Rottweilers Ate My Laptop

Rottweilers. Computers. Cameras. World Domination. Not necessarily in that order.

Rottweilers.
Computers. Cameras.
World Domination.
Not necessarily in that order.

Searching for an answer

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You know what we do here whenever we’re lost for a topic, don’t you? That’s right, the search stats page!

wiredtree provisioned in: I moved my VPS servers to WiredTree in May, and so far my experience has been overwhelmingly positive (see the related blog posts if you’d like). My first VPS server was provisioned in 2.5 hours from time of order to receipt of welcome e-mail with login instructions. My second VPS server’s provisioning was not quite so speedy, but the delay was primarily due to a screw-up on my part regarding the number to contact me for the required telephone verification. I have no experience with dedicated or hybrid servers and do not know how long those would take to be set up.

mary wild: I’m a bit surprised at the number of searches that still come here on that name. Unfortunately, I have no new updates to supply. The most recent article from the St. Louis Post-Dispatch was on July 6, and I’ve seen nothing since then regarding sentencing for the handler who caused heat-related deaths of seven of the eight show dogs she chose to leave in a poorly-ventilated cargo van overnight in late June. I do have alerts set up for this topic and others that I follow, and I will post should new information come in.

did michael jackson have a rottweiler: In the 15 years I’ve owned Rottweilers, I have never heard that Michael Jackson was ever a Rottweiler owner. Honestly. Does he really seem like a Rottweiler person? Jackson’s name does not come up on any searches for “celebrity +Rottweiler” or similar, so I’m guessing that the answer is “no.”

(NaBloPoMo | July ’09: 28 of 31 | 75% Challenge: 185 of 274)

Free Flash and graphics that I do like

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I know I have ranted in the past about free Flash website introductions and the so-called webmasters who think these non-unique creations are making their websites better. That does not mean I am against all free stuff, though.

If you can customize it enough to make it your own without violating someone else’s intellectual property rights, I’m fine with it. If you are trying to get started learning by analyzing someone else’s work, I’m fine with it if they are.

FlashDen, along with the other Envato Marketplace sites, is now offering a free file of the month. July’s file is a nice photo gallery with quite a few customization options. I am a fan of FlashDen in general. As someone who is very weak in Flash but who needs to use it for projects now and then, I really appreciate having a good source of affordable and customizable Flash files like FlashDen. Not every file is a master work, but the buyer ratings and comments help in selecting something that is worth the price.

I also try to remember to log in to iStockPhoto weekly to grab the Free Image of the Week. It’s not always something I can use right away, or maybe ever, but I’ve definitely grabbed a few images that fit into themes that will come up in time. Again, I am a fan of the site for its reasonably priced royalty-free stock photography. I am not a great photographer, so when I can’t provide my own photo illustration for a project, it’s good to have an affordable source with quality images to choose from.

Some free stuff is definitely worth a lot more than the asking price!

Quick Rottweiler update: Freya is now in the stopped-up phase of her current IBS digestive upset episode. I always worry about a blockage at this point, even if she seems like she is feeling better. She is usually back to normal about 24 hours after the stopped-up phase so hopefully I can stop worrying tomorrow evening. Axel has some tummy troubles of his own today, but probably related to either grazing (most all of our dogs have been like black and tan cows and I wish I knew what kind of grass might taste bad to Rottweilers) or heat. Since we have had almost no actual warmth this summer, the heat seems to be affecting both dogs a little quicker than usual.

Quick jagoff update: Maybe I shouldn’t be surprised, but a few jagoffs still have firecrackers left over from last weekend. Guess where I would like to shove those firecrackers (hint: like Butt Rocket, only with higher-powered explosives).

(NaBloPoMo | July ’09: 11 of 31 | 75% Challenge: 168 of 274)

Terabytes!

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I just added a Seagate FreeAgent 1.5 TB, as in one and a half terabytes, or 1,536 gigabytes, external hard drive to our home setup. The plan is to finally organize our glut of digital “stuff”: photos, music, fonts, documents. There are also many non-digital photos that I’d like to scan and save. I wonder how long it will take us to fill up this drive?

Something that is probably amazing only to those of us who have been around a while (translate: old) is that this amount of storage cost less than $150. If you are old enough to remember a 20 MB (not a typo, I do mean MB as in megabyte) drive costing twice that, an inexpensive 1.5 TB drive is amazing indeed.

(NaBloPoMo | June 09: 27 of 30 | 75% Challenge: 154 of 274)

Upgrades: one down, one to go.

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If you don’t follow me on Twitter or didn’t catch my update yesterday (might still be over to the right, there): all went very well with the update to WordPress 2.8. Of course, you are thinking I am restating the obvious since you are reading it here. Just like with the server move over the last couple of weeks, I was almost psyched out by the people who had bad upgrade experiences to report. I am now in the group reporting good upgrade experiences. It was truly almost “just one click.”

The Movable Type update went better than I expected. It was a big shock being back in the land of Perl, though. Pretty much every script I’ve had to implement for my own sites, work sites, or sites belonging to my friends or clubs and organizations I volunteer for has been PHP over the last few years. Movable Type has always been written in Perl and has stayed that way even to the present day. Talk about bucking a trend.

Right now I have all of my old designs and templates backed up (in a couple of different locations) and the blog itself is running on default templates of the current version. It will take me a little while to change the look back. I’m a bit lost after having not edited Movable Type templates for literally years!

(NaBloPoMo | June ‘09: 11 of 30 | 75% Challenge: 138 of 274)

Observations, more tech-y than not

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  • New iPhone 3GS is really tempting, until I come back to the part of having to switch to AT&T. Cut-copy-paste will finally be enabled, as will MMS. Oh, wait. Back to that AT&T thing again. No MMS right away for AT&T customers. Plus, less bars in more places. I will be fair and say that AT&T has less bars in more of the places that I have to or want to be. I’m sure coverage is fine for many people who are not me. Still, no deal, yet again.
  • Also not making the cut for me, even though as a longtime Palm PDA user I would have loved it to: Palm Pre. I would so love a smartphone like this with touchscreen and “real” keyboard both, and an included navigation app, too. No SD card is a minus, and having to switch to Sprint would be a bigger minus. See above about coverage in the places that I have to or want to be.
  • This Facebook user name thing is probably going to bite me in the ass. Hopefully the other 30-something people with my same first and last name will be asleep at the switch, so I don’t get the lame versions of the user name.
  • And I’ve said it before and will probably say it again: does every damn thing have to be a freaking video? I don’t always want to sit through even a few minutes of video. Sometimes I just want bullet points that I can skim in a few seconds. Can’t you give me both?

(NaBloPoMo | June ‘09: 9 of 30 | 75% Challenge: 136 of 274)