Mostly Harmless

Moving domain to a new host… crossing fingers.

… time passes … *DNS updates happen*

This domain is now live on a new host… looks like I had some character translation issues with the DB move. Doh!

… time passes … *re-import db*

All is well.

WP 2.0.5 -> 2.5

Yeah, that worked.

Akismet spam blocker upgraded with an extra click as well. Awesome.

Now that I’ve installed WPAU there is a chance in hell that I’ll keep WP mostly current (oh, a pun? nah).

Pity I didn’t pick a nicer theme as well. Can’t win ‘em all.

The site manager on this host only has WP version 2.3.2. I think that going the WordPress automatic upgrade plugin route will prove to be much more effective/current.

After many years I’ve moved my blog over to WordPress.

Just like everybody else.

I’ve got about 4 anti-spam barriers enabled so we’ll see how that goes.

Since I didn’t bother to categorize any posts for 6 years it will be ever so convenient to do that now. The admin page is completely worthless when it comes to assigning categories in batches. There’s a script called “batch categories” that isn’t WP 2.x compatible but I found a plugin called wp-cats that does the trick well enough. Not that it works in Safari, mind you. I can deal with using Firefox once in a while, I guess.

There are 4-5 “draft” posts that I’d completely forgotten about; I think some of them are a couple of years old. Probably safe to delete them at this point because whatever the heck I was writing about is damned old news by now.

Can web sites get cob webs?. Perhaps.

So what’s up?

I only had 58 spam comments trapped in the comment queue. That’s pretty decent considering I haven’t checked that in a couple of months.

I decided I was growing weary of sending Yahoo! $50 a month for my store that loses all that money every year so I just cancelled that tonight. It shall be reborn as eBay auctions and a page full of PayPal “Buy Now!” buttons somewhere on this server, as soon as the DNS update goes through. And as soon as I create that page. The associated merchant account is going away too assuming I can figure out how to cancel it. I bet if I close my bank account they’d call me right away, but that’s probably a last resort, what with all the other automatic transfers going on with that account…

The whole rest of this site needs to buried in an unmarked grave, I think. Right now I’m uploading a new index page via RapidWeaver. And in about 5 seconds I’ll know whether or not I just nuked the whole site… nope. Worked as expected. Yay me. Also made a functional blog link. Amazing but true.

[sidebar: I need to start some food cookin' in my Euro Pro Toaster Oven. (I'm amazed I remembered my Amazon associate password...) I've only used my regular stove a few times since I got that. The nice thing is that I can throw a piece of meat on the rack and ignore it for 22 minutes and it comes out just right.]

So, yeah, eBay. I managed to find my 6-year old user ID so I’m enjoying all the excitement that comes from losing auctions by trying to be cheap — which is the point of eBay in the first place. Better to be on the selling end if you can find a good supply of something worth selling and find a niche. Here’s a good niche: shipping scales. My Ultra Ship scale will arrive shortly. I bought it from one of the stores after trying to get it $10 cheaper in an auction (5 times).

[steak update: out of the oven, resting for 5 minutes at least...]

You need a scale if you want to ship lots of your own stuff, and with 40k+ new eBay users every day it seems like there might be a lot of people thinking about setting up shop. Nice racket to be selling shipping supplies on eBay for people to use with eBay. As far as cheap scales are concerned the Ultra Ship is the most accurate and useful. If you don’t mind being off by 4-7 ounces you can get one of the other scales.

Soon as the scale shows up it will have the opportunity to weigh my extra Dilbert calendar, old VCR, hidden motion detecting camera, tape deck, old car stereo, books, and whatever else I can dig up from the closet… and then I’ll see what I can get wholesale.

I’ve read almost two complete books about selling on eBay, so I’m practically an expert already.
[that was a powerful-good steak.]

I’m sitting on my butt at Gate 43 at SFO. My flight got delayed 50 minutes so I coughed up the $9.99 for wireless net access and streamed my TiVo for about 45 minutes (ha! take that!).

Anywho, what I wanted to say, was that I just purged 309 comment spam attempts. I doubt there were any legitimate comments in there.

Really time to implement that Captcha…

I’ve got a handful of blurry photos from around Moscone Center. A couple of them look a little artsy so I might post ‘em. Got some pics from the Apple campus too. Didn’t bother with standing in line at the campus Apple Store for 3 hours so I don’t have a “mothership” T-shirt. No biggie. The WWDC shirt is nice though.

The band at the Apple Campus Bash was The Wallflowers.

Starting the pre-boarding… gotta go.