WorldMaker Interim

Interim nearing Retirement....

2004-12-17T21:21:00.000-05:00

Created a new account with a new host, and felt liberated enough to cancel my account with my existing account. Changed my domain's nameservers and was amazed at how quick I noticed the propagation, which was less than an hour or so...

I'm thinking I'll be using Drupal, at least for the immediate time being, because although I was glad to find an intact copy of most of my last MDV engine, I'm thinking its probably time to retire the quick and dirty MDV. I've been watching Drupal in action at the new LoadedMouth and have come to like its smashing of generic CMS and Slash-style. It has enough of the Slash-ism to be real useful, but without looking like every other Slash-y site out there.

The site isn't yet ready for primetime, and I'll probably be spending the next few days on a template of it of my own. I'm thinking I've lost Gradient Overload, and although I wasn't planning to replace it this soon, I'm thinking I'll probably make a new one. I have a new logo that I'm planning to unveil soon.

The Rain God in Me

2004-12-13T22:30:00.000-05:00

There is a common myth that I’ve had told to me that on his or her deathbed an atheist will often “repent” and shout out to god. Often this is either used in conjunction with the broken Pascal’s Argument in an attempt to sway me or it is used in conjunction with “magic” and placed in the same mystic realm as “out of body experiences” and “near-death experiences”, which is to say that they sound to me an awful lot like illusions and hysterias.

No, for me, the place I will most likely seek comfort on the deathbed isn’t “God” or any other external deity. I’m afraid that the obvious place for me to go is a familiar place called solipsism. Solipsism, the belief that I alone matter, is something that has always been on the edge of my thoughts. Ultimately it’s a combination of natural skepticism and paranoia. At the end of the day it’s easy for me to say, “I’m not sure anyone else exists outside me,” and fall asleep in that simple comfort. Come death, I think the temptation would be too great to slip into those thoughts one last time. Solipsism isn’t exactly egotism, at least in my opinion. In fact, the loneliness that tinges it can alone be ego-shrinking.

In my own thoughts I’ve dealt with solipsism for a long time. The small belief I carry as a keepsake of some of my more solipsistic periods of childhood, as a small mini-solipsism, is the belief that I am a Rain God. I remember so many afternoons when I was disturbed and angered over some outside game and my only friend and companion would be the Rain… its tears would overpower my own, and in so doing would drown out the sorrow by forcing us to move to indoors activities.

A psychologist might diagnose it all away as a mild case of SAD (seasonal anxiety disorder) in which the lack of sunshine causes my grief, not my grief causing the Rain. They would probably further go on to say that I had what I felt was a rough childhood and what they think was a loner attitude. But, what do they know? How does that explain my seeming preference for nocturnal living or the fact that my moods generally do start often before the weather?

I believe that these past few months’ heavy rain and cloud cover in my vicinity is no coincidence, and is partly my doing. A psychologist might call that delusion, perhaps even a “benign” delusion, but I’ve always just kind of seen it as a toy I may or may not have. It isn’t so much a delusion as a running joke in my life and I’m just not sure who the joke is on: me or the universe.

Beyond that however, is the fact that between quantum cryptography and the more panentheistic belief structures solipsism is slowly being accepted as a possibility, although in a much larger sense. I find it aesthetically pleasing to think that perhaps I, as a momentary fragment of consciousness in and of the Universe, am quite possibly thinking the thoughts of the Universe and it really is all about me, just “me the Universe”. If that’s the case, then the joke is on both us: me and the universe.

So, I believe this recent heavy cloud cover and rains have been due to my mulling over my job situation, even as this session of it nears its close. I am feeling the very feelings I warned myself, out loud and in public, that I warned myself I would have. I’m feeling regret that I accepted the money I was offered, and the only job I was offered, and didn’t fight hard enough for a better one.

It’s not that I’m unhappy, I’m just not happy. This place is so stifling, uncreative, and conservative, that I feel like I’m slowly dieing. I feel like the creativity is being burned off me like some layer of skin I didn’t know I had. Even beyond all that, I feel stuck in a rut simply in the fact that I don’t feel challenged in the work. There isn’t anything in the efforts I’m asked to take that I haven’t done before. The typical response is “well, ask to do something that will ask new things of you”, but it’s just not that simple. There isn’t any task at work, due to its technological conservatism, that I haven’t done some form of already. Having such a big name brand on my resume can’t hurt obviously, and I can parlay what I have been able to do into good potential interviewer stock, but I can’t honestly say that I’ve learned anything really new or gained any experience.

“I told you so” just sounds so much more hurtful when it’s you on both sides of the discussion.

I keep wondering if perhaps I should continue to seek a job that might be emotionally and creatively more fulfilling for the next semester I can co-op, even if the Co-op Office at school and the co-op HR people at work might both be hugely disappointed, and perhaps angry. Someone in my group at work even suggested I keep an ear to the ground for a possibly better oppurtunity. On the other hand a few of my close friends, some of whom have done similar work in co-ops, think that I'm just whining and I just just live through it.

The one job that keeps haunting me is how much I would have preferred to try working at Microsoft. It would have offered a more technologically progressive work environment, better perks, and a chance to see more of the world than I currently have. (Perhaps, however, the real siren song I hear is that of such a stereotypically rainy city like Seattle/Redmond for a lesser Rain God.)

I spent quite a bit of work attempting to get them to notice me. I got some notice, but some of it was simply too late. That particular recruiter was kind in acknowledging me, and offered to fight for me and my resume in the next round of recruiting, which itself has just passed by uneventfully. If I emailed him, what would he say? I feel so drained from the job I’m currently in that I’m not sure I’d have the will to fight for a new position...

Book of the Moment

2004-12-09T01:11:00.000-05:00

I tried doing this once before with my "Currently Reading" mini-blog, but found out that I often wouldn't update it enough, due to both procrastination and a slower reading pace (thanks to College). Because books seem to be so integral to my creative sanity, and are a large part of any "decorating" efforts I tend to make, I do like the idea of attempting say a bit more about what I'm reading and why.

I'll start this off with Stephen Baxter's Manifold: Origin. Baxter is an often incredible writer in my fairly small, but heavily enjoyed, category of ex-physicists who write great books that I often pick off a shelf automatically. (The other in this category is David Brin.) The problem with some of Baxter's novels is that as much as I enjoy them they can often be slow reading for me. This book actually sat in my "Currently Reading" box up to the point where I got tired of it and hid it away in a template redesign. It has been on my shelf with a bookmark in it for several months now. So the book has come back into the vogue of my conscious because it has become my coffee break book at work now that I've finished scribing my Meta-War tale (which I'm thinking I'll release in its entirety relatively shortly; probably after I scribe something of a Cliff's Notes).

The book took some time for me to get into it. It started strong, and I liked the previous two in the series, but this one's large focus on anthropology had me bogged down in much of the beginning because I had a hard time slogging through it. Anthropology is one of the few subjects where I have little interest. Finally, one 15 minute break at a time I've reached the next part and peeled off more layers of the onion. In this new part Stephen Baxter has started to explore the larger meta-world one small jigsaw piece at a time and this is where Baxter really shines. Like myself, Baxter is awesome when playing with larger scales and structures, but his detail in "typical" story places such as character development is often somewhat wanting. But that's what I read his books for. (On the other hand, I've got Neal Stephenson's Quicksilver on my shelf mocking me... I'm not sure I'll read it. Stephenson seems to have delved into the complete inverse in which he mounts large amounts of detail and development and tangential focus, but the overall larger picture seems to be out of focus and fuzzy. An interesting take on things, but I'm certain the mountainous volume is much more than I can muster.)

Manifold: Origin, like the two preceding it, is an exploration of Fermi's Paradox ("if there is intelligent life out there, why haven't we noticed it?"). One book conjectured, "it's out there if we look in the right places". The second theorized, "it's all around us, we just haven't noticed". This one points to the current theory in Anthropology that in at least one point in world history there were multiple intelligent hominid species on this planet. It seems to be that it is then taking that idea and pushing it back around the first and second conjectures in new ways.

Reading it at Coffee Breaks re-energizes some of my spirit and gives me time to think about what I read earlier, and balances the some of the slowness of my take to the book. As new revelations are slowly building I find myself awaiting the next coffee break...

What happens in Bizarro World, stays in Bizarro World...

2004-12-02T01:08:00.000-05:00

You know what the Bizarro World is, don't you? It's a part of the grand Superman mythos, the unsettling Sealab 2021 mythos, the satirical Drawn Together mythos, and even made a cameo in the Seinfeld mythos. (Just to name a few.) From time to time Superman would come into contact with an arrival into his Universe from the Bizarro Universe, which was usually Superman's short-bus counterpart Bizarro Superman, or Superman might wind up with an unplanned vacation in the Bizarro Universe. Bizarro Superman is considered by some as Superman's menace, although he was really more like Superman's retarded ward. Bizarro Superman didn't really know any better than destroying and smashing things because, ultimately, he was extremely stupid. It was often that he would think he was helping things by destroying things. It was the only real characterization from the DC Canon that truly pulled any emotion from me as a kid, the harsh emotion of pity.

The main Conservative tactic over the last four years, and which I believe will continue for sometime, seems to fit the description Bizarro Liberalism extraordinarily well.

I think its probably best to explain Bizarro Liberalism through examples. A few quick starting points: The Rights Fight, The Bush Agenda: Unfuckingbeleivable: God vs. Liberals.

I've been meaning to showcase a few of the Reader's Letters from the local newspaper that have particularly boiled my blood, but these are easy enough to find at the Courier Journal's Opinion Page. Instead I've decided to savage someone from a much smaller paper, the student-published "liberal" newspaper The Louisville Cardinal. (The Cardinal is actually sometimes readable. On the other hand, there actually is a student-published conservative newspaper, The Louisville Patriot, which frightens me from even attempting to pick it up.) For an appetizer, you can read how Louisville is not a "safe zone" for Conservatives. For the main course I offer you this letter to the editor that I can't find online (hopefully for good editorial reasons, although probably just because they don't publish letters to the editor online):

Stupid liberals strongly advised to get a clue

Here is a little clue for liberals: they got their butts handed to them because they are stupid — yes, stupid. They act like they are so smart and sophisticated, but they aren't. They're stupid.

Right off the bat you have a bizarro version of my view that Conservatives are Stupid. Obviously only one can actually be fact. Maybe its just me, but I remember the election being a tight race that had a mere 3 million vote seperation (around 3% of the voters) and decided in quite a few states by a much smaller margin. I would not consider that a metaphorical "butt handing", perhaps a "butt rubbing" or "butt slapping", but definitely not a metaphorical "butt handing".

They talk about tolerance for all groups accept [sic] the ones they don't like (Christians), and then they think people will actually agree with them — that's stupid.

Once again you seem to have discovered a Bizarro cache of thoughts. I haven't yet met a liberal who doesn't accept Christians, excepting the fact that they don't always agree with some of the more fundamentalist backwards beliefs. We realize how many people hold and cherish some of these Flat Earth-ian beliefs, and accept that that exists, even if we don't condone it. We also accept that many of these morons won't agree with on these issues, which is why we try to deal with real issues such as the Economy and Environmentalism. Beyond that, shockingly some Liberals are Christian.

No, it is the Conservatives who talk about intolerance for many groups, in particular those they don't like, and then they think people will actually agree with them, even those in those particular groups. (Of course, sadly that appears to be the case, but it doesn't make it any less stupid.)

They think people who work hard and want the government out of their pocket books are going to roll over and let a bunch of government geeks take their money and give it to lazy people who won't work — that's stupid.

At least now we've briefly left Bizarro World for Myth and Lies World, which is fairly well known country and has been a showcase of the Conservatives for several decades. Here we see, like some animals in their 'natural' habit in tourist-gawked zoo cages, the "Myth of Conservative Libertarianism" and the "Myth of Welfare is for Lazy People". First of all Consersative Libertarianism, at this point, is a joke. The War Economy mentality that modern Conservatives have, in which a perpetual war is necessary for the good of the country (ha!), means entirely new meanings for Government Spending. Only now, instead of taking from your pocket book and putting into the pocket books of the less fortunate, or into the education of you or your relatives, the Conservatives are just giving that money away to Big Multinational Corporations. Is Halliburton more important than "lazy people"?

They thought a small group of homosexuals were going to completely change the definition of marriage by staging a handful of pink and rainbow parades — that's stupid.

Ah, enjoy raining on parades, then? First of all, in what Bizarro world is allowing same-sex marriage completely changing the definition of marriage? Let's see, from Webster: "an intimate or close union". I don't know about you, but some of the gay couples I've met have had much more intimate and close relationships than some of the heterosexual couples I've met. If anything is changing the definition of marriage it is the current profluence of divorce in this country. Secondly, I think its more than just a "small group", it's completely easy for a heterosexual man to support gay marriage rights (like, say, random example: me), and it wasn't just parades that took place. Maybe you were too busy pissing on the parades to see some of the other stuff.

They thought a sloppy half-cocked propaganda film by a sloppy half-baked loser like Michael Moore was going to change America — that's real stupid.

Sloppy, perhaps, but Fahrenheit 9/11 wasn't lacking adequate preparation or forethought. If anything, it was too planned an attack, which I'll admit may have pushed a few moderates away. I'm not sure about Moore's drug usage (although I'll admit that I'm for the legalization of drugs, so I wouldn't hold it against the guy), but I do know that his sloppiness is a matter of personal style, which I don't begrudge him. I also don't believe a man with his money, charitable contributions, or hopeful and optimistic goal of perhaps bettering mankind through an odd sense of humor, can be classified as a "loser". Beyond that, none of the liberals I knew thought the movie would change America, we only hoped, and in some cases (such as the liberals who are Christian) prayed that the movie just might change America. I don't know about you, but I don't believe hope is stupid, and I feel offended that you are so eager to piss on people's broken hope and broken dreams.

The entire structure of the Liberal Democrat movement is based on stupid ideas and stupid principles. No wonder we kicked your butts, you aren't that smart.

Sally Frank
Intern

The entire structure of the conservative movement is based on lies and a bizarro twisting of liberal politics meant to ensnare liberals. The amazing thing is that it seems to have worked, even if it has divided the country while doing so.

By the way, you switched from "they" to "you" in your final paragraph, which is something that upsets English majors. I've used "you" consistently through out, to make my lambasting of you all the more personal because you seem to be an idiot, and I have no shame in hurting the feelings of strangers for being intolerant and backwards.

Drenching the Thanksgiving Spirit

2004-11-28T14:22:00.000-05:00

Whereas I thought that I would have last night spent some time with family after a long drive out of town, I found myself instead watching the Back to the Future trilogy in my room. It was nice to have such an immediate relief from the cold rain, but ultimately disappointment still simmered.

It had been discussed for a few weeks. Being the un-planner that I am I continued to not really think about it until it was almost nigh. By then it was easy enough to take the positions of my sister and my mother that the trip to Otter Creek Park was such a large hassle and that I would much rather not spend my rare amount of holiday time off from work this semester to spend the night camping in Otter Creek with family.

Yesterday I had all intention of getting pretty drunk because it was the final tailgate of the year. Realization struck when I woke up early yesterday that not only would fewer people be tailgating, but that I wouldn't have planned to get drunk during a tailgate this semester and the only reason I had been telling people that I probably would be getting drunk was because it would relieve me of responsibility.

I realized that what I was fighting was not really what my sister or mother was fighting, it was that I was fighting things closer to hand: I didn't want to drive, I didn't want to use my car, and I didn't want to think. If I had realized this earlier, instead of feeding off my sister and mother's discontent, I could have effected those changes in much easier ways.

I found myself looking forward to it, actually, by the end of yesterday's game. The game, Louisville vs. Cincinatti at Louisville, was a beautiful rain drenched affair. I had left at half-time of the last rain drenched game, and so resolved myself to watching this one until the final quarter ran out of time. Few others seemed similarly resolved, but those that remained were all equally in high spirits. It's hard to imagine a better game: The first touch-down occured with only 12 seconds lost on the clock from the start of the game. By half-time the score was 42-0, which meant we had a taco game at the half (ticket stubs become worth free tacos from the local franchisee of the national fast-casual Qdoba chain at 40 points scored in a home game). The third quarter ended 63-0 and even though they scored in the fourth quarter the final score still left us a 63 point lead at 70-7. This was one of the most incredibly one-sided games I've seen and it was all the more satisfactory for the victory to be against a regional rival in our conference (both current (C-USA) and incoming (Big East)) that continued to brag this year about having a better defense than us even when the stats didn't show it. Sure, their offense had suffered major damage from the loss of their main quarterback, but if their defense was as great as they bragged it was we shouldn't have been able to post as many points as we did.

It was an awesome game and well worth the thorough soak I recieved from the medium-heavy mildly cold rains. In fact, the cold really didn't hit until I found myself trudging out of the stadium and down the sidewalk in the direction of my car. Recounting the game with family over dinner was the only thing I could think of even as I stopped in the Arby's halfway between the stadium and my car for a cup of coffee and a few brief moments to warm myself. Not a few minutes after leaving the warmth of the Arby's, as I was again trudging in the mildly cold rain, my jacket I noticed was weighing some ten or twenty pounds from all the rain it appears to have soaked up, I was informed that there had been some sort of wreck on Dixie Highway and we weren't going to even attempt the drive.

I didn't even have dinner, because I was cold and tired and had already passed up eating at Arby's for the promise of eating with family. Instead I took the opportunity to remove my wet clothes and curl up in my warm room watching movies. It wasn't the same as having a large meal with family, and in the end I find that I regret it. My sister sounded pretty happy not to have to make the drive to Otter Crrek. I was just tired and soaked.

As much as previous years' memories of outings to Otter Creek with my dad's large family are often drenched and soaked themselves in small annoyances, I should be thankful that I have a family that has them and for what joys and entertainments do come out of them.

For a much more blissful tale of this Thanksgiving season, my friend Andy posted his own thoughts.

The Rights Fight

2004-11-27T13:55:00.000-05:00

It just amazes me how insensitive these bigots can be and yet they claim that we are the ones who are "close-minded" because we don't accept their bigotry.

In today's more local news Boyd County, KY's gay rights troubles continue. The ACLU fought hard to try to get acceptance training into that school district after some extreme cases of bigotry and yet the lessons weren't learned. It's disappointing, and with the anti-rights ammendment recently passed in the State it can only get worse it seems. Apparently some group based in Arizona is already at legal arms to battle for these students' "right" to remain uneducated bigots. I'm not gay, so I suppose I can be ridiculed for supporting their cause even if it doesn't affect me personally.

On a more national level I found myself angered over a conservative blogger who equated the "Right to Choose" with a mass slaughter. When pressed on what he knew of abortion he could only bring up the oft-cited "40 million dead" and talk about the tougher later-pregnancy (so-called, incorrectly, "partial birth") abortions that can cause just as much trouble to a mother and are only for the most extreme of circumstances (the mother's life is at risk). As I told him, the major abortive methods prescribed are chemical and hormonal and only work early in a pregnancy. Early enough into a pregnancy the abortion is as "killing" as masturbation or menstruation. But all of that is neither here nor there as ultimately I'm not an expert and cannot make any sort of stand on this issue. I support choice because as a guy I have no right to support anything else. I will never have to face this issue first hand. It's apparently easy for guys to try to legislate something that doesn't affect them.

I bring both of these up because ultimately they don't directly affect me, but I've had to take stands on these issues because they do indirectly affect me. The rallying cry for the Democratic Party for the next four years cannot be "move to the center" or "appease the bigots", it must be "Give me Liberty or Death" or the New Hampshire slogan "Live Free or Die". The conservatives are trying to legislate their religion and take away rights, freedoms, and liberty from those they don't like and don't agree with. We, the Left, have to focus and support all of these issues because a loss in any of them is a loss in all of them. We have to stop throwing these bigots bones and teach them once and for all that bigotry shall not be tolerated in our country, much less supported by the government.

I'll come back and comment on the Rights that directly affect me (Privacy, Freedom of Religion) in a later post.

Amatuer Economist Hour

2004-11-26T03:46:00.000-05:00

Well, those who know me or read some of the posts that are archives that are currently not available (and possibly lost to the electron cloud depending on how much my current host can pull out) may know that I enjoy from time to time playing the Amatuer Economist game.

Lately I've been extremely pessimistic about the current state of the Economy and the direction it appears to be heading. First of all, before I continue, I must apologize to fine Economists such as Alan Greenspan for even thinking to publically post any sort of pessimistic outlook on the economy. The economy is very much influenced by mob law and if a panic shall occur and it can be blamed on me, it will.

This post is a filter and rewrite of comments I posted to a piece at Loaded Mouth called The Bush Agenda: Pants, Meet Shit which in turn was a pointer to the Boston Herald article Economic 'Armageddon' Predicted.

The article sounds heavily in line with what I (the Amatuer Economist) have been predicting in private with friends. (Obviously I don't carry as much salt as "Morgan Stanley", so feel free to disagree with me.)

Mainly, the Conservatives are gearing us up to being drenched in the Second Great Depression. First of all, the political model Rove has seemed to be following is the exact same one that gave Republicans control of the US for 30 years and landed us in the first Great Depression. Secondly, I think that the economic signs are almost easy to see... Which the article points out beautifully. The big thing however, I think, is the unprecedently low Employment in the country with Employment *still* declining. "Unemployment" numbers may be dropping, but most of that is due to people dropping out of the system because Unemployment Insurance runs out after 6 months or so in most states.

However, my longer term predictions are somewhat more detailed than the ones in the article (again, amatuer economics):

This new depression will make the one in the 80s look like "recession" Bush claims that he helped us climb out of in the last four years.
It may not be worse than the Great Depression in terms of the world economy as world trade controls are much better today and I think that the EU and China will both be strong rocks in the global economy.
It may not be worse in individual "short term" segments, but I think it will be much more prolonged. Assuming that Republicans are not stupid enough to make any major changes to the FDIC, Fed. Reserve, Welfare, or Unemployment we shall have several "old" new deal pieces in place to serve as semi-decent anchors within the immediate short term in particular.
Time to start stuffing the mattress again with currency? Or raisins? I'd say gold, but we're full of it up here, and so saturated the market it's lost it's meaning. —Kate S.

At the moment anything less than $100,000 in a single account is fine. The FDIC insures it for you, so even if your bank should go bankrupt (and with today's "mega-banks" that is almost a ridiculous situation) you'll still be able to reclaim that cash, so no need to stuff mattresses. (If you have more than $100,000 I would suggest investing anything above that in Real Estate or other accounts with other banks.)

The real worry is that inflation is going to hit (soon, most likely), and it could quite possibly be hyperinflation. You might not have to worry about magically losing your cash, but your cash will definitely not go as far.

The best investment is still Real Estate. The price of Real Estate will always go up, no matter what happens with inflation or the price of the dollar. The same cannot be said for any mineral (such as Gold) or market investment.

What does this mean? We aren't going to see the Banks and Savings & Loans fail as spectacularly as they did during the great depression (watch "It's a Wonderful Life" for some small idea), but we could very well see the return of Hoovervilles, which I hope the new ones are called Bushvilles, because he deserves nothing less.

Again, I'm thinking it will be somewhere between the 80s Depression and the Great Depression in terms of depth, but could well possibly last much much longer.

The only thing that could possibly shorten such a thing would be a new FDR and a new new deal, but I think at the moment the possibility of finding one could be tough. Especially because this time the Conservatives aren't going to take *any* responsibility for the state of the economy, because bullshit "Reagonomics" tells them they aren't responsible. [sarcasm]After all, it's all Clinton's fault and the sins of the over-eager dot-com boom are merely just coming back to haunt us.[/sarcasm]

Tas, at LoadedMouth pointed out how its the social programs (Welfare, Unemployment, et al) that are always bailing the Economy out and that it helped proved that Capitalism doesn't work. I'm not a socialist, and its interesting to hear the "capitalism failed hard" message. I wouldn't say it failed so much as it "succumbed to a mob mentality", which is more a human failing than a failing of capitalism's basic theory. (Just as Communism neither proved nor disproved basic socialism theory.)

I myself have come away from a lot of reading being something of a "Social Credit" supporter. Social Credit was a part of the seed for a lot of the ideas that modern economics seems to take for granted. The big key to the platform is the idea that neither pure socialism nor pure capitalism have been shown to work in practice. I very much believe that a mixed economy is the only possibility that has been shown to work in the long term as both socialism and capitalism provide excellent checks and balances between each other. (Let socialism handle a market's needs and capitalism a market's wants.)

(Just for anyone curious, the name "Social Credit" fell out of vogue except in Canada where parties of that name were instrumental in that country's economy (and universal healthcare). The name actually stands for one of the more radical ideas that Social Credit supporters had in which some Capitalist excess is skimmed (most of the theories on doing this come from manipulating the credit system which does in fact give banks the power to "generate" money) to provide "basic needs" checks to every citizen (tangent: this radical socialist tactic could well help the conservatives and their hatred of abortion in that babies would also get these checks thus reducing, though not eliminating, the financial burden of having a new kid). A neat sci-fi exploration of some of this theory is in Heinlein's For Us, The Living.)

We're all fucked if I'm right. I'm so hoping I'm wrong and just jumping to conclusions...

Back Logged

2004-11-26T03:11:00.000-05:00

Posted in Loaded Mouth's comments:

My host lost the server's hard drive. I was told they kept weekly back-ups, but I'm hearing that depending on how much they can recover the next best back-up they have available is from "around 5 months ago".

I'm extremely pissed, but I've paid until January... I'm hoping that I'll get some sort of refund and that I'll have a new host picked by then. I found a much more local company, but wasn't happy with their prices, and found I was happy with GoDaddy's prices but not their locality (in particular, no 800 number).

Probably my biggest annoyance is that I don't have a local backup at all at this point, which I'll admit was laziness and forgetfulness on my part (as well as a hard drive crash). I may possibly be able to find some stuff, but I don't have a backup of any sort of blog content. It just goes to show me that I keep forgetting the same lessons.

At least, at the moment, I have email. So anyway, the short answer is, "the System is Down, yo" and so expect much more verbose and angry posts here in response to not having my own site in working order. I'm thinking I might need to set up an interim blogger site just to keep me from exploding from excess built up verbage.

It appears that I am setting up a temporary blogger page...