Life in the slow lane.
I woke up this morning. Will miracles never cease to happen?
Nearly two years now since my disabilities forced me from the working class and you’d think I’ve become used to used to this new “life in the slow lane”—but I’m not. Sure, the effects of these disabilities, especially the one which recently required surgery, kept me down and out but it didn’t stop me from getting frustrated with the whole mess.
Now it’s down to taking the time to get back on my feet from the surgery itself. Once I do that I’ll have to bounce going back to work against progressive deafness and the increasing chronic pain due to a back injury (limits me to light labor only). This would be no problem if I was say about 230 miles farther south than I am since work opportunities there for my type of folks are much more plentiful shall we say than up here near the border of Canada even in this day and age. But up here I am and up here I stay so I’ll just have to deal with it when the time comes (there is plenty of advantages in living up here though, both present and future, aside from lack of employment opportunities).
The problem with combination of living here and the idea of possible employment is that this town has one of the highest unemployment rate in the state of Vermont (17.8%). The other problem is the majority jobs that are available often require heavy labor which leaves me right out of the picture. The other types of jobs require a CDL which I can’t get, being an adult supervisor to troubled kids/impaired adults with behavioral problems (uh…no thanks) or being a certified nurse (nope). I also don’t have a teacher’s certification and that about wraps it up for available jobs around here.
I’m not really belly aching about this as I still have a ways to go before I can even begin to consider working again but once in awhile I just have to get things of this nature off my chest and that’s what this blog’s all about.
In the meantime, I just wish it would stop raining long enough to let me finish mowing the lawn.
Lacking posts but accomplishing more?
I haven’t been posting much of late (as if that’s a surprise) and for the usual reason—not feeling well. But now there’s an extra reason you see. I’m starting to do (more difficult) chores per day and (finally) running errands to more places than just the local grocer’s for milk which I wasn’t managing to accomplish before. So instead of spending the 3 to 4 days between actual posts feeling too lousy to post I’m now spending the 3 or 4 days between posts doing those (more difficult) chores and running more errands and then feeling to lousy to post.
Everyone see how that works?
No?
Okay, I don’t blame you.
It goes like this. Although I’m still going 3 to 4 days without posting I’m actually accomplishing more on those days then I was accomplishing previously. In other words, I’m being more productive when I’m not posting instead of just being (understandably) a layabout.
The problem now is that doing a bit more chores than I have been and running a few more errands than I have been is taking a great deal longer than than it used to thus taking up more of a given day than it used to. And, of course, at the end of the day with all these extra chores and errands that I’m now managing to accomplish I’m completely wiped out. And this means I’m not up to posting. At the least writing up posts for this little site of mine requires me to be in a position other than passed out on the floor/bed/couch/what-have-you.
This, however, does have it’s drawbacks in that I’m still managing to follow all these interesting news stories and blog posts that have me slavering to pound out posts with my opinions on these news stories and blog posts. Not that anyone really cares what my opinions might be but more along the lines of a personal release sort of thing. I mean, if you eat a smorgasbord of information every day it’s got to come out somewhere (I’ll refrain from the obvious analogy).
The whole point of this rather blithering post is that I’m getting better. But man, it’s taking it’s time about it. Realistically, and as much as it irritates me to admit it, I’m probably looking at the better part of a year before I’m 100% again. And, as My Lady keeps telling me, if I overdo it it’s just going to take that much longer.
Okay, so I’ll settle for 92% by early 2010?
(Disclaimer: Author is not to be held responsible for any meanderings, bad analogies, bad grammar, misspellings and/or any other weirdness in the above post due to the fact that he mowed the lawn, ran two different errands, wrote the above post and is now late for his medications. He should recover from all this within the next 3 or 4 days)
WordPress 2.8.1 fixes 2.8 auto upgrade bug
WordPress 2.8 has a bug and a rather large one for those who have been unfortunate enough to have experienced it. And it has to do with the automatic (core) upgrade feature. Here’s an excerpt from Dougal Campbell’s recent post about this:
But the big problem driving a quick update is a bug in the core upgrade feature. It seems that in the case where the upgrade can’t be completed for some reason, the upgrade feature was deleting the wrong files when it attempted to clean up. Oops!
Fortunately, this problem can be easily fixed by performing a manual upgrade.
Not everyone has been affected by this problem but if it does rear it’s ugly head it can be frustratingly random in that it often doesn’t give a reason as to why it failed. In other words, when this problem does occur, more often than not it leaves no entry in any of the default WordPress error logs of what might have went wrong. And in that case it’s hard to discern from the usual flurry of upgrade problems due to the few non-compatible plugins that always crop up.
For myself and my two little sites it went rather strangely in that both sites use the same plugins, both were running 2.7.1, both are on the same host/server and both are setup the same way with the exception of themes (the site themes were irrelevant in this case anyway). One site auto-upgraded with no problem whatsoever while the other turned belly up and died—badly. And just for the record, I’ve never had any auto-upgrade fail in the past whether it was built-in or by plugin.
For all that it the problem was easily fixed by an old fashioned FTP re-upgrade so to speak and it’s all running along nicely now. And again, not all users have been affected by this although I’ve not come across any solid reason why this is.
Ah, the beauties of doing it yourself–gotta love it (if you didn’t then you’d never be doing it in the first place). And yet another fine reason for always backing up prior to any upgrade.
Migrating tomorrow
My host has sent me an email stating that I will be migrating tomorrow. I don’t know if my wings are up to this on such a short notice but I’ll start with the flapping exercises tonight and hope for the best. They state that the migration should only take 1 to 2 hours but if past migrations are any example it could take 1 to 2 days which will require a lot of flapping indeed so I must be at my best. Otherwise I might have to just wing it and who knows what might happen then.
I can’t really say that I’ve been disappointed with my host though. They really do their best at keeping things up to date and running smoothly and they succeed at this more times than not. They also spend a great deal of time “tweaking the kernel” which seems to me would piss the kernel right off but it appears he doesn’t mind so much in fact, it actually seems to make him run that much better.
Either way this means that the site will probably go down for awhile tomorrow while all the flapping is going on. Hopefully all this migrating business will be completed within the expected time frame and no extra flapping will be needed. After all, I haven’t migrated since early 2008 (took the bus the last couple of times) and I’m out of shape.
Now, where did my wing expanders get too?
WordPress 2.8—up one blog and downed the other.
I have two blogs to my name. This one and another that I’ve done absolutely nothing with for the past few months despite my best intentions. Both have well maintained databases and clean, dusted, well swept installs. Both use most of the same plugins. I auto-upgraded both from WordPress 2.7.1 to 2.8 two days ago.
I’ve never had an upgrade fail, auto or otherwise. However…
The blog that I’ve done absolutely nothing with over the past few months upgraded without a hitch and putted happily down the road without a single hitch or hiccup. This one however, failed to extract the downloaded 2.8 zip file after 5 tries and upon the 6th it finally gave in and successfully completed the upgrade (or so it said) and then promptly threw a 500 error that absolutely refused to go away. To add an extra kick to the whole mess my error logs were completely ignorant of anything that might have gone wrong.
I threw up my hands in surrender, shut down the computer and spent the rest of the day reading a good book.
The next day I brought out my various implements of destruction and went after the problem. After much grunting, groaning and constructive cursing it turned out to be one of 4 plugins that are currently sitting in the penalty box for the foreseeable future until I feel motivated enough to hunt down the offender and have it promptly executed.
Now this old blog is humming right along and I’m liking WordPress 2.8 quite a lot. 795 bugs, many of which have been sitting around for a long time now have been fixed (the devs finally getting down and cleaning out Trac of all the dead weight), a new and much better widget interface (finally) and finely tuned (and faster) database amongst many other fine tunings and performance improvements.
Now if I can only get back to posting on a regular basis without the blog or my body throwing fits all will be well, yes?
My body is brittle?
I went to down Boston way one week ago today for a follow up appointment with my surgeon. She wanted to see how me and her fine work were getting along and I, of course, had a few of my own questions to ask her. Like what did she mean when she said my body was “brittle” for example.
All in all the appointment itself went well enough and the explanation of “brittle” didn’t tell me me anything I didn’t already know. I have atypical reactions to standard procedures, medications and you never know what color my blood will be at any given moment—that kind of thing. Suffice to say that my recovery from surgery is going well albeit a bit slowly.
It was after this pronouncement that everything went wrong as if somewhere within my mind, body and/or spirit perked up and said “Oh yeah? Well watch this!”
I won’t get into the details of the last several days since my return home but Laurie had to hang a sign on her shop door once again and stay home with her invalid for 3 days this time until I was able to stand erect for more than 30 seconds without passing out or having a bad bathroom experience.
So once again I have been unable to post anything to my poor blog due to ill health. Will this ever end? I mean I’d prefer to start posting about different and varied subjects just like in the old days when I could make it to the computer without losing consciousness.
Oh well, at least the spammers have another excuse to leave me their heartfelt “get well” comments. They’re getting quite good at it lately.
Those protruding bones
I was lying in bed last night, which is usually what I do at night, trying my best to get to sleep but my face absolutely refused to relax. Has this ever happened to you? Laying there in bed wondering why you feel so uptight when you finally realize that your face is all scrunched up like it smelled something bad and you can’t get it to relax?
Man, I hope I’m not the only one.
Anyway, there I was moving my facial muscles this way and that in hopes that whatever facial lever, spring or gear that was apparently jammed up would let loose when I finally decided just to give my face a quick rub. That’s when it happened…
…this couldn’t be my face could it?
I can’t understand it. This was hardly the first time I ever had un-jam my face so I could trip off to la-la land without a face cramp and I never noticed this before. My cheekbones were protruding! They never did that before or at least not that I noticed. So was the rest of the front of my skull as I kneaded my poor high strung face into submission. The mental image that formed in my mind while I traced out the exact dimensions of the front of my brain case almost put me off my lunch.
Gah!
Okay, so I’ve always been a rather slim individual (Skinny! I mean run around outside just to get a tan skinny!) and I know I lost 20 pounds while at the hospital but I swear that I had more flesh on my face a month ago or even last week. Where did it all go? I can’t be getting old that fast.
Can I?
This can’t go on. I need more flesh on my face. I don’t want to end up looking like Peter Cushing in Star Wars IV.
A bit of theme maintenance
Please excuse the previous change of scenery. I noticed a couple wrinkles in my current theme and I’m busy ironing them out. Things will be back to normal shortly.
Thanks!
Update: Well…the wrinkles are still there but it’s not worse so I guess that’s something. The problem is that the comment box over extends itself to the right as I see it, maybe not for others?
