Unleashed |
|
|
the old, long abandoned blog; I don't come here much anymore THE NEW BLOG Links September 11 The F-word What is Greatness? Becoming My Grandmother Strangers and yet... Classical & the Web Goodbye Free Web? Multiple Recordings Mind Transporter Music, Art & Me Music Rant Mozart & Schubert Art Appreciation Diplomacy Archives
|
Monday, March 24, 2003
Abandon all hope? In case anyone finds their way here. Yes the new Reflections in D minor bit the dust after less than a week. After both Moveable Type and pMachine and now a hand coded blog have all three crapped out I think it should be fairly obvious that there is a problem with the server. Feature Price Hosting will not admit that there is a problem at all. I have submitted a total of 10 separate trouble tickets so far and every one has been closed with a note saying that my site is up and running. Well, my links page, my about page and my women bloggers page are all still okay so I guess they think if any page appears normal the whole site can be considered "up and running." All I know to do is to keep harrassing them. I really miss blogging and there is so much I want to say right now but I don't want to keep on leading my few readers back and forth from one page to another so I probably won't be posting here or anywhere. I don't know how long it will be before I have a permanent blog but if anyone wants to be notified please email me and I'll put you on a list.
My sincerest apologies and my thanks for your loyalty and patience. I hope this will be resolved and that I still have a few readers left when it's over.
Update: I am continuing to submit trouble tickets as fast as Feature Price's help desk can close them but this could continue indefinitely. I tried calling them on the phone and they hung up on me twice. The third time I called I got some stupid recorded message saying that I had dialed "too many numbers or not enough". What the hell? In case anyone reading this lives in the Ft. Myers Florida area and likes me well enough to give them some grief, their phone number is (239) 622-0000, and their address is 1516 Jackson Street, Ft. Myers FL 33901.
Update #2: There is actually some progress to report this morning! FP help desk responded to my last trouble ticket with their usual "We uploaded a test page and it worked just fine" so I tried uploading my page again just to check and see what would happen and it actually did upload this time BUT the beginning of the last entry is missing. Also the page where the old MT blog was is now completely blank.
Update #3: Well...it seems to be working now. I'm a little afraid to start again and I still wish I could get Moveable Type working again. I think archiving is going to be a big problem. I haven't figured out how to get permalinks to work permanently. Wednesday, March 19, 2003
Official Move Announcement The new Reflections in d minor is now officially open.Yay! I feel like celebrating. If I get over 100 visits on opening day I will really feel like celebrating. Come on and make it happen.
Tuesday, March 18, 2003
Sneak Preview My new permanent blog is up but obviously still needs some work. I wanted to have everything perfect before the unveiling but I'm hoping someone can tell me how to fix a little problem - part of the text is blue that shouldn't be.
I'm sure there are some other problems too. I guess you can consider it still "under construction." Monday, March 17, 2003
Prediction I predict that the invasion of Iraq will start on Friday, the 21st. Why? Because I have opera tickets for that evening. Of course I'll go anyway. I'm sure I don't have anything to worry about personally but I still don't like the idea of being in even a small, relatively unimportant city like Tulsa while scary things are going on in the world and it will put a shadow over everything.
Visit Michele's blog for more predictions.
Update: Last night after I went to bed I started thinking that maybe I shouldn't have posted this. I don't like the way it sounds. Of course there will be a shadow over everything. And maybe I won't go. I don't know. Should I be out enjoying a musical evening while people are dying on the other side of the world? Not that anything I do would make any difference. Blogging Woes: The Continuing Saga Now working on Plan D. (Or is it Plan E? I've sort of lost count) Nerd Test
 take the nerd test. and go to mewing.net. a nerd utopia. That's pretty good but no I do not prefer vinyl, and what's this about obscure bands? Not that there's anything wrong with bands, especially obscure bands, but why assume that's what everyone is into? Why not assume that some people might be into orchestras and obscure composers instead? SHEESH! We classical music fans never get any respect!
Via Book Geek. Sunday, March 16, 2003
The Daily Whine The entire world is conspiring against me having a permanent blog. (other than this one) Even Blogger is not cooperating. I know I have everything correct this time. I've checked all the settings over and over again and it's still not working. Saturday, March 15, 2003
He's joking, right? Considering some of the nonsense coming out of universities these days, I could almost believe that this is serious. Blogging My new real blog will be up and running sometime in the next week, with the same name as the MT blog: Reflections in d minor. I have a plan now but probably won't have much time to work on it this weekend. I'm not sure yet what I'm going to do about comments. I'm going to look at some different comment systems so if anyone knows of a good one that is still accepting new registrations please let me know.
The Friday Five 1. Do you like talking on the phone? Why or why not?
2. Who is the last person you talked to on the phone?
3. About how many telephones do you have at home?
4. Have you encountered anyone who has really bad phone manners? What happened?
5. Would you rather pick up the phone and call someone or write them an e-mail or a letter? Why or why not?
Friday, March 14, 2003
Thursday, March 13, 2003
I think I'll lay off quizzes for a while Here's someone who really needs to switch to decaf. Be sure not to miss the last paragraph before the two lines of all caps at the bottom of the post. Yikes!
(Just teasing, Warren. I have days like that myself)
Caffeinated Check out the mug on the top right in this picture. It says: "What part of 'No decaf' don't you understand?".
I found this one at Bread Coffee Chocolate Yoga which, by the way, is a really great blog. In fact it's so great that it actually made me violate my ironclad never-blogroll-anyone-who-can't-find-the-shift-key rule. Yeah...it's that good. Wednesday, March 12, 2003
Blog Anniversary Well this is it, the big day, the one year anniversary of the day I started this blog (Yay.) and I'm thinking that it's too bad I don't like beer because this seems like the kind of anniversary for sitting alone and crying into one's beer. About three months ago after much hesitation I left this blog for a new Moveable Type blog and had planned to abandon this one permanently. Unfortunately, two weeks ago the new blog had a major melt-down and at this point I am totally stumped as to what to do about it.
Things have been different from what I expected at first. I had never heard of weblogs until I read an article about them around the beginning of March 2002. The article had a link to Blogger.com so I checked it out, looked at a few blogs to try to get an idea what it was all about and about a week or so later started my own. At first I was only interested in writing and my original idea was that I would try to write some kind of little essay two or three times a week, but I soon discovered blogging and everything changed.
Amoung the first blogs I linked to, and who linked to me, were The Rat's Nest, World Wide Rant, War Liberal and Muslim Pundit. Since then there have been many more as you can see on my links page. I really get into the whole blogging community thing and because of it this blog is very different from what I intended it to be. I do write a few essays like I originally intended but it seems I do more linking than writing and seldom take the time to really work on writing.
I'm not complaining. I rather like the way things have turned out. (except for the technical problems, of course) I enjoy being part of an online community. I often read articles and blog posts that try to define what blogging is or should be. They usually get it wrong. Some journalists and academics seem to think that every blog post should be suitable for inclusion in a PhD thesis. Some bloggers have all these little rules, an unwritten Sacred Code of Blogging. Other bloggers act like they're so above it all and regularly write posts proudly declaring that they don't care how many readers they have or how many people link to them, with the clear indication that they are somehow superior to people who do care about these things.
Well, they're all wrong. Blogging is a different thing for different individuals. It's anything you want it to be. Whenever you catch yourself about to make a statement about what a blog should be substitute the word "paper" for the world "blog." If you have a sheet of paper you can write anything you like on it - an essay for a college class, a column for the local newspaper, a letter to your brother or sister, a grocery list or just doodling. And when you're done you can show it to everybody who's willing to look at it or you can just keep it to yourself. It's your sheet of paper and you can do anything you damn well please with it.
So where am I going? One way or another I will continue blogging as I have for the past year. I really hate to give up on my Moveable Type blog but I also hate being in limbo like this. My server fees are paid up until December so I certainly don't want to stay here much longer. My sincerest thanks to the handful of loyal readers who have stayed with me. I can't promise how soon things will be back to normal or even what "normal" will be but I definitely plan to stick around....somewhere. Tuesday, March 11, 2003
Blog Find Found recently: Tales from the Left Hand Path. Might be interesting. I'm not sure yet how well I'm going to like this blog. I think he's anti-war but from what I've seen so far he doesn't talk about the war all that much. Mostly personal stories and observations. I love the picture at the top of the left hand column. Crazy Quiz I couldn't resist this quiz, even though I know absolutely nothing about anime. (which made it very hard to answer a couple of the questions) I liked most of the questions though and you get about 10 choices for each. Except for the two anime questions the only one I had trouble with was the Disney question. Only the more recent Disney films were listed and I haven't even seen most of them. Overall, a very good quiz. Here's my result:
And speaking of the media... Have you noticed how both sides are absolutely convinced that "the media" are biased toward the other side? I read something a little while ago that referred to the media as being "part of Bush's war machine" or some such nonsense. I suppose it could be said that I'm guilty of the same thing but if the media is pro-war then why are the peace protests so often at the top of the national news while the pro-war rallies are a mere footnote on the local news? Why do the networks show anti-America demonstrations from around the world nearly every night but never say anything about the Iraqi defectors who have risked their lives to tell us about the true conditions in their country? Why do we only see these things on the Internet and in a few newspapers, never on television where most people get the news?
Most of the media people probably honestly believe that their reporting is unbiased. The goal is to attract and keep viewers so they don't report anything that too obviously supports one side or the other. I also sense that the media is afraid of the American public. They have this idea that most of us are unthinking, brutes, ruled by emotion, and that if they say anything to get us all stirred up we will all take to the streets with our guns and pitchforks and kitchen knives to commit indiscriminate acts of violence and create widespread chaos. Therefore it is natural that they would want to over-emphasize the peace movement and de-emphasize or simply not report anything that would be seen as a good reason for war.
A Letter to Germany Every time I read another essay by Orson Scott Card I am even more impressed by his intelligence and common sense. In this column he answers a letter from a German schoolteacher who writes to tell Mr. Card about the "excellent documentaries on both German and French television" which of course is so much more honest and informative than the "censored" American media. A Mind of Its Own I'm having a weird little computer problem. It's not really even a problem, it's just annoying. Sunday I decided to change the wallpaper. I browsed through the pictures I already had saved on my PC and changed it several times trying to make up my mind. I wasn't satisfied with anything so I went searching and found this very cool wallpaper site and finally picked out this image, then reversed it so the marbles would be on the right side of the screen. The problem is, now the picture keeps changing all by itself. It keeps going back to the other pictures that I just tried out for a minute. My computer is torturing me. It must have seen me looking through the Dell catalog that came in the mail and now it thinks I don't love it anymore. Well, it might have a mind of it's own but it's not very intelligent or doesn't know me very well because this kind of behavior does not cause me to have warm feelings toward this freaking piece of .... uh...I mean, this wonderful machine that has provided me with so many hours of pleasant diversion. Monday, March 10, 2003
New Art Blog Since I've started posting here again I've gotten back into the habit of checking Blogger's Most Recently Updated list. I only click on the most interesting titles and occasionally I find one worth linking. This morning I was lucky enough to witness the birth of a new art blog: D. Caron's Art Journal. I'll be looking in once in a while to see how it's shaping up. The Comments link has disappeared again. I didn' t do it. Hopefully they will be back before too long. Creatures of the Clock We've had our living room wall clock for well over 20 years. I can't remember where or when we bought it. It's a fairly typical battery operated wall clock with a real wood frame, white face, roman numerals. It used to have a thin red second hand. My oldest son's first playmate, an adorable little girl named Sarah, would often watch the second hand for a minute or two and then laugh as if it was the funniest thing in the world.
Cats liked the second hand too. The clock has been knocked down several times by cats trying to catch it. The wood frame has been broken and glued back together twice. We finally got a clue and removed the second hand. Since then the clock has been hanging undisturbed on our wall for a number of years.
This weekend my young grandson, thrilled with his ability to make small inanimate objects fly through the air, sent a light blue Beanie Baby dinosaur sailing across the living room for the third time in less than a minute, knocking the clock off the wall and breaking the frame again. Grandson quickly lost interest in making objects fly across the room, but I'm sure the thrill will return in no time. I picked up the clock and put the battery back in, expecting that it would work as usual and that I would only need to glue the frame back together once again. I could hear the faint ticking so I set it aside, but when I looked a short time later the hands hadn't moved.
We do not really need a wall clock in the living room. The digital clock on the VCR is visible from every seat in the room. But we all found ourselves repeatedly looking at the spot on the wall where the clock had been. Have you ever noticed how often you look at the clock? Do you sometimes look at the clock when you already know what time it is or when you don't especially need to know what time it is? It's almost like the clock is an extension of ourselves - like an arm. If we don't know where it is and what it's doing at all times we feel that something is wrong.
So this afternoon I went and bought a cheap plastic clock at Wal-mart and hung it on the wall where the old one used to be. I don't think we'll have this one long because I want to look for something a little more attractive but this was an emergency. There was a spot on the wall where a clock belonged and it couldn't wait for me to take time to find just the right one. Pablo de Sarasate (1844-1908) Born Pablo Martín Melitón de Sarasate y Navascuéz, this Spanish composer was born on today's date in 1844. Sarasate's Zigeunerweisen, for violin and orchestra, is a wild ride! That piece and his Carmen Fantasy are all I have heard by this composer.
Sunday, March 09, 2003
Continuing Troubles Still no progress on my site problems. I have not been able to get a satisfactory response from Feature Price hosting. I guess I should have known better than to trust any company based in Florida. All of their "help" desk personnel are obviously either senior citizens in the late stages of Alzheimers, or Cuban boat people who are learning English on the job. Today's Classical Birthday's Two more of my favorite composers were born on this date. I regret that I haven't had time to write a proper tribute. (And I would rather save it until my real blog is up and running again)
Josef Myslivecek (1737-1781) - A Czech composer who should be much more well known. His violin concerti are delightful. To me they sound like what Vivaldi might have written if he had lived in the Classical Era - bright, lively, exciting.
Samuel Barber (1910-1981) - Barber is best known for his Adagio for Strings, originally the second movement of his String Quartet in B minor Op. 11. Barber himself arranged the adagio for string orchestra. Unfortunately the original, complete version is now rarely heard. I also enjoy Barber's Violin Concerto, especially the second movement. Saturday, March 08, 2003
@$#&%! Well...there is obviously a problem with my server. Now my new blog is blank also. I have contacted my hosting company again (third time) and hopefully I will get more than a rude response this time.
Friday, March 07, 2003
Not Exactly a Grand Opening Well I guess I'll quit stalling and go ahead and unveil my new project. My new pMachine blog, if it becomes permanent will have the same title as my broken MT blog: Reflections in d minor. There is no need to rush and update your blogrolls. Right now there are links to both this blog and the new one on what's left of my MT blog. If/When I finally decide to give up on it there will be an entry page at the old address www.aeternam626.com so you will always be able to find me there. I'll let you know when I finally decide to make the change permanent so you can link directly to the blog if you want to.
For a few days at least I plan to post identical entries on both of my working blogs so you don't need to check both. You can go to either one to get the latest news and blather. I might be too busy to post very much this weekend anyway, so everyone have a lovely weekend and if the forecast is as good where you are as it is here then for goodness sake get away from the computer and go outside. :-)
Blogrolls Bigwig asked this question in the comments to the post below.
Umm, is this the old blog or the new blog? My answer:
Do not edit your blogroll yet! This is the old blog and definitely temporary. I'm not really sure where I'll end up. I hate to give up on Moveable Type. There are all those great posts there from the past 3 months. But on the other hand, I have started a new "test" blog with pMachine and that seems to be working out pretty well. I'm not sure what I'll do if I actually manage to fix the problem with MT. What will I do with two blogs? I'll probably go public with my new pMachine blog later today or sometime this weekend. There's no reason why you all shouldn't suffer through my redecorating, which I might be working on for a long time. :-)
Thursday, March 06, 2003
Bizarre Tale This story sounds like an urban legend. Even if it's true it doesn't matter. Even without Saddam there would be no shortage of people to fill the role of Brutal Dictator.
Found at Follow Me Here Making Progress (I think) I finally managed to get pMachine installed. No I'm not going to show it to you yet. First I want to make it look a little more like my weblog, but pM has the most confusing templates I have ever seen in my life! They look nothing like what I'm used to. I can't find anything remotely resembling a style sheet. I have seen some very attractive pMachine sites so I know there has to be a way. (~sob~ I miss Moveable Type)
Update: Oh. Now I get it. It now looks entirely possible that I might not be stuck here forever.
Thank you for your support, ladies I have read about the Lysistrata Project on a number of blogs. I loved Asparagirl's post on the subject. I guess I'm a little late to the party as usual but I still have to put my fifty-cents-worth in. (Hey...I think a lot of my own opinions, remember)
Once again the "doves" are giving the "hawks" a helping hand, unintentionally of course. Come on gals, you're not thinking. What does a man typically do after sex? More often than not he rolls over and goes to sleep, right? In other words, men are very peaceful after getting laid. On the other hand, if men are denied sex they tend to remain tense, possibly aggressive, until their tension is relieved somehow.
So don't be too hard on the women participating in the Lysistrata Project. They're helping in two ways. In the short term they're helping out the war effort by not making young men feel too peaceful and, if they manage to stick with the project, they'll be contributing to the betterment of the human race by taking themselves out of the gene pool. Wednesday, March 05, 2003
Time to say "Enough is enough!" This woman, a single doctor, was beaten for attending a party where single males were present. She later committed suicide "in protest of female oppression under the Iranian Islamic state." Some protest. If you were going to kill yourself anyway why didn't you take a few women-hating males with you?
You know... there's something that I've been holding in for a long time. I keep telling myself that I don't know what it's like to have to live like that so I have no right to say. No right to tell those women what they should do. But I can't stand it anymore so I'm going to come out with it: Why don't muslim women fight back? I don't think the religion is to blame as much as the culture. I can't see American women putting up with that sort of thing? Don't they have kitchen knives and iron skillets in Iran? Have you ever heard of Lorena Bobbitt? Fight back, dammit! Organize, band together, march in the streets and shout "we're not going to take it anymore!" Yes, I know, many women would be killed. Many women are being killed now. Take a few of your oppressors with you. Vow to kill or sexually mutilate 3 medieval fascist male pigs for every woman who is beaten or murdered.
And all of you American feminists - why the hell aren't you doing something about this? Why do I hear not a peep out of you damned self-righteous hypocrites? I guess "sexual harrassment" and the "glass ceiling" in the American workplace is so much worse than being beaten for attending a party or showing one's face.
How about all of you who wanted to go play human shield? (That is, until you found out that it might actually be dangerous) You want to be a shield? Why don't you go shield some women from abuse? Oh, sorry, I forgot... the oppressors are not Americans so they're not really oppressors. Everything America does is Evil; everything people from other cultures do is just part of their culture. We should try to understand and not judge them according to our own decadent capitalist culture.
The fantasy ideologists in my own culture can only be dismissed as irrelevant. Why do I even bother addressing them? The women living in cultures that oppress women will never read this or anything else like it. Oh how I wish they could! I wish I could set off a spark that would lead to the women's revolution. Such a revolution would be bloody, no doubt about it, but the lives of your grandaughters would be better for it.
Mood Music When you're in a bad mood do you listen to happy music in an effort to pick yourself up? Or do you listen to happy music when you're happy and sad music when you're feeling down?
As you might have noticed I wasn't in the best of moods last night. So what do I do first thing this morning? I reach for the most melancholy of the five Palestrina discs that I own. (The Lamentations of Jeremiah the Prophet) It just finished playing a few minutes ago. Palestrina is sort of like potato chips: you can't have just one. What do I want to listen to after Palestrina? More Palestrina.
Funny thing though, Palestrina is equally satisfying when I'm in a happy mood, so maybe it's not about mood at all. I guess I'm just seriously obsessed with Palestrina right now. Tuesday, March 04, 2003
It's my Pity Party and I'll cry if I want to Why not. Most of my readers have left anyway. I spent 3 hours trying to install pMachine. Actually, it was mostly my husband who did the installing. I wanted to try to do it myself but...well... never mind. I would probably be sitting here until tomorrow morning if I had tried it all by myself. But anyway, we failed. A whole evening wasted with nothing to show for it. And I still don't have a clue what's wrong with my MT blog. My blogiversary is coming up in a few days. It's been a fun year. Well, not really that fun I guess but interesting. I guess I could go back to Blogger permanently but that would be like sort of like moving back into a two-room apartment after getting used to living in a house. I don't know what I'm going to do now. I don't want to say that I'm quitting because I would like to keep blogging but right now I don't feel much like continuing either. Whatever I do, even if the Moveable Type problem gets fixed, it'll be like starting over again from the beginning. I was getting about 90-100 visits a day; now it's close to 50 and a lot of those are Google searches for "nude WWF wrestlers" and other crap like that. Yeah, I could be real popular if I was always blathering about total crap. Maybe if I talked a lot about blow jobs maybe then I would get lots of readers. Blow jobs are the big thing now aren't they? What an interesting topic! I need to make up a story about nude WWF wrestlers giving each other blow jobs and watch the hits pile up.
Who is the REAL woman here? Andrea linked to this so-called real women site. It didn't take me long to figure out that I probably wouldn't fit in but I know beyond a shadow of a doubt that I am a Real Woman. Therefore I have written a Real Woman Creed that suits me better. After all, I have as much right as they have to define Real Womanhood.
Antonio Vivaldi (1678-1741) Antonio Vivaldi was born on March 4, 1678. He is most famous for his Four Seasons, a set of four violin concerti, but he composed many more concerti, sonatas and vocal works.
Since Vivaldi is one of my favorite composers I feel I should write more but this will have to do for now.
Monday, March 03, 2003
MT Problem Update At least one other MT user has the same problem I have. Unfortunately, no one has an answer yet. I don't know what to do. Give up on MT and get on with life? Am I being too impatient? I'm considering looking for something else entirely but I'm reluctant to start with another unsupported blog program. Birthdays I have missed some big ones in the past few days.
Gioachino Rossini - born February 29, 1792
Comments Oops. I didn' t mean to get rid of the comments. I copied and pasted the code and I can't see anything I missed but still no comments. You can always email me. PLEASE email me, especially if you know anything about Moveable Type. Things That Go Bump (and scratch and drip) in the Night Another one of those little rules of life - When two people sleep together only one at a time will ever be bothered by a noise, but the one who is bothered by the noise will keep the person who is not bothered by it awake half the night searching for or trying to stop the noise.
Pardon the mess while I play around with the template. (YIKES! This does not look good) Well....I suppose this will do for now since I (hopefully) won't be using this blog for very long. I had to change templates because I kept getting errors when I tried to publish with the other one.
Sunday, March 02, 2003
Update I finally got an email back from Ben the Moveable Type guy. He asked some questions about the problem I'm having. I answered and now I'm waiting to hear back from him again. Weekends are sort of slow for blogging anyway so I'm just sort of relaxing and taking the weekend off from worrying about this mess. I'm hoping that Reflections in D minor will be back soon but I'm sure it's going to be at least several more days.
|
