Archive | March 2012

To Relocate or Not To Relocate

Mar31

I’ve been blogging for about 8 weeks and I really like it!  WordPress.com is an excellent platform, rich in features.  Help was available when I  needed it.  I feel safe here.  But WordPress itself says that WordPress.com may not be right for everyone.

It may be time to expand my horizons.  It would be really nice to make  changes to the theme I’ve selected, and I became accustomed to Google Analytics years ago.  WordPress.com has very good reasons to standardize the themes it offers;  it would not be practical or safe to allow users access to features like those.  One user could destroy things  for all the rest of us!

CORT moving van, Fairway Trails Apartment comp...

CORT moving van, Fairway Trails Apartment complex, Ypsilanti, Township, Michigan. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

So, I’m considering upgrading, either to WordPress.org or to the company that hosts my email and its domain.  The WordPress Guided Transfer facility is completely booked up at the moment.  However, WordPress.com’s  instructions for moving do not seem all that difficult, and my new home may be able to help as well.Am  I brave enough to venture forth without handholding?  Things that might be problems are:What features that I now enjoy seamlessly will vanish if I move?  (Yes,  I’ll get Jetpack, which you can get from WordPress.com when you leave.  It contains many of the tools we use here.)

Will the support over there be as good?  What about forums?  What about Zemanta?

Will my new host shower me with inconveniences and unexpected charges?

An experienced professional, who is familiar with my skills, said he thinks I can handle it. Writing about a potential change often helps me decide, so now that’s done.

Now  all that’s left is doing a little more research and if warranted, making the move.  My audience should not notice a thing except the esthetic presentation niceties that I long for.

Kitchen Drawer and Cabinet Clutter Part II

Mar31
Modern kitchen
Modern kitchen (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

Well, all of the kitchen drawers have been tidied, including the coupon, medication and receipts drawers.  We cleared the potholder drawer of quite a bit of surplus.  Kitchen tools, rarely used things (skewers,   mallet, corn handles, crème brulee dishes, etc.,) vases, baking pans, cutting boards, everyday stuff–all got the treatment. The kitchen cupboards within reach look wonderful.  There is a row of shelves too high to reach without a ladder.  The quandary:  do we put stuff up there that is unlikely to be used again, or should those shelves remain empty?  Spouser fixed that:  we’re storing camp stoves and accessories up there, as well as an ornate punch bowl with its matching tiny cups, and a small forest of Thermos bottles.

T. tidied the pantry for us; now one can see the inventory on hand, and there’s a logical place for everything.  Grocery shopping and unpacking is much easier now.  

The absence of things bestows a crisp look upon interior space; it’s become a decorating principle for our entire home.  We’ve been putting away all small items except the best one for each place.  Many surfaces don’t need anything and are now bare.  A large number of decorator and kitchen things have gone to the Goodwill store. Our home looks fresher and larger than before.

We’ve gotten rid of 27 linear feet of bookshelf space as well as the bookshelves themselves.  Their contents were, variously: shredded, given away, donated to charity, and discarded.  This opened up enough space to put a 6-foot work table in the room-formerly-called-the-gym.  Now a project can be set up and left for days, instead of tying up the kitchen table!

The entire clutter clearing campaign centered upon a domino effect.  Remove a sticking point in the system, see what new possibilities open up, go after one of those, re-evaluate, then lather, rinse, repeat!

The biggest payoff is seeing the job done (well, nearly done) but a true benefit is the feeling of calm open space in our home.  Oh, yeah…

Related articles

On Intelligence in Mammals

Mar28
Fresco of Dolphins, ca. 1600 BC, from Knossos,...

Fresco of Dolphins, ca. 1600 BC, from Knossos, Crete. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

“Man has always assumed that he was more intelligent than dolphins because he had achieved so much…the wheel, New York, wars and so on…while all the dolphins had ever done was muck about in the water having a good time. But conversely, the dolphins had always believed that they were far more intelligent than man…for precisely the same reason.”             Douglas Adams (British comic Writer, 1952-2001)

Just think: No human has ever learned what a dolphin really thinks about itself and dolphin-kind as compared to humanity.  Someday humans and dolphins may bridge that gap, but for now, things seem pretty much o.k. the way they are.  It’s even possible that the dolphins may solve the problem before we do!

Router Behavior Grumblings

Mar22

Over the years, I’ve learned that computer tasks won’t go smoothly on the first try.  “That’s why they call it work and pay you so much.”  However, I’m retired and fixing the home network only pays off in satisfaction.  Sanity requires plenty of time for false starts and trouble-shooting.

I run a small home network to share one internet cable connection.  The old router has intermittently dropped the connection and dumped the user off for the last several months.  The telephone support tech fellow chewed up three  fruitless hours, then eventually pointed the finger at my cable ISP.

The cable guy came out and tested my signal, which was fine.  We substituted lengths of cable among devices on the network.  His new cable and the cable in place all work well.  He was stumped, and he punted—would I consider purchasing a new router?  Well, Yes.  A faster one would allow better video streaming. We weren’t using streaming video back when the old router came on board, and an upgrade would be welcome. So I went to Best Buy and got a nice, more robust new router.

Then the intermittent drops became less frequent on my current installation.  Life was hectic and I just put with resetting the router as needed.  This went on for months and installing the new router became scarier by the week.

Tonight I couldn’t get the reset to restore the connection.  This is a bad time, but without a router, my only window to the world is my DROID phone.  I found the router’s box but still have to locate the instruction book which was removed for reading.

Then Real Life set in:  a friend called and we talked at length.  Spent a few minutes looking for the router instructions but got sidetracked.  My son called with measurements for my granddaughter-to-be’s baby blanket so I could order the fabric.  (The adoption is in progress.)

And then the blasted router let me back online.  Talk about intermittent!  I stayed online for 20 minutes or so and the connection dropped again, not to be reinstated amid numerous attempts.  Oh, well…

It’s too late this evening to start installing the router.  This near-start added more dread to the coming task, but pretty soon it must be faced.  Sunday afternoon, maybe?