Friction and Harmony

Or maybe you can…

F’nH has a new look.  I’m not sure yet if I’ll keep it or not, but I do know I’m not going back to the template I had before.  As you can see, I don’t have the heart to get rid of “the girls” just yet.

The reason for the change is that I checked the author’s website to see if there was an update that allowed for threaded commenting (I love that at Pam’s site), and I discovered that the authors were New Zealanders!  Oh, and self-proclaimed Marxists, too.  Let me tell you, I knew a “Kiwi” foreign exchange student once…

Okay, so really it was the Marxist bullshit that turned me.  They had their “manifesto” posted, and although it was quite comical, I really don’t want anything more to do with them.  Here’s a sample:

We also don’t trust people with too much money. You gotta wonder how many kittens and puppies were strangled somewhere in their bloodline to become ’so damn money’. So yeah, we’re working class leftist marxist pinko scum, but we’re proud of that! At least it means we’re honest people.

Honest?  Well, I guess.  That still doesn’t make you right.  A schizophrenic inmate tell you the things he hears the voices tell him to do without bending the truth even a little.  That doesn’t change the fact that he/she is a danger to society and their own person… (whichever one of those ‘persons’ inside is weakest, anyway.)  So I sure as hell won’t advertise or do business with you – even if it’s “free”.

Anyway, to you, my three beloved readers…

Please let me know if there is anything that doesn’t seem to be working – especially if the site doesn’t load or is terribly slow.  I know some of you don’t like “dark” themes like the one I put up at the HoZ for Mrs. Who – so feel free to choose another skin down there in the control menu at the bottom left of the window.  Personally, I like the “Water” theme, and might make that the default.  Whatever theme you choose should show up again if you have cookies enabled.

So go ahead – poke around.  If you know of any WordPress widgets that you’ve found useful or pretty, please clue me in.  I usually test on my pathetic little blog before I do anything major to the HoZ, so consider you’re really helping Mrs. Who out in the long run.  Anything I glean that I find useful or cool will undoubtedly find its way to the House.  But don’t worry – I’m not about to overhaul HoZ anytime soon.  I’m just looking for tweaks and corners to tuck in.  She seems pretty happy with her blog, which makes me happy.

And yes, I expect input from all three of you. 

Holy crap!  My spam filters went through the ceiling with the previous entry.  Evidently, mentioning a Cr0$$-P0$t in the title brings about every spammer on the webz for a piece of the action.

Fucking leeches.

…$60.00 per month for “Up to 8M download speed!”

It’s been like this for weeks, now.  And it’s only getting worse.  I’ve complained until I’m blue in the face – they don’t fucking give a damn.  CenturyTel SUCKS ASS!!

I’m back from the dead…

Fantastico sucks rocks.

Thatisall.

Welcome to oblivion.

 I’ve moved, folks!  The rest of my content will hopefully follow soon. 

>>>>>>>>>> <<<<<<<<<<<<

Okay – update:  I finally ditched my crappy hosting company (NetFirms of Canada) and moved-in with my honey.  She’s been happy with her hosting for the past six or eight months – or whatever it’s been – and I’ve used-up most of my hosting time with NetFlaccid.  The kicker was getting my 30-day notice on my domain expiration for F’nH.

Preferring to gouge myself with a hot poker rather than give my poorly-endowed Canuck hosts another measley cent, I frantically applied for my transfer before work Friday.

I just did my database move and directory restoration.  Now I’ll have to go in and fix the minor stuff – widgets that didn’t carry my sidebar content and such…

But right now, I’m sipping some relatively nice Irish whiskey, so I soon won’t give a flaming poot how it turns out… 

On second thought,   I remember what happened when Grau got on a drunk-blogging bender.

Nope.  I’ll fix it tomorrow! 

I got out the leaf-blower and got rid of those errant leaves in the background on my front page. Now “Elvis” (the Oingo Boingo smoking cowboy skeleton – I’m sure someone knows why he’s called Elvis, but I can’t tell you) is occupying the vacated space, but he needs some re-tooling… if I decide to keep him at all.  He’s way too dark and “sharp” to keep as a background for text.  However, I do like the little Elvis icons better than those stupid orange dots everywhere.

Of course nothing ever works out like I intend – and I’m still trying to isolate bits and pieces of this template. I miss my old “Neuron” template, but the widget thing is hard to part with… There were other errors too, but at this point I can’t be sure if they’re WP 2.2 incompatibilities or if they’re part of my cluster-fuckwidget hosting problems.

Mrs. Who’s blog is skimming along (knock on wood) over at HostMonster, so I may be moving back in with her over there soon.

Trust me – Netfirms SUCKS! Half the time, I can’t even get to my blog, and it’s been so frustrating I just haven’t wanted to deal with it at all. My external editor won’t post without screwing something up – though it’s working fine for HoZ.

Hmmm… Tell me again, Mr. Netfirms tech, how it must be something *I’M* doing??

Bitnugget.

(Just watch – F’nH is destined for another blackout. I can feel it in my bones!)

It seems like the only thing that’s getting me to sit down and write is the ever-loving need to bitch about something. So…

I liked the new template for about a day. Now I’m tired of looking at a $70k TOYOTA at the top of my blog, and it all looks just too washed-out. I know, I know… I can go in and tweak it. Gah – I’m not that motivated. There has to be something else out there that’s closer to what I have in my mind of how I want my site to look.

I liked my old look – it was comfortable. I liked the little gizmo drop-down buttons to hide the crap I’m not interested in looking at until I need it. I wish the author was still around to fix it – no telling what happened there. I suppose the problems are minor, but I don’t like the idea of something being broken… Random-spewing XHTML errors and widget-challenged sidebars don’t cut it, I’m afraid.

Now that my database errors are resolved, I did manage to find a bunch (okay, well, a handful) of recent comments that got sucked-up in the Bad-Karma Vortex (including my own and Mrs. Who’s; I found our IP in the addy blacklist – go figure). If you had tried to comment recently and it didn’t show, it’s probably because my idiot hosting company changed SOMETHING on the SQL server to cause it to blow bits, which in-turn screwed Spam Karma AND the commenting scripts in WP.

I don’t care if it is or isn’t their fault, I’m still blaming it all on my asshat hosting company. Principle and all, you know…

I think we’re in the market for a new web host.

NetFirms.com has blown our databases more than once, causing all kinds of fun, including nearly a week’s worth of lost posts and comments a couple of months ago. Connection problems and speed issues are commonplace. And whenever I call or email them for support – their first kneejerk response is usually “it’s not our fault! Check the FAQ’s to help your own damned self!!”

Last time they dropped our server, rather than submitting an emailed trouble-ticket, I decided it would be best to call to bitch find out how it possibly could have happened and what *I* might do to correct their problem. As one might expect, I spent nearly a half-hour on hold, waiting for some sort of response, let alone a resolution. A few weeks later, I get a phone bill with over $10.00 of “International Long Distance” added to it.

Shit!

Damn Canadians… Who would have thought a call to “America Light” would be “International Long Distance.” Stupid local damn phone company, too. I pay an exorbitant “flat-rate, no long-distance, no extras” (they weren’t lying there!) monthly service fee, and I get bent-over at every turn.

SO…

For anyone out there hosting their own sites – do you have a web host that you can recommend? Oh, and the first person to say “Go Daddy” wins either a groin or head-shot… your choice.

In the interest of getting “back into the swing of things,” I figured I’d tinker under the hood a little. Well, I tried to set-up a cron to do – of all things – a regular backup of my blog. Of course mine was the guinea pig before I did the same to Mrs. Who’s blog. Good thing…

Pffffffft!!

Toasted my blog entirely. (Stupid hosting portal wizmos!) I’m recovered from my last good backup, but sans my most recent (albeit over a week-old) post. I tried to retrieve it from Zoundry, but it was buggered ‘cos Zoundry evidently got confused. POS…

Am I surprised? Not in the least. Things have a habit of breaking when I’m in a foul mood (which I am at the moment).

Who is winning today? Not effing me, that’s for sure! (Grrrr.)

I apologize for any of you having difficulty reaching my site, not being able to comment or load pages, or experience unusually SLOW page loads.

My web-hosting company has been having difficulties for what seems like weeks now. They have been un-helpful in my requests for support. According to the tech who responded, the issue was “isolated” and “temporary” and “only affected a few customers.” Though I explained that it had been happening for weeks, they treated it as if it was a one-time thing. When the SQL server crashed several weeks ago that caused me to lose databases for BOTH F’nH and HoZ, there was no explanation – no apology. Nothing.

I’m an IT engineer for nearly 20 years, and my business is consulting and systems integration. Needless to say, my own hosting company has dropped-off my list of recommendations to my clients. If things continue as they have for the past weeks, I’ll be forced to forfeit the remainder of my year’s upgraded hosting fee and move.

Needless to say, I won’t be happy about losing 9 months of hosting fees – so I’ll get my money’s worth somehow.

I’ll keep you posted – if you can reach me that is.

If you have been having problems reaching my site… PLEASE take a moment to let me know in the comments so I can forward them. Feel free to… be colorful in describing your frustration.

Thanks…