Wednesday:
Me: Hey, we're moving our spiffed-up web site to an off-site host. We need to redirect www.ourplace.edu to the hostingplace.com server. We're cutting over on Saturday. Can we schedule that?
Tech support at my ISP: Sorry, we don't schedule stuff like that in advance. Just call back on Saturday and give us an hour's notice.
Saturday:
Me: Hi, I need www.ourplace.edu to change over so it points to hostingplace.com.
ISP: OK, that's cool. I've written it all up in a ticket with excruciating thoroughness and read it back to you. You have verified that everything is correct and we both agree that this will be just fine after I submit the ticket and somebody takes care of it.
Couple hours later: I note voice mail on my cell phone. (Which is taken apart in an effort to dry it out from being dropped in water. Please don't ask.)
"Yeah, can you call us back? We got the ticket but we're kind of confused."
Me: [calls back] Hi, you said you had questions.
ISP: Yeah, it says, you want to change www.ourplace.edu.
Me: Yeah, we're replacing it with a CNAME.
ISP: So you want www.ourplace.edu to point to a CNAME?
Me: Yeah, that's right.
ISP: OK, I see here in the ticket where it says you want ourplace.edu to point to a CNAME. Where should it point?
Me: hostingplace.com. It should be in the ticket.
ISP: Oh yeah, there it is. OK. I'll take care of it.
30 mins later:
www.ourplace.edu has been redirected to hostingplace.com.ourplace.edu.
[For those of the IT geek persuasion, no, I don't run my own DNS server on site. It's never seemed like it was worth the trouble. But now . . . bleah.]