What are the chances!?!??!

I don't like to let anyone down, and if I give my word - I'm going to accomplish whatever it is that I've given my word to.

I've been working on creating a website for one of my girlfriends. During the process, we had a miscommunication which slowed the development down by a week. Where the misunderstanding was on my part (I misread an email!), I felt awful - and said not to worry - I'd complete the site in it's entirety based upon the information that I had up to that point - within 36 hours.

Part of this 36 hour time frame, my son was at the middle stage of his being really sick. Clearly it was an unexpected situation - but I wasn't about to not keep my word. So, on the Friday night that I said I'd complete the site - after both kids were in bed - I pulled a marathon and completed it. I finished at about 3 a.m., published it - and sent my girlfriend a long email explaining what I had done to the site, and to please review it and let me know what changes she might have, yada yada yada.

I felt really good, because despite the fact my son had been so sick - and though I was very tired - I didn't let my girlfriend down; and in some ways, it was a well needed distraction from thinking about how sick the Ty Guy was. I got to spend some good time with my father (who stayed up with me while I worked) which I don't get to do at all since my parents live out of state. (Oh, did I forget to mention that my parents were down for my daughter's birthday party? Well - they were, although we didn't get to spend too much time focusing on things other than how sick my son was, so the time working on the computer was a good bonding time - as well as a break from worrying...)

So, my girlfriend calls me on Sunday - and asks how my son is doing. I hadn't gone into details at all in my email, just mentioned that he had been sick. So, at this point - I'd just spent all of the day and night previous at Children's Hospital, didn't have any better answers on my son's health, was really tired - and just filled her in. Then I switched the conversation because I was dying to know how she liked her site...and being the good friend she is, she said "Oh, it's fine, I just have a couple of questions, but it can wait until the TyGuy's feeling better and you have a little more time....." She called middle of the week, to check on him and ask an unrelated question about something - and so of course, I asked again. And, in good friend fashion - she said "I have minor changes, really it can wait until you get situated... let's talk on Monday!".

So here it is Monday. I pulled up the site at work to show a coworker this great DHTML menu I used for her nav bar, and the site was not there. What was there, was the placeholder I had put there while I was working on the site. Funny thing is......I deleted that placeholder from the server prior to publishing the site. Which meant only one thing: a server must've crashed, and the company backed the site up from a date prior to the crash. Which would mean one thing: She never saw the site! She probably read my email, thought I was a complete idiot (Being a good girlfriend, she wouldn't think that necessarily, but definitely think I was overwhelmed and only thought I published the site!) and didn't know how to tell me!

I've never been so mortified. Well, at least not this mortified in quite some time anyway! I called the hosting company and guess what. I published the site at about 3:30 a.m. 7/29; the server crashed at about 4:00 p.m. on 7/28 - they backed the server up to the morning of 7/28. And the kicker of it all - I got no email notification about it because they have a typo in my email that's on file! What's even better? I couldn't tell that the site wasn't working because when I called it up on my system - it was stored in my cache. AAAAAAAAAAAAGGGGGGGGGGHHHHHHHH.

She's been sending out emails and advertising her site on her card - and people haven't been seeing the site!!!!!
I'm absolutely mortified. And while it's not my fault per se, I still feel awful.