Category Archives: Website

Somehow, running the marathon is not as daunting as updating this blog. Just sayin’… But I’m the type of person that likes to spite those that are skeptical of me. If someone tells me I can’t do something, I secretly want to do that very thing and spite them passive aggressively. Yeah, I’m that type of chick.

I always like a challenge, so when I read earlier today that WordPress is challenging bloggers to write for every single day of 2011, I wanted to do that. I felt very bitter towards the little voice in me that says, “Fuck, I can’t reliably post once a month.”

And today earlier at work, I made a vow to try to post every single day. I am going to give myself some allowances. I am going to go for 30-31 posts in a month for 12 months straight. This means that although I just found out about this on the 4th, I can still catch up with smaller frequent posts. I’m not sure whether that’s the direction I want this blog to go, but I’m willing to experiment. Just excuse the fact that this all happened on the 4th and now I’m home typing in the very early hours of the 5th. Woops. Just lost another day.

A part of me thought that perhaps I should make a resolution just to update one of my blogs a day. Maybe that’s more realistic.

Today was my re-entry into the productive workforce. I just got back from Portland early yesterday morning and came into the work for the first time in the New Year. So, in my mind yesterday was really the first, the first day of the new year in the real world. So, I will post a post for every real day I have. :P

I’ve been making an effort to come home and cook after work. It helps that Ryan isn’t constantly in the city, anymore. He’s on summer vacation. I have to say that being diligent and recording my dinner is allowing me to aspire to some sort of variety.

Read about it below:

I downloaded the new software after playing with my coworker’s new iphone. It isn’t the same as getting a new and shiny one, but it is close enough. For the most part, it looks pretty nifty. They allow for more apps, voice recorder, etc… However, I am getting really annoyed at how the WordPress app is not allowing me to upload pictures to my server.

REALLY ANNOYING! It’s been my application of choice, being the lazy blogger that I am.

After reading an entry about customizing twitter layouts at Viget Labs, I thought she made a good point about why people want to personalize their page.

I wanted it to tell people where else they could find me. I’m not a marketer trying to get 1,000 followers so I can spam them with crap and get more site traffic… I just want the small group I do have to be able to follow me elsewhere…

Whether you just add a tiled background or delve deeper and get super creative with it, customizing your Twitter background makes you look more legit. So as more and more spammers show up on Twitter, it makes sense to spend a few minutes distinguishing yourself from the crowd.

Which is a very good point. Twitter has tons of spammers now, so I thought “why not?”

Like I mentioned yesterday, my 12″ powerbook doesn’t allow for much room on the screen. This gets in the way of any customization the article described. Look at how this looks:

AND this is after maximizing the browser. The article’s author’s twitter page also appears broken on my screen. I do realize that other people have larger screens. Still, it doesn’t look very good to me. I’ll reserve judgment until I see it at work.

Anyway, I have way too many twitter accounts. I haven’t figured out exactly what I want it all to do. I have the same issue with domain names – I buy too many than I know what to do with. I think I have the bag lady hoarding instincts.

In other news, my boss twitters and I recently added him. I’ve been reluctant, because his twitter account is more related to our job than mine. Oh well. It’s all good. He’s the marketing guru at our job and is really getting into the social networking phenomena.

My boss was flexing his marketing muscles with another co-worker and they were both talking about popping up in google searches. I try to stay on the d/l on the interwebs. I mention this and they thought I was being overly paranoid. I specifically made it so that this page wouldn’t come up when my name was googled. If you know me in real life, you probably know about this site. However, I don’t want just anyone to be able to stalk me around here. There are some things I am wary of, not because I have anything really big to hide, but because there are a lot of little things on the periphery when you have been blogging for around 10 years.

In addition, this guy HogWild is “following” me and I finally went over to his twitter account to see who he was. He has a comic strip that is pretty hilarious.

Last week, I tried to upload wordpress 2.6.5 to 2.7. In the beginning it went fine. I made a new post and went to bed. I made a post about Kiva.Org. My friend also mentioned she saw my post when I went over to her place for Christmas dinner. Hence, I am not going crazy.

Later that night, I went on my blog and it disappeared. I didn’t notice that at first, but what I did notice was that the dashboard reverted back to 2.6.5. My database was updated. There were remnants of the 2.7 files. My wp-config file was the updated version, so I didn’t know what was wrong.

I deleted the admin and include folders and recopied 2.7 around 2… 3 times. The first time nothing changed. Then I deleted the database and installed the new 2.7 seperate, etc.

One issue that might have triggered this is that I was finally moving over my site to dreamhost, and the nameserver change could have f-ed things up. Another is that I just got hacked.

Earlier today, my site turned into the default site for wordpress with no entries. The title said, “Ahhhh.” I don’t remember doing that, but maybe I just messed with it too much. I tried to log into the admin and it didn’t take any of my passwords. I think I’ve been hacked.

In the end, today, I deleted every file. Then I deleted my database. Then I uploaded all the 2.7 files. I manually moved over my theme folders and upload folder. Then, finally I imported my database.

Voila!!

But now the question is whether this will be here in the morning when I wake up.

I have redone the site (I wasn’t very pleased with the last incarnation, anyway) and postponed switching servers over. I did manage to switch the domain over.

In an effort to feel more productive, I’ve been knitting and crocheting small easy to finish projects, such as that scarf down there. I knitted a small scarf in stockinette knit and am finishing the ends with a crochet and a button hole. I also crocheted knitted buttons for it.

I tried to play some piano to the horror of my neighbors and I’ve been cooking. A lot. This is all just to say that the career change front is a little tough. I haven’t really advertised my skills, but now I find myself freelancing in design. It’s a lot tough.

Yesterday I went to get a guest pass at the local Gold’s Gym, and I am not that pleased. The work rooms are a little dark and depressing. I don’t want it to be frou frou pretty, but it looks depressing. AND I don’t know how to work some of the more scary looking machines. The machines I have worked with managed to be pretty self explanatory / I had someone to show me. These machines here, I have no idea how to use. I end up wandering around the place looking confused, lost, and little. I hate how you have to agree to a personal training session to get anyone there to show you anything. However, I am curious about the classes and I want to start using machines. : T I need something more aggressive than just running and cardio to keep the bulge off.

I am feeling a little frustrated these days. I am keeping really busy, but I don’t think the things I produce during the day are that meaningful to anyone but me. That doesn’t feel good.

So… I was updating the site and my cable modem blows. I spent the last hours troubleshooting it and organizing the dirty cables underneath the desk I never use. DIRTY. I changed the co-axial cable, cat5 cable, restart the thing, restart my router, and etc.. Finally after speaking with couple of representatives, they are letting me bring it in instead of waiting a week for a tech. It’s been working really unreliably for the past couple of days. Actually, ever since I came back.

So, of course … here I am. I am updating and fixing my site up while in a public place waiting for 15+ minutes for them to call my number … after they told me that I couldn’t check my email. (They are now serving 602 at desk #3… I am 609!)

I was going to wait until later tonight to debut the site, but it won’t let me change the site back here at the public computer station.

I’ve only updated the backend of this site 2 times. One of those times was this morning. I came back from Japan to find that a whole month or so of my posts were absolutely gone. It could be from my server (which I have yet to hear from). Maybe they crashed and the last backup was a pathetically old one? Unfortunately I did not save frequent backup of my database files.

I suspect that this site was hacked by bots. I think that the culprit is an old plugin I never updated. That, and the security was compromised, because I never updated the backend. F-me.

I sort of suspected that things were wonky, because frequently my posts would turn off the comments themselves. (this is also why I suspect that particular plugin – since it was aimed at the comments feature) Unfortunately, I didn’t think it was a big deal to take some time to update. Shame on me.

Sigh. So… here I am. Fortunately, i can bring up some of the posts (the picture posts), because I can copy and paste them from another site I update. Still, this really sucks.

I spent this morning backing up my physical files, databases, and updating the wordpress backend to the new 2.6. : P