hu nose

100 mm diameter quartz crystal

those of you who may be waiting to comment, but can’t, i haven’t forgotten you. unfortunately, the problem is two-fold, and in order to address the first part, i have to be able to back up the blog… but i can’t, because of the server configuration being run by my host, EZPZ… they’re not going to change, and i can’t back up because of the fact that they run something that is incompatible with my being able to back up, and until they fix it, there’s nothing i can do.

it would be time to investigate other hosting possibilities, except they have informed me that they’re going to try to address this problem within the next few weeks, and told me to wait… and considering how many times i have done so in the past, i am not too fond of the idea of packing up and switching hosts, so i’m going to wait and see what happens.

bleh

the days keep going by.

i got my computer fixed by the kubuntu gods at Kubuntu Forums, where they are quite a bit better than just about anybody else at diagnosing and helping to fix any problems that one might have with one’s kubuntu system… and, by the way, it wasn’t the video drivers. the people who put together the update packages left out an important part of the desktop manager, and released a new update that had that important part in it the next day… πŸ˜‰ i suppose that’s what i get for using a free, community-based operating system.

it could be worse. i could be using <shudder> micro$lop…

moe returned very early friday morning, so the doggies have calmed back down to their standard level of chaos.

i’ve got a rehearsal later on this evening with the fremont philharmonic, whose moisture festival dates are april 2nd through april 6th. we’ve only had one rehearsal, we still don’t know exactly who is playing when, and there’s a WHOLE BUNCH of new music that we haven’t learned yet. then i’ve got a rehearsal with the SANCApators (which is eben sprinsock‘s other band) on wednesday. they’ve got two rehearsals, and then i’m playing with them at the moisture festival on march 23rd. then i’ve got a rehearsal with snake suspenderz on thursday. snake suspenderz is playing a private gig at a corporate party on saturday, and a public gig on sunday, at C&P Coffee in west seattle, if you’re interested in seeing us play: we’re doing a special performance with Katy Webber, who is a FANTASTIC jazz singer (who also played the part of Dick Whittington in the most recent panto)… snake suspenderz is also playing as a “pit band” at the moisture festival march 26th through march 30th. i don’t know if we’re going to have any “on stage” performances this year, but even still, i’ve got a total of 19 performances, which should make up for any loss that i experience due to the fact that i’ve gotten paid less per share than last year (grumble, mutter).

i’ve got a whole bunch more moisture festival performances this year than i had last year, and a combination of widely varying circumstances means that they’re actually taking snake suspenderz seriously this year, but if they maintain the new “tradition” of paying a smaller share than they did last year (which started last year), this will probably be the last year that i participate in the moisture festival in the way that i have been for the past ELEVEN YEARS now… πŸ˜› of course i don’t know that they’re going to pay less per share than they did last year, but at this point i don’t trust the board of directors to do anything rational any longer.

and before any of that happens, moe and i are going to heppner oregon again (like we did last year), and after that, we’re going to the ocean for a few days. we’re going to a place that DOES NOT have wifi, so it’s going to mean that we’re going to have to exist for a few days without our smart-phones, or ipads, or laptops… we’re going to have to do with kites, dogs, beach, and each other… like in olden times.

it was another one of “those” days… 8P

i didn’t wake up in the best of moods today. the dogs wanted to get up about 2 hours before i was ready to get up – moe is in las vegas at a vet conference and gets back tonight. the dogs are always worried when she leaves for more than a day, and they’ve been getting more and more antsy the longer she’s away. i’ve been running rye and lucy until their tongues hang out, and that’s been keeping them sort of quiet, but it doesn’t work first thing in the morning…

so, i got the (3) dogs, and the (1) cat, and the (2) birds fed, and started up my computer, and, of course, there were system updates that came in overnight, so i installed them and rebooted the computer… and the computer wouldn’t reboot. πŸ˜› i posted in kubuntu forums, and the current theory is that xorg stopped supporting my video, which doesn’t strike me as being particurlarly likely, as this is a 4-to-5-year-old computer that had not-quite-top-of-the-line components installed when it was first built… but it is also based on guesses more than anything else, at this point.

so, i decided to do it the “hard” way (whoever thought that getting mail on my laptop would be the “hard” way?), so i fired up my mac, logged in, and pointed my browser at my webmail page… and i COULDN’T LOG IN… πŸ˜› πŸ˜›

and then i had an appointment with gary from Giant Atomic Robots about the Hybrid Elephant web site, and i was about ⅔ of the way there when i realised that, despite the fact that i planned on taking my laptop, and i even went so far as to disconnect it and put it in the same place that i had put everything else that i succeeded in remembering, i actually FORGOT my laptop!

after i returned home from my meeting with the giant atomic robot gary, i determined that the reason i couldn’t log into my email was not because of my VPN as i suspected, but because they had actually MOVED the entire webmail site to a different server, and, because of the fact that i don’t use webmail on a regular basis (POP mail is still the safest way to go!), i didn’t get the message…

i’m running really thin on spoons today, and i don’t get to go to sleep until after i pick moe up, at 1:00 in the morning… πŸ˜› πŸ˜› πŸ˜›

Time for a guaranteed income?

Time for a Guaranteed Income? — this is the first step towards The RICH Economy, which i have been promoting for 20 years or so. nobody’s actually done it yet, but the fact that sweden is voting on it soon is definitely a step in the right direction…

although the author of this article doesn’t seem to think too highly of the concept… at least she isn’t dismissing the idea outright…

Continue reading Time for a guaranteed income?

grr…

so, i was notified today, by someone who tried to do it and failed, that their comment was blocked because of “spam” when they tried to submit it. i don’t have anything that deliberately filters out everything as spam, so i tried to comment on my own blog, and, what do you know? i was blocked because my comment appears to be spam…

that would explain why i’ve not gotten any new comments on my blog for some time, but… weird!

i’m not deliberately blocking anybody (except spammers, and they know who they are), but the fact that i’m getting blocked indicates some bug somewhere… which is all the more motivation to back up and reinstall my blog, because too many weird things have been happening to it recently, and i need to fix it.

dear 183.60.243.188

dear 183.60.243.188, CHINANET Guangdong province network, Data Communication Division, China Telecom, CN.

you have been banned from this network.

TWICE.

once on 140127 and once today, 140208.

the reason you have been banned is because you tried to access a part of our web that is off limits to people who aren’t supposed to be there, in other words, the “admin” section of our web site. the reason you aren’t supposed to be there is because people who access our admin section should know the password, and be honourable and “sattvah” enough NOT to do evil with the information that resides there (which is one of the reasons why i decided to put the “admin” section of the web site somewhere OTHER than in the directory called “/admin”)…

because of the fact that you tried, TWICE to access that part of the site, without a request to lift the ban the first time, the possibility that you are EVER going to be allowed to access any of the site, at all, in the future, is, at this point, practically non existent.

get a clue, spam-boy… you’re not going to break in, so you might as well just give up.

sigh… i knew it would come to this eventually…

so people have noticed that the two teams in the superbowl this year are from the two states that have legalised cannabis. they’ve come up with mildly amusing names, like “superb owl” and “buzzed bowl” and “420 bowl” and plain old “pot bowl”, but there’s one that i thought of when i first learned that these two teams were making up the superbowl, that is not only “media friendly” (whatever that means), but is supremely appropriate, and i haven’t heard it anywhere else… so, you heard it here, first: it’s the

SMOKE-A BOWL

right? see what i mean? πŸ˜‰

good suggestion, i think i will… 😎