See the "Gabey's Photos" link on the left-hand side of the page? The one that links to my album site on clubphoto.com? Well I just went to check clubphoto.com, and their freaking site is GONE! Kaput, vanished, disintegrated, its metabolic processes are of interest only to historians. Done.

If it weren't approaching 2:30 AM, I'd have recited a colorful string of four-lettered, loud-volume vocabulary. But as I didn't want to scare the cats, wake Mark, and for that matter wake the entire neighborhood, I decided to keep my volume to myself and spare the rest of the ZIP code from my urge to rant.

Another service, WinkFlash, has bought ClubPhoto's old servers and is going to try to restore members' albums. However, said members have to log into WinkFlash with their old ClubPhoto ID to facilitate this process.

Of COURSE I couldn't freaking log in to WinkFlash with my Gabey8 ClubPhoto ID. It wouldn't accept it. At which point, you know that urge to rant I'd been suppressing? I came this-close to serenading the rest of the ZIP code with my unbridled opinion of ClubPhoto's demise.

I emailed WinkFlash's customer service and described the problems I had logging in. We'll see before long if they can get the ball rolling and restore my albums.

I have a valid reason to be angry. First of all, I was a PAID member of ClubPhoto. It was hardly a fortune, but my membership should've had another year to go. Second of all, the oldest album or two I had on there came from BEFORE the hard-disk crash of a few years ago. So while I at least have the majority of the original photos from those albums, I don't have the originals of the pre-disk-crash pictures.

Heck, even for the albums which I DO have the original photos of, what I DON'T have are the CAPTIONS that I put on those photos. There's no freaking way I'm going to be able to recreate some of those, if those albums don't get put back online. Losing those would TRULY rot.

I'm googling ClubPhoto now to find out what in the flaming heck happened. It seems that on the day they were closed down, their entire staff was notified that morning that they were laid off, and to clean out their desks and leave within the hour. Nice people skills, guys! Geesh -- at least when I got downsized, I had a few WEEKS to wrap up what I was doing, clean out my cubicle, and go.

is about all I can say right now.