I suddenly find myself in search of a new webhost for the first time in FIFTEEN YEARS.
Amazingly enough (my Aunt Sammie would say it’s ESP), I thought to save off a local backup copy of my WordPress database last month, so my blog is not lost.
Micfo never raised my webhosting fees for the entire time I was a customer (which could be one reason they fell behind on their own datacenter payments, resulting in their customers’ data basically being held ransom), so I’ve been overpaying for unlimited storage and bandwidth.
Party’s over.
So, current status: Trying to restore my SQL-based backups and get my blog back up and running. Also realizing that I didn’t actually have the sweet-ass grandfathered-in deal I thought I had.
Update, 10:15pm I’ve imported every blog entry from my backup, plus the few I’d posted since then (thanks to Aaron pointing out that our RSS reader of choice, Newsblur, had the text cached). I’ve made my theme look pretty seamlessly like it used to (for better or for worse). I’ve imported my blog categories.
Still to do in the near future:
import comments
upload and relink images
reinstall a few key plugins
Considering that it took me about a week of evenings to convert my site from Movable Type to WordPress some eight years ago, getting everything back up and running in a couple of days (including securing a new hosting service and waiting for DNS propagation) really ain’t too shabby.
This is what it looks like when you really don’t want to move your monitor to plug in a new HDMI cable.
Working from home for EIGHT WEEKS STRAIGHT OMG prompted me to buy an HDMI splitter for my widescreen monitor. It arrived this afternoon, and I can already tell it’s going to make my situation at least a teensy bit less inconvenient.
Granted, Skype is still going to be confused about where my microphone and speakers are every time I plug in the monitor, but at least I know WTF is going on now, and what settings to change back.
Working on code, data validation, report design, or pretty much anything that I do for work is SO much easier with multiple monitors. And plugging my laptop into a splitter is so much easier than unplugging the cable from the back of my tower — and then trying to plug it back in when I actually want to use my home desktop.
Didn’t feel like doing Krav Zoom class this evening. Did it anyway. Usually that feels like a good decision in the end, but today’s class was a surprise Fitness Challenge. Now my back hurts, my arms are shaky, and I feel nauseated.
Funny how I’ve slowly joined the throng of bloggers who don’t really blog anymore. My husband jokes that he knows something’s bothering me when he reads about it on my blog (and I’m pretty sure he’s the only person who reads it if I don’t cross-post to Facebook).
It didn’t used to be like that. Before I had other responsibilities (e.g. parenting), I would blog almost daily. Granted, that was also before everyone had smartphones and was online, so it was pretty much an entirely different world. Back then, I wrote about my life in the kind of excruciating detail you’d share in person over coffee or other adult beverages. Nowadays, I think twice (or even three times) before posting any Personally Identifiable Information, even though my blog is set to have search engines ignore it.
It also doesn’t help that I accidentally nuked all of my (incorrectly-applied) WordPress theme customizations recently, and that I completely forgot how I tweaked my photo editing workflow on desktop for dealing with the Apple-specific HEIC image files that Photoshop won’t open. Oh, and I’ve been using my widescreen monitor as a second display for my work laptop, but plugging that HDMI cable back into my tower is a royal pain in the butt. (Luckily, I have an HDMI switchbox arriving next week that will solve that annoyance.)
I know that a regular brain dump is vital to my mental health. I know this, yet other things keep taking precedence. Hobbies like gardening or sewing used to be the main culprit, but now that I’ve been stuck at home for the past two months*, other responsibilities and tasks are more immediate. Our dishwasher broke at the very beginning of “coronavirus season,” as my son calls it, so a non-trivial amount of time goes toward washing dishes lately (split between myself and Aaron). I spend some time planning my workday and Connor’s remote school day. I spend 15 minutes outside weeding while Connor watches his evening TV. Once Connor goes to bed at night, my brain is pretty much done. I might do some reading, or watch Netflix with Aaron when he’s not working, or watch YouTube by myself if he’s at work, or play Spider Solitaire on my phone — something sufficiently mindless to wind down for the day.
If I were the avid journal-writer I used to be, this would be the perfect opportunity to capture what life is like during this Very Unusual Time. Granted, I do still write a snippet every night before bed in the Exist app, so I at least have a brief snapshot of each day.
…As interesting as THAT might be. eyeroll
We have at least four more weeks of the stay-at-home order here in Ohio. School will be remote for the remainder of the school year (ending May 28 for our district), and I’ll be continuing to work from home for that time. It remains to be seen what kind of daytime options Connor will have this summer, but I’ve signed him up for four weeks of Cub Day Camp and one week of science camp so far. If I need to work from home during the times when we don’t have anywhere for him to go, I think my boss will be amenable to me working from home, now that we have the infrastructure (and company-wide precedent) for that sort of thing.
I do have to say that Springtime is probably one of the best times to be working from home, though. I can watch my favorite part of the year as the greenery pops up and the first blooms open ALL DAY LONG, not just briefly before and after work and on the weekends. (I feel bad for Aaron and Connor, though, who are both dealing with major seasonal allergies. Spring is NOT Aaron’s favorite season, for sure.)
* deep breath *
OK, brain dump successful.
I’m going to make writing in general a priority for the coming weeks. I’ve made it a priority to spend at least 15 minutes outside every day (I’m totally solar-powered), so perhaps making this a secondary priority will add to the mental health boost I so desperately need during this time of extreme weirdness.
Me, apparently. I should have taken a backup of not just my WordPress database but also my server files before I decided to update my blog’s theme. The upgrade of the backend database to the newest version of PHP caused zero problems… so I threw caution to the wind and hit that Update Theme button I’d been avoiding for years.
Honestly, I’ve had this same blog design for eight years, and haven’t thought about it much until lately. It’s not like I have a free stretch of time to sit down and implement a new blog design — and it’s not like that’s even close to the top of my priority list. I might carve out an hour to find myself a new pre-designed theme, though.
The only real casualty was my Archive page. It’s completely MIA, because I seem to recall doing something non-standard when I implemented it. Some of my formatting is wonky now, and I haven’t checked my RSS feed (although I think my husband may be the only subscriber, anyway), but whatev.
