WordPress 2.5
Well, I’ve jumped in & done the upgrade to the newest version of WordPress. Version 2.5 came out about a week ago, but I haven’t had the time to get to the upgrade, what with all the testing & checking for updated themes & plugins, until today.
Those who visit the site directly will notice a new theme has been installed. Not because I was necessarily dissatisfied with the old one, but more because I like to change things up every so often, and picking a new theme that was 2.5 ‘compliant’ seemed as good a reason as any.
I think that I was able to test things out enough to ensure that nothing is broken, but it’s almost a certainty that something will have slipped through the cracks. So, if you run into anything that doesn’t work right, please let me know by dropping me an email or just clicking on the ‘Contact’ link near the top of the page.
-ghp
New hosting in place
After a year with A Small Orange, I have switched over to Precision Effect for my web hosting.
I wasn’t really dissatisfied with ASO, in that I can’t say anything bad about them. ASO’s support & community forums are outstanding resources. The main reason for the change is that I wasn’t all that thrilled with the performance I was getting out of ASO. I don’t know if they put me on a server that was overloaded or what, but over the past 6 months, I’ve been noticing fairly regular slowdowns, both in how fast my blog was getting served out and in how quick the response was (or wasn’t) when I had to do admin tasks.
So, I decided to investigate alternative hosting options, as my contract with ASO was/is just about up. After a bit of investigation, particularly at WebHostingTalk.com, I got it narrowed down to MediaLayer & Precision Effect, both of which are getting rave reviews on that forum. Precision Effect’s hosting plans & pricing mapped just a little better to my needs than MediaLayer’s, so they got my business.
Hopefully, the worst of the DNS propagation is over with, as I made the DNS change to PE’s servers, after backing up & moving over my site, around noon today.
As of this moment, things feel quite snappy to me, and have throughout the day as I’ve been working on getting things up & running. Hopefully, that will continue…
-ghp
Super Bowl XLII & MarsEdit
Super Bowl XLII is about to start. Soon enough, the season will be over. That makes me sad. I revel in the 17 week odyssey that is the NFL regular season. The playoffs are OK, because the games mean so much & the quality of play is ratcheted up a notch (although not as much as with the NHL playoffs). I just miss the full slate of games on regular Sunday, is all — the routine is comforting.
As for today’s game, I’m pulling for (and predicting) a New England victory. I want to see perfection, in the form of a 19-0 season. I want to see the ‘72 Dolphins shut up & sent away so that they can begin acting with the level of dignity & decorum that befits their age & status. They’ve been acting shamefully for over 20 years (I recall them actively rooting against challengers to their record, beginning with the ‘85 Bears…). They’re better than that, and certainly better than Don Shula’s terrible grasping at straws in the form of trying to get an asterisk applied to the Pats’ potential 19-0 record. Silly & shameful.
As for MarsEdit, I’m once again giving a blog editing app a chance. Version 2.1 was just released, and it’s gone a long way towards addressing many of the things that I thought was lacking in it (as well as another potentially great blogging app, Ecto) before. It’s still not perfect, as it doesn’t have quite the full level of tag support that I’d like to see, but there is a workaround that helps mitigate the inconvenience until such a time as the (very responsive) author incorporates fuller tagging support.
The downside is that it’s Mac only. Using the Wordpress admin editor is still the best option when I’m using a Windows box (e.g., at work). I’ll try to persevere…
-ghp
In my head
I felt good walking out of work this evening.
Sad thing is, I caught myself doing it.
That’s probably not a good thing, is it? Not trusting that the good thing/feeling will continue if you acknowledge that it actually happened, that is…
Inside my head can be a, shall we say, odd and often unpleasant place to be. I’m sure that’s probably true for most everyone, but I know it’s the case for me. I know that I ought not doubt the good things, but that pesky sense of impending doom is awfully hard to shake, knamean?
God has blessed me, most certainly beyond anything I even remotely deserve. I ought to thankfully rest in those grace-full blessing. Sin, however, rears its ugly head, only to drag me away from that rest. Well, it’s probably more accurate to say that sin causes me to willingly run away from that rest, isn’t it? Machts nichts…
I’m feeling the need to just ramble, even as there’s a part of me (sitting inside my head, actually - the part that contributes my inner running monologue…) that’s saying it’s a bad idea — e.g., it’s self-indulgent, lame, boring, & readership-destroying. I just need to get some of these thoughts out, though, and since I’ve paid for hosting & taken the trouble to learn how to install, configure, & run things, I might as well do whatever the heck I please. Besides, I know there aren’t all that many folks to alienate out there (although I certainly do thank you hardy 30 or so subscribers of my RSS feed, and the average of 10 or so folks who browse directly by each day!). If you’ve been reading long enough, then you probably know enough of my quirks to possibly even be (morbidly) fascinated or (strangely) interested in what I might be thinking on a given day. Goodness knows I have opinions. And I certainly consume enough information each day, so that I should be able to crank stuff out. So that’s what I’ll try to do…
As I was saying, today was a pleasant walk out to the car. I like winter. I like the cold, crisp weather. After 12 years in North Carolina, cold, crisp winter air was something that almost made me giddy during my first winter back in the Midwest 6 years ago. That holds true through to today. The bite in the air. The sound carrying across the snow. The way the cold temps make my jacket crinkle. So often it’s those little things about God’s creation that make the biggest, most satisfying impressions.
And for that, I’m thankful.
-ghp
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