I Can Go to Sleep Now

Ahhh… looks like everything’s all sorted out. Like I said, there’ll be some more tweak and changes and refinement to the site once I decide what else and where else I’m putting things. Consider this the alpha version of the site design. I would’ve waited until I was completely done, but I couldn’t take those round corners any longer. Now we’re back to sharp and pointy and I can relax for a day or two.

Speaking of relaxing, tomorrow morning is my PET Scan to see how the cisplatin/gemzar combo did. Then later in the afternoon I get my weekly bloodwork to see if I can have my wisdom tooth extracted on Thursday.

Yay me.

Slowly Going Insane

So I’ve been working a bit on the site design today, as well as getting Barb’s site up and running where she can get back to posting things too. I gave up on coding everything with the new site’s design and made do with hacking and slashing through the default template’s code until I got what I wanted to see. You’ll notice that the site still looks the same. That’s because something wonky’s happening with my webhost right now and it’s driving me insane. I have the new design ready (well, the bones of it – it still needs a LOT of refinement), but I can’t get it uploaded right now for multiple reasons. Plus, I’m looking to do some domain name switching around so there’s that little headache I’ve given myself too. Whee.

Percolating Dendrites

Well, today was another blah sort of day. The Power of Neulasta is wearing off, so I don’t feel as sore and achy (yesterday was back to old-school Neulasta – feeling like I’d been beaten by a sack of potatoes). Today I primarily felt sleepy tired, which I’m guessing is probably due to lack of caffeine. You see, I take my caffeine in Coca-Cola form and something about the chemo working on my tastebuds is not compatible with Coca-Cola. Sometimes if I get my Coke from a 2 liter bottle the taste thing isn’t quite so bad, so I think it might be more of a carbonation issue than a specific Coke issue. Either way, my ass is draggin’.

Aside from the whole tired thing, parts of my brain seem to be waking up again. I’ve been coming up with some good coding/design ideas for the new site, though the tiredness makes me feel so blah that I don’t have the energy or focus to try to implement any of them. At least I’m coming up with ideas of some kind. That’s a welcome change from the stupor. Now if I can just get over the “staring at the blank screen” syndrome, I’ll be fine.

One thing I did today was change how my RSS feeds are picked up. I’ve noticed that a couple of people seem to be reading the site that way, so if you are, you might want to change the RSS URL. If you don’t understand what I just said, don’t worry – it’s a geek thing. If you’re one of my RSS’ers, the new RSS feed link is through feedburner. You can still use the old feed link for now, but once the site starts changing, the old link’s not going to work any longer. Probably. You know, while I’m typing this, I think I might go ahead and put a feed button over there on the right. Look at me being proactive.

Everything Seems to be Working

Except for that stupid ordered list dot on the “Playing:” info. The main thing though, it looks like all of my email is back to normal. At least I sent test messages to and from all of my various accounts and they all seemed to send and arrive like they should’ve. So, if you know one of my email addresses, you can send me email. If you don’t, leave me a comment – I’ll be getting the email links back on the site in a bit. And as cool as the layout of the Hemmingway theme was, I switched back to Kubrick for the readability. Hopefully I’ll be able to get some design time in this weekend so I can ditch the theme. In the meantime, you gets what you gets. Whaddaya want from me? I got cancer.

Speaking of which, I stopped in today to get my weekly bloodwork and the checkout from the nurse. Turns out my platelets are pretty low. The low is around 100 and mine were more like 70. What does this mean? In the words of the nurse: “Don’t get cut.” I guess that means no bar fights this week. Here’s hoping I don’t wake up with another nosebleed. Check that. Here’s hoping that I don’t get another nosebleed, but that if I do, I wake up first. Eeeewwww…

Here Goes Everything

Well, after agonizing over the new design yesterday and Friday, I’ve decided to say the heck with it and just use a default WordPress theme for now. I still have a lot of setting up and coding type stuff to do to get things like I want them, so I’m going to do all of that first, then worry about the design later. Form before function, you know. Best advice at them moment would be to not send me any email just yet – it’ll take a couple of days for the DNS servers to start resolving to all the right locations and I wouldn’t want to miss your email between servers. I’ll post here when I’m relatively certain that email’s back to normal.

If the site’s not purple any longer, then congratulations! You’re looking at my new home! And if you’re looking at my home, that means… you can leave comments! Welcome to the Brave New World…

Since it’ll be your first time to leave a comment, it’ll be held for review to make sure you’re a real person. So don’t be surprised when it doesn’t show up immediately. Once you’ve commented (and been approved) a couple of times, it’ll go right to commenting in the future.

Good Things Brewing

Changes are afoot here in Moondoggieville! I’m set up with a new webhost, which I’m hoping to be switched over to by the end of the weekend. I’m going to be switching CMS systems from MovableType to WordPress, so I’ll be making sure I’m working in the new place before making the switch. What will this mean to you?

  • A new look to the site, since I can’t just start out my new time with the same old website.
  • Possible short site outage as the net’s DNS servers repopulate with my new location.
  • Longer than usual lagtimes in email replies for a bit as I code the new site and make the transition from one mail server to another.
  • COMMENTS! You’re going to be able to comment! Probably!
  • The revealing of my latest URLs, one of which you’ve discovered, if you’re the clicking kind.

So, bear with me and we’ll get through the weekend together.

Now I have to shut down and move my computer to a new desk as well. Everything’s changing! Couldn’t you just wet yourself?

Almost Back to Normal

Well, it’s been a rough week or so, but things are almost back to normal here in Moondoggieville. Great thanks goes out to my good friend and former boss Rob for tracking down my December and January posts in the Yahoo cache – you ROCK! It still took a little bit of finagling and a lot of waiting on Nexpoint support, but we’re finally all back up and going. I don’t recall if I made any posts in February, so I’m waiting to hear back from my parents to see if they have any printouts for me.
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Web Site Weirdness

You might have noticed some weirdness going on here at Moondoggie Productions. My web host had a bad weekend, which means I had a really bad weekend. The server my site was on went down “for unscheduled maintenance” for over two days, then when it did come back online, my site was only current up through December 5th of last year. My web host (Nexpoint, who you should stay far away from in my current opinion) claims that the 12/5 backup was the most recent “usuable” backup of the site that they could find and apologized for the inconvenience. According to their own company’s site, one of their “Protective Features” is a daily backup. So apparently, sixty of these daily backups were unusable. Either that, or their web site lies and the backups are more along the lines of bimonthly or worse. I have asked the support people which of these options is the case and they have yet to get back to me with an answer.

In addition, whatever they did and however they did it managed to corrupt by blog’s database so that it no longer recognizes my username/password combination. Hence, the nonstandard looking post here. This means that not only do I have to re-enter all of my entries in the ensuing time, I’ll probably have to re-enter all of the old ones into a new database.

Did I mention that I’m in chemotherapy this week?

So, if you know of any good, honest web hosts who don’t charge through the nose, feel free to click the contact link and send me an email, because I will certainly be looking to go elsewhere.
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Oh yeah, two more things…

So now that I’m back on the PC and not under the pressure to be a Creative Mac Person, I’m ready to start working on the site again. Who knows – I might even get the comments working. I was just never comfortable editing code on a Mac. I need my UltraEdit32 to be truly happy and productive.

All of my computer stuff is now on the second floor. Barb and I are back to sharing an office. Hopefully now that I don’t have The Re-Switch hangong over my head and I don’t have to walk up to the third floor, this will mean I’ll be posting more often.

Of course, that’s no guarantee. So here’s what I’ll do – if you’re getting tired of checking the site every couple of minutes to see if I posted something, click that “Contact Me” link on the left over there. Let me know you want to be on the update list and I’ll start sending out an email when I post something. No spamming, no selling, no giving your email address to all of my perverted little friends. Just a simple email to let you know there’s something new here. Or you can just keep checking every few minutes like you currently do. Right? RIGHT?