous contributors as well as new contributors to write content for the grand re-opening, estimated to be mid-May.

Bill "Flatch" O'Flannerhardy, commented, "Dude. You just can't go around deleting people's hard work like that."

JP claims that he will boycott Cox @Home until they are able to undelete the cherished files or at least provide him with daily backrubs and foot massages for a year. "I'm switching to DSL which not only is it faster and is not shared by your neighbors," he said referring to the fact that, unlike digital subscriber line subscribers (DSL), cable modem subscribers in any given neighborhood share the same bandwidth, resulting in slowdowns during peak neighborhood usage, he added "but they don't go around deleting your files every time you move."

Send any comments or complaints to Cox @Home support line at support@home.net

To reach JP, email him at eljefe@casajp.com

To be added to the mailing list and to be notified of the re-launch date, email to oleskoo@yahoo.com