robglazebrook.com

As promised, I’ve got a few big announcements to make today. Here they go:

Big announcement #1: Changing webhosts.

I’ve been hosting with Linksky since some time in 2002, whenever it was that I finally got fed up with Iowa State’s stipped-down servers. However, that’s about to change. CollegeBuddy Quinn and I are going in together on a (mt) Media Temple account. I have no major gripes with Linksky… I just feel like I’ve outgrown them. I need more databases, and faster servers. I have ambitions, you know.

How this affects me: I’m going to have a lot of work to do.

How this affects you: hardly at all, really. Just thought I’d let you know.

Big announcement #2: Rootarcana go bye-bye.

As part of this change, I’ve come to the decision that it’s time to drop the Rootarcana name. Rootarcana rocked as a name when I came up with it, five or six years ago. Since then, it has grown progressively less cool with each passing year. For the last few years, I’ve had a crises of conscience every time it came up for renewal, and I always ended up renewing because I didn’t have time to get anything else together. This time, no excuses. I’m dropping rootarcana.

However, I’m not dropping the blogging thing. Not at all. Instead, my Blog Of The Future will be hosted on robglazebrook.com.

How this affects me: I’ll no longer have to explain what the hell my domain name means to every well-meaning techie out there.

How this affects you: If you have me bookmarked, you’ll have to update that. If you have me set as your home page, that’ll need to change. If you’re subscribed to my RSS feed… well, you get the idea. Changes will need to be made. I’ll let you know when that happens.

Big announcement #3: New design time.

A new webhost and a new domain means it’s time for a new design. This has been a stumbling block for me in the past: I don’t have a lot of time to invest in my personal website just now, which means no new design, which means no moving to a new host, et cetera. This time I’m planning on just sucking it up and using Someone Else’s Design for a couple of months until I have time to make my own. There are plenty of good designs out there for the taking… I’ll just have to silence that designer-side of me that will inevitably scream, “but… this isn’t exactly what I wanted!” I’ll live, I’m sure.

How this affects me: See above whining.

How this affects you: The site will look different for the first time in a couple of years. Of course, it’ll be a new site, so maybe it won’t bother you at all.

Big announcement #4: Amanda is pregnant!

Just kidding. You should’ve seen the look on your face, though.

How this affects me: I don’t need to find a new apartment in a new state just yet.

How this affects you: Think of all those calories you burned in that adrenaline rush!

Big announcement #5: Switching blogging software.

I’ve been using Movable Type for years now. However, I’ve become disenchanted with their software, and am looking to move away. I’ve decided to move to Wordpress instead. Why? Because I do a fair bit of Wordpress design at work, so it’s what I’m good with at the moment. Two years ago, I probably would have went with Drupal because I was doing so much ISUComm and Habitat for Humanity work. So it goes.

How this affects me: I have to figure out how to convert nearly five years of posts and comments from one platform to another. It won’t be easy. It would have been even tougher had I not lost all my posts from 2000 - 2002 or so, I guess.

How this affects you: Things in old posts will probably look hinky. These things happen.

That’s all for now! Questions and comments are appreciated (if you can get Movable Type’s damn comment thinger to work).

You know, for the record, I didn’t specify how much later. :) Patience is a virtue, children.

So! Yes. My blog is up and running again. I’m a little annoyed with my webhost over the ordeal. I got an email from them last week saying they’d randomly decided to move me to a newer, faster server. I was happy about this, until I noticed that my blog’s database did NOT come along for the ride. I emailed back and forth (and back and forth…) with their tech support about this for five. Stinking. Days. Before I solved the problem. Yeah. ~I~ solved it. Five days emailing their tech support and I ended up fixing it myself. Admittedly, I did need their help getting to the solution, but still. It kinda sucks that I had to fix it myself. Normally their tech support is great on the rare occasion I have to use it, so I’ll assume things’ll get better for now.

Alrighty. Big announcement time! Some of you already know, but here t’is just the same: Amanda Marie Wurzinger and I are a couple. :) We have been, in fact, since December 9th, meaning we celebrated our first monthiversary just last week. I waited to post about it because there were a few people I wanted to tell in person first. And then, once I’d spoken to them all, my blog broke. :p So goes life. You know now, and that’ll have to be good enough.

What have we being doing with ourselves? Good question. We keep busy. We went to the Nutcracker Ballet in Ames one weekend, although that might have been before we were an official couple. We’ve went to two Iowa Stars games since the big day (the Stars lost both games, but the last one was really close), which is fun and I hope to continue going. We watch a lot of movies, though we’ve not yet seen one in the theater together (we’re hoping to change that this weekend).

Last weekend, we painted my upstairs living room. T’was a chore! I’d been saying I was going to paint it for months, but hadn’t gotten around to it. On Saturday afternoon we made the spontaneous decision to paint the next day, so we ran to The Woodsmith Store for supplies. I heart my employee discount there. :) I got two gallons of paint in two different shades of pale blue-gray, four rolls of painter’s tape, roller covers, tray inserts, drop cloths, and so on. We, my friends, were going to try vertical stripes.

And try we did! And I think we did a pretty kick-butt job all around. It was close, though. I almost didn’t buy enough supplies. We were very literally scraping the bottom of the can for the base coat. We finished with maybe an ounce or two of useable paint left. And then, after the paint had dried, came the stripe-taping. It was wearing work, and we ~very~ nearly ran out of tape. I’d bought four rolls of the stuff, which is 240 yards (720 feet) of tape. When I taped off the last stripe, I pulled out the remaining tape to see how close we cut it. I had less than eight inches left.

Now my living room walls look awesome, but they are making my furniture look crappy by comparison. I’ve decided I need furniture covers in a rich, solid color of some sort. That’ll come some other weekend. I still haven’t gotten my living room put back together again yet. When I do, I’ll take pictures and post them to flickr.

That’s a good enough update for today. I get the feeling I’ll be posting again soon. If anything, we have a new guy starting in my department at work next week, so my work load should lessen somewhat.

If you can read this, it means I have gotten my database back and my blog is up and running again. Horay!

More to come later. :)

I’m working on the code behind the site. This may cause certain portions of the site, particularly comments and individual entry pages, to not function correctly. I’ll remove this message when changes are complete.

Let me know if you can see this post, please! I’ve done quite a bit of site maintenance today, and I want to make sure the blog is still working for everyone.

What I’ve done:

1) Moved to a new server. I’m still with LinkSky, but I moved to one of their newer, faster servers. Hopefully, this will result in the site feeling a little speedier. It also gives me 300MB of room to play around in. :)

2) Updated my name servers. This was required because of the move to a new server. What this means is, some of you may see the old page for a couple of days, while some of you will see the new site. That’s why I’m looking for comments… I want to see when people start getting the new site.

3) Updated MovableType. Previously, I was using MovableType 2.64. Now, I’m up to 3.11. What does this mean? For me, it means I have a faster, more customizable, and far more aesthetically pleasing blogging system. For you, this means I’ll probably require you to register for comments at Typekey within a week or so. In theory, this will eliminate the (non-family-related) spam problem I’ve been having.

So! Comment, comment, comment! If you do not comment, you are probably a Nazi. And probably not a very popular Nazi, either. I bet you don’t even get invited to the Party parties. Loser.