Devauld.ca

I started off, innocently enough, looking at some websites through Alexa's website, and a diagnostic showed me that I had a broken link. I looked at the link in question, as well as the article that linked to it, and realized that I had simply misplaced a single quote when writing the article. I though I was doing a favor to the internet by correcting this mistake, and I was very wrong.

Minutes after making the change, I popped back to Google Reader to wander around the internet, and I found that within the space of a couple minutes Google managed to find over a hundred new blog entries. Disappointment hit when I realized that the blog in question was mine, and the only reason Google decided to index these new entries was because of a change I made to a year old entry.

I'm usually comfortable being the maven or the early adopter, but this time being too far out on the edge caused me a great deal of pain. When I learned of the simplicity of hosting, I immediately moved my spot on the web from a roll-your-own solution to a Typo installation. I spent a great deal of time transforming my table definitions into the Typo ideal. After the initial migration, I started to customize the site and ran into a great deal of difficulty. Typo was layed out like a PHP developer trying to make his way in the Ruby world. At this juncture, the majority of the Ruby/Rails community was migrating towards a new up and comer: Mephisto.

As the typical geek that I am, I spent hours sitting and debugging conversion scripts to move my customized Typo environment to the Mephisto environment. After many sleep deprived nights I managed to get everything pulled over just in time for the CSS ReBoot. After which I meandered about on my merry way.

Life was bliss. A few friends told me that through the feed they were devouring was spitting up duplicates like a newborn. I never paid any attention; after all, how big of an inconvenience could it be clicking on the 'Mark as Read' button?

My explorations into editing, this eve, led to my reversion to the mainstream. When I saw google choking on the 100+ new articles that were mostly written last year, the tender flint that existed in me to try something new and to be on the edge burned in a white hot flame and died. I wanted, no needed, to be in the same place as everyone else. Luckily for me my hosting provider has a simple 'One Click Install' for WordPress, and within minutes Google showed me the way to convert my Mephisto bloggins into the WP standard. It wasn't a seamless reversion, but it was less painless than fighting my way against the mainstream.

In the space of a couple hours, I reverted the page you see to a simple, yet elegant, mainstream application for blogging. Most of the difficulties in the transition came from the shared apache I use on DreamHost, and were quickly rectified by liberal use of kill command after the installation.

If you are still having problems, please let me know. If you don't know what I'm talking about, please be happy for me.

My thirtieth trip around the sun was market on the calendar for last week.

Despite my desire for a lack of drama, my automobile would not have anything of the sort. The cold snap on Monday prevented some normally functioning part from performing its duties. The land yacht encountered some type of transmission problems, and would require twice as many rotations per minute from the engine to get the same speed out of the wheels. I engaged Ninth Ave Auto to find me a vehicle and they did not disappoint. Delivered on my birthday proper was a silver 2003 Nissan Pathfinder. So far it has met or exceeded all expectations, including how much fuel it consumes. This summer, more offroadish camping adventures await in Bragg Creek, and I'm very happy to have something with four wheel drive again.

My celebratory occasion in time was not without some windfall. Sonja bought Rockband for us, and it is the most fun I've had in a long time. The drums, I imagine, are everyone's favorite, as they are a great break from the general idea of a video game. I've lost myself a few times bashing away at the electronic pads, trying frantically to put together the little rhythm that I have to get through some songs. If you think I'm crazy, then you haven't tried it.

I also received some credit at some of my favorite stores. Although I haven't unloaded on electronics, or outdoor gear YET; however, I did have to pull the trigger on some dead tree carcass. I couldn't help but wonder, as I stood surrounded by wonderful pieces of fiction, great literary history, personal biographies, compilations of comics and more reference than one can comprehend why I would pick up the equivalent of a text book. Again, I realized that the last bit of fiction that I consumed was a good book devoured in a single sitting. When I handed over the massive tome, I had to wonder if many people spend their windfall on what others would consider torturous.