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Looking For Quacks In The Pavement

  • Interesting Things about March 8

    So, here’s the deal. It’s not a Google meme this time, but rather a Wikipedia meme. Cute, no?

    The Rules:
    1. Type in your birthday (minus the year) in the search bar at Wikipedia.org
    2. List three interesting facts, two births, and one death that happened on your birthday.

    Righto. Let’s see… “March 8” gives us such interesting tidbits as…

    Events:

    1782 – Gnadenhütten massacre: Almost 100 Native Americans in Gnadenhutten, Ohio had their skulls crushed with a mallet by Pennsylvanian militiamen in a mass murder.
    1911 – International Women’s Day is celebrated for the first time.
    1948 – The United States Supreme Court rules that religious instruction in public schools violated the Constitution.

    (I was tempted to go with all three of the massacres available, but, no.)

    Births:

    1918 – Alan Hale, Jr., American actor
    1969 – Andrea Parker, American actress, ballet dancer

    (The Skipper and Miss Parker. Go figure.)

    Death:

    1999 – Joe DiMaggio, baseball player

    (Thus answering the immortal question from that Simon And Garfunkel song, I suppose.)

  • Still here. Just not writing much yet.

    In between efforts to get my things (physical and virtual) from my former office, trying to get my mood back on an even keel, getting (and keeping) the new webserver running, gearing up for the job hunt and so forth, I simply haven’t had energy or willpower enough to write about what’s happened.

    Maybe that’s for the best. Anything I’d have written in the last couple of weeks would’ve come across as dreadfully maudlin.

    My goals as of now are simple, yet daunting: To find a job that pays comparably to the last one. (No choice, there. Child support + rent + other bills + eating = serious money.) To avoid slipping into a major depression. (If I fail this goal, I fail the other. It’s that simple.) I keep telling myself “I can do this,” and sometimes I even believe it.

    I’m not really built for serious life challenges, you know? But I can either mourn the life I had or get the hell on with finding out what the future holds. Again, it’s that simple. And when you get right down to it, I’m a simple kind of guy.

    Going to the office yesterday to get the last of my computer files, though, damned near broke me. Dammit.

  • Fun with RAM

    Twice in the last twelve hours I’ve called the (polite, efficient, helpful) Dedicated Hosting support techs at Infinity Internet (our new hosts!) to reboot this webserver. As near as I can tell, running six websites (no matter how low-traffic) and an email rig on 128 megabytes of RAM just isn’t going to cut it.

    I’ve tweaked some settings here and there to (hopefully) cut down on the chance of another server lock-up between now and Monday (which is the earliest I can talk to someone about upgrading the memory), but if you see my little family of websites go “poof” between now and then… well, now you’ll know why.

    Unless, of course, the server vapor-locks before you can read this. In which case you’ll be able to read all about it next week when I get this resolved…

  • Didja miss me?

    Whew. I ran into a little gotcha right at the end (“hmm, maybe double-checking PHP for MySQL support would’ve been a good idea two days ago…”) but other than that it would seem that my efforts of the past week have paid off.

    Yes, the websites are back. Not that they were ever really gone, thanks to the good efforts of my former corporate overseer, but I feel a whole helluva lot better now that I’m up and running in new digs. There will be bits and pieces of all of our sites that probably won’t be fully functional until I’ve had a chance to tinker with them individually, of course. Please be patient with me, as it’s been quite the couple of weeks.

    I’ll do a nice big “catch up on things” post later. This? I’m mostly just testing to make sure things actually work…

  • It doesn’t get much worse.

    I just got the call. I’ve been let go.

    My cellphone will go away shortly. My access to servers and what-not will go away. Oh, yeah, that means this website and a number of others hosted on this server will probably go away. That includes my email account, as well as others’ email accounts. If things suddenly vanish… you’ll know why.

    And I have no good prospects, and I do not look good on paper, and I have no idea what I’m going to do now.

    Wish me luck. I could certainly use some, for a change.

  • And now, I wait.

    You don’t make a violent angry scene at the workplace without facing the consequences later on. At least, this is the case if you’re a responsible citizen of the world, which is a status I continually strive for.

    I was just asked, politely, not to show up at work tomorrow while the Powers That Be consult with Corporate HR about the problem that is yours truly. Before anyone gets angry at… anyone, really, please keep in mind that they’re within their rights to do this much. I don’t know what sort of action they want to take next, though, and that’s what scares me silly. If I’m lucky it’ll be some docked pay and a mark on my permanent record. If I’m not… well, I’m trying very hard not to dwell on the worst-case scenario. Very.

    Of course, eventually one of my rare flashes of mindless rage had to get me into more trouble than my natural talents and normal good nature could get me back out of, huh? Maybe this is the time I finally have to pay the piper. It would just figure, wouldn’t it? Still… I hope not.

    I like my job, dammit.

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