Random thoughts, organized and categorized for your consumption.
Site News
Items of interest about this site.
Parting Company with Bluehost.com
Feb 28th
After a few years of “like it / hate it” service with my web host, named Bluehost.com, I have decided to move on. It wasn’t just one incident or issue that pushed me to leave, but a steady and seamingly growing lack of interest from the company to find and fix the issues that arose.
I had a few sites and about 5 gigabytes of data sitting on this host, so moving isn’t trivial. That’s what makes the decision to leave even more instructive to others: if I have to put up with the serious pane of moving my site, email More >
New Host and Quick Test
Feb 27th
This is the first post on the new web host. Hopefully all is well and this will post up just fine. Time will tell if this host is any better than the last one, as the last one was positively awful near the end…. but more on that issue later.
For now the key is to find out if any of this works out and so far it looks like it does, or mostly does.
Just trying it out
Feb 17th
I’m going to try this new theme for a bit and see how it works for me. Maybe more photo’s will slip into the design if things are easier (and more fluid) with this layout. We’ll see.
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Better Web Site Days
Jun 20th
After some initial problems it seems that the web site is all fixed up and working again. This is a nice change of pace from the previous few days where everything just wouldn’t seem to work properly at all.
Strangely, many of the problems were due to “unsupported directives” in an Apache htaccess file. I’ve never seen anything like it, but it doesn’t matter now. Things are working again and I’m glad to have it done.
New Server Move Not-So-Complete
Jun 19th
After having spent a few days on the new service, Bluehost.com, I can say that I’m having some problems that don’t allow me to say that all is well.
First off, all of my scripts that do site redirection are broken with an Server Error 500 page. The reason, according to the logs, is that the headers (hidden stuff at the front of all good web pages) aren’t being sent. But I’ve checked things out and they are being sent. Wonderful, another set of problems to track down.
On top of that the host has been down twice in 2 weeks, not More >
Transition Complete?
Jun 11th
Could I be so fortunate as to have this post be the defining moment of the domain transfer from one host to another? We shall see. If so, welcome to the new site!.
Wordpress 2.0 and site changes
Dec 31st
I’ve updated the blog software to Wordpress 2.0 and things seem to be moving along fine. Over the course of the next few days I hope to be using more of the new features it offers.
This may mean some broken or strange looking pages. Bear with me while I figure it all out and get things back to normal, or at least a general state of working-ness.
When upgrades don't go smoothly
Aug 21st
I saw a post earlier this week proclaiming a new version of Wordpress (my current blogging software) was out. Having missed the previous two updates, I downloaded it, checked it over, read the directions and installed it. After putting a post in, everything seemed to work. I got a little text message that looked odd, but all seemed fine. Peachy.
On Saturday I got back around to looking at what caused this text error. To my horror it had gone from mere annoyance to full blown site wide chaos. Text error messages sprung out of nearly every page. When I poked around More >
Newsletter Finally Available
May 1st
I’ve finally completed my novella and posted it online. Go take a look at the latest creation, almost 15 months in the making: MS Insights Newsletter for 2004
Go on, read it. You know you want to.
Spam Nuker
Mar 28th
Oh how I hate comment spam. I have tried everything and it just keeps coming. Now I’ve found a site with the best way to kill it for your WordPress 1.5.x install: CJD Spam Nuke. You install it, activate it, go to the comments moderation page, then nuke every single last lame posting. It happened so fast I had to check it twice to make sure it worked.
If you have comment spam, go get this plugin and kill it dead. I did.