Nancy Kamp's
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Disclaimer: This weblog contains many tedious and repetitious bits as well as a few gems of useful web lackey info and amusing turns of phrase. It stands as a monument to the need for editing and is a glimpse into a simple but over-tired heart trying to succeed when pitted against the giants of the Internet. Nancy Kamp
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January 9, 2003: A Pox on All Their Houses December 26 was the last day I could publish anything at all to this website because DirecTv discontinued my Internet service in their mad rush go out of the ISP (Internet service provider) business. I am not amused. AOL is getting worse and worse, and while SBC (Southwestern Bell), my new DSL company of choice, could switch my long distance carrier without breaking a sweat, they cannot pick up the slack in ISP-providing until some time next week. This is agony.
January 16, 2003: Back in the Saddle I've published, corrected publishing errors and redone tons of stuff, but no matter what I do, I can't fix the too wide opening page for the jewelry section of the site. While I know there should be an HTML / FrontPage element that controls this, I've never figured out what this might be. Now I just think having banners or photos or other elements that take up fixed width are responsible - in other words, it the element is bigger than the table/cell/column, the element's fixed width rules and the page is too wide. Having said that, I haven't yet been able to isolate the element that's plaguing my page widths today. Grrr. Another Grr: DirecTv thinks it didn't cut off my Internet access until January 8 and wants to keep my money for all those days after December 26 when AOL was my only friend. Worse yet, their accounting department phone number says I'm supposed to take up the problem with an e-mail address that doesn't respond to e-mail because they (probably) fired everyone.
January 22, 2003: Picking Them Off One by one, I'm eliminating our newsletters. Perhaps that's too strong. I'm actually honing them into a manageable unit after weighing all the factors from advertising revenues to my workload. My bottom line is time. So the HTML version of GraciousJaneMarie, the newsletter will be published online only. All of our wonderful subscribers will receive the text version, a short, monthly reminder that we've got great new stuff. The bonus for the subscribers is that more of their mailbox space will be available for spam??? (Did I say that?) And we will be more likely to get through their ISP's spam filters.
January 27, 2003: Exploding Heads So much has been going on I think my head will burst. For example, each day I report vmadmin.com to Yahoo.com as a major spammer, and I still get tons of mail from them in my mailboxes. Since the good folks at vmadmin are listed all over the Internet as spammers, I can only wonder what Yahoo! gets for overloading their servers and letting this stuff through. On the home front, we've had serious trouble with our mailboxes - first, old autoresponder messages (my fault) and now, non existent autoresponders. The ^%@# things still aren't working after a weekend of fun, fun fun, and we're trying to run and promote a new contest here. Grrr. Besides all that, I can only send out GraciousJaneMarie, the newsletter, in batches of 24 thanks to my new ISP, SBC. Right now it's only a hassle, but the situation could grow into a serious problem as our list goes. End of pitiful whining rant.
February 1, 2003: Almost Groundhog Day* I've been trying to set up a new Jane Marie section for cookbook recommendations. I did an OK job, published it and suddenly realized that given the fact my sister and I collect cookbooks, the recommndation page could grow into the slowest loading page on the net. So I redid my OK job with the beginnings of many new pages. I don't have a total grasp of my position as our entire IT department, but I know enough to know the more systematic this website is, the better for surfers and moi. Cedant is a great web host, but their mail system is terrible. I can't delete old addresses, their poor tech guys spent a week with me while we tried to fix our messed up autoresponders (almost there), and there is no Trash, which means if we delete something in error, too bad. What to do? What to do? *For many years, Groundhog Day was my favorite holiday. Put that down to a childhood in Pennsylvania. But here in Oklahoma we observe the shadows of pot-bellied pigs instead of groundhogs, and somehow the present giving charm has gone out of the day for me - though I will be in attendance at the OKC Zoo celebrations tomorrow. Old habits die hard.
February 2, 2003 Potbellied
pigs stand in for groundhogs at the OKC
Zoo.
February 4, 2002: Time to Hang It Up I just panicked because although I could type in Word, nothing was appearing on the screen in FrontPage. Finally I figured out that the font color was somehow set to white. Sigh.
February 6, 2003: Pulling My Hair Out It looks as though none of the jewelry pages have had a logo for almost 24 hours because good old FrontPage inserted extra code into the logo file. On top of that, all the jewelry pages are cursed with weird colored and sized fonts. I absolutely never know what's going to show up. The only thing I'm sure of is FrontPage will NOT do what I ask it to do. Do not buy this product. It sucks.
February 11, 2003: Hart of Darkness I've started our taxes. Dun - dun - duh. The net has been buzzing with anti-Turbo Tax vibes, but I got my copy before the rumors reached me. Certainly, I didn't expect to find my Internet Explorer firewall at odds with my tax software since it's never happened before, but it was and had to be disabled. Since I didn't and don't know how to do this, I have no idea how I made this all work. But hey, maybe Rudolph the Red Nosed Reindeer intervened for me (hence today's title) with whomever is going to end up as the patron saint of computers. Stranger things, my friends, stranger things.
February 14, 2003: Fighting Fire Ants They probably don't come more anti-war than Kurt Vonnegut. This is a better thing on several levels because even if you would like to personally dispatch Saddam and his ilk, it's important to consider all sides of a question. In fact I've always believed if you can't ask yourself, "What if I'm wrong?" you probably are. Having said that, I can say we enjoyed* Vonnegut's Wednesday night lecture in OKC. The topic was writing, but the talk was "war is evil." Which it is. Some interesting points:
I agree. But how do you negotiate with fanatics? They're just like fire ants. So in the spirit of the very late Roman statesman, Cato the Elder, who ended every speech - no matter what the topic - with "Carthage must be destroyed," I say, "Fire ants must go." *Comic relief courtesy of the world's longest and most boring introduction (think grace delivered by a drunken preacher who does not believe in hot food), repeated rolling blackboard antics, and spontaneous and unasked for interruptions of the speaker by kindly folks who wanted to give the speaker water (and discuss it with him) as well as microphone adjusters.
Valentine stuff: Jane Marie found this info in Jeffrey Kacirk's Forgotten English and thought it would fit nicely in this weblog:
February 26, 2003: Wishing Upon a Star OK, so I'm standing there, scraping ice off the windows of my daughter's car (she was doing her hair), wearing a neighbor-gagging outfit consisting of yesterday's orange socks, pale pink nightshirt, heavy purple coat and the gray gloves I received one Christmas from a loved one who's never had enough interest in me to know I hate gray when it hit me: the star naming folks must be making a fortune. Why, oh why, can't I? The short answer is because the companies that offer people the chance to name a star after someone are simply selling expensive certificates. Anyone could get into that business for the cost of a printer. And this does not add value to our world.
March 2, 2003: Calling a Cuddle My beloved husband has begun referring to the meetings (huddles) he attends as "cuddles." While I'm sure (I'm very sure) he is being sarcastic, I love the new use of the word because I HATE MEETINGS. Anything that can lighten those enormous drains on time and brain power is a better thing from where I sit. Curiously, I find myself calling my sister/partner, Jane Marie, more frequently than the budget allows because we always have all sorts of things to discuss. Which is why people have cuddles in the first place. But somehow, renaming our necessary evils removes some of the ugly. So does that mean I won't fumble for an excuse the next time you inform me that my presence is required for an hour of cuddling? Sure.
March 4, 2003: Lying Spam-Weasel I just got off the phone (He hung up on me!) with a lying spam-weasel. It was not a pretty conversation. I had opened my website's main e-mail mailbox - the one everything defaults to - and found a piece of mail addressed to <subscribeGJMcontest> - clearly not a mailbox where one would receive anything more than contest entries + new newsletter subscriptions. Nevertheless, the mailing informed me "You've received this e-mail because you subscribe to the XXX XXXX XXXXXXX XXXXX Newsletter. Your address has NOT been sold or other wise disclosed to any third party." Well, oh yeah? Since the mailing contained a phone number, I called it and informed the nice young man who answered that I had been spammed. After listening politely to my rant, the nice young man transferred me to his manager who told me in no uncertain terms that he was not now and nor had he ever been a spammer and if I didn't like it, I could take the matter up with the third party who sent out their mail. When I tried to explain that farming out his mailings made him a de facto spammer because I had just received his spam, the manager got very (very) irate and said he would sue me if I wrote* about his company's spamming habit (my words). It didn't matter that I was looking right at his spam as our conversation continued. It didn't matter that I was giving him valuable feedback. It didn't matter that if I got spam from his company, I couldn't accept his protestations of innocence. But what does matter is I can't mention his company's #@^%$ name because I don't want to be sued. It does matter that I wouldn't be on his %#$@ mailing list by choice even if I were really interested in his product/service (I'm not.) It does matter that if you contract with a company to do business in your name, you better be monitoring exactly how they represent you. Because if you send me spam, knowingly or not, you are a spammer. *This anecdote would fit nicely into an article I am about to turn in, but revealing the spammer's name is not worth a lawsuit. And the article isn't actually about spam anyway.
March 10, 2003 Prune Tequila Ice Cream I just spent over three hours trying to add a few links to the Guinevere page, but every time I made one change, FrontPage changed random text to this font. I really, really hate FrontPage. And
if that isn't enough, I just found this weird ice cream recipe (see
today's title) in the October 2002 issue of Gourmet
March 12, 2003 Dog Thoughts I was reading Dave Barry's Big Trouble last night when I saw my own words right there on page 137. In case you didn't know, I want to be Dave Barry when I grow up, so you can imagine my joy when I realized our minds had produced exactly the same thing. Now I know you're thinking ole Dave must have borrowed from me. He had, no doubt, bookmarked this website and was happily perusing the Quotations section, when les mots justes appeared before his eyes under Mottos, Kamp Dog Mottos, to be exact. But anyone who has followed Barry's writing career knows he churns out the good stuff at an amazing rate. And some lightning calculations after a quick look at the book's date of copyright show he probably wrote the line in 1997 while I've been spouting what is surely the international dog motto There might be food for some years myself. Conclusions:
PS Sometime during the composition of this gem, it occurred to me that Dave Barry should be informed I had described him as a genius in a public forum. However, he doesn't accept e-mails (!!!!!!!!!), and who has time to write letters anyway?
March 17, 2003 Unconscious Tyrannosaurus Defacer My dear sister, Jane Marie, once made me the proud owner of Morton, a lovely (?) model of a tyrannosaurus. It stands in the bay window near my computer, surrounded by plants. I like it. I also like the fact that my husband vacuums this area of the house every week because the inhabitants of his oversized birdcage, which hangs in the window, shed feathers everywhere. Sadly though, he has taken it upon himself to dust all the things nearby WITH THE VACUUM CLEANER, not with the brush designed for this purpose either. He even uses the end of the long tube with the hard edge for dusting! Tragedy was bound to happen. And it did. Sometime in the eon since I last inspected Morton up close and personally, his nose has been chipped. I, as you would, immediately accused the man with the tube of this heinous crime. And he, as you would, denied it. But let's face facts.
And how did I handle the inescapable conclusion / conviction of an otherwise fine and worthy human being? Name calling. Mr. Kamp will henceforth and always be known in these pages as UTD, Unconscious Tyrannosaurus* Defacer. Take that! *And now that I think of it, UTD also dusted the ceramic elephant table our sister-in-law, Carol, made for us. He removed a hunk of the elephant's trunk with the long tube of the vacuum cleaner! Do you see a pattern?
March 21, 2003: Goat Soap "Goats eat poison ivy and it doesn't seem to hurt them." Cindy Sterling, maker of goat soap Goat soap is made with goat's milk. It comes in flavors like Raspberry Sunshine. There's something very troubling about this, but I can't even understand simple directions from Microsoft.
March 25, 2003: Spam Me No More I'm thinking of collecting all the spam I get on April Fools' Day and listing the addresses here for spambots to pick up and spam. It would make a fitting revenge cycle. Or else I could thank the spammers for their order and send them an invoice.
March 31, 2003: Grump, Grump It wouldn't be the end of the month if I didn't complain about something. Last week's publication of The Decision (part 3 of The Idea), a Teddy Bear Wars story in which I had mice in my laundry room, came true. More or less. While we certainly didn't hire any overbearing mouse patriarchs to run things around here, I did have a mouse in my laundry room wall. It's happened before, and it's awful every time. They struggle to get out for several days and die there, rotting. Ugh.
April 6, 2003: Choking on Code I spent hours last night trying to add one link to two pages of this site. My computer kept freezing and I kept cursing, but it wasn't until the middle of the night that I realized FrontPage was adding lines and lines of useless HTML code every time I had inserted a ♥. These were Martha Bear® pages so you can imagine how much heart-connected code was stuffed into my pages. Well, you can't really, but trust me on this. Sure enough, when I removed the hearts and associated code today, the problem solved itself. Who knew FrontPage's dirty little habit of sticking in code would be more than a nuisance? Once again, I can only say, "Grrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr." By the way, there is no information about this problem on the Microsoft website. Quelle surprise.
April 18, 2003: I Do NOT Have a Septic Tank Most of my spam these days involves septic tank offers. Somehow, some way, a septic tank spammer bought my e-mail address and decided I had (A) "subscribed" to his mailing list, and (B) my septic tank is in serious trouble and only his product can save it. By the same reasoning, Dr. Somebody (I forget who, but you're probably getting mail from him too) is convinced you and I are the only ones who can loot Africa and make a profit together. He sends three or four e-mails a day to me, begging for my assistance in the form of my banking information. Since there are so many clones of Dr. Somebody out there, I wouldn't mention him except I just learned his scam was the number one Internet scam of 2002. Read my still timely article on the Nigerian Bank Scam for details.
April 24, 2003: Slaves of New Dork Over the centuries that I have been enthralled (in the old Nordic sense - when a thrall was a slave) by Microsoft, I have often been amazed and awed by what Bill and company have accomplished for the unity and good of the world (interesting, albeit not always original product concepts and massive charitable donations). However, I remain mystified that I have absolutely no recourse for help (unless I pay big bucks per minute, which isn't going to happen) in my sad and lonely quest for a way to keep some of these pages from being too wide for some of your screens. I know I complain about FrontPage frequently, but if you use it, either you're a techno-genius or as clueless as I am and want to grumble too. The sad part of this is I will probably purchase the new version of this $#@%$ software that looms just over the horizon. Why? Because they own me, and maybe, just maybe, the FrontPage bugs that bug me now will disappear when I upgrade. Or not.
May 1, 2003: Neatness Counts On March 4th, I wrote about a Spam-Weasel who was more than ugly when I spoke with him by phone. Spam-Weasel threatened to sue me if I published the name of his company so I caved and did not do so. Then joy of joys, I got an e-mail this morning from six-d-nine.org offering to publish the name of spam-weasel's %$#@$ website on his website because he "aint afraid of the big bad suits." My hero. Unfortunately, two months is a long time in this SOHO (small office, home office) and I can't find the stupid thing. Wouldn't you know? Curiously, I also got non spam mail today (travel writers' stuff I'd requested) about doggy summer vacations. And if that weren't enough, I did my monthly read through of blog entries and discovered all kinds of mistakes on the April page. Life is full and rich. Complete change of topic: When I started this website, I envisioned a somber, professional billboard for my writing biz. Then, Gracious Jane Marie came on board and my world turned pink and cutesy. Bears and mice took over and began writing on my walls - not literally, but the message is clear: I can write all the weblogs I want as long as I understand who's in charge here. Martha Bear® and friends must be the real focus of our efforts because people love them. With that directive in mind, I've been battling to renew the greenlightWRITING.com domain. (There has been some confusion - this does not refer in any way to our flagship, greenlightWRITE.com.) As renewal dates for domains have come up, I've been moving them to Hostica because they do a great job and they're cheap. But Verisign, who last handled this domain (at an exorbitant fee), and I never got our acts together and the renewal transfer failed. With time running out, I decided to wait until today and buy the name from scratch on the open market. But I've been thinking about our future and how we'll get where we want to be (rich and famous, duh). Wasting resources (cash) on remnants of the past won't get us there. So I hereby release you, greenlightWRITING.com. We'll always have our memories unless that Whickers dude gets at them.
May 5, 2003: I May Already Be a Winner This morning's e-mail revealed that I have won $500,000. Yippee. Unfortunately, this is a scam. The lottery, which I never entered, will require me to send them some money in order to facilitate the transfer of my prize. And somehow that prize will never materialize. I know this because you don't get something for nothing, and because I read http://www.netscalped.com/_disc4/000004f6.htm in which another winner detailed the process - including the irate comments she received when she suggested they subtract the transfer fee from her winnings. For more information: Sigh.
May 9, 2003: Let's Twist Again 20 miles from where I sit typing these words, people are sifting through the ruins of their lives. The tragedy wouldn't be quite real to me except that when yesterday's storm hit, I was pacing the terminal of the OKC airport while our CDO, my daughter, was sitting in a plane. Her flight was delayed because the airport, which is located on the south side of the city, was surrounded by lightning strikes. If a tornado had roared out of the stormy cloud cover, those of us in the airport terminal couldn't have seen it coming. And although any spring storm in Oklahoma carries the possibily of tornadic activity, it was only a local television weatherman (Gary England - he played himself in Twister - DTS) who communicated to us the fact that tornadoes were in the south OKC area. It should have been troubling that I heard the pilot of a plane that couldn't land because of the weather ask the gate supervisor to look out the window to tell him how the weather looked on the ground. It should have been worrisome that the gate supervisor got his weather information from a TV program in an airport bar. It is, however, a point of local pride that Oklahoma City's television weather information is state of the art. TV weather reports saved lives yesterday. If my life and the life of my child were never in danger, then I am grateful. And if no has to mourn today for anything beyond their precious possessions, then that too is a better thing. But except for ourselves, weather is surely our greatest enemy on this planet. And I, for one, wish we could call a truce.
May 13, 2003: Stove Wars I just threw out my microwave and popcorn popper because I accidentally set them on fire. I turned on a burner, left the kitchen and when I came back, there were foot high flames shooting out of the stove because I'd turned on the wrong burner, which happened to contain casually placed appliance cords that should have been stowed away. Mea culpa. You should see how black the lids I used to cover the burners to cut off the fire's oxygen got - and you could except that the UTD has taken my camera to LA to take photos for a future photo essay. Perhaps we really do need another camera. But first we need a new microwave. In the meantime,
May 26, 2003: Decorations Today is Memorial Day, a special and sad day for so many American families. With a flying leap of logic, I can twist my train of thought onto the fact that this is also Jane Marie's birthday - a special and happy day for our family since JM is everyone's favorite sister/aunt/whatever. We all love her so much because she's absolutely, 100% wonderful. My online gift to her is really a gift from Carol Abbott of <http://www.carolabbott.net> who made these beautiful banners for us:
Carol has several websites, but Jane Marie discovered her at <http://www.geocities.com/cpbackground/graphics.html> where she offers free backgrounds to help beautify the Internet one page at a time. We think Carol is very talented graphic designer and one terrific lady. We hope she goes into business soon.
May 28, 2003: I'm with Busey Our UTD's idiot cousin, actor Gary Busey, is getting his own reality show. He can't be any worse than Anna Nicole Smith, but don't these television people have any standards? The man bragged about riding his motorcycle without a helmet after he almost killed himself. Oh, the shame.
June 8, 2003: Party Hearty Jane Marie and I and 30 or so of our father's closest relatives and friends spent Friday night at a small celebration in honor of his 86th birthday. Aside from the real pleasure Dad had in seeing so many people he loves together in Erie, PA and the catching up everyone did, my sister and I indulged in shameless self promotion. Since we never forced anyone to listen, we're pretty sure a good time was had by all. (More in the June issue of GraciousJaneMarie, the newsletter.) By the way, this was supposed to be yesterday's weblog, but I slept for 11 hours instead of working. Bad Nancy had an excuse besides the party though. As the last arriving houseguest, I had a room of my own - the kitchen/dining area, which contains a couch. This would have been fine, however Dad wakes up early. Every morning of my stay, he woke up at exactly 6:20 a.m. and went into the kitchen to make coffee. When he noticed me, he would say, "Oh, $%$#@!" and my day would begin. Naturally, the day after the party got started at 4:30 a.m. when Jane Marie got up to catch her plane. I did some work and went back to sleep only to have sister Peg awaken and snatch me from dreamland for good. I am still exhausted. PS One topic that always seems to arise at gatherings in Erie is food. Dad's house is within walking distance of Valerio's, one of the wonderful Italian restaurants in the area. They not only offer delicious things to eat, but also exhibit the kind of customer service most businesses only talk about. We had lunch there about three days before our departure. When I mentioned I'd love to pickup a sandwich about 9 a.m. on Saturday, the order was taken and my future assured. As happens, Nancy's order was shuffled and wasn't ready for pickup. The nice gentleman at the pickup counter not only produced a fresh sandwich within seconds, but did not charge me because I had to wait. My total time within Valerio's was so short no one in the waiting van had really noticed I was gone. Now that's a place I look forward to patronizing again.
June 12, 2003: The Spam Also Rises Got up bright and early only to find a message from our web host that the greenlightWRITE mailboxes were about to exceed their limit. I started working my way through them and found one containing 531 spams (that's the correct term, I hear) and one old message from Jane Marie. All were deleted and so were four useless mailboxes. All together now, "Can no one save us from this cursed spam?" There is a liberating PS to this whole thing. I was so inspired by the deletion of the 500+ spam messages that I went into an unrelated mailbox and deleted over 200 professional education messages I'd been hoarding (until the time was right to read them) and deleted every one of them as well. Old news is just not worth storing.
June 14, 2003: Mighty Hunter, Mighty Fighter I always loved the Tarzan ("mighty hunter, mighty fighter") books and now I get to play one on TV - more or less. The less being that I'm not actually going to be on television, only that I should be because I killed a giant, saucer-size tarantula that was IN MY HOUSE. Last Saturday, I hit the thing with ant spray and it scuttled into a fully loaded (is there any other kind?) bookcase. My daughter, who had let the monster into our sacred home in the first place, and I cowered in fear for hours before giving up and going to bed. As the days passed, we all trembled with thoughts of encountering the beast in our beds or as we reached into pretty much anything. The UTD, my brave and powerful husband, even called from California with instructions, "Kill it before I come home." But no sightings were made. When the UTD arrived in Oklahoma, his task was clear: remove the deadly spider from wherever it had been plotting to kill and eat us, and ensure it terrorized our family no more. And bless him, he did. Only, I had already killed the enemy. It hadn't survived the ant spray and was rotting in the bookcase. Who knew ant spray was so powerful? No doubt ant spray will slowly poison us all. But at least I can open the closet door again.
June 19, 2003: Good Samaritans The UTD is not always a lucky man. He has never bought a winning lottery ticket and he got three flat tires (one on a rental) in the last several days - even as I write this, he 's buying new tires. But last night, as we stood forlornly by the side of the interstate wondering why the flat wouldn't come off the axel (yes, the nuts, or whatever they're called, were off - the $%$@ tire was rusted or otherwise frozen in place) a nice man stopped to see if he could help! And he did. The temporary tire was put on the car and we got home. Wow. Along those same lines, I recently heard from Joe at NetScalped.com, whose website provides useful and wallet-saving advice for online lambs wanting to avoid the wolves:
Joe is right. I am currently suffocating under a pile of research on petty theft in Europe. It is absolutely and totally mood lifting to be reminded of the Joes and anonymous guys who stop to help strangers. God bless you, every one.
June 28, 2003: Giant Housecat Our CDO is in charge of changing the wallpaper on all our computers. Recently I was treated with a month long view of one of our dog staffers wearing a crown (this doesn't bode well for staff discipline, however that's another weblog), but this morning I woke up to find myself staring at a photo of what has got to be the world's largest housecat. The thing is as big as a sheep! Honest. If that's the direction cat breeding is going, then we and our canine friends are doomed. Doomed. I may be a goner anyway. Hostica, the host of many of our domains, has changed their system and I have to reregister each individual domain and all its doings. The first several hours I've spent doing this have not gone well. I think I have a contender for the anti-customer service site of the month.
July 2, 2003: Damned If I Do I ended last month with a rant (What else?) against Hostica's change to a new hosting system that does not allow for data migration from their old system. This has taken up many hours of my time and I still don't have credit for the services I was using under the old system. (Yes, they made me repurchase everything, and I have 12 domains!) But wait. There's more. When I started building websites, I didn't know you shouldn't have any spaces in file names so some of the page names we have are not only long, but also cumbersome because of the spaces - these spaces are sometimes filled with "%20" type characters. The thing is, most of the domains point to pages on this site and one of them, GraciousJaneMarie.com, (both page and domain-wise) is critical. Now Hostica says I can't have spaces in page addresses (that come from file names) in locations where I want pointers to point. If I change the page file name, how long before the Internet gets the word and people typing "GraciousJaneMarie.com" end up where they're supposed to? And what if FrontPage breaks all the internal links? I've thought about putting up a second, mirror-type page so we could have the best of both worlds, but duplicating content can screw up search engine ranking. I'm playing deer in the headlights while I muddle through.
July 8, 2003: Summer Blahs I have the feeling that none of us are as productive in the summer as we could be. While I did work until 10:45 last night, I have yet to threaten a non paying customer with a bill collector, link to some of my articles that have been published elsewhere online or do all the awful bookkeeping stuff that piles up when you have a SOHO (small office, home office) business. Instead, I scratch at weekend mosquito bites and gaze fondly at my much maligned staff as they scratch at imaginary (I hope - I paid enough for those behind the ear drops) fleas. Then it's time to look out the window, check my spam and consider lunch. Of course if I'm to afford lunch, I'd better do the bill collector thing.
July 14, 2003: 28 Days Later I believe I've been working on the Hostica (hosting service) rollover for a month or more. They are definitely the poster children for how not to migrate data. The bottom line for me was I would have had to do all the data migration if I had switched to another company without being sure of the quality of a new service. Hostica has retained me as a customer because my switching cost would have been higher than the time, trouble and expense I've gone through to date. And if you like good scary movies (with some predictable bits), try 28 Days Later (Widescreen Edition).
July 18, 2003: Lost Passport Woes "The day on which one starts out is not the day to begin one's preparations." Nigerian saying more quotations Yesterday was not a good day, being neither productive nor stress free. My older daughter, Jill, who was scheduled to leave for London, got up (not bright and early!!!) to pack (!!!) and could not find her passport. We know she had one because she used it last summer on a fun-filled school trip:
The entire family spent four delightful hours ransacking the house to no avail. With five hours to go until departure, Jill rescheduled her flight ($100) with the wonderful Mary of Edmond Oklahoma's AAA Travel. We contacted the very helpful folks at American Passport Express ($175 including Saturday delivery) who walked us through the paperwork we needed to get to the local passport folks in the downtown Oklahoma City post office [not the main downtown post office - this is the one across the street from the Oklahoma City National Memorial]. Pat at the post office ($115 and $30) was very helpful in getting the official paperwork completed. Then it was back home to await the arrival of Jill's new itinerary (required by the government for quick passport replacement) before a quick trip to the copy store to copy all the documents not sealed at the post office. The final step was a trip to FedEx ($17.10) to overnight all necessary materials to American Passport Express - we hope. FedEx tracking told us American Passport picked up Jill's paperwork at 9:08 a.m. this morning. We have our fingers crossed that all will go well from here. And we learned a few things along the way:
July 19, 2003 Lost Passport - Part Two All's well that ends well, but we had a hard morning. Jill's new passport was sent to OKC last evening for Saturday delivery (pickup at the FedEx office), but when Jill and her dad arrived, they were told it wasn't there. The less than helpful gentleman at the counter said, "Sorry," and as far as he was concerned, that was that. To make a long, long story short, the FedEx manager and Jennifer from American Passport Express unearthed the thing, and Jill will be on her way to London this afternoon. Our thanks to everyone who helped to save the day.
July 20, 2003 She's There! We got an e-mail from Jill via the very kind folks at the Elizabeth Hotel in London. She arrived safely and is off to see the sights. Whew.
July 25, 2003 Total Information Overload I keep getting technical ezines and magazines with detailed instructions on so many things I don't have time to prioritize let alone understand. This is a better thing in the sense that technology waits for no man or woman, but if I haven't had time finish scanning last year's pictures of Jill's trip to Italy, let alone cull them (I think all my daughter's photos are works of art), how will I ever make time to deal with the new pictures she will bring home from this year's adventures in London and Paris? Think about it. Shouldn't you be catching up on the back issues of Engine Blocks and Head Gaskets or Tatting for Tomorrow (or whatever interests you and makes you a more useful member of society) instead of sitting in a lawn chair and mindlessly listening to a CD you made from tunes you downloaded illegally? I know where my responsibility lies. I just can't locate it amid all that backlogged ironing.
July 26, 2003: Go Lance, Go Somewhere in the Paris hordes watching the finish of the Tour de France, our Jill and her friends stood wearing their Lance Armstrong T shirts and cheering him on. But I searched for familiar faces in vain. We'll all have to wait for Jill's report until she gets home. Drat. And now my monitor has gone pink again, signaling it's death knell. Oh happy day.
July 31, 2003: New Attitude With a new monitor (oh the clarity, the clarity) and a newly returned daughter, I'm thrilled to report how quickly a very large number of pictures will download from a digital camera. This is in great contrast to last year's photos of Italy, which largely remain in a pile in case there's a break in my schedule. Over the next few months, I'll be slipping Jill's pics into appropriate places on the site like Travel. In the meantime, here's a sample (right column - scroll up) from the Tour de France end zone. I have no idea why everyone is wearing a yellow jersey, but I'm certainly not stupid enough to wake the kid up to ask. Update: The riders in the above photo were "just people who'd signed up to ride that day." So much for our sports scoop, though the news is good if your dream is to ride in the Tour de France.
August 4, 2003: Mistake Proof Fence OK, I borrowed today's title from the very wonderful and tragic Rabbit Proof Fence. That doesn't make my efforts wonderful and tragic though I do aim for the former. Sadly, you wouldn't believe how easy it is to find bad links, misspellings and horriblenesses in pages I've seen fit to publish on this site. This has no doubt led to billions in lost revenue so I've unilaterally decided we should ask for donations in return for my promise to clean up the site as fast as I can. The good thing about donations is we won't be pioneers in the process. The better thing is no one is obligated to help us out, but if they do, the result will be a much finer Internet. And who, besides Al Qaeda, doesn't want that?
August 11, 2003: White Oleander I should probably poison my milk as in the disturbing flick that shares today's title. Our Alexa stats keep getting worse and worse - except they also indicate our traffic is growing. This is confirmed by our web host stats. I can only conclude the Internet is adding lots of pages and things are being reshuffled. (Google dance)
August 15, 2003: Boomer Sooner If you have a small business, you want to take every tax deduction you can, right? I've deducted 90% of my last several computers because they are used for work about 95% of the time with 5% other (kid) usage - my kids are not geeks like their parents. (The UTD has a business laptop.) When our Jill began talking college, I immediately thought we should get her a state of the art laptop. However, reality has dictated that we put this purchase off until January. In the meantime, I was inspired to give Jill my backup (old) computer. I even thought we could pay me / greenlightWRITE for the privilege so the IRS would see I was trying to keep everything ship shape in the ole accounting department. All I can say is the IRS didn't have to lug that monstrosity (Pentium 130, 2 gig hard drive) to OU and spend hours getting it to work once it was set up (with the huge monitor on top of the mini-refrigerator). When I finally connected to the Internet, the thing was so slow (despite the university setup), I never could get a web page to actually load. Steps will have to be taken, but if the IRS thinks that computer is worth a penny more than the $20 someone would charge me to haul it off, I'd like to see them do my accounting.
August 16, 2003: Uh, Oh Friday, the UTD and I went downtown to get our passports renewed. We fell into conversation with the very helpful Angel at the post office and I told him I would mention him in this weblog, but what did I do? Nada. Zip. Mea culpa, Angel. Here you go. And thanks for the good service.
August 25, 2003: Blue Screen of Cat Anyone who's been around the Internet has probably been cursed with a BSOD, a blue screen of death, when Windows goes nuts as it does periodically. Since I started running XP almost two years ago, I haven't had that problem, but an error in shutting down my PC last night (caused by FrontPage and my carelessness) left me with today's title and a frozen computer. Our CDO, who is in charge of wallpaper for all our computer screens, had selected a photo of a large man holding the world's biggest pussycat. Once I corrected the FrontPage failure to shut down problem, I was left with the cat picture on a blue background AND IT WOULDN'T GO AWAY. Nothing worked. Neither Escape nor Control+Alt+Delete nor turning off the computer. Finally, I turned off the power and was able to reboot. As soon as I get a minute, the cat is history. And as far as BSODs go, I strongly urge you to have an emergency rescue disk on hand. If you don't know what this is, ask your computer and follow its instructions. Do it now or you'll be sorry.
August 29, 2003: Back to School Piercings I had just finished Stuart Kaminsky's delightful Mildred Pierced: A Toby Peters Mystery (Joan Crawford is in trouble) when I heard a commercial for back to school piercings. I should be stunned, but ...
September 3, 2003: Homecoming Shirts There isn't a lot of stuff that has a shorter shelf life than high school gear. Whether you go onto college or not, your class ring probably won't give you the same thrill at 19 as it did at 16. And the homecoming shirt you just had to have will move to the back - or let's be honest here - the floor of your closet. But you've still gotta have as much high school stuff as you can afford because it's high school, right? So it's with a sad heart that I must report
our purchase of a homecoming shirt for the CDO.
This comes on top of Monday's order for a shiny new laptop for our college
student who had been fobbed off with my old backup PC, which turned
up its toes and faked its own death over the weekend. (August
15, 2003: Boomer Sooner - please scroll
up) We surfed the net in an effort to find the best deal (check out the three links above right), decided on a Dell and then discussed options for hours. Now we wait for the custom (that means it will take longer to arrive) laptop to get here so I can play with it before delivering it to its very eager owner.
September 7, 2003: Fiasco I handled our transition to Bravenet.com's newsletter publishing system very badly. My excuse is that I had no time to let our subscribers know they would be required to opt-in to the new system. But I should have rewritten the generic message to better reflect the source of the mail. We lost hundreds of subscribers and will have to work extra hard to make back the numbers. Since Jane Marie sees each subscriber as a personal friend, she is not amused.
September 11, 2003 "The second anniversary and succeeding ones can be harder than the first, because you're not as numb." Diane Leonard, widow of April 19th "Your light still shines." Angela Coppola, daughter of September 11 victim, Gerard Rod Coppola, after reading her father's name
September 25, 2003: Where Has Nancy Been? Nowhere. Sigh. What with auto accidents (neither of which was our fault), never ending back to school chores, tweaking the site and all the other stuff that life is made up of, who has time? On the other hand, I miss the days when I wrote here more regularly. Now I just whine, and that has got to stop. Really. So I promise to try and include only interesting, uplifting and /or useful website material. In keeping with that pledge, I thought to call your attention to the Canadian World Domination (think polite hockey) website. Also Top 10 Perks of Canadian World Domination. "The US is our trading partner, our neighbour, our ally and our friend ... and sometimes we'd like to give them such a smack!" Rick Mercer It's scary when South Park is prophetic as it clearly was in the song Blame Canada, which featured prominently in the extremely crude and sometimes funny film, South Park - Bigger, Longer & Uncut. I could swear the song was nominated for an Academy Award, but surely I am mistaken, and it's not worth looking up, is it?
September 28, 2003: Fireworks In memory of George Plimpton, our UTD has accepted the title of Director of Fireworks (DF). Dell Update - Our daughter's new laptop arrived early in the week and has been delivered to Norman, Oklahoma. She actually stayed home (in her dorm) to play with it, calling at 11:30 p.m. to ask nerdly questions! My heart is full.
October 3, 2003 Brain Overload My kids joke that there isn't a subject I don't know something about - "You gave her a lecture about the French and Indian War and it was 11:00 at night!" Maybe I do get carried away, but I've always thought other people must be as fascinated by interesting stuff as I am. After all, who wants to think they're boring? Today, however, I've reached my maximum brain load capacity. As you may know or surmise, I watch daytime television while making jewelry or doing paperwork. It's a sort of perk of working at home, or at least I thought it was until I heard Kathy Lee Gifford announce she has written a musical about Aimee Semple McPherson. I swear I don't want to ever learn anything - a n y t h i n g - again. Ich. On the other hand, Aimee led an interesting life so lead me to the box office. I'll take four tickets.
October 22, 2003: Breakfast with Imelda The other morning, our DF and I strolled into breakfast to find we were sharing the Rome Cavalieri Hilton (click for details) executive clubroom with Imelda Marcos and her entourage. It was a sobering experience because we had been wallowing in a €1620 (euro - the current average exchange rate between dollars and euros makes this something like $1944) per night suite due entirely to the DF's hard work and accumulated hotel points while the former first lady of the Philippines amassed her fortune (and shoe collection - she was wearing simple, but stylish, black pumps) via exploitation of the Filipino people. I would like to say there was further reward for our toil and virtue, but when we arrived home, I discovered my computer had been invaded by aggressive spyware that neither Ad-aware nor Spykiller have been able to remove. My Internet Explorer (IE) file is corrupted and the lovely people at Gateway who sold me this computer have hidden the cure in an undiscovered location. I think I could pick up IE from any AOL disc, but where do they all go when you need one? Note to Jane Marie - I cannot access e-mail at this time. Aaaargh!!!!
October 28, 2003 The Rewards of Virtue I am now back at about 80% capacity in terms of online capabilities. This is not a better thing, but it's all I can manage after the ravages of what turned out to be a full scale assault of virual megaspam from the wonderful folks of Xupiter, Gator, etc. My only solution was to reformat my hard drive, but things have changed under XP and some of the old DOS commands don't work. In my ignorance, I managed to give myself two operating systems on the same hard drive and that can't be good. But at least I have Internet access again. I was able to get online with my pitiful backup computer - salvaged from the refuse heap at OU, however the poor thing [Homecoming Shirts] wasn't able to handle this site so except for deleting spam, it might as well hand in its dinner pail and shut down for good. It's clear that the time for a new computer for Nancy is approaching since we can't afford for me to be unable to work for a week. This is not good news for the budget, but I hope it makes the creators of viral hell really proud.
November 7, 2003 Crushed and Mutilated You won't find a peppier title on any of my weblog entries any time soon so you won't be seeing many entries at all. I simply haven't the heart to write in the wake of the overwhelming chaos caused by the virus I came home to last month.
I absolutely can't understand the minds of those who cause random virus chaos when they could be doing amazing things. Clearly they have talent, but it's so warped Microsoft has put a $5M bounty on their heads. Go Bill, go. I would like to add that FrontPage sucks since it recently saw fit to corrupt thousands of links on our site by adding extra code. Months or even years ago, I mentioned that File:/// may be added to internal links made before pages are initially saved. Recently, I've seen that same thing added to hundreds of previously saved and published pages. I don't know why, but I'm not a happy webmaster. Down with Bill!
November 10, 2003: Saved by the Bounty Hunter I'm not sure of the pride I take in going to parties and talking about (grrr) FrontPage. It's nerdly to be sure, but when people say they're throwing together a website, can you just bite your tongue, nod sagely and swill some more punch? I didn't think so. The good news is I discovered a new author. I was starved for a good book when I got a copy of Crimson Hit. After four bombs in a row - Why are some people legally permitted to cause grievous body harm to trees? - I was thrilled by this soon to be published Bob Burton novel. It's entertaining. It's clever. It's a great read. Sign up for your copy now (scroll up - right column) or risk missing a fresh series where the bounty hunter always gets his man and, of course, his woman.
November 17, 2003: Nancy's Famous Neighbors Based on hotel rooms I've been lucky enough to stay in (through no merit of my own), you're probably thinking I live in a wonderful neighborhood filled with Oklahoma's finest architecture - hey we do have some pretty swell buildings. But alas, my home and greenlightWRITE's World Headquarters are located in a modest suburb of Oklahoma City with nothing more than the DF's excellent gardening skills to distinguish it. However, I do possess neighbors Us Magazine has been pursuing for years. Cowboy star Dale Robertson's former ranch (he kept the house) is only a few miles away and singer Garth Brook's father's home is almost within walking distance (if you're feeling energetic - very energetic). Everyone else in the area is less famous, but just as meritorious in the big scheme of things. And that's it
November
24, 2003: Giving
a Little This
morning's mail brought word from PayPal that you can contribute to some
of your favorite charities with just a few mouse clicks. These
include:
*United States Fund for UNICEF at http://unicefholiday.kintera.org As we come to the end of what we'd like to see as a joyous and peaceful Ramadan, and with Hanukkah and Christmas only a month away - not to speak of countless other upcoming religious festivals around the world - wouldn't it be wonderful if we could unite to solve the health and poverty problems of the world instead of blowing each other up? Or sending each other computer viruses?
November
28, 2003 The
Easy Way If you read this blog with any regularity,
you know I like to shop - sometimes I wonder if I didn't start this
whole site thing to help my shopping habit. But this morning at
5:18 a.m., I committed a shopping mortal sin. I didn't get up
and join the crowd waiting for the $15 gift certificates available free
to the first 300 shoppers. (Too late to make the 6 a.m. deadline
by then.) And I didn't rise, dress and drive to my neighborhood When I finally got my lazy self up, I strolled to my computer and without even brushing my teeth or walking out my door, I bought the camera for the princely shipping charge of $1.87! Ha! Take that early morning crowd fighters! I win! Ny-ah.
And just now I signed us up to become Wal-Mart affiliates because you need to know about good deals too.
December 6, 2003 Holiday Diets Everyone wants to lose 10 pounds for the holidays, but criminals have taken dining strategies to a new level. Just yesterday, I read about the crazed Internet denizen who met his soul mate online and then ate the poor, unsuspecting chump. I was, of course, relieved because that incident took place in Germany. And as you know, it can't happen here. But guess which resident of Oklahoma opened up the morning paper [Daily Oklahoman] to read the page four headline, "Eizember tells story of survival"? It seems that captured fugitive Scott Eizember cooked and ate a dog while on the run from the law for murder, assault and kidnapping. I don't know about the food situation where you live, but there is absolutely nothing between here and Germany that could set my gastronomic juices flowing right now. And to get my mind off breakfast (Where did that come from?), here's a little customer service gem that came in this morning's e-mail from the friendly folks at SBC:
Talk about your appetite suppressants.
December 24, 2003 Skip this Paycheck I would be remiss if I didn't issue a movie warning as my Christmas gift to you. We went to see a the new movie Paycheck the other night and while it isn't the worst film ever, it's got an unbelievable storyline that's full of holes. Unless you're a fan of director John Woo's explosions, choose The Last Samurai (I'm not a Tom Cruise junkie, but this movie is good - though I understand not quite historically accurate) or Lord of the Rings - Return of the King (wow) or take a chance on one of the thousands of pictures set to open on December 25. Happy viewing.
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