Monthly Archives: March 2025

anhedonia, anxiety, depression, malfunctioning computers, moisture festival

things

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things are beginning to settle down, a bit… there’s still some undefined (and undefinable) weirdness with moe’s and my email, which has been compounded by some apparent SUPER weirdness with either moe’s or my ability to send text messages, which SHOULDN’T be connected in any way… and the whole thing is made even weirder because we recently received a new router, which is supposed to replace our old router… and the new router, for some reason (i strongly suspect demons, or their ilk) decided that it was going to try to connect to my old mac, which has been quite happy NOT connecting to internet for quite some time… like before we moved into our current dwelling… and i keep thinking that there should be some immanent fiasco brewing with my VPN, which, if i recall correctly, acted in a way that it shouldn’t the last time i changed my IP address… but i changed my IP address two weeks ago, and, so far, there has been no indication that the VPN has even taken notice. 🤨

but, strangely enough, the “starting to settle down a bit” scenario has done absolutely nothing to my anxiety and depression… but getting kicked off mastodon, apparently, has had a MINOR effect on my depression: instead of worrying about concrete things that i read about, i worry about more amorphous things that i imagine COULD BE happening. 🫤

which is the perfect mood to start moisture festival next week. 😟 wednesday at 17:00 we load in and sound check, and then there’s one show thursday, two shows friday, the last of which gets out after midnight, three shows saturday, and two shows sunday… it’s gonna be a LONG and BUSY week. 🥵

anhedonia, host services, hybrid elephant, the battle of the computer

oy… 😒

now that it’s over, i can talk about it…

so, there was this thing where some of my web sites were bringing down the server resources for other sites, and they wanted me to use WHM to separate them into different accounts, so that it would stop happening… but the OLD host provider either couldn’t, or wouldn’t tell me how that was supposed to be done…

so, two weekends ago, i changed host providers, to one who said he would help me sort out the FUMTU that was my web site(s)… and he did!

but, as a part of that, the web site that i’m paying someone else to monitor, went down, briefly, a few times in a 24 hour period. the guy notified me that it had gone down, and suggested i contact my hosting company. i suggested that it had gone down because we had been migrating to a new host, and included the new host provider on the email thread, so he would know what was happening.

which resulted in the new host provider and the old web designer getting into a pissing match, which ended with the new host provider telling me to never again include him in emails to the old host provider, and the old host provider telling me that the new web host is not his client, and doesn’t know what he’s talking about.

so i fired the old web designer, and put in a new web designer, who SPECIFICALLY SAID that she would be working with my new host provider, because she doesn’t have a dog in this fight… which is to say, she is NOT ALSO a host provider, she’s just a web designer, and if she has to contact the host provider about something, she wants a way to do it, which is NOT just asking me to ask the host provider… which is one of the things that i have found REALLY IRRITATING about ALL of my previous designers. 👍👍

i need to pay for a couple of new licenses, but i would have had to pay for them, anyway, so that’s not a big deal, but the new web designer is charging me about the same price for THREE months, as the old web designer was charging me for ONE month, so it’s all going to work out in the end.

also, i got kicked off mastodon for being “too political”, so i uninstalled the ActivityPub plugin, because if i can’t read other peoples’ rantings about how awful the political stuff is, then i don’t want to contribute to it. feh! 😒

anxiety, depression, frustration, host services, the battle of the computer, web design

and others…

last weekend was REALLY difficult… on top of the “normal” massive political and social dumpster-fire-in-a-flood situation that is going on, moe was in chicago, i had two dogs, a cat, a bird, and a snake to look after, AND my web sites were switching host providers, which, by itself, is one of the most difficult transitions under the BEST of circumstances…

and it’s not over yet, although it’s about 95% finished, at this point: our email still hasn’t settled down, yet. with mine, there seems to be some difference between IMAP and SMTP, which SHOULD display the same, but it doesn’t, and i no longer know enough about it to even come close to telling why, or even accurately describe what is happening… and pretty much all of moe’s mail that is more than a couple months old has mysteriously vanished, and she doesn’t even use a SMTP client, preferring IMAP, which, in itself, is somewhat disturbing. 🤨

ETA 250322 the NEW host provider is re-downloading her email, because, apparently, the first (really difficult) download was MISSING EIGHT GIGABYTES of data. 😒

and, on top of that, there’s continuing unresolved chaos and discord between the (new) host provider and the (old) web designer, which, once again, put me into a profoundly deep “chuck it all in the dumpster and go live alone in a remote cabin in the woods with no connection to the outside world for the rest of my life” mood, which is still in the slow process of dissipating. 😒

host services, the battle of the computer

whoowee… 🤦

this has probably been the worst migration i have ever experienced, and it’s PRIMARILY because of the old host provider making things AS DIFFICULT AS POSSIBLE, while, at the same time, being TOTALLY UNAWARE of the fact that they were making things AS DIFFICULT AS POSSIBLE!

they were great when i signed up with them, but since they sold out to a large, multi-national corporation, a couple of years ago, their service has taken a distinct nose-dive, and i’m REALLY glad to be quit of webhost python.

and, the staff at the new host provider has been taking up the slack in a way that really impresses me — although that might be because i am just not used to having things go my way without a lot of my hard work going into it — but, in less than 12 hours, they have taken two “not a web site” sites and made both of them work as well as they can, given that the DNS settings for both sites have changed, and it usually takes 24 to 48 hours for the new DNS settings to propagate… i’m STILL not getting, or being able to send email at one of the two regular accounts i have, but, at this point, i’m willing to wait for the DNS to catch up.

host services, the battle of the computer

the battle commences

i have been poking around one of my old haunts, WebHostingTalk dot com, which has, in the past, been a source of succinct and correct answers, and, once again, it has not failed.

among other things, i learned that i “shouldn’t have to come here for this kind of help – your provider should support you”, and, if it were the same host provider i signed up with originally, i’m fairly sure that they would have helped me figure this out. but, for whatever it’s worth, WebHost Python sold out a couple of years ago, and their “support” has suffered the most, as a result. it used to be that i knew all the tech support engineers by name, but now there is a different “support” “engineer” for every time they respond to my tickets, some of whom don’t write english particularly clearly, and, even when they write perfectly clearly, about half of the time they only read the first two or three sentences, and then they start responding as though they have read the entire message, which means that, frequently, they’re repeating themselves, or what they’re saying has no relation to the actual subject… 😒

another thing i learned is that there is, actually a “tool” that is part of WHM, which splits “add-on domains” out into their own accounts… which is EXACTLY what i need… EXCEPT that it is only accessible by a person who has “root” privileges, which i DO NOT have… in other words, someone FROM THE HOST PROVIDER has to operate it… but, apparently, the “support” “engineers” either don’t know about it, or, if they do, then they are deliberately withholding that information and, potentially, laughing at me behind my back as i flounder about trying to figure out what to do.

both of those options are very definitely NOT what i should expect to receive from the people I PAY to help me figure these things out, especially when they’re talking about increasing their charges by 25%. 😒

SO moving everything to a new host provider BEFORE i figure them out is probably the wise and prudent thing to do.

FORTUNATELY that is ANOTHER thing that WHT is good for, and i have ALREADY made contact with a guy who said that he would host all my domains for about the same price that WHP was charging me BEFORE the 25% increase, AND he will help me split my add-on domains out into separate accounts. 😎👍👍

so, if you’re reading this, and it affects a web site of yours, be prepared to change the nameserver information at your domain registrar when i switch hosts. 😉

naturally, all this takes place at the end of the week, when the next business day is 3 days away… fortunately (this time), there isn’t something imminently going on that is going to break if i let it go over the weekend, and it will give me more of a chance to alert those people who it will affect. i’ve alerted two of the three people i still host, but the other one is proving a bit more elusive… and i totally understand, given his share of horrendous fiascoes that he has to live through… 😉

depression, frustration, host services, the battle of the computer

piling it on thick and fast… 😒

the other day i noticed that my web site wasn’t responding. i have had some recent warnings, from my commercial web designer, that my hosting situation wasn’t as robust as it should be, and so i wasn’t particularly surprised by this, but it definitely needed further investigation.

it turns out that there has, apparently, been a change in how server resources are allocated, something which has never been an issue before (or, if it has, it hasn’t been anything I have either heard about, or have any control over), and having all my domains on one “account” strains server resources. 🤨

the solution to, at least, this PART of the problem, is to use WHM to separate the domains into different accounts… but, until i switched to the current host provider (i want to say five to seven years ago), i didn’t even have ACCESS to WHM, have only the vaguest clue how to use it, and i DO NOT know how to use it to “separate the domains into different accounts”… and, it’s my impression that it is REALLY easy to FUCK THINGS UP, if you don’t know what you’re doing with WHM… which, it is my guess, is one of the reasons i never had access to it before the current host provider… 😒

and ON TOP OF ALL THAT…

i got an email from the host provider, this morning, that basically said “oh, by the way, we’re raising your rate by 25%”. 🤬

i have LOST TOUCH with A LOT of the stuff i used to know about internet and computers, and i’m kind of okay with that… which means that learning new things about internet domains and accounts, and learning a how to use a new computer tool, was NOT on my list of things i really want to do, and changing host providers AGAIN is ALREADY something i would RATHER NOT do…

but, guess what? it looks like i’m going to be doing both of them ANYWAY! 🤬🤬

so, i responded, saying that i could use WHM, if someone who knows how to do it wants to talk me through it… this was their response:

If you want to avoid all domains sharing the same resources, the best practice is to create a separate cPanel account for each domain through WHM. This way, each site gets its own resource allocation, helping to prevent performance issues if one site experiences high traffic or other problems.

To clarify:

– You can create a new cPanel account in WHM under the Create a New Account section.
– Each account will have its own login, email setup, and resource limits (based on your hosting package).
– Please note that moving files, databases, and emails from one cPanel account to another must be done manually. Unfortunately, we are unable to assist with the migration process — you will need to handle this yourself.

You can access the WHM panel through your client area by selecting Login to Control Panel.

from their email this morning:

To enable us to continue providing you with the quality and reliability you expect — and to further enhance the performance and security of your services — we will

be charging me 25% more…

the quality and reliability i have come to expect is for them to help me figure this out, like they did prior to selling out. 😒

i am so NOT going to pay 25% more for this crap! 🤬

frustration, imaginary pooperty, technology, the cloud drive crack of 2021, the very big stupid, typography

dongkuthoomubor

i have a book and a 3-CD set called “Creative Alliance 9.0” which, allegedly, contains 7000+ truetype and type 1 fonts. according to ebay, it was made in 1999, when things were still labeled as “compatible with MacOS 6.0 or greater, and Windows 3.1, 95, 98, and NT”…

gawd, i remember those days… 🙄

and, as far as i can tell, the font information on these disks still work on modern computers — “font” (or, more technically accurately “typeface”) information doesn’t change that much.

i recently followed this guy on mastodon, who is the lead for a project called “DISKMASTER” at the internet archive, which is a collection of around 26,200 disks from the period of time when CD-ROMs were the medium of choice. when he heard about this disk set, he encouraged me to upload it to the archive…

but… 😒

first, i made an account, with my default browser, firefox — recently firefox changed their user agreement to allow them to be able to sell, or use to train their AI, any information that i upload (including this text 😒), so that is likely to change very soon — and when i tried to upload the first disk, i got this error message that said “Remove all zero byte files”, said that directories are “zero byte files” and upload of directories was only possible through chrome… but there is no “chrome” for linux, and the mac i have which has a CD-ROM drive runs an “antique” operating system and no longer connects to internet, so that my really important applications like photoshop and sibelius can’t “automatically” update themselves into oblivion.

however, there IS a “chromium” for linux, which i don’t use because i’m trying to keep google from sticking THEIR nose into my private life (as much as possible), so i tried that…

when i tried to hit the internet archive, it gave me a blank page, with no clue that i had even loaded a web page. when i looked at the source for the page, it appears that i was SUPPOSED to be re-directed to a “no script” version of the page, but the URI to which i was supposed to be re-directed, doesn’t exist. 😒🙄

now, don’t get me wrong, i would DEARLY LOVE to get these disks on the internet archive, and, potentially, gain access to these fonts… i USED TO HAVE most of them, because i USED TO BE in the business of using them on a regular basis, but since the cloud drive crack of 2021, they all went away, and these disks NO LONGER WORK on modern mac or windows computers, even if they do have CD-ROM drives.

but, unless someone can tell me how to upload them without any “zero byte files”, i’m lost.

moe, unicycle

burph

moe and i went to eugene, oregon, yesterday, so that she could get a new tattoo. we left the house at 06:00 and didn’t get back until 01:15 this morning. she was under the needle for SEVEN HOURS yesterday… and it is allegedly going to take a month to fully heal. i took care of the dogs, who were very frustrated that they got shoved in their crates and went for a long ride, and then didn’t get to do anything except sleep in their crates the whole day. the eugene saturday market (apparently a cousin to the fremont sunday market) was happening about two blocks away from where the car was parked, but, because of the fact that i was feeling rather uncertain about the exact location of the car, i didn’t go, and basically slept in the car the whole day, with a couple of potty breaks for the dogs.

so, today, while i went to my unicycle class, moe took the dogs for a hike at campbell, and now they’re all asleep NOT in their crates.

i am progressing INFINITESIMALLY slowly on the unicycle, but i AM progressing… i’m not free-mounting all the time, but i am free-mounting a significant quantity MORE of the time than i was a few months ago… and i’m able to idle a few times without holding on to something… and i can ride backwards for a few feet, as long as i’m holding on to something with one hand…

there is still NO WAY i would even ATTEMPT to ride while playing the tuba (my ultimate goal), but i’m a lot closer than i was a year ago… which is something, i guess…

i re-installed the ActivityPub plugin for wordpress, so this is going to be a test to determine whether or not it actually works…

and, apparently, it doesn’t work, and i don’t know why. 🙄