Last week I received an email from Haloscan, my comment provider.
"The hardware and software are physically failing," it read. "We have no choice but to discontinue the service."
The phrasing really bothers me, like Grampa Haloscan just made the jump to hospice care. "We're sorry," his doctors tell us in low voices, "there's nothing else we can do. He's physically failing, we have no choice but to discontinue his use."
While in the background Grampa Haloscan plucks weakly at the sheets and thinks loving thoughts about cream of celery soup.
It's possible I'm making this harder than it needs to be.
Bottom line is that Haloscan is done. The email provided a link whereby I could "upgrade" my service to another host to preserve seven years of comment archives and continue the service, but apparently my bullshit handhacked old Blogger code from 2003 didn't make the cut because I wasn't allowed an audience with this touted "upgrade" page.
And that was kind of the last straw. I've been trying to upgrade this stupid website for six months, but everyone I've attempted to hire to redesign and/or move it has ignored me. Which is telling. Mia emailed me earlier today to tell me about the Haloscan thing in case I hadn't heard, and she offered to help me upgrade to the new and improved 2007 version of Blogger. You know, on the off chance I felt like launching myself into a brand new echelon of outdated source code. I wrote her back like, "meh, I've been thinking about maybe moving to wordpress and I don't know how to move my archives and it looks really hard and I don't really understand wordpress so what do you think?"
Turns out she thought I should maybe just take the ELEVEN SECONDS it would require to update to the latest version of Blogger and stop making shit harder. And since I'd pretty much spent the majority of my day avoiding the floor guy by eating Triscuits in bed, I went ahead and threw eleven seconds up against updating my blog. It boiled down to pushing three buttons. I felt like Blogger was rolling its eyes at me the whole time.
So here. I had to get rid of that MSPaint banner because I'm not seven. And I lost my "About" page that I didn't really care about at all and never updated, and no doubt some other Blogspot Plus bonus features from 2004 vanished as well but hey, I've still got the Blogger hoodie they sent me when they opted to make Blogspot Pro a free service six years ago so at the end of the day I'm still a big winner.
Okay, I've got to shake the bedsheets out now, it's like a shredded wheat bomb exploded in here.
Wednesday, February 03, 2010
Tuesday, February 02, 2010
Here, catch.
I just like ten minutes ago got back from Oxnard, California where I was helping Little Chel get moved into her and her husband's new apartment; he's in the military and she's been working hard to ensure he has a nice home to come back to after his most recent deployment. Chel and her mom really did all the heavy lifting; I drove out there yesterday morning with a Tahoe full of carefully labeled plastic totes and I drove back today with a bag of brand new, pride-filled NAVY tee-shirts and some "onion blossom" flavored Pringles.
(A word about said Pringles: they were $1.41 on base so I threw them in the shopping cart on the basis of scientific discovery. We couldn't reach a taste consensus, but if you took a big wad of horseradish and rolled it in orange table salt? There. Eat that.
I just looked at the Pringles website and they don't even list "onion blossom" as a flavor option anymore. I am either in possession of a very valuable can of rare Pringles or a very salty can of slow acting poison.)
The News Upon Returning Home: Tomorrow the floor guy starts lining out the travertine floor, the door guy comes to replace the wrong French doors with the right French doors, and the electrician comes to finish up the light trim and switches.
The floor is going to take three days-- three full days of no walking on it, meaning we'll have no access to the family room for those three days. The family room is only accessible via the kitchen death zone, and frankly we're all a little concerned about Randy tiptoeing across a still wet and slowly shifting floor on Day Two in a desperate attempt to reach His Chair. All of Randy's "best stuff" is in the family room, and since we can't move his entire impromptu kitchen table desk into the bedroom, Randy has calmed himself by deducing that we'll simply crawl in and out of the family room window for the next three days.
"It'll be fine," he assured me tonight, catching my sweaty backpack when I flung it at him. "We'll just take the screen off one side of the window."
"What about the dog?" I asked, flinging my shoes into the closet. I'd just been behind the wheel for eight and a half hours; "fling" was seriously my only available mode of handoff.
"I'll boost him."
I was just about to deal with my dirty clothes but I stopped mid-fling.
"You'll boost him," I said. "You'll boost The Jake. Through the window."
"Boost!" He made what I can only assume to be a gesture representative of a man shoving a ninety pound dog through a window.
I pulled my socks off and put them in the closet, fling style. There was an inch of drywall dust on the dresser. The bedroom door still needed to be painted. Randy's Tahoe now smelled like tacos and feet.
"Sure," I conceded, "boost. Boost him." Problem solved. "You have to do it, though, I can't lift him to boost him." I looked at The Jake, then, wiggling his fat ass around the closet. I bet I could fling him, I thought.
"Oh, I''ll do it! I'll do the boosting!" He almost sang it, like a huge weight had just been lifted from his shoulders-- and put squarely and furrily in his hands. He looked so happy, I didn't have the heart to tell him about his footy taco truck.
"Yes. Awesome, do it. Boost the dog," I relented. I moved into my optimum flinging stance. "Okay, now back up a little. Tell me what you think about these chips."
(A word about said Pringles: they were $1.41 on base so I threw them in the shopping cart on the basis of scientific discovery. We couldn't reach a taste consensus, but if you took a big wad of horseradish and rolled it in orange table salt? There. Eat that.
I just looked at the Pringles website and they don't even list "onion blossom" as a flavor option anymore. I am either in possession of a very valuable can of rare Pringles or a very salty can of slow acting poison.)
The News Upon Returning Home: Tomorrow the floor guy starts lining out the travertine floor, the door guy comes to replace the wrong French doors with the right French doors, and the electrician comes to finish up the light trim and switches.
The floor is going to take three days-- three full days of no walking on it, meaning we'll have no access to the family room for those three days. The family room is only accessible via the kitchen death zone, and frankly we're all a little concerned about Randy tiptoeing across a still wet and slowly shifting floor on Day Two in a desperate attempt to reach His Chair. All of Randy's "best stuff" is in the family room, and since we can't move his entire impromptu kitchen table desk into the bedroom, Randy has calmed himself by deducing that we'll simply crawl in and out of the family room window for the next three days.
"It'll be fine," he assured me tonight, catching my sweaty backpack when I flung it at him. "We'll just take the screen off one side of the window."
"What about the dog?" I asked, flinging my shoes into the closet. I'd just been behind the wheel for eight and a half hours; "fling" was seriously my only available mode of handoff.
"I'll boost him."
I was just about to deal with my dirty clothes but I stopped mid-fling.
"You'll boost him," I said. "You'll boost The Jake. Through the window."
"Boost!" He made what I can only assume to be a gesture representative of a man shoving a ninety pound dog through a window.
I pulled my socks off and put them in the closet, fling style. There was an inch of drywall dust on the dresser. The bedroom door still needed to be painted. Randy's Tahoe now smelled like tacos and feet.
"Sure," I conceded, "boost. Boost him." Problem solved. "You have to do it, though, I can't lift him to boost him." I looked at The Jake, then, wiggling his fat ass around the closet. I bet I could fling him, I thought.
"Oh, I''ll do it! I'll do the boosting!" He almost sang it, like a huge weight had just been lifted from his shoulders-- and put squarely and furrily in his hands. He looked so happy, I didn't have the heart to tell him about his footy taco truck.
"Yes. Awesome, do it. Boost the dog," I relented. I moved into my optimum flinging stance. "Okay, now back up a little. Tell me what you think about these chips."
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