Caution .htaccess idiot at work

[selena]

I am officially frustrated to tears.

This is my scenario:

I need to be able to allow hotlinking of thumbs for a handful of TGP's. My thoughts were that I could make a directory inside my domain...rather like...

http://www.mydomain.com/shitIwanthotlinked/test.jpg

Inside the folder shitIwanthotlinked I would put the thumbs and a .htacess file. From everything I have read everywhere, I thought I could put

RewriteEngine Off

in the .htaccess file and life would be peachy. They could hotlink, I could use my partner accounts, and the whole world would fill with joy.

But I was oh-so-wrong.

I get my 404 error when I try it. I've also used some of those online testers, and they say my hotlink protection is working just fine and dandy. ~sighs~

Now, I have also read that I can add domains to my main? htaccess and then they would be able to hotlink. I was trying to avoid doing that, as every time I *look* at the htaccess in my root I seem to mess it up.

I am going to try my hosting company again tonight. I really, really like my hosts. This time I wasn't able to make their tech guy understand what I wanted to do. Or I wasn't understanding him, which is more likely.

In the iterim I thought I would ask here. I really need the most stress free way of making this happen, as I'm highly allergic to anything having to do with my server outside of uploading files.