It’s The Book Of My Days, It’s The Book Of My Life

It’s the weekend, Thaïs is with her grandparents, Mario is out getting some work done, so I finally have some alone time. And what do I do? Some housework… cooking… cleaning… dusting… No way! I’m blogging… and twittering tweeting and plurking…

Signed up on Plurk just a few days ago. It’s a whole lot of fun. Twitter is great. But this is way better, although for the moment I use Twitter more (I think!). I guess that’s because it is so easy to tweet from my cell phone with all the freely available and easily installable Twitter clients for mobile phones. Check out this list from Mashable.

There’s always the mobile version of Plurk, but I think a mobile client would be so much simpler to use. If you know of any, do send me a plurk. And if you don’t already have a Plurk account, what are you waiting for???

Plurk is such a fun word, I’ve started incorporating it into my normal speech — ‘oh plurk’, ‘what the plurk’, ‘plurk off’… much to Mario’s bewilderment.

Time to sign off now. I really have to get started with all that plurkin housework!

Needless to say, I’ve been away from bloggyland for a while. Without getting into details, I’ll just say that the last few weeks have been difficult… personal problems…. blah… blah… Maybe I’ll blog about it some time in the future… or maybe not. Depends on how things go. Anyway, now that things are hopefully getting back to normal, I find myself looking forward to a more regular posting schedule.

When I resurfaced, one of the first things I found was that Wordpress had a new version out. Version 2.5. Everybody’s talking about it. Has anyone upgraded? I also hear that there are some theme compatibility issues with the new version? Hmm… sounds like upgrading to the latest version will be a big job. A couple of months ago when I shifted to my own domain, I had upgraded to version 2.3 without any hassles. This time, given what I’ve been reading, I’m not so sure, even though there is an Automatic Upgrade plugin. I hope they come out with version 3 soon

While on the topic of shifting to my own domain, I’m supposed to be answering Pete’s question on why I shifted (sorry Pete, for the delay). I started this blog to keep in touch with friends and family. From the start, I always wanted my own domain. But when I started blogging, I didn’t know if I’d be serious about the whole thing. Normally quiet and reserved, I didn’t know whether I’d actually blog regularly and so on. So I figured in a few months the blog would die a natural death and that would be the end of my blogging stint. Not because my daughter doesn’t give me enough to talk about, but more because of my taciturn nature. Then I found that I liked it. Making fun of my little angel is rewarding enough to make me want to keep going. That’s basically what my blog is about. This is one of the few posts that’s not dedicated to her and her crazy antics. And now, as she starts school next month, I have a feeling there will be plenty of entertainment to look forward to. So that’s why I shifted… I’ve been blogging over a year now, albeit irregularly, but still enjoying it. And I have no plans to stop anytime soon.

Speaking of friends and family, I get email from said friends and family telling me that they read my blog regularly (you know who you are!). Why then, don’t you comment? Hmm?? Why??? OK… maybe if I promise to post regularly?

I’m finally feeling well enough to post again. I’ve been down with the ‘flu for the last 4 days. With my clogged sinuses and throbbing brain, everytime I sat down in front of the computer it felt like my head would explode. In the midst of this all, I had my insurance exam to answer. How I managed I’ll never know, but I did and I’m glad it’s over. I should know the results in a couple of days, but if I don’t mention the exam again, you’ll know I failed it!

And now, here’s something that happened yesterday:

I walked into the TV room where Thaïs and Mario were sitting and found Thaïs scowling and rubbing her eyes. I asked her what had happened.

“My eyes are burning. Daddy farted.”

A few seconds later my eyes started burning too. I’m not kidding. This really happened. It must have been some fart!

Just found out through one of my favorite tech blogs that Microsoft is offering 5 GB of free storage online, a service they call Windows Live SkyDrive.

My experience with Windows Live services hasn’t been that great so I won’t be signing up anytime soon. I don’t know what it is, but their sites take so long to load, I usually end up just closing the browser tab in disgust. I groan every time I see a Microsoft-related link, and think twice before clicking it.

From the same blog I found that AOL offers a similar service called XDrive, again with 5 GB free space.

Found out through another of my favorite tech blogs about yet another free online storage site called MediaMax. I signed up yesterday. They’re currently offering 25 GB of free space. I haven’t had much time to play around with the service, but so far it seems good. The first thing I’m going to do is check if the free version offers FTP access.

The first (and only)time I signed up for a free online storage account was over 10 years ago. That was before I had a computer at home. Pen drives were non-existent. We had those flat square-ish things… What were they called? Oh yes… floppies. But even those weren’t good enough for me. At that time I had an assorted collection of stuff that added up to a ’staggering’ 5 MB, which would have meant that I’d have had to carry about 5 floppies around with me. So you see why I had to rely on such services for file transfer. And then, all of a sudden, the service/website/whatever-you-want=to-call-it just vanished. OK.. so maybe I hadn’t logged in to the account for a few months.. and maybe I hadn’t checked my associated mail account either… but the end result was that I lost all my data stored there. I didn’t even think of making a backup, so I guess I deserved it!

Anyway, I’ve learned from my mistakes and this time I’m going to be prepared with backups. Actually, I’ve got a backup of the backups of my favorite stuff now!

After much deliberation I’ve finally decided. I’m moving. My blog, that is. To my own domain. If all goes well, I should have the new site up and running in a few days. I’m planning on continuing with Wordpress.

Any tips on moving a Wordpress blog to a new host?

Anyone??

The last 5 days  have been rather hectic, hence the lack of activity on this blog. I’m attending a week-long training course for life insurance agents which ends in another 2 days. At the end of it all, subject to the fact that I clear the examination, I hope to be a licensed insurance agent.

The only hurdle, as mentioned above, is the examination. Feels strange, preparing for one, after so many years. And to make matters worse, I’m the second-oldest student in the class Such a difference from my school days where I was usually the youngest in the class.

That’s about all I have time for now. Have to get back to those books! I am trying to clear the exam, you know…

Apologies to my RSS subscribers (I know I have just a handful, but still) who got the post entitled “Temporary Post Used For Style Detection” delivered to their readers. I had just installed Windows Live Writer and during the setup while WLW was trying to update the weblog style, I got a little popup asking me if I wanted to post a temporary post which would be deleted immediately. I clicked ‘Yes’ but apparently WLW couldn’t delete the post fast enough..

So anyway, this was just FYI.

At least, I’d like to think it was a ‘he’. I’m talking about a frog that had been in my bathroom since the day I got back from my two-week trip out of town.

The day I arrived I ran into the bathroom and would have run right back out, had it not been a poo or die situation. I could have used one of the other bathrooms in the house, but there’s something supremely satisfying about sitting on one’s own throne, and having been away for two weeks, I’d suffered enough. So there I sat, one eye on my book and the other on the frog perched up on the window sill. I quickly realized this wouldn’t work. Having to constantly watch the frog, was having an adverse effect on my bowel movements.

Shower time was even more trying as it meant having to stand about a foot away from the window, that much closer to the creature with the glittering, protruding black eyes.

Thaïs, to my amusement/horror/disgust (I’m not sure which), wanted to reach out and touch it. I told Mario about my predicament. Mistake No.1. His reaction was typical, “Hmmph! It’s a harmless frog. Don’t tell me you’re scared of that little thing?!”

Scared? Not at all. I’ve spent years in the lab dissecting the poor amphibians. I just didn’t want that slimy thing jumping on me while I was unwinding with a steamy hot shower.

Anyway, I decided to leave the window open so it could escape on its own. So for the next few days I’d open the window in the morning, keep checking on the frog every few hours, and the instant I realized it had jumped out I’d shut the window. Unfortunately, my plan failed miserably, because every night the frog would be right there in his favorite spot on the window sill, glaring at me with his beady eyes.

I asked Mario why the frog kept coming back. Mistake No. 2. “I think it’s looking for a warm moist place to hibernate,” he said grinning wickedly.

It was several days later that I realized how I was being outwitted by the frog. On closer inspection of the window frame I found a 1″ x 1″ gap between frame and wall at the upper right hand corner. Now I was getting somewhere. The next time the frog went out on its daily jaunt, I plugged the gap and voila! Success at last!

Needless to say, Mario hasn’t stopped kidding me since.

Just a short post to let you all know I’m still around and will get back to blogging soon. My grandmother passed away on the 3rd, after a brief illness. We will be having a memorial service for her on the 10th, so I hope to be back soon after.

BTW, my daughter gave me the title for this post.

As I mentioned in my last post, I haven’t had the time to update my blog or read any of the other blogs I’ve subscribed to. However, I’ve been relatively free the last two days, so I’ve been catching up on all the stuff I missed the past two weeks.

Something I realized as I went through all the unread posts, over two hundred of them, was that almost half the feeds were ‘headlines only’. There were quite a few interesting headlines and I’d liked to have read the posts in their entirety, but unfortunately I was offline. Going online would have taken up precious time which I didn’t have. Given the speed of my Internet connection, it would have taken ages for each website to load. So I just had to skip all the headline posts. Such a pity!!!

I wonder about the usefulness of a ‘headlines only’ subscription. For me, the whole point of subscribing to a feed means that you want to read actual posts, not just headlines.

Maybe there are other advantages to a ‘headlines only’ subscription that I’m not aware of?