You may or may not have noticed my web site has been mostly down today. All I am going to say about it for now is that I may or may not be looking for a new web host.

Oh yes … color me aggravated. Aggravated enough to finally sit down and write an actual email to my web host complaining about the situation.

I better hit post now, because I have the feeling my site won’t be responsive again shortly, and I have things to do today other than sit here trying (and failing) to post to my web site and dealing with tech support.

Just a reminder, while my web site seems to be working at this very moment, that I have a Livejournal where I post when my web site is not working (and cross-post all my blog posts as well) … and my web site has not been working much of today. I have no reason to expect that it will continue working for the rest of the day, because the server it is on has been hosed just about all morning. My confidence in my web host is currently not very high.

So, you may want to bookmark my Livejournal, just in case my web site takes a nose-dive again. I’m hoping it won’t, but it’s not been a good day for Just Orb.

And why do these horrible problems always happen right after I brag about my host to a bunch of people? I don’t take back the good words yet, but this goes on much longer, and I may have to do so.

I just noticed I never changed the stupid time stamp on my web site to compensate for the stupid Daylight Saving Time change. So … for the last week, everything you have been reading and I have been saying has been time-shifted one hour too early. Duh. There has got to be a way to automate Wordpress to do this for me. It happens every time we make a time change, and it always makes me feel like a total idiot.

Well, it’s not just my web site that gets thrown off my the completely ignorant time changes. I just set the clock in the truck today too, and I still feel like my entire life is running one hour off. I hate, hate, hate time changes!

The thought crossed my mind, about two minutes ago, that I had some domain names coming up for renewal soon. I searched my email for the reminders. The last one I remembered seeing was the 30 day one, and as it turns out, I missed the latest one. Eek!

I hadn’t really put any thought at all into whether or not I was going to keep the orbitweaver.com domain name. I have had it for a few years now, and aside from the odd temporary project, I haven’t really used it at all. It was a gift from someone though, and I didn’t really want to let it go … even though I don’t use it. Silly waste of money I suppose.

All the same, when I realized today was the last day to renew it, I made a panic purchase and bought it for another year. Yes, one more year to agonize over whether or not to keep it or to actually come up with something to use it for. Maybe I need to pass it on to someone else?

And next month I will be renewing orbizart.com, because that one I do have to keep, seeing as it is sort of my business name … you know, if I ever do have a business.

Two of my domains are coming up for renewal again. Oh, the annual anguish about whether or not to keep them! I think this year I will let Orbitweaver go. It was a gift, so I do hate to let it go, but I haven’t used it for much. Seems silly to keep paying for it. I have to keep Orbizart, no matter what. It was also a gift, which isn’t the reason I have to keep it. No, someday it’s going to be used for something. I swear, it will! It actually might be used for something as early as January. I have a project idea, and rather than try to come up with a new domain name (all the ones I have thought of so far are taken), might as well use it. The project is an artsy-fartsy one, so maybe that’s what I have been waiting to use it for all along!

And what is this project idea? You’ll just have to wait and see! I promise, it will be fun. Well, it’ll be fun for me, but I hope other people find it fun too.

In other non-news, the cats have been out of their minds all night and are even more feisty and frisky this morning. I’m going to blame it on the cold weather and the full moon. I can find no other reason for all the running around and being noisy.

I wish the craft store opened earlier. I’d love to go get my shopping done right now, while I still feel like going. I think I’ll blow off the craft store until next week and just go to the grocery store as soon as the sun comes up. It’s not like this house isn’t full to overflowing with craft and art supplies. I’ll just have to make do with what I have.

After 24 hours of being drugged on cold medicine, I am feeling better, but I am far from feeling great. It’s too cold to be spending too much time fussing around out in the world while having a cold. I have a ton of stuff to get done around the house anyway. I want the house somewhat neat and clean for the weekend, since I plan to do some crafty stuff and won’t want to do any housework.

And so ends another completely useless post…

I should be sleeping, but I have been sitting at the computer, mostly poking around under the hood of my web site. I moved some things around in the sidebar, and that took an hour. Not that any of it looks any different (other than the addition of the Utterli widget) but the code is completely rewritten. What a headache.

Then I added a plugin (two actually) that add a short list of potentially similar posts at the end of every post on the single post pages. I’m surprised by how accurate it is. It misses the mark sometimes, but it’s cool enough to keep around a while. There are settings I can tweak, so maybe I can get rid of the occasional not-at-all similar posts that show up.

I also tested out some teleprompter software. I think I found one I like. Why a teleprompter? I hate looking down at notes while making video posts, and without notes, I sound like an idiot. I should never, ever be allowed to babble in front of a video camera without notes or a written script. Well, not all the time anyway. I know some of you like the random babbling. I would like to create a recurring podcast though that appeals to a wider audience than the subgroup of people who really do care what I had for dinner last night and the latest neighborhood gossip. I’ve decided I will likely not become rich in this lifetime^†, so I might as well shoot for famous!

That’s what I have been doing tonight instead of sleeping. I feel like I accomplished something. Always a good feeling. Now let’s see if I can find something to talk about tomorrow other than dinner and gossip … and then force myself to make a video post.

1. † Monetarily rich. My life is actually very, very rich in other ways. [↩]

I think I’m going to get serious about this blogging thing. Not that I am not serious about it, but I have so many applications and ways to make audio and video posts and whatnot that I just don’t use. It’s caused entirely by the fear of my own recorded voice. I cannot stand how I sound in recordings. I sound like a silly little girl and not the full-grown woman I am! I have tried to change the way I sound, but there’s no use. It’s never going to happen.

So, going forward, I am going to force myself to make one Utterli post a day, no matter what, and one Stickam video post a week, no matter what. Even if I look like hell, sound like hell, and don’t have a damn thing to say. Sort of like I do every day in text, except you’ll get to see and hear me! Won’t that be fun.

Maybe I can overcome my fear of microphones and video recorders. Silly fears anyway. I have no problem running my mouth off in front of real people, seems silly not to be able to do it in front of machinery, right?

I have been turned onto an interesting webcam broadcasting site called Stickam, and thanks to it’s ease of use and total awesomeness, OrbCam may be returning even better than before. At long last, there will be moving video and audio at the same time. Live!

Of course, that means I’ll have to think of things to say and look human while sitting at the computer. Eek!

Anyway, I have put a little player in the sidebar of my blog, for now. Eventually, it will get its own page and a larger player.

Currently there’s one silly video I recorded earlier this morning to test out the settings. For those of you not reading this at my blog, I’ll put it behind the cut so you don’t feel left out.

Also, the one behind the cut it larger than the postage stamp in the sidebar, if anyone really wants to see what I look like before the sun comes up.
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My web site is seemingly hosed in some way. The server. It’s having some kind of issue (again).

I’m too tired to even pop off an email to support. Maybe it’ll work itself out overnight.

I’m going to bed. I just wiped out Germany, and boy, was that hard work!

I am issuing a challenge to myself for this week. Starting right after this post and ending next Monday morning, I am only going to allow myself to post images to my web site. If I have something to say, I better be able to say it visually. So either there will be a lot of interesting imagery or there will be no posts at all. Who knows? I will also be keeping a paper journal. I even bought a new 80 page spiral just for the occasion. I bet you it’s at least half full by next Monday. And finally, I will not be visiting my usual daily time-sinks, such as Metafilter and Google News (or any news sites).

These actions are going to serve two purposes: my addiction to posting the most boring and mundane details of my boring and mundane life may be broken, and I might be forced to do some thoughtful photography and graphic design. Additionally, I’ll be forced to use a pen and paper to get something off my chest, and maybe my crappy, crappy handwriting will improve.

I’d like to just unplug the network cable and disconnect from the online world entirely for a week, but it’s too tightly entwined with my personal life in a number of ways. It is no longer possible for me to just not be online for a week or more. That is what I get for convincing all my friends and family members they needed computers and the internet, and well, some business is just easier to deal with online as well.

Anyway, there’s my challenge to myself. Ought to be interesting … or very, very boring. Guess we’ll have to wait and see what comes of it! Maybe eventually I will get to take an actual unplug-from-the-network type vacation, or perhaps even a vacate-the-house type vacation, but right now, this is the best I can do: change a daily activity in a big way and challenge myself to deal with that daily activity in a new way.

Maybe I’ll regain some energy or even get some artwork done. Or maybe I’ll just lay around the house with my extra free time whining to the cats about my life. At any rate, I won’t be whining here, and I suspect — as this is shaping up to be the second sucky week in a row — it’d just be a week of non-stop whining anyway. I’ll spare us all the drama of a week like that.

So until next Monday morning, my lips — or rather my typing fingers — are sealed. The challenge is now on!

If there’s something you really need to say to me, the email address is on the sidebar of my web site.

I finally submitted a support ticket with my web host asking what the hell is up with the server I am on. The intermittent brief downtimes have been getting more and more frequent, to the point where I can almost guarantee that every time I find a few minutes to sit down at the computer to check for new comments, my site will not be available … or I’ll start a short post, and by the time I hit the post button, the server is not responding and my post vanishes into the ether (which is why I now write them in a text editor if it’s really important).

It takes a lot to get me grumpy about my web site hosting. As some of you know, I was on a terrible host previous to this one, and I put up with it for far too long. My current host isn’t a terrible host, but the server I am on seems to be having some major issues, and I’m tired of being on the receiving end of them.

I have no clue what the problem is, but I want to be on a better server, or this server needs to be fixed, or I’m going to start slowly looking for somewhere else to host my web site. I don’t expect 100% uptime. I don’t even expect 98% uptime. I do expect that the five or six times during the day when I stop by my own web site, it will be there. That hasn’t been the case lately, and yes, it’s starting to chap my hide.

So I guess we’ll see what happens now. I do hate to complain, but it’s a trend that has been getting worse and not better. I have seen this happen before, and I am not waiting until the last minute to bail and find a new host this time.

The Response:

There’s been a few users on the server that have caused problems. When any customer encounters a problem, we do our best to work with them in order to resolve the problem, long term. This troubleshooting sometimes takes an extended period of time. We apologize for the inconvenience(s) and hope to have everything sorted out soon.

OK, then. I guess we wait and see.

Just a reminder that I am posting some stuff behind a Friends Only filter over at Livejournal. Not that what I posted there today is something everyone on the planet would want to read (bitching about family), but I have been starting to post some stuff over there off and on, and some of it is actually not just ranting and venting. I expect there to be more posts that get written over there and friends-locked, even when it isn’t me letting off steam.

If anyone reading my web site at Just Orb (or, for that matter happening across my Livejournal) is so inclined and wishes to have access to the more personal and sometimes more ranty stuff, there are a few things they have to do. They have to go to Livejournal and click the green Create Journal button. You don’t have to use your journal and make posts, but you do need an account there to read Friends Only posts. I know. It’s a hassle and one more thing to sign into. Sorry, but that’s just the way I am doing things now. Once you have created an account, you then have to go to my profile page and click the little button with a person and a plus sign on it to add me as a friend. I get an email informing me of this, I friend you back, and then you get to read my locked posts on my Livejournal.

Like I said, it’s a hassle, and to be honest, you could never read anything I write over there and not really miss out on much. The only reason I mention this again is that I do have some actual real-life friends who read my web site (and don’t get to visit it often), and since they are a little more involved with my life, they might want to go to the bother. Also, I only mentioned I was going to do this once briefly, and there may be some people who really, really want to read it all, but didn’t catch the post I mentioned things would be changing. I thought I should mention it again, just in case. I will likely not mention it again.

Anyway, I spent all my spare babbling time for the morning and afternoon ranting over there, and now I have to go bust my butt to get the things done I really want and need to get done today. Maybe I’ll have something non-ranty and non-family-related to say later, but don’t hold your breath. I’m pretty peeved today. The day, it did not start well, and mixed in with the family drama there were some other stressful things I had to deal with. Mondays … they do suck.

I’m not even going to rant. What would be the point, since people are completely and totally incapable of understanding that a photo I capture with my very own camera belongs to me and not to them, and that to take it and use it — for any purpose, but most especially to make money — is wrong.

I don’t even think it’s that people are completely and totally incapable of comprehending this simple fact. I think it’s that they just don’t give a damn. Don’t care. Fuck me, right? I’m just the person who took the photos they found so awesome they had to use them, claim them as their own, and make money off of them. Who the hell am I to complain?

It also happens with the words too. I find things I have written scraped right off my site with no link back, no attribution to me or my web site, and nothing but disgusting money-making ads surrounding it. It’s as if because I don’t plaster crappy ads all over my web site, some people think it’s perfectly OK for them to profit off the things I have to say. Fuck me, right? I’m just the person spewing my brain-babble all over a web site every damn day without getting paid for it. Who am I to complain?

Well, this behavior doesn’t inspire me to keep creating, keep sharing, or keep spewing my brains all over a web site every damn day. It inspires me to yank down my entire web site, move over to Livejournal, make my journal Friends Only, and flip off anyone who wants permission to read it unless I have an establish relationship with them. I won’t, of course, because it is never wise to do anything in a fit of anger, but I will say the thought is seriously crossing my mind tonight. I am very close to reaching my limits of tolerance for the form of humanity that exists on the internet who believes anything they find thereon is fair game for their own personal usage and profit.

With that said …

Happy Anniversary to Just Orb! Seven years as a domain, twelve years as a regularly updated internet existence. Mostly it’s been a happy and fulfilling experience. It’s a shame I had to be reminded on anniversary night of the ongoing issue of copyright infringement on the internet. I’m going to go have a cocktail and talk myself out of the crappy mood I am now enjoying, before I start hating all people and do something rash with my web site. It’s time to enjoy that last glass of absinthe I have been saving for a special occasion. Probably won’t calm me down, but it will make me too lazy to do anything other than sit on the couch and stew quietly.

Some people really, really suck.

I have frittered approximately 27% of my life away doing what I do online, and right this minute, I am trying my best to remind myself it’s been worth it. That isn’t actually an easy argument to make. Sometimes, it is far more grief than it is worth.

Such silence from me on a Monday? How unusual! I tend to have something to gripe about on Mondays.

Well, I stayed up all night grubbing around in the coding for my web site. I fixed some problems and made some changes. I added some navigation features to make it easier to get around my web site, cleared out some cruft hiding in dark corners, and made a few stylistic and design changes (all very minor). The biggest change is the uploading of the new edited banner image and putting up some new profile photos. A new tagline also came to me at some pre-dawn hour. If you don’t normally read my site at my site, you might want to go see what I added to my banner. I think it’s a cute addition. I still need to do something about the links page, but I don’t know what to do with it yet, so it’s not a crisis.

End result? I was utterly fatigued when the sun came up, but I was also utterly thrilled with how my web site was working and looking. I am declaring the night a success and not a waste of time.

Since I was awake all night refreshing my failing memory on the intricacies of PHP, I slept most of the day and ran around like a chicken with its head cut off the rest of the day trying to catch up with life. I haven’t succeeded in catching up yet. Life moves along quite quickly whether or not someone decided to stay up all night fiddling with PHP. Now all I want to do is get dinner done and watch some TV with Lin. That Dateline show about tower climbers is on tonight, and we are really looking forward to see it!