goblinbox

In which this website would be in fifth grade now, if it were human.

GOBLINBOX.COM is nine years old today.

It’s been on at least seven different servers. It’s been hand-coded, it’s been run on Movabletype and WordPress. It’s had ten different forums. There have been as many as eight different databases at a time. There have been innumerable themes and color schemes and layouts.

It has suffered multiple crashes and some pretty significant data loss. There are sub-folders filled with broken image galleries. I’ve been asked to remove material a half a dozen times by both friends and employers. It’s been hacked twice, it’s been served take-down orders thrice, and it nearly got me sued once.

At its peak, it was getting ten thousand unique hits each month (now it gets about 2k), was spidered, indexed, and botted within an inch of its life, and it used upwards of 90% of the server’s total bandwidth.

It has been the cause of my learning FrontPage, HTML, Dreamweaver, graphic design and slicing, CSS, DNS, PHP, server security, MySQL, legal crap, and a lot of social crap.

I’ve written here about tech, work, sci-fi, gadgets, books, media, death, sex, miscarriage, love, divorce, travel, loss, weather, panic and anxiety, surgery, spirituality, film photography, knitting, and music – and there are even some pretty good recipes.

I’ve learned that some people will bitch at me for writing about them, and that other people will bitch at me for not writing about them. I’ve learned that there’s an awful lot of stuff I can’t write about, but that I can still somehow manage to convey what I need to convey.

Friends and family keep up with me through this website. I’ve made lots of new friends through this website. Some of them are old friends now, some of them dropped off the Internet, some of them I now know in real life.

Many of the blogs I’ve followed over the years are gone now. People are always announcing sabbaticals, or deleting their sites, or drifting away quietly. I’ve never announced a break, and never even felt the desire to do so. I love this website, and I really mean it when I say Here’s to another nine years!

When I’ve needed it most, I’ve received tremendous love and support here, and I truly cherish that. Thank you, all who come to visit, each and every one of you, old or new. I mean it. Even if you don’t comment.

If you want, you can take a trip with me down memory lane and look at the Internet archive entries. Remember when the site was orange? When it was purple? Those crazy Xmas themes I used to build? Hah!

GOBLINBOX.COM is nine years old today. Nine! Nine.

In which my fucking browser ate my post so I had to write the whole thing all over again! Gah! So NOW this post is totally an exercise in Weird Tense. It’s a good thing I majored in Literature, y’all, or we’d never make it through this.

Yeah, so I’d started out today’s missive with something about this morning’s yoga class and how after only going twice I can touch my toes again, and how I paid for the rest of the sessions to make myself keep going.

And then I told you (again, but you forgave me) that I bought a yoga mat, and that it will be here Tuesday, and you were all happy for me and my yoga class.

Then I said something about how every time I want to write a blog post, all I can think about is stuff I’ve seen online, and how I’m not really doing anything IRL but working and sleeping. And then I cleverly said something about how I should get excited and make things so everyone would know that I know all about the Internet’s meme-of-the-week and I thereby retained my geek cred, which is totally important since obviously that’s all I have.

Then I cleverly segued into something along the lines of how much I love the Internet because it’s so awesomesauce and I was all ‘and here’s a story to prove it,’ and I went on to tell you about how last week someone on Twitter – where my entire social life takes place – linked to these totally fantastic posters some guy had designed for IYA09, and I told you about how I’d left a comment on the post – because hello! did you see those posters?! how could I not comment? – and that that’s what got me an email this week letting me know that the posters were now available for purchase.

Then this morning, Keef (the humanoid who has awesomely been hosting my site for free for about a geological age) hit me up on IM to discuss some server stuff, and I asked him if he’d seen the posters, and he hadn’t, so then I linked him, and then he had, and he allowed as to how wouldn’t they be great screenprints, and I totally agreed, and then it evolved into him emailing the artist to see if he, the artist, was interested in actual honest-to-God screenprinting, not that giclée stuff, which basically means “ink jet” anyway, and the artist said he’d already been asked several times if the posters would be available in that format, and it turns out that Keef totally does screenprinting, and so there you go.

Point being, I didn’t actually get excited and make anything myself, but I know people – online – who totally do that shit all the time.

And I watched CERN’s tweets as they spun up the LHC, and hung out at a live talk about Drake’s Equation at Astronomy.fm (during the moments I was blowing off the Tedious Data Entry Project I’m involved in at work) and so basically, other than going to yoga class and smiling at a bunch of strangers and being reminded yet again of my total and complete lack of muscle strength, I’ve really basically just had my head up the Internet’s arse all day.

Oh, did I mention that I love the Internet?

I did?

In which there are links.

A new Twitter-like site was launched recently. It’s called, for no apparent reason, Plurk. It’s basically Twitter with a cuter GUI, and doesn’t, as far as I can tell, do anything new. I signed up for an account (because I’m a whore and have to try all the new junk on the ‘net) but won’t switch entirely to Plurk until there’s a WordPress plugin for it and/or it proves to be more stable than Twitter.

Feeling conflicted about cheating on Twitter, I started using Ping.fm (per Vuboq‘s advice) to update all my services simultaneously, and now I’m running totally redundant content all over the damn web.

I really hope all this shit is useful to my beloved future AI, who will mine it all to use in personality modeling. (Other people have children or build monuments. My beloved future AI will immortalize me by basing part of itself on all the shit I’ll leave on the ‘net when I die. Blog posts, book lists, tracks listened to, purchases, blah blah blah. I’m so well-documented!) Because there really can’t be any other good use for all this meaningless chatter.

Although I do love reading my friends’ Twitters on my cell phone (when Twitter’s actually working, that is) as I go about my day. Keeps me feeling close to people who live on the other side of the country, or even on other continents, and that’s really the most hopeful application of technology, innit? Community!

In other news, teh BF is still hawt and I’m having way better sex than you. Srsly. WAY better. Like, omfgwtfbbq better it’s freaking ASTONISHING I am so totally not kidding!

In which I go on and on about crap like WP plugins and widgets and CSS.

I have made this new template work! Yay! In more than one browser, even! YAY ME!

It turns out that IE gets pissed if the math doesn’t work in one’s CSS; in other words, if your container is 800 px wide and your left column and right column (including padding or margins) does not equal 800, the page fails to render. Which sucks. Also, if you have an element inside a column that is wider than the column itself, the page fails to render. Which sucks.

Here’s the list of crap I accomplished last night:

1. Make this layout work in IE.
2. Find and install an RSS icon.
3. Link to Rants9.
4. Make an Archive page that works.
5. Make a Category heatmap.
6. Make the padding around Flickr images in the sidebar not suck.
7. Add All Consuming to the sidebar.
8. Add Current Status plugin to post pages.
9. Figure out HOW to alpha sort my Blogroll.
10. Feel like I have a template I can enjoy for more than two weeks!

So I know most of you probably hate this template, and want to go back to something else, and/or think it’s too busy… change sucks, I know. But sound off anyway. Hurt me.

I’ve quasi-updated the SiteTech page, which tells you all about what I’m running here on the site. I need to update it further because I’m not using some of the things listed there.

Now I’m gonna run and get some lunch. Ciao, babies!

Update: I bought soup and a sandwich from Revelations, where I found The Purse I Want. OMG! It costs $50, which is a lot for a purse, but it’s wonderful.

It has a long strap, so I can wear it across my body the way I like to, and it’s small yet big enough for all my electronics. I want I want I want I want it.

Maybe after Bindu sees the vet and the jeep sees the mechanic. *sigh* Poverty sucks.

In which I love these Mac-and-PC commercials.

I’m a Windows user, but that’s only because I’ve been really poor for a long time. When I get cash flow again, though, I’m buyin’ me a Mac.

Widgets, gadgets, completely different things. LOL! Yeah, Vista’s nothing like OSX. NOTHING. LIKE. IT.

In which there’s a geek fest.

I got an email today from Dr. Derrick over at ISU. (I don’t think we know each other, but he called me Mush.) Anyway, the point is the geeks will be partying at an event called IgniteIT and he invited me and asked me to let other geeks know.

Geeks! Partying! Here! In Iowa!

IgniteIT is one night in a three-day event called the Emerging Technologies Conference, hosted by ISU and packed full of neato geek guests. I mean, shit: Neil Stephenson is gonna be there. (He wrote Diamond Age and damn near makes fun of the futility of being mayor or Des Moines on his website. Heh.) Neil won’t be at IgniteIT, but I might might be. I mean, room full of geeks! Hello! Sign me up!

Now go read the definition of Latitudinarianism and think about what you’ve done.

In which the ‘box celebrates a very important occasion.

Six years ago today, I registered the GOBLINBOX.COM domain and immediately the hilarity you’ve come to know and love ensued.

Yay! Now buy me something!

In which the move is postphoned just a little longer. And I buy silly checks.

At the coffee shop this morning, the barrista was playing one of those pieces of music none of us can name but all know because it was in Fantasia and I found myself whistling along. The woman in line behind me said, “Your whistling sounds just like the Disney version!” (I can whistle, yo. I really can.)

Now I want to see Fantasia. I loved that film. I wonder if I’d have to join Netflix to get it, since Bread and I owe the local movie rental place, like, sixty bucks in late fees.

Since DNS is still updating, I won’t be moving goblinbox.com today. Probably tomorrow. (I’ve got everything moved, but LISCO isn’t authoritative yet, so even if I do DNS traffic won’t be pointed to the new server anyway.)

I might swing by the office tomorrow and backup the database one final time — don’t want to lose any comments! — and point traffic to the new server then. Hopefully this move will be smoother than most have been. I’m really hoping Rants 9 will work right off the bat and I won’t lose yet another batch of brilliant posts!

In other news, I totally cheesed out and ordered cartoon checks today. I’ve been carrying those bland safety yellow ones for a couple of years now so I decided to get something colorful. I’m such a corndog.

In which I totally didn’t put my refund into savings. Also: music, massage, my uterus, and moving the ‘box to a new server.

I got my $100 refund from Iowa this week, so I promptly spent it on two CDs and a massage! woot!

MUSIC

Bombay Dub Orchestra: Bombay Dub Orchestra Recently, Comfort Music turned me onto a few tracks from this CD and I dug ‘em so much I had to buy the whole thing. It’s eastern Indian pop, basically, and if you know me you know I love me some eastern Indian pop.

The first CD is entitled ‘bombay’ and I’ve already heard three of the 12 tracks. The second CD is called simply ‘dub’ and features eight remixes of the material on the first CD. I’m ripping it into iTunes now and am really excited to hear it.

Magnet: The Tourniquet I intend to buy all the Magnet albums I can find, starting with this one. (I love Magnet.) I’m still listening to the unfamiliar tracks on this one; it’s so exciting to have fresh goodies on one’s iPod.

Nod to The Rex Monday… again… for turning me on to Magnet in the first place.

MASSAGE

My massage therapist, who also happens to be Amazon Blonde, totally fucking rocks. She has a heated pad for her table, so I got to lie there in wonderful warmth while she worked on me. She’s really good at what she does, and her warm table kept me from feeling too crampy. She’s going to turn her front room into a massage room. I told her I’d bring her all of my mellow CDs to play when she’s working.

I loved that warm table, so soothing. When I got up, though, the Cramps From Hell� arrived like an avalanche. I popped 500mg of acetaminophen and drove home. On the way, before the meds kicked in, I was all shaky and watery and trembly and felt like my guts were tied in knots.

BLEEDING

At home, I didn’t have any more Tylenol, so I waited seven hours before taking any ibuprofin because I didn’t know if you could take them both at once. This means I spent the time from nine to eleven last night rocking and crying and moaning and being in pain. Then I took a pill, but it didn’t help. Twenty minutes later I took another — for a total 400mg of ibuprofin — and was able to fall asleep.

“Some women experience increased menstrual pain in their late 30s and 40s as their endocrine systems prepare for menopause by decreasing hormone levels and thus fertility… An estimated 10 percent to 15 percent of women experience monthly menstrual pain severe enough to prevent normal daily function at school, work, or home.”

It’s called dysmenorrhea. The pain. And yes, it is excessive. Quite.

‘Normal aging,’ my ass.

MOVING

In other news, the ‘box is moving — for real. I’ve got much of my crap moved to the new server, I’ve regained control of DNS for the domain, and I’ll probably stay late tonight after work and finish the move so I can update DNS tomorrow morning. When Rants is back up, you’ll know the move is done. You may get errors trying to visit goblinbox.com tomorrow or over the weekend, depending on how fast DNS propegates and how well I test my apps before moving over.

In which when I grow up, I want my own server.

Keef is moving again, which means goblinbox.com is moving again. Possibly even this week sometime. I want to move because I can no longer run Gallery on this box due to the new restrictions since the hack, but I also equally don’t want to move because it can be a total pain in the arse.

This site is big. I mean, it ain’t no amazon.com or nothin’ — but for a personal site, it’s pretty big.

Thank God I work at the Internet, is all I have to say. Fast fast fast connections. Yum.

In other news, this amuses me every time I see it.

In which I tell you technical crap you probably don’t care about.

I’m trying to move this site from one of LISCO’s old Cobalts over to the outsourced server. Thing is, the site’s got a secure form on it and I don’t really know shit about SSL/HTTPS. I activated SSL on the new server, fine. But the secure form? Was built in FrontPage, which I loathe and hate. And which, incidentally, doesn’t seem to be allowed to connect to the secure folder on the target server. If I disable FP extensions so I can connect using FTP to upload the form, it won’t work. But I can’t seem to upload it with FP.

Good thing I enjoy a challenge.

I’m also the webmistress for the Amma Fairfield Satsang. I let both of its domains expire because I couldn’t find my fucking login for 000domains.com, which is where I registered the domains. I finally got in (more or less accidentally) and renewed them, but now one of the sites can’t find it’s MySQL database, probably due to some DNS problem and/or some side effect of the domain having been disabled. Believe me, this is a total pain in the ass, especially since I can’t remember the cPanel login nor the FTP login. They should both be saved in my password app, but they’re not. Which means either that I’m a slob or that I accidentally overwrote the app’s db when synching with my PPC. Ugh.

Technology, as much as I adore it, does not really make things easier.

In other news, it’s fucking nice outside and I absolutely love not being cold. I love rolling out of bed without wincing and shivering. I love standing outside the back door while brushing my hair. I love Iowa in the spring, it’s so balmy and sweet.

And for no reason whatsoever, this is a picture of some farmer’s random spring brush fire I drove past the other day:

In which I do my administratrix thing.

I upgraded goblinbox to WordPress v2.0.2 today! It was terrifyingly easy! I’m so happy it’s hard not to squeal.

I also installed a calendar over at house-11.com. It’s supposed to be so the band can put their schedules in there so we know when rehearsals are and when gigs are, but it seems weirdly slow and hard-to-use so I might find another calendar app instead.

Anyway, nutshell: I installed lotsa software today. (Yes, I do realize that you couldn’t care less. Yes, I do know this might very well be the most boring entry you’ve ever read. I really only posted it to make sure WP was still working.)

In other news, here’s an old Queen song.