Recently in Website Updates of Sorts Category
- Removed threaded comments. Only rarely works, and, frankly, I'll never need them. Nobody comments anyway (sniff, sniff, pity, pity).
- My new host rocks. I send in support tickets and within minutes the problem is fixed. I want to marry my host.
Changed hosts once again. Turns out Movable Type was banned on the last host's servers. Who knew? Anyway, I was within my first 30 days of service, so I should be getting my money back.
Nice thing is, my new host is the kind that I usually just really can't afford. But they had a hosting special, sort of like a cell phone plan, where the charge is cheaper per month the longer your contract is for. So, the upshot is, I've got a TON of disk space on this bad boy and a TON of data transfer. What this means? More Jake Monstrosity. Maybe this weekend.
Maybe.
- Changed hosts, which is why things will be messed up until I can get everything up and running again.
- Cancelled Chinqwamania and am allowing the domain to expire. Feel free to buy up the domain name and satirize my pathetickitude.
Got tired of finding that inadequately had gone down, contacting my host support, then not hearing from them until a day later when the site was back up. Response: "Your site seems fine. There is no server down." Yeah, thanks buddy. So I'm changing hosts. In a couple days, everything will disappear, before appearing once again. Like a phoenix rising from its ashes.
I'm in the early stages of dismantling Chinqwamania, because I'm a big grown-up now and don't want that kind of garbage to ruin my career. I'm putting my domain registration through the proverbial paper shredder by way of letting it expire in February. If it makes the image any more appealing, think of me as a politician, the time as midnight, and the light source as flashlight. Nothing will hinder me on the rocky climb up that ladder. My reputation is stellar.
Fairly soon, I'll be taking the videos offline. I'll save them for nostalgia's sake, so that years from now I can dig up my old external CD-ROM drive (by then the media will be obsolete, you see), pop in the scratched polycarbonate plastic disc, and weep in front of the images because I am young, so young. By this time, I will be a disembodied head floating around in a hovercraft.
Jake Monstrosity suffers a different fate. I have already moved him over to this site. You can find him here. He is also available via a link on the random page. See nav bar to the left. I'm attempting to come up with new, fresh ideas for Jake, considering it's all getting a little stale.... Any input would be appreciated and ignored. No, kidding. Appreciated.
Yesterday I forgot to include two useless pieces of information that it was just as well I omitted:
1) I have finally gotten threaded comments to work on this thing. Amazingly, all it took was for me to use my noggin and actually LOOK at the code, rather than cut and paste whatever was given to me and place blind faith in developers. Forgot about that little thing called "brain" (no, wait, I mean "Krang"). So, if this should ever be flooded with comments by those amazed by the wit and stupidity of my entries, you, yes you, can reply to any comment you choose, and the comment will appear nested. Because I adore livejournal, is why.
2) I have named my car. At first I was going to call it "Subarobot" (because it's a Subaru and it's metallic gray), a name I still kind of love and may use on occasion, but I finally decided on "Mister Sulu." Because it's a Japanese car, and when I put the pedal to the metal I can say, in my best Sulu impersonation, "Warp 8, cap'n." You see, I'm not much of a Trekkie, so I can. It is impossible for this name to at all reflect on my coolness. I am not a geek. I am a human being.
Update: All I want for Christmas.
I just discovered, in attempting to clean up the chinqwamania site, that I still had a few remnants of an old blog there from last March. God, I was depressed. I'm about to delete all that forever, but before I do that, I'd like to include part of an entry that reminded me of something forgotten: my "second script," set in space.
No aliens, no A.I. Gone Bad, no Jason, no Leprechaun, no zombies even -- although someday I will write a zombie movie, when I can come up with something that has not been done before. (Why do you think I meditate? This is something that has to be attained. Like Nirvana. A zombie movie.)
Space makes for a pretty boring setting unless something goes wrong. Well, this is a stupid argument. Any place makes for a pretty boring setting unless something goes wrong. But a space freighter (Freighter of what, who knows? I just like Alien, is all.), running smoothly, same crew working steadily -- that is boring. Dare I say, maddening. Has anyone other than Ren & Stimpy dealt with the subject of space madness resulting from nothing but BOREDOM? Did I mention that this would be a comedy?
OK, the characters, as they are now, are two:
1) A grease monkey of some sort, whose name rhymes with "truck" or at least has a syllable very close to "truck"... like DRUKKER. Or BROCK. Or MACK. He's as steady as a rock that's steady. He's also always dirty, and probably just a tad hot.
2) A woman, whose name I had but now I can't remember because I never write things down. She's socially inept, because she's in space. And has been for a long time.
What a hack I am. Solaris. 2001. That guy in Matrix named Dozer. It's good for me to occasionally look back and say, "God. What an unoriginal dork I was 9 months ago."
I was getting some pretty crazy spam comments. Regrettably, I deleted them all. It's not that I want spam comments on my bloggo, but they were just so... interesting. Mostly for video poker sites, but the comments all appeared to be famous/semi-famous philosophical and political quotes. I give the following example:
Religion is but a desperate attempt to find an escape from the truly dreadful situation in which we find ourselves. Here we are in this wholly fantastic universe with scarcely a clue as to whether our existence has any real significance. No wonder then that many people feel the need for some belief that gives them a sense of security, and no wonder that they become very angry with people like me who say that this is illusory.
This is a quote from Fred Hoyle. (No, I did not know this already. I googled it, like any sane person.) But somebody/thing called "Slots" left it in my comments. Without attributing it to Fred, the bastard.
The upshot of all this is that I installed the MT-Blacklist plug-in, and it's already blocked 20 such comments. I love MT-Blacklist now, but perhaps I'm not as enlightened as I would have been. I'll no longer have some video casino robot telling me belief is illusory. I am. I was.
Those one or two of my friends who may have come here at the exact moment it was being restructured (in this case, moment = a range of about 6 hours) may have wondered what the hell I was doing to the bloggo. Well, I was doing this to it. Very plain, I know, but I never wanted more than a utilitarian blog.
I would have had it all fixed much quicker if it hadn't been for two things: 1) I fucked up midway through installing MovableType (it's what I get for not really knowing what I'm doing) and had to start again from scratch, and 2) I was at work. But my reference shift, which would have been extremely slow what with NOBODY asking reference questions, just flew by as I FTPed my way to glory. It was bloody, but I got through it.
Today is Friday. This morning, I announced this fact and then put my head on the table. My mother asked me if Fridays are bad for me. I replied that Friday -- or at least this particular Friday -- feels like the end of a long, harrowing journey from hell to the home I knew as a child, where I can finally die in peace lying in the mud. That's not actually what I said, but it was something like that. Then my mother asked me if I had ever actually read Cold Mountain. I said no.
And it was the truth.
I could do with some sleep.
