I registered my domain a few years back before I really understood all the ramifications (not that I really do now) with what was then the cheapest fly by night place I could find. All the info concerning the transaction on my end was on a hard drive that got wiped out so I can't even remember the name.

I just did a Whosis search for my domain in preparation to tranferring it renewing it, but came up with the message:

To help prevent malicious domain hijacking and domain
transfer errors, the registrar has protected the registrant
of this domain name registrant by locking it. Any attempted
transfers will be denied at the registry until the registrant
requests otherwise. The registrant for the name may unlock
the name at any time at the current registrar in order for
a transfer initiation to succeed.

This is hard to do since I have no record of who the registrar was! BTW, I never requested that they do so.

Seems like I am in a bind. Obvious criticisms about how I conduct my business aside, anyone have any ideas what I can do about it, other than let the clock tick and hope they send me a renewal notice in time, that is, if they are still around to send one?

Go to internic.net and use the whois there to see where the domain is registered. Then you can ask the registrar to remove the lock - or whatever it is you want them to do.

-t

Seems that your registered your domain with one of Enom's resellers. Maybe registerfly.com because they have been in this business for a few years.