Server Switches! And More!

4 June 2008 by

The last month or so has been a little dicey for me web-wise, mainly because my interblogwebsite has been highly uncooperative. And if you don’t know anything else about my technical skills, you should know this one critical piece of information: I HAVE ABSOLUTELY NO IDEA HOW ALL THIS STUFF WORKS.

And since I have no idea what I’m doing, I am deeply, completely dependent on the people who keep this blawg-o-mine up and running behind the scenes. I daresay that Emily has developed a pronounced twitch in her left shoulder just from seeing my email address appear so frequently in her inbox, but she has been an absolute champ in terms of keeping me afloat in these murky techy waters. The same goes for Jules, Heather and Laura. They have jumped to my troubleshooting rescue more times than I can count.

Because I’m telling you: if not for every single one of those people I just listed, my header would be half-way down the page and my posts would be trapped on a server just south of nowhere. Not to mention that there would probably be some easy-listening music playing incessantly in the background, and you’d never be able to turn it off.

Ever.

So anyway.

Last week Emily – who has been great about monitoring my traffic and bandwidth usage and blah blah I’m typing the words but they have lost all meaning blah blah – made a couple of recommendations about webhosting and servers and whatnot, and I would be more specific if I had any idea at all what I was talking about, because I am the same person who only realized a couple of months ago (thanks to Anne) that there’s a thing called a cPanel that goes along with my blog, and I can access it and set up email addresses! And look at stats! And upload files! And more!

One of Emily’s recommendations was that I move the blawg to Fused Network, and so that is exactly what I did. Except that I think we all know that I myself didn’t move one thing. I just sat on my little barstool and commenced with the hand-wringing, because while I’m not good at many things, I am an excellent hand-wringer.

Award-winning, in fact.

But as it turns out, the hand-wringing was fairly minimal. There were some hiccups as a result of me posting when I was still floating between two servers, but David at Fused and Emily at Swank could not have been more helpful. In fact, once I signed up with Fused, David actually CALLED ME ON THE TELEPHONE to touch base about the whole process, and even though we must have exchanged about 40 emails over the last day and a half as I have tried to wrap my head around the whole server-switching process, he never once replied with, “Hey! Can’t you, like, TAKE A CLASS or something?”

Because I seriously need to take a class, y’all.

However, there is one lingering issue, and I think that’s why I started writing this post to begin with, but you can never really be sure with me, and besides, I take great pride in using 500 words when only 50 are necessary, and anyway, HASN’T THIS SERVER STUFF BEEN SO FUN TO READ ABOUT?

Ahem.

The lingering issue is that for some reason Bloglines seems to have decided to quit picking up my RSS feeds. I have no idea why. I’ve sent them a couple of emails, and OH, ARE THEY EVER GOING TO GROW TO LOVE MY RAMBLING BRAND OF CRAZY, but I haven’t gotten a response yet and don’t really know if I will. So if you subscribe here via Bloglines, you probably need to unsubscribe and then subscribe again, making sure that you select the Feedburner feed and none of the others.

There. Isn’t that so delightfully, needlessly complicated?

Last thing.

I’ve decided that, after the first of next week, I’m going to take a little hiatus from giveaways for the rest of the summer. I have a fun book giveaway scheduled for tomorrow, and a cool gardening-related giveaway scheduled for the first of next week. And once those are over, I’m going to take a giveaway vacation.

Unless I run across a CD that I think you can’t live without. Because I will always make an exception for music.

I will also make an exception if someone wants to give y’all some cash money.

But the main thing is just that as much as I love doing the giveaways, the correspondence involved with a giveaway takes up a pretty good chunk of email-related time. And a break from that end of things is gonna be a mighty good thing. Our summer is shaping up to be pretty busy, and there’s a five year-old who lives here who wants to go swimming and go to the movies and play with friends and run around in the blazing hot sun while his mama wonders if it’s possible to die from sweating.

Fun times. Precious memories.

Happy Wednesday, y’all.

Filed Under: The Interweb

Let’s Try This Again: A Real-Live iPod Giveaway

3 June 2008 by

If you’ve been trying to access this post, you should have better luck now. However, I’m in the process of restoring all the comments that didn’t make the transition, so if you know you filled out the MIR form and left a comment here, you may not see your comment for an hour or so. If you still don’t see your comment by the end of the night, just send me an email and I’ll get it fixed.

Thanks for your patience, everybody!

So the people at the Gospel Music Association do this little thingy called Music in the Rockies. Music in the Rockies is a place where songwriters and performers and worship leaders can go and get all sorts of great training. And here is where I could start a big huge list of all the people who will be performing at this year’s MIR, but instead I’ll just direct you here because y’all are very, very good at the clicking and the reading.

Another component to MIR is that they have sessions where parents can learn how to protect their kids in the music industry. I know some of you have super-talented kids with some mighty big dreams, and this would be a great opportunity for you to learn how to help facilitate those dreams AND make sure you and your family head into the music industry with your eyes wide open.

MIR also provides the chance to get some feedback from successful professional musicians and other music industry people, which I’m guessing would be pretty invaluable if you’re wondering if you or someone you love has what it takes to make it professionally.

Needless to say, I will not be attending MIR. Because I know beyond a shadow of a doubt that I do not have what it takes to make it in the music industry, nor will I be leading worship at any time in my whole life, unless of course it becomes all the musical rage for a 30-something woman to sing classic Amy Grant songs in an off-key monotone.

FINGERS CROSSED!

So. All that being said.

Here’s how you can have a chance to win a real-live iPod Nano, which, by the way, can play music and movies and TV shows and everything.

OH, it is very fancy.

1. Click here.

2. Look for this image (I can’t provide direct links because it’s a Flash-enabled site, so instead I’m relying on visual aids, and I do hope it all works beautifully):

MIR

3. Click on the image, and you’ll see this box pop up:

Photobucket

Fill out the form – and you don’t have to give your phone number. Just fill out your name, email, and address – so that if you win they know where to ship your fabulous prize.

4. Come back here – and this part is OH-SO-IMPORTANT – leave me a comment letting me know that you filled out the form. I’ll draw for a winner from my comments, but I’ll have to verify that you actually filled out the form before I announce the winner (so make sure you use the same email address on the form and in my comments).

5. That’s it! The giveaway will stay open for one whole week – until June 9, 2008. As always, I’ll use random.org to draw for a winner.

And you will NOT be inundated with mail or with email if you fill out the form. I made a point to ask. You’ll receive an informational email about Music in the Rockies registration, and you can unsubscribe from that mailing list with the click of a button if you never want to receive another email from them again.

But I figured that filling out a form was a small price to pay for a new Nano. Call me crazy.

(CRAZY!)

(Beat you to it!)

Happy iPod’ing!

This giveaway is now closed.

Filed Under: Rambling

More! Techy! Fun!

1 June 2008 by

I’m moving to a new webhost sometime in the next few hours, and if all goes as planned, you won’t even notice.

And of course I’m not really the one moving. The blog is moving. I am quite happy here in my circa-1974 home, thankyouverymuch. But the blog wanted more room to stretch out or entertain or somesuch nonsense.

The blog is so demanding.

Anyway, if you have any trouble accessing the blawg, just know that it’s temporary, and I’ll be back with All The Average just as soon as possible.

Thank you and have a lovely Monday.

Filed Under: Rambling

Number Eleven

31 May 2008 by

Happy Anniversary, Mr. BooDaddy.

Here are eleven reasons why I’m proud to be your wife.

(I KNOW!)

(A LIST!)

(SHOCKING.)

1. You always do what you say you’re going to do. And because of that, you don’t make empty promises.

2. You make your family a priority. Every single day. Even when you’re swamped with work, you make time to sit down and see what’s going on with the little man and me, and you never make us feel like there’s something else you need to be doing. You’re a phenomenal daddy.

3. Whenever Alex and I walk in the door, you are always visibly happy to see us. Always.

4. You’re a morning person. And as a result of your cheerful morning example, we have a little boy who says “GOOD MORNING!” as soon as his feet hit the floor in the AM. Which is so much more pleasant than if he were to grumble for the first hour that he’s awake. Like, you know, I do.

5. You handle our money stuff. You keep me in the loop, and I always know what’s going on, but you take care of all the day-to-day responsibilities. And I am so grateful for that. Plus, you understand numbers, which is oh-so-helpful for the math-challenged likes of me.

6. You have incredible discernment. Whereas I tend to jump in just about any situation feet first and figure that everything will work out in the end, you hang back, survey the lay of the land, and see all the things that I don’t. You keep us on an even keel.

7. You’re not afraid to ask tough questions.

8. You’re not afraid to give honest answers.

9. And you’re not afraid to admit when you’re wrong.

10. You have stretched waaaay outside your comfort zone in the last year. And it’s been totally inspiring to see how God has worked in and through you. I get all teary-eyed when I think about it, because He’s done some mighty big things.

BIG!

HUGE!

11. You know every single bit of my junk – the procrastinating, the bad moods, the mistakes of my 20s, the horrific singing, the fears of my 30s, the freakish love of fried chicken, the impatience, the quirks, the stuff that keeps me awake at night, the annoying tendency to let laundry overtake random surfaces in our house – and you love me anyway.

Happy Number Eleven. It hasn’t always been easy, but it’s always been worth the fight. It still is.

I love you.

Filed Under: Rambling

The Cousins

30 May 2008 by

Today Alex and I went to a neighbor’s pool with my cousin Paige, her hubby, their little boy, my cousin B. and his two girls. Paige, B. and I grew up together, so we have spent MANY an afternoon in the water over the last thirty-something years. I guess that’s why watching our kids together this afternoon was one of those odd, full-circle, gosh-I’m-getting-older-but-I-don’t-mind-it-so-much-because-this-is-pretty-cool moments that makes me want to sing some sort of Michael W. Smith song about cousins, cannonballs, and pools.

Assuming that he’s ever written a song that covered those particular topics.

Which, now that I think about it, is highly unlikely.

But if he had written a song that covered those particular topics, I would have TOTALLY been singing it today.

Because honestly, the kids were so much fun that it made me a little teary-eyed. Paige’s little boy is about 18 months old now, and one of the best parts of the afternoon – at least for me – was watching Paige and her husband watch him. He is absolutely adorable, and they are smitten. Every child should be so loved.

Since I am a wee bit fair-skinned, we didn’t hit the pool until the sun was low enough in the sky that being poolside DIDN’T REQUIRE ME TO WEAR A PROTECTIVE SLEEVE, and the little man and I had an absolute blast. We stayed in the water for over two hours, and we probably would have stayed until dark if supper hadn’t beckoned.

But supper was fried chicken. And nothing beckons me like fried chicken. I believe this fact has been well-established, and it should not surprise you.

So when we were sufficiently waterlogged, we walked over to my aunt’s house and ate supper in her backyard. I am typically not a person who enjoys eating in the out of doors because, well, BUGS, but tonight was perfect. There was the aforementioned fried chicken, and in true Southern fashion, we had two different kinds of potatoes (French fries and potato salad), plus onion rings, rice and biscuits.

Because here is something I want you to always remember and never, ever forget: if one starch is good, then five starches are, well, PERFECTION. The only thing that would have made those side dishes any better is if there had been a batch of hush puppies thrown in. And maybe some fried okra.

And maybe some fried dill pickles, too, but I’ll stop now because if I keep going I’ll find myself setting up a FryDaddy in Mama’s kitchen at 2 in the morning and she’ll wake up and be all, “What in the sam hill are you doing?” and I’ll be all, “SEEING WHAT I CAN DEEP FRY,” and she’ll be all, “Oh, well, wake me up again if you fix somethin’ good.”

After supper all the children ran around in the backyard, weaving in and around my aunt’s daylily beds while the rest of us visited. We talked about everything and nothing, and we laughed until we wheezed when B. told an old story about riding horses with my brother. I wished that the rest of our family was there – especially Sister, who remembers all the funny stories the rest of us forget – but we did the best we could without them. And once the sun set, we put down the sweet tea, rounded up the tired young’uns and headed back home.

Alex is sound asleep now, with a Lightning McQueen car clutched in his right hand and a stuffed green frog by his side. And I know it’s sentimental, but I really can’t help but hope that, in about thirty years, he’ll find himself right where I was tonight: sitting with cousins, eating fried chicken, and watching the next generation of our family play with leaves and brooms and umbrellas under a clear Southern sky.

Because life just doesn’t get much better – or sweeter – than that.

This much I know for sure.

The end.

Filed Under: Family Fun

Feed Ish-Ahs

29 May 2008 by

Most of you who subscribe to my blog through Bloglines are subscribed through a feed that seems to have stopped working.

Which is why you may be seeing a bright red exclamation point next to “BooMama” in your list-o-blogs.

So.

I have absolutely no idea how this stuff works, but just know that all my feeds are running through Feedburner now, and if you are tired of seeing the bright red exclamation point, then you can subscribe to the new feed either in Bloglines or Google Reader or whatever RSS reader you use.

And here’s the new feed: http://feeds.feedburner.com/Boomama. It is sure to be very sassy.

If you’re not seeing the bright red exclamation point and everything has been updating as usual, then you’re golden. No need to change a thing.

And now I need to go take some Advil. Because the tech talk is right up there with math as far as I’m concerned.

Oh, I type the techy words and think they might have a shot of being at least somewhat accurate usage-wise, but in my head all I hear is “blah blah blahdety blah blah.”

Feed / reader / RSS / aggregation / blah blah blahdety blah blah.

The interweb is awesome.

Filed Under: The Interweb
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