Silly me, I want to start another website. This is something I have wanted to do for a long time, and over the years I have planned and think it is a good idea. I have had a pretty fair domain for some time now, eight letters two natural words and somebody even tried to buy it about a year ago. The domain might not be wonderful but I think it will work.

I don't want to talk about it too much but I will say it has a gardening theme. If any of you gardeners out there have a blog or wish to or if you just want to do something neat then leave a comment. If you also have a nice website layout I can use I will be your friend for life.

I also have another killer idea, even better domain, same gardening theme and I am even more excited about this one but you might have to wait for it. This one is really ground breaking (get it? gardening =! groundbreaking) and I know you will just love it but it takes some work.

These two site ideas are different enough that I want to keep them seperate. Should be fun!

I have been using Godaddy as my registrar since they were the little guys. It seemed like a risk at the time, but they seemed to me to be willing to stand up for what is right, and I took a chance. They have never done me wrong.

My blood ran just a little bit cold when I read of GoDaddy shutting down a domain name due to a complaint, as reported here on Slashdot and I began to gradually transfer my own domains to another registrar. I left the domains I hold for other people. It's not so much that I think anyone would threaten anything I manage, it's just the principle.

Today they have done it again, pulling the plug on a website at the first hint of trouble, as reported at news.com. I understand that it is not good business practise for GoDaddy to go to court for a >$10 a year account, but I would like to see them display a tiny bit of hesitation. While the data on this recent website may have been of borderline sensitivity, I can't really see any benefit in quickly taking down this particular copy of the data.

I don't really have any evidence that other registrars would in any way stand up for my poor domain, in the spirit of "innocent until proven guilty" I will very likely give them the chance.

NameCheap.com will likely stand to gain control of the domains I manage for others. I will continue to spread my own domains out a bit, possibly even trying some overseas companies such as joker.com and gandi.net. Once again I doubt I will ever be involved in anything controversial, but the very idea that my domain name could be messed with is so very icky. Like being evicted.

In other news, this week brought us The Day The Googlebomb Died and I don't know whether to be happy or sad.

This is a date I must remember. It could have been a better day, but it is pretty much over now.

On this day, maybe at about 7:45PM or so give or take, my son cashed in on years of showing up and participating and a good amount of hard work, and became an Eagle Scout.

Of course I cried, and I look forward to the formal ceremony where I plan to weep openly in front of numerous young boys and their parents. That's just how I roll.

Earlier today, I got a call from the high school while at work. I held my breath until the lady said the word "clinic". After that, the lady on the phone told me to come and get the boy and take him to the doctor immediately. She goes through all kinds of symptoms like dizziness and tingling but I wasn't really paying attention to any of that. I just took my leave from work hoping I had the insurance card on me but not really expecting to need it. The school does seem to play these things up a bit.

When I got to the school office I was suprised to see one of the teachers sitting with the boy. We got out quickly after I agreed to go to the doctor. My son explained that he had all the symptoms of a stroke, and that medication was effective if taken in the first three hours.

We were still sitting in the examining room waiting for the doctor when the three hour mark passed. Not so much because the doctor was behind but more because my son was hesitant to call me in the first place.

The doctor comes in and pronounces it a migraine. Joy.

So, we came home, chilled a bit, had supper, and went back out to face the Board of Review that would determine if my son was eligible to be an Eagle Scout.

Can you believe someone had the nerve to rear-end me on the way? We both got out and he asked me if I wanted to pull over and have a look. I told him that if I was able to pull over at all then I was fine and not to worry. And I was.

That was my day.

Curses, and I could easily do better than that, my Linux attempts are not really working out too well.

Now you must understand that I do recognise that somewhat modern equipment would perform oh so much better...and I do take into account that this particular laptop was severely dropped during delivery, and subsequently glued back together by yours truly, using substandard methods...

Nevertheless,

What do you mean, no OS found?

That seems to be a running theme in this here weblog.

I mean, the hard drive didn't seem to be all that hard to find during all that installization process.

Why wait until installation is complete to tell me there is a problem?

I swear I will install Windows just to see something. See if I don't. I know I must have a screw loose. Where might that one be?

tomorrow, maybe Fedora core 5, Maybe W98. Let the best man win.

I have a frequently spammed script on one of my sites. I was suprised while reading my server logs to discover that one of the miscreants showed up using...

Mozilla/4.0 (compatible; MSIE 6.0; MSIE 5.5; Windows NT 5.0) Opera 7.02 Bork-edition [en]

Certainly it is a spoof, but an unusual one. Of course the Bork-Bork version of Opera was a retaliation against Microsoft after none of the MS engineers were able to produce a webpage viewable in the Opera browser. This version caused Microsoft pages to appearas if they had been written by the Muppets' Swedish Chef.

I have been interested in getting all my various calendars synchronized for quite some time now. I have had some success in adding my PDA schedule to my computer records, but the thing that interested me most was online calendars that could be subscribed to using another calendar. I have found a new toy to try out, the service at Zimbra. I tried out the online demo and much to my joy I was able to subscribe to a calendar on a Drupal site. This is the thing I have been waiting for: setting up Drupal sites for the organizations I belong to, and when the person scheduling the events enters it on the website I can expect my own personal calendar to be updated with all the upcoming events.

It looks like there are hosted packages available for Zimbra as well as a download. I would like to install it myself, and there is a free and paid version. I will need to poke around and see which is right for me.

Next up, I must see if there is a way for a Drupal site to subscribe to Google Calendar through the invite feature. After that. I must just get organized...

***update: this may be more that I wanted after all, it seems like a commitment sort of thing right when I am seriously thinking of dumping SUSE, and there is no BSD port. Maybe I try it, maybe I wait for the next guy to get that good. Seems like a nice product. though.

I live in a fairly undeveloped area. Mostly I like it that way. Sometimes the system wishes to interfere. I wrote about it here. I wish I could do it better.