Continue reading »]]> I’m incredibly surprised at myself for keeping so quiet about this issue until now. What seems like a million years ago now, I participated in “Grey Day” as a sort of grassroots effort in 2000 for People of the Internet to self-regulate how they generated their web content. It was the advent of “hot-linking” and posting whole swaths of copyrighted content on your website, because who cares? The C&D you got in your inbox very quickly informed you of who cared indeed.

Basically, it was trying to send the message that if everyone steals content for their websites, no one will make anything any more and everything would just be drab and blah and boring and “grey.” So, stealing is wrong, mmkay, don’t do it. It was a cute effort, but ultimately didn’t work. People still steal content on the Internet. All the time. There’s tons of ways to do it. And lots of people don’t even think they’re doing anything wrong.

I don’t like copyright infringement. It makes me kinda grumpy. I like copyright infringement on the Internet even less. People who honestly believe “Everything on the Internet is free” need a boot to the head as far as I’m concerned. Just ask Cooks Source magazine how free the Internet is. I’m fascinated by copyright law. I have extended family members who’ve made it their specialty (I come from a very litigious family).

So, with the hub-bub of SOPA/PIPA/Censorship, etc it’s very odd that I’m not being more active or vocal on it. If there was ever a day to be so, today’s the day. I’ve already written one of my senators, Ben Cardin. He supports PIPA and I was shocked and appalled. Then I saw text from a press release that he’s a co-sponsor of the bill to have an active role in it since he is no longer on the committee that would give it the most attention and also that he wouldn’t vote for it as-is. So, if you’re in Maryland, be a dear and encourage him to stick to his guns on that one.

So, what’s finally spurred me to comment? Google and this: End Piracy, Not Liberty. The last paragraph is the crux of the whole SOPA/PIPA thing: As written, it won’t work to stop piracy.

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Once upon a time, I had quite a laugh sifting through the weirdo spam comments I was getting on the blog. They haven’t been very funny in a very long time. They still aren’t. However, I’ve noticed that I’ve been getting tons more lately. And they’re all on really old posts. Yay Google indexing?

To all my recent spam readers, I bid you welcome and good tidings… Or something.

This post brought to you by “Doing anything under the sun to make me not notice the horrible headache I have right now,” the number “3,” and the letter “M.”

Continue reading »]]> It’s been quiet here in the country the last week or so. I’ve had to drive in to the office every day this week which is soul crushing and draining to say the least. There’s a very good reason I take full advantage of my ability to work from home.

Any of the time I’d normally use for blogging has otherwise been occupied with commuting this week. It stinks. I promise some fun stuff next week. There’s a bunch of different ideas floating around my head wanting out. And the spam has been hilarious the last two weeks too.

For now I just have to shout out to my friends who have unknowingly made this week bearable, the tiny victories of finding Chinese food that delivers and the caffeine consumed miraculously keeping me awake.

I would be a horrible wife for not also giving love to my husband who has suppressed his own bad day dealings to comfort me. His week has sucked just as much but he’s let me be the whiny one. I win at life because I married that guy.

Continue reading »]]> By the above picture, you can probably guess what happened there. That was Saturday. I was headed out to crash Trey’s bachelor party and I decided, “What the hell? It’s a week before the wedding, I’ll just throw my phone on the concrete steps in front of the house and see what happens!” (Not really. It fell out of my purse.)

Surprisingly, I did not cry. This is a big deal for me.

I drove to a Verizon dealer near the house. They were closed. So, then I had to use the very broken phone to find an alternate Verizon location. That was exciting! Shards in the fingers are not so good . . .

So, it definitely still works, but is incredibly difficult to deal with. My replacement should be arriving on Tuesday (aka tomorrow)

In other, more better news!Wedding favors! Done!
Vows and Ceremony! Done!
Table Assignments! Done!
Under garments that work and fit! Done!
Attendant Gifts! Ordered!

I’m doing pretty good, I think, so far. I do have some people who need to get paid, still. I’m totally getting married and it’s going to be awesome! At least that’s what I keep telling myself after my terribly nonsensical nightmares that I have forgotten something very important.

And on a completely different vein, I switched web hosts for the most arbitrary reason possible. My previous web host doesn’t support PHP 5.0. Because it didn’t have the most recent technology, I couldn’t use the Wordbook plugin. I am so capricious! The transition went pretty smoothly, I think.

The hardest part was getting the old Priory of the Storm guild forums migrated to the new server. That part was actually a little fun because I ended up having to run the SQL queries for the data manually. The only thing that didn’t port correctly were other users’ userpics. I really don’t think that will terribly disappoint anyone, though. It is an archive, after all. I just wanted it to be functional and secure.

HOLY CRAP I’M GETTING MARRIED IN 5 DAYS!!!!!!!

Continue reading »]]> Another day done and more updates and polishing done to the old home domain name: viciousgrin.com.  Most of the work was done on the Writings section and a lot of removing broken links and other fun stuff of that nature.  I think the next polishing steps are going to be adding the links from the boring home page into pages on the blog design.  Or!  Adding all that lovely and glorious content into the wonderfully-not-designed-by-me WordPress site.  Very exciting for me.

I haven’t done any real, solid, good site design work in at least 2 years since I stopped working for VetInsite (now VetStreet).  And even then, those were your average static websites.  /shrug.  I enjoy appreciating the more than excellent talent of more gifted folks than me.

Tomorrow’s blog post should hopefully detail the new desks, various furniture purchased this weekend, status of the home unpacking and various other actually exciting things that have happened over the last few days.  Yay!