ominous
After the first of the year, traffic improved. Even now, I hit at least two sticky spots per day, and sometimes more. But the sticky spots aren’t nearly as sticky, and the really bad bits more often than not have good explanations: glass in the road. An accident for rubberneckers to gawk at. The mere presence of a cop.
I think it’s the recession. Back in the 90s, after the dotcom bubble burst, Bay Area traffic became souffle-light. This is more of the same — perhaps not as profound a plummet as that one, but far more broadly based.
Home values are down, too. On NPR the other day, I heard a Contra Costra realty board member talking about seventy percent reductions in home values. With Prop 13, new buyers will get their taxes locked in at the lower values, thereby permanently affecting municipal revenues. The Ghost of Howard Jarvis laughs, rattling his fat stinking jowls yet again, and our schools and infrastructure spending will suffer for it.
I’m okay so far . . . but I’ll be a lot happier once we manage to sell our house.
D.
My Bluehost. I think I’ll keep her.
(Okay, does anyone recognize the reference in the title? If you’re under, say, 42 years old, don’t even try.)
The tech at Bluehost figured out my Issues. First, to recap, I couldn’t log in to my admin panel. Whenever I would try, I would get to login.php (like usual), I would put in my username and password, click “login,” and then I would see that same login.php screen with the password blanked out.
Then I would type in my password again, click “login,” and I would see that same login.php screen with the password blanked out. Then I would type in my password again, click “login,” and I would see that same login.php screen with the password blanked out. Then I would type in my password again, click “login,” and I would see that same login.php screen with the password blanked out. Then I would type in my password again, click “login,” and I would see that same login.php screen with the password blanked —
Eventually, I figured out that sheer stick-toitiveness was not enough. I had one other option open to my puny brain: change the password! I clicked on the link on the login.php screen and it told me that instructions would be sent to my email address. The email had a link to a page telling me “click on this link.” When I clicked on the link, I was given a screen telling me that instructions would be sent to my email address. The email had a link to a page —
Oh, now this was bulllshit. So I called the Bluehost tech support line, fully expecting them to tell me it was a WordPress issue so go to hell. But no! The guy figured it out. More on that in a minute.
Now, I know I’ve slammed Bluehost in the past for suspending me without warning just because of a few measly spams. I’ve even threatened moving on to some other host just to spite the Blue Group. Pat J.’s probably still hankering for me to shift to DreamHost (or whatever it’s called) so he’ll get some beaucoup Dreampoints. Sorry, Pat.
It was delightful watching this guy in action. He kept trying trick after trick. Was it a cache problem? No. A Firefox problem? No. We kept trying one thing after another. Had I been blacklisted by my own blog? No.
Finally, he figured it out: somehow, my blog had become convinced that I had an open admin panel out there Somewhere. If you’re logged in, you can’t log in! Such a nefarious tautology. So he logged me out, and now I can log in. And in the future, I MUST log out so that this will not happen again.
Because, needless to say, even though the tech guy figured out my problem, God only knows how I could fix it for myself. Databases. It had something to do with databases.
D.
I am curious PLATFORM
Just a quick question: is this theme formatted well on your browser? Internet Explorer screws it up — it shunts the right sidebar down to the bottom. How’s it looking on Macs, Opera, and so forth?
D.
Unclear on the concept
I wish we could get our cats to do this . . .
. . . except for the part where she plugs the toilet paper, flushes, and then you have cat poop and water all over the bathroom floor.
D.
Here’s yer fvc&!ng frogs
We’re getting very, very close to contentment here at Balls and Walnuts.
The current theme, as of this writing, is mistylook by Sadish Bala. So, far, it seems pretty slick to me. I’m going to play around with a few more of the options.
Like the frogs? The observers/participants on the sidelines do indeed seem to have a misty look . . .
D.
Atahualpa’s revenge
Two reasons I didn’t post yesterday:
1. I’m still not 100%. After doing three loads of laundry and doing all the shopping (Target, PetSmart, the local Italian deli, and the supermarket), I was wiped. Managed to make dinner but only because it wasn’t too complex — just a rib eye steak and Potatoes Lyonnaise for my family, cereal and a couple of eggs for me.
2. Atahualpa killed my blog.
Atahualpa looked like the perfect theme. The description brags, “Over 200 theme options on 25 admin pages, drop down / fly out menus, fluid, fixed or hybrid width, turn sidebars on /off per page type, auto image resizing, 4 extra widgets and MANY other features. For WP 2.2-2.7 and WPMU.”
200 options — I like that! It seemed the ideal theme for someone who wants to learn about themes, see how changes to the CSS leads to changes in appearance, optimize functionality, and restore the fucking frogs to their rightful position. And it worked, too, for all of about one hour, and then everything crashed. All I got were “time out” messages when I tried to go to my site. Not even a nastygram from Blue Host.
So for now, I’ve reinstalled Thematic, and I’m off in search of another theme. Grrr — I wish it would have crashed BEFORE I had spent over an hour creating a header that would have knocked your socks off. It was a veritable frog orgy. Optimized for Atahualpa, of course.
D.
Sicko
If anyone has been emailing me at my azureus account, I’ve been down the last 48 hours. Literally down. More on that below.
So TWICE in the last few days, I’ve heard stories about our president attending “an ecumenical prayer service with Christian, Jewish, Muslim, and Hindu religious leaders.” Notice what’s missing?
Surreal
Imagine watching all of the nightmare scenes from Twin Peaks strung together.
Animated.
With lions.
Hat tip to my son. I don’t smell any grass on him, I swear.
D.
Shadchen
I’m still trying to figure out . . .
The Obama Women
how to marry my son to Malia Obama . . . oh, let’s say 8 years from now, when Jake will be 21, Malia 18. (Malia’s in the middle.) Imagine! I could harass Jake’s father-in-law at family picnics. “You think you had it rough. Try interning at L.A. County Hospital, with every damned doc calling you Doogie. Pain in the ass having a funny name. Aw, why am I trying to explain that to you.”
To which the president would say, “C’mon, Doogie, let’s shoot some hoop.”
Then our newlyweds would sneak away from their embarrassing parents in order to make us some brilliant grandbabies. Yeah!
D.