Tag: housekeeping

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Maintenance Of Some Sort – UPDATE

Dear Leaf Peepers,

It looks like my web host has taken down the server that my site was hosted on and backed up my site with a version from some time in 2007. Because of that, the webcam has crashed (my old site didn’t even have a webcam page) and we won’t know when the rain anticipated for my little burg will start falling.

Here’s surprising news—I’m not too happy about this.

– bob

UPDATE: Well, my site is up, but Mr. Anonymous’ site is still down. “Website Disabled” is the precise term. Apparently there was some “crash” of the “server” that stores all of the “scary quotation marks.” And you know how important those can be.

UPDATE II: Mr. Anonymous’ site is a version from a time long ago, before I fixed it. Now if I could only remember what I did…

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Forty Five Degrees

Pals,

How about this? Obama and McCain seem to have swept today’s primaries. Who might be their respective party’s nominees? Hard to know…

Oh, right. Superdelegates. They’ll surely fix it. What were we thinking?

Spent the weekend at the folks’ place doing a little finish carpentry. The stay—with more gifts and more cake—continues my Birthday Holiday Season, so you needn’t worry about that. There are more events planned next weekend, so I’ll try to stay up past 9:00 for those. Advancing age, you know.

Now for a little housekeeping: the podcast is purely in the planning stages at this time. I stumbled across some new tricks to make the thing work, so we’re that much closer. Have something to contribute? Send an email with “a jaunty little podcast” to avoid the spambot if you want to be a guest. We’re going to post at bobtherieau.com, register at iTunes, and link from here. Clearly you’re an expert at something (or maybe you need email alerts just to remember when to breathe, but hey, let’s hear about how you set up the alerts.) so we want to hear from you. I’m pretty sure we want to hear from you. Maybe. Hopefully.

By the way, the Idyllwild Weather Clam missed badly yesterday. It was warm and the Clam went too low. I asked her about this, and she seemed embarrassed by the error. She has promised to do better next time though. You gotta love contrition in any bivalve, much more so in a mile-high bivalve.

So yeah. Birthday Holiday Season—good, ongoing, gifts. Podcast—a show about everything, nothing without your help. Clam—She’s real sorry, will predict weather much better next time.

There you have it. Hello, Tuesday.

– bob

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Freakish Geek Nonsense Alert! – Webclip Icons

Friends,

Now that you have an iPhone or iPod Touch, you must know that you can save bookmarks to favorite websites on your home screen (or another of nine screens, but that’s for another day). I’ve added new webclip icons to the famous bobtherieau.com site for your amusement. Just cruise to the page on your iPhone and hit the plus sign at the bottom of the screen. You’ll be asked what to do, so just click “Add to Home Page.” Glossy finish, rounded corners, it looks swell.

And for the rest of you, KCRW is giving away an iPod Touch every hour or so during their pledge drive this week. Donate to the station and get a chance to win! You know you love them. Give them money.

– bob

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U.S. of China – Puttin’ On The Feedbag

Friends,

Now that you’re restricted from reading this lovely mess by say, Websense, fire up your feedreaders and point them here: http://feeds.feedburner.com/ajauntylittleblog. Let’s see if Mao’s Little Helper has stopped that.

Mouse to Cat—check.

– bob

UPDATE: (sounds like you’re striking back against the “crushing of dissent.” are you actually dissenting? -ed The truth is like a bouquet of flowers that smell bad! What’s the worry?)

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United States of China

Friends,

This site is now blocked by Websense at San Diego’s Omnipresent Charitable Organization. Actually, all sites hosted on the blogspot.com domain have been silenced. Other “social networking and personal journaling” sites have been disappeared as well. TypePad sites are among them, but there are a couple that missed the axe for now. I won’t name them and give the thugs ideas, though.

It’s disconcerting of course, but I worry about the greater message. Alternative and private opinion isn’t welcome at a place that some might consider progressive, and that’s a choice made by some anonymous individual. Was it us? Was it a Websense update that just automatically installed (which is likely since it happened on the 15th)? Was it an executive decision made to enforce parity with our ban on Facebook and MySpace? And this—will it make the place happier and more productive?

I’m not happy, if that’s any indication.

By the way, you can send this URL to yourself and give it a try: http://tinyurl.com/39fjs9 It’s a TinyURL for the giant link to this site through the YouHide proxy server. Here’s another one: http://tinyurl.com/26vbdk from SurfUnblocked. The nice thing about this one is that the advertising banner doesn’t seem to be that overwhelming. Proxy servers. Geez, it’s come to this.

Your pal,

bob

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happy new year.

Friends,

We made it. If 2006 was a truly stinkeroo year for reasons that might be best left to a splash into the archives, doesn’t it seem that 2007 was merely a “transition” year? Some of us transitioned more than the others though. I gained an impossibly adorable niece, ended an abhorrent and downright smelly habit, didn’t get a new job, and managed to annoy my vivacious writing partner enough to make her move to another state (not even a neighboring state. what the hell did you do, champ? -ed)

Oh!Yeah, that little Inez is awfully cute. This is from Christmas, where her handlers were sick. My nephew and his driver were also unwell. Now I hear that Dad has graciously accepted their gift of goo. Generous!

What about that smelly habit? Yeah, I’ve decided to quit smoking after a two and a half decade career supporting America’s proud family tobacco farmers. They’ll be sad even after hearing the real reason why I made the decision. It wasn’t because of the hectoring (although there was plenty of that). It wasn’t even because I’m a cheapskate and holy crap, have you priced a pack lately? No, it’s actually an anti-government move (yeah, huge. our institutions should start crumbling any minute. – ed. The scoundrels in office haven’t learned that they can’t count on cigarette taxes as a reliable source of income for their pet projects. Surely they’ll try to score political points by claiming that their taxation has achieved their aims of forcing more people to quit. “It’s a win for public health!” they’ll gloat. I’ll believe that on a cold day in a Kaiser waiting room, thankyouverymuch. So no more cigarette tax revenue from me.

To answer your questions ahead of time, I’ve tried to quit before and was unsuccessful. I’m angrier about it now though. Oh, yeah. I’ve got a hell of a headache.

As far as the job search goes, as little said about it as possible is better. How depressing is it? I made similar money (maybe more when adjusted for inflation) two and a half decades ago. Hey! Isn’t that when…

Once the nicotine withdrawals subside, I think I’ll be better able to get down the business of business. Stuff’s going on here at Jaunty Central too that’ll be unveiled very soon. Too soon for some!

I hope you’re enjoying your new year so far. We’re gonna have a bunch of fun, okay?

Your pal,

– bob

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bobtherieau.com Is Down UP! – or – Gimme An F!

editor’s note: look kid, the site was down for two freakin’ hours. christ, you get that shook up over a little website, i ain’t even gonna tell you what’s in the water you’re drinking. oh yeah, obama snorted cocaine too. what’re you gonna do? cry? – ed

Friends,

Just a brief little love note to the intertubes: Where oh where has my website gone? Into the ether? Perhaps. One could ping the site and receive a response not unlike the fluttering heartbeat of a baby bird that has struck your living room window so hard that the sound was mistaken for gunplay. You could ping the site, but that seems to be all. No pretty pictures. No idea how much Russian spam I have waiting to be deleted. No robot sounds.

Maybe this is the day the interwebs died.

– bob

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Out Of Town Update

Friends,

Just a little note to let you know that I’ll be in America’s Finest Pretty Good Adequate Will Do In A Pinch Doesn’t Stink Too Bad Barely Passable City this weekend. All Christmas shopping will occur during this blessed period we call Mallpanikohazeukah.

So dammit, be nice. We’re watching.

– bob

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Photos Broken, Unrelated To Destruction Of Southern California

Dearest Peepers,

You may have noticed that the photos embedded here aren’t loading and that the entire bobtherieau.com site is down. My web host is subjecting the gerbils to “scheduled maintenance” which I presume means a colonic, a melon smoothie, and viewing a PowerPoint presentation on using teamwork to spin the wheels a little faster. My only advice to the technicians is to be careful. Those little bastards bite.

Your pal,

bob

UPDATE: The pictures and bobtherieau.com are back up. You gotta love those rested and relaxed gerbils…

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Greetings From Vacationtown

Friends,

Posting’s gonna be a little light for a few days. I’m on a little vacation and I only have brief access to a computer (long story) while I’m away. I also noted that the machine feeding the Jaunty Webcam! has crashed. Yippee.

Back next weekend.

– bob

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Beep!

Friends,

I have a new (to me) toy. It’s a little editor called MarsEdit. It grabs as many posts as you wish to feed to it (remember to turn on RSS!) and lets you create new ones—all from a non-web interface. Whether or not it’s better or not is hard to say. It is new though, so I’ll have to play with it a bit to see what all the fuss is about.

More this afternoon…

– bob

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Potted Ham Received

By the way,

If you’ve sent email here but have earned no response, I apologize. The spam filters are not working and I’m having to wade through hundreds of pieces of krep every day. If my eye accidentally passed over your message, please send it again with something eye catching in the subject line, like [a jaunty little blog] for instance. I’m setting up a filter to look for that and if it’s not abused, I’ll keep it running.

Sound okay? Okay!

– bob

editor’s note: they can always leave a comment. -ed

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Whatever Happened To…

Friends,

Nobody is very sad that we’ve stopped writing The Question, but we did. We wrote it primarily for our own amusement anyway, but it stopped being fun and started being an obligation. Actually, I personally received way more negative commentary about it than positive and that was certainly no fun. It may rise again one day, but no time soon.

Your pal,

bob

P.S. I’m also working on a follow-up piece to the Town Crier story (note: google cache link used since the town crier doesn’t permalink to past articles. – ed) on radiation in the drinking water, plus how blogging is killing my career! Come back for those later in the day, won’t you?