I am a failure.

I have succeeded in many areas in the last few days:

• delicious pizza (so good that when Saturday's supply was exhausted I made more)
• new blog template (see above post)
• configuring email (it sounds easy, but it wasn't)
• getting started on getting in shape (weights, crunches, etc.)
  
  and
  
  
• reading stuff that isn't on the internet (books! Remember those?)

But I am still a failure. However, I suspect that it might not be entirely my fault.

Here is the situation: I have a web host. I have SmartFTP (the free version). I uploaded some files to my server, including an image folder and the pages you can see if you go to noirbettie.com. I opened SmartFTP on Saturday and none of my files were there. They are obviously still on the server, but nowhere to be found on the FTP program. I figured I had a couple of choices: download them from the server, which I don't know how to do; ignore them and continue adding new files; or upload them again, overwriting my previous work.

I think I chose the wrong option (the last one), because now nothing is working. Except the website itself, except that it's showing the old versions of the pages (I modified two of them and overwrote them on FTP after re-uploading them).

I found a SmartFTP tutorial online, but it only covered getting started. So, before I got started on this folly of mine, I checked to make sure ALL of the settings were correct. They appeared to be, so I went ahead with the upload. But as I said, the files don't seem to be going anywhere. As far as I can tell, I am not in fact overwriting the information that is already on my server, but I don't know why. I'm looking through the forums at SmartFTP, but so far only one person has posted with a similar problem and no one has replied. I'm going to try the FutureQuest forums next.

I just want to cry because this is so not my area of expertise. Put me on Iron Chef and I'd probably be fine, but this? Hopelessly lost.

NEW INFORMATION: I have received a telephone call inviting me to go on Iron Chef.

No, hang on...that wasn't it. But I may have figured out the problem with my FTP program, which may not have actually been the problem at all. It seems that I may have fucked up my admin permissions with my web host. I submitted a fix-it request to my host and have already received a response, though it appears to be automated (and I hope it is, since I think about three people work at this company).

Please cross your fingers that this will take care of the problem.