Categories
Burningbird

Change, change

I’ve finished moving the rest of the webloggers off the old site to the new. It will be a tough time for a day or two until the DNS change propages for Loren, Michael, and Malcolm. I’m still waiting to hear from Frank when he’s ready to convert from Radio to Movable Type and join up – and I bet he got a real impetus to do that today – but that’s a new account, not a move.

I still have to get my own sites finished. The work is tedious, and I’d rather redesign the front end or something fun of that nature, but it has to get done. One change I decided to make is to drop the Practical RDF weblog and use the Semantic Web for Poets site for any RDF related material. I want to keep book-related material in one spot, at the official book site, rather than scattered between the two places. I am finding that this is becoming confusing to the readers – they don’t know where to go for updates, or that there are updates to the material or samples.

To abruptly change the subject of this post, and change my earlier desire to stay home and read, I do want to take another road trip, sooner rather than later. If all goes well, I’ll be on the road a week from today, and you’ll never guess where I’m going. Well, to be brutally honest, you most likely don’t care, but even if you did, I wouldn’t tell. Neener.

In the meantime, today is 70F and sunny, the snows are coming in on Sunday, and I’m going to find a place to hike that isn’t under water.

Categories
Just Shelley

The EBay Experience

Another task accomplished this week – putting together my first, and hopefully last, eBay auction. I wonder if eBay puts so much information on each page to deliberately obfuscate the fact that many of the nifty little extras come with a fee? Regardless of reason, the user interface to build an auction is a mess.

Not sure if I’ll get any nibbles or not, but I’ve also let several mineral collecting organizations know about the collection, and a couple of dealers. Hopefully I’ll find a home for the bits of sparkle. If nothing else, I think I may have met a potential future weblogger or two.

Keeping fingers crossed.

Categories
Burningbird

No Pings I

Another side effect of the move is that trackback pings were not working on my sites, and the trackback templates were broken with the photo blogs.

However, I am a highly trained technical person, with over 20 years of experience, a degree in computer science and skills beyond most mortal men. Women too. I put my keen sense of troubleshooting to work, determined to hunt down this error and kill it, kill it dead.

It was grueling. It was a true battle between woman and machine – a struggle of monumental proportions. However my talents pervailed and I found the error – somehow the Template.pm file didn’t get copied to each of my sites. Trackback didn’t work because, in effect, Trackback wasn’t there.

This move has been a tough move. This week has been a long week. If you’ve pinged me this week, you might want to send that ping my way again. Sorry.

(And at this point, Loren is frantically making backup copies of all of his files before I move his site first thing in the morning.)

Categories
Just Shelley

Wanna chocolate?

Many thanks for the kind words about my birthday.

My roommate took me out for an Italian dinner that would violate every aspect of an Atkins diet. We had bruschetta for an appetizer, home made garlic breadsticks with the dinner, which happened to be chicken, artichoke, sun dried tomato, and shitake mushroom sauteed in garlic and virgin olive oil, served with smoked cheese, and tossed with pasta. It was beyond good.

For dessert? Godiva chocolates, baby. First class, all the way.

Following Loren’s good advice in comments yesterday, I went for a vigorous four mile walk today, burning off some of the goodies. I can’t believe how much better I feel lately. I feel like a new woman, rested and healthy and ready for trouble. Tomorrow we’re expecting 75 degree weather, this weekend snow, so you can imagine what I’ll be doing tomorrow.

(If you guessed working on the computer and writing to this weblog, you’re ill. Get help.)

Speaking of weblogging, I managed to get the Practical RDF weblog up and running, Mirror Self is running with about half of the photo weblogs, but the For Poets sites are just not importing well. Two imported, one failed during import, and one is generating build errors when I try to rebuild the pages. Normally when I move a Movable Type weblog, I’ll do a dump of the SQL and copy the files. However, with the weblog split, I wanted to start clean. I have things to do, though, so I’m not going to screw with it much longer. Luckily none of the sites is big and I can just copy the posts, though I’ll lose the comments.

Friday I finish moving the rest of the sites: LorenMichael, and Malcolm. Good. Once we’re moved, all tucked in with our favorite blankies and hot cocoa, we can return to telling each other our favorite bedtime stories.

virtualchocolates.jpg

Categories
Just Shelley

A song on my 49th birthday

Recovered from the Wayback Machine.

I turned 49 today. Or, more precisely, I turned 49 this morning at 7:02am. I’ve reached the age where I’ve lived too long to die and leave a beautiful corpse. The the only other option open to me now is to live long enough to become a burden on society.

In one more year I’ll reach the age of 50, and then all the rules will have changed. I’m heading into a time when chest pain is cause for concern rather than a move to loosen my bra. Gone are the years where I was asked if I had any kids – now the questions drift more towards grandkids then not. I never thought I would miss the good old days when I’d have to to fend off issues of choosing not to have children (“Well, you still have time to change your mind”).

The middle years of twixt and tween, of being over 50 but before being old – dying before now is a tragedy but after is a blessing. If I were to die now, I would just die, with nothing much more than: “Well, it’s sad, true, but we all have to go sometime.”

And where is the taut, smooth flesh of yesteryear? Who snuck in and left this old, well, older woman?

I turned 49 today and in exactly one year I’ll turn 50. I will kill the first person to give me a black balloon and consider the time spent in prison worth it.

I woke up with visions of black clouds vaguely resembling balloons and I didn’t _quite_ kick the cat, and I didn’t _quite_ slit my wrists. In fact, my coffee tasted remarkably good this morning as I looked out at the clouds lightening to that silver grey, thinking how lovely they are. I’m not one to look on the down side for long, a trait that I seem to grow into more each year. Yes in a year I’ll turn 50, but what can happen in that year?

I’ll write a million or so words and from these a few will come together that I’ll read again and again and I’ll feel that deep satisfaction a writer gets when they know, regardless of what anyone says, they’re good.

I’ll have more chances to take the kind of photographs that when I look at them later, I break into a smile and I holler out loud regardless of who is around: Look! Look what I have created!

I will have another year to try foods that I’ve turned my nose up at in the past. It may even be raw octopus with suckers still fresh enough to grip the insides of my cheeks. I may not like it – I may absolutely hate it – but I’ll have tried it. There won’t be a moment before the end when I’ll think to myself, “I wish I had tried raw octopus.”

In the next 12 months, I may meet one or two people who will end up being a close friend for the rest of my life – or I may realize that I’ve already met the person and have just not experienced the epiphany of the act. We may be sharing a coffee or a beer and I’ll look at the person and think how lucky I am, how much richer my life is because I had a chance to get to know them.

Within these 52 weeks, I may meet someone who I become fond of, or even fall in love with. We could be sharing a laugh, and I’ll know at the moment when my mouth widens into a smile why the other is laughing, and this knowledge becomes an act of immense sensuality. Or perhaps we’ll be on a couch together, me in his arms, or him in mine, or even just sitting beside each other, watching an old movie and the very air will crack with eroticism more intense than anything generated from a strip tease or edible panties.

Or maybe I’ll watch that movie alone and still feel the sensuality of the moment; and experience the arousal that a good film, or book, or song, can generate when it touches you.

In 365 days, I can redefine who I am in 365 ways.

In 8760 hours, a lot can happen. And if in all those hours and days and weeks and months my dreams have not been met, and I’m lucky to reach 50, then I know I’ll continue to have time to meet them, or to dream new dreams.