I've written about my life - my mundane, "every day", routine, unremarkable, boring life - and I've written it for me as the audience. If you come to this site regularly, irregularly or even not at all but read through RSS, I want to sincerely thank you for stopping by and reading. To have ANYBODY read this blog makes be feel wonderful, especially if you're not a family member or don't even know me!

I've written about people that I have lost forever, I have written about people that have come into my life. I just write about the things I do, the things that interest me, the people that interest me. As I wrote two years ago:

I don't get a lot of traffic here because of that. I'm not a popular guy - I just write about the things I do in my life along with a few pieces about things I like/dislike or just catch my eye. I don't try for anything deep, anything philosophical, political or edgy. It's just me. I don't have a lot of friends out there who read this blog, and certainly not a lot of family members either. I'm OK with that. I guess if I write for an audience of one (me), I won't be all that disappointed in my traffic or my lack of comments or even the frequency of what I write.

So, if I'm just writing for me, hopefully I won't disappoint me by trying to keep writing almost every day. I feel the need to do that - don't know why. Perhaps it's this feeling that may, just maybe, if people stop-by regularly and actually read this thing, then I should keep it going for as long as I can. Maybe I can get one or two more readers that way.

So - what in the world am I going to try to do to add to the Mundane experience here? I have one word:

OK, people, especially the people at 64.127.124.151, 64.127.124.138 and everyone using 64.62.168.* :

WHAT THE HELL ARE YOU DOING?????

You are sucking my bandwidth dry! There's not that much here to see, so what the hell are you doing?

So, that's it! NO MORE BYTES FOR YOU!

Time for a DENY IP for a while

Here's something that caught my attention when... reading the newspaper today, yeah, that's it... newspaper...

The Tribune had an article that said talked about reading blogs at work. I guess this started because the writer was... reading blogs at work and found this at Romensko (which I guess started because of something that was brought up at Ad Age).

Apparently, employees spend about 9% of their work-time reading blogs. And the Tribune article thinks that one of the reasons is that reading a blog looks like you're doing work (even though the blog being read is not work-related). As the Tribune writer (Steve Johnson) says: "To a boss standing at, say, 20 paces, reading a blog resembles work." Apparently, if you look at some blog stats, you'd see that page hits "peak during working hours, then plummet on weekends when, of course, there's no incentive to read them that's quite so strong as productivity avoidance".

Now, my stats start rising dramatically at about 11am and stay there all afternoon and then dip slightly over dinner and it's back up again from 7 to 8. The weekday/weekend usage tracks toward the workweek with the weekends lower.

Still, interesting that we're out on the web reading that many blogs...

Well, I did it! A VERY SMOOTH transition to MovableType 3.2.

Nice tweaks with the interface. Hopefully, the backend is good as well.

I know it's boring to all of you out there, but somehow I feel the need to let others know how my website transfer and MovableType upgrade has been going.

Well, I think I got the comments just about figured out. If you use TypeKey, you can go ahead and comment - if you don't, the comments will be moderated.

Now the exciting thing for me is to see that the new MT-Blacklist is just chugging away, doing its work to keep the spam off my comments. I mean, look what it's done in a day:

And the whole new comment moderation system in MovableType 3.15 is just a breeze to handle all this stuff.

I'm happy. Now I can just sit back... and think of more mundane crap to blog about...

Well, nothing to talk about. I'm busy at the office, so all of my out-of-the-office time is being spent piecing together the blog. Right now, to focus is comments. I just can't get them up all the way. Found out it's because I didn't uninstall the old MT-Blacklist. So, right now, the comments are still moderated (I'm hoping to be able to drop that soon), or, If you have a TypeKey account, you are free to comment!

I'm Back!

To my frequent, not so frequent, and irregular readers, to my RSS Feed readers, and to the people that stumble here from the various search engines:

I am being FORCED to shutdown my blog. Yes, the administrator of my webhosting service suspended my account and I am not being allowed to run MovableType on his host.

Why? Well the CPU usage for mt.cgi shot through the roof and was averaging 80%.

Why? Because of a certain thing going on in the industry - Comment Spamming. As ANY user of MovableType knows, MT just doesn't hit a CPU utilization of 80% and sit there. MT only runs when you - as an author - are posting or rebuilding. How often is that? For me - it's barely once or twice a day. And if you use the product, you know how quick that happens.

So you just know that the issue are those damn Comment Spammers. I'm running MT 2.661 and MT-Blacklist. While this has been helpful to stop a lot of the spamming, it still happens. the MT log is filled with rejected attempts to comment. I was also starting to get hit with Trackback Spam as well.

Version 2 of MT - as far as I recall - DID perform poorly when a spammer attacked a site. I have been putting-off upgrading because of other plugs-ins I use and there compatibility with MT 3. It's been getting so bad lately that I didn't give a damn - I was going to upgrade anyway.

Then I got suspended. I guess the reason why I am just SO PISSED-OFF RIGHT NOW is that I feel that this was a knee-jerk reaction that was a bit out my control, and it was happening right in the middle of me deciding to upgrade and potentially fix the issue.

The only reason this website is up right now is the admin renamed the MT directory (and password protected it) and told me I cannot use the product anymore on his box.

He is also NOT allowing me to upgrade to MT 3.15.

So, that's it. I have to shutdown MT. There will be no more additions to this blog for as long as it's on the current webhost box.

Now, that doesn't mean this is over. Oh, no - not by any means. The website will remain up and you can always view the archives here. THE COMMENT AND TRACKBACK FEATURES OF MY BLOG ARE NOW INOPERABLE.

My INTENT is to find a a new webhosting service, preferably one that understands MT (I have a feeling that the admin of this host has no clue what the product is or does).

If anyone out there has any recommendations for a webhost that has good pricing, good service, and may have a clue about MovableType, PLEASE CONTACT ME IMMEDIATELY. I have one lead that seems to have good pricing with what I think is GREAT bandwidth and GREAT storage. And let's be frank - it's all about the money. I ain't making any money from this site.

I mean, for cripes sake - this is just a personal website with a bunch of pictures and a blog, people! It's not like it's a huge e-commerce site!

I really didn't want to move - I've been using a reseller for this website, and Jeff has been absolutely great over the years. I really don't want to leave him, but the admin has forced my hand and I don't have a choice.

*sigh*

So, thanks Jeff for the great service over the years. Thank you to the readers who have stopped by here over the years.

I hope to see you within a few days/weeks (better not be months!) when we're back up and running at a new host!

Don't forget, drop me a line with recommendations! Also, if you know of anybody (even yourself) that would be interested in transferring MT and the blog(s) to the new host, I am willing to entertain hiring somebody to just do it for me (my time is a bit limited recently, and if I can (reasonably) pay somebody to pick-up my MT/MySQL installation and plop it down on a new host, I would love to do it. Remember - MT is shut down and do I have any valid recent exports of my data? HELL NO! Can we do the transfer just doing MySQL exports?) I am even willing to entertain a website redesign (for $$$) if anyone wants to quote me that as well. Any way, please help me!

SEE YA!

I don't have a lot of time to write lately, between being busy and being under the weather, it's just an effort.

What's been more of an effort has been trying to clean-up after those damn comment spammers. I'm using MT-Blacklist, but I'm still on MT 2 so I think it's time to go to MT 3 and get the new blacklist pieces and new comment pieces and hopefully things will work out.

I'm saying this publicly because if things get a bit "wonky" here, you'll know why.

Lately, I've been hitting my 1Gb Bandwidth Limit around the 30th or 31st of the month. Today, I hit it early.

Time to grovel to the host and ask "may I have a bit more, sir?" in my best Oliver Twist voice. Turns out we struck a deal on an annual rate for a monthly 3Gb bandwidth rate.

I feel embarrassed sometimes when I see the site going Bandwidth Exceeded. It's not like there's a lot of people that regularly read my stuff, but I feel bad that I could keep the site alive for everyone that wanted to stop by here.

Anyway, that should be a bit better for a while...

Well, since I now have a cell phone with a camera, I might as well join in and get myself a Moblog.

Go over and visit My Mundane Photographic Mid-Life at Buzznet!!!

I'll try to get a link to the moblog in my sidebar by the weekend.

UPDATE: It's there! (It doesn't have the fancy opaque transition rollover thingy, though)

194 comment spams from 64.141.68.16 that are slow enough to get around MT's built-in throttle is just plain EVIL.

You're EVIL, ya bastard. You and your like. Go away and do not darken my door again, Mr 64.141.68.16. You and your random quotes with links to a home equity loan site...

May you die a horrible death and rot in hell, every single one of you comment spammers...

Make sure you stop by and say Happy Birthday to Erin today!

I haven't paid attention to something for about 2 years, and all of a sudden this morning I get an email from BlogTree. BlogTree is a site that a blogger can subscribe to to show who you have been influenced by and who you are influencing to write blogs (As an example, here is this blog's genealogy.)

I have said that Erin and Mike (though I'm not sure what's going on in Cooties-land right now...) were the people that influenced me to start this blog, so they are my "parents". Whoever else was influenced by them are my "siblings".

Well, I now have a Blog Child - Who should we trust - though there seems to be a lot of many parents.

Bandwidth Limit Exceeded
The server is temporarily unable to service your request due to the site owner reaching his/her bandwidth limit. Please try again later.
Apache/1.3.29 Server at www.reallans.com Port 80

Well... what the hell was that all about?

I apologize to those who actually stop by and read this blog. My particular blog page is a bit large and takes a little time to load. Now, I have extra incentive to trim it down as I've actually hit my dandwidth limit for the month of March.

I'm open to technical suggestions on paring down the page.

I'm getting this overwhelming sensation to cry out "Good, ya bastards!!!!" when I look in my MovableType log and see: 2004.02.25 08:13:38 212.199.169.153 MT-Blacklist comment denial on My Mundane Mid-Life: business-grants.org . MT-Blacklist works!

Do you use MovableType? Are you having trouble with trolls using comments for spam?????????? Go and get MT-BlackList now! Keep the bastards out!!!! At least go out and update MovableType to 2.661 - it's nice to see in the log: Throttled comment attempt from 212.199.169.153 !!!

Well, I'm still working on getting the blog up and running. XML feeds by category aren't working - don't know why yet (doesn't help that I don't remember how I did it in the first place...). MySQL seems faster than the Berkeley DB (yea!), but I can't tell if the performance boost is due to MySQL or the new host (the problem with changing too many things at once).

Twenty seven days after what I thought was going to be a painless migration of one server to another, I am up an running on my new host. Wow, that sucked... I got no assist at all whatsoever from my hosting company on trying to get the Berkeley DB installed, so I just went the MySQL route and rebuilt the blog by hand. Things might be a bit "wonky" (as the Brits might say), but at least I'm up, active and posting. I'll try to fix all of my errors as I find them. I did one bad thing - I didn't have any record of my blog config information in MT so I'm winging it. I also had to re-import all of my entries, so if anybody out there linked to any of my old posts, well the links are now all different and God knows where you're pointing...

I'm going to "back-fill" all of the posts I missed (yes, I was actually keeping a file of posts that I wanted to make when I was unable to do so).

Looks like the DNS nameserver changes are complete for the website, but now I've got a bigger situation (I think) - I may need to reconfigure MovableType. Looks like it'll be a while before I can post here...

My hosting company sucks and I'm moving. The performance sucks, and the outages are just way out of hand (The site was down fort over 10 hours today... for no reason...), so I'm moving the blog.

That means that you won't see any activity here for a while while I move this monster as well as making the DNS changes.

I'll see you in a few days!

I knew I didn't get much traffic here at the ol' website. I also knew that no one really links to me either (let's face it - a mundane life is just not worth linking to). I registered at The Truth Laid Bear to be part of the TTLB Blogosphere Ecosystem.

Well, I've found out that I'm not a Insignificant Microbe (which actually made me feel better), and I'm not a Multicellular Microorganism, Wiggly Worm, Crunchy Crustacean, or a Lowly Insect.

I'm a Slimy Mollusc, and I'm not sure how I feel about being one of them. I'm not the bottom of the food chain, but... Slimy Mollusc? EW....

It looks like BlogShares is attempting a comeback with new ownership (thanks to Jay Campbell). They were able to salvage the majority of the data from the backups and the Spiders are a-Spiderin'. Yea!

Oh, well. BlogShares crashed last week and Seyed said it won't be reopening. Nuts. It was an interesting "game" while it lasted. My last Total Worth was $6,320,238,942.05. At the beginning of November I was ranked 111, and my overall growth in net worth for the month was 265.49%, so I think I'd move up a bit. There weren't a lot of billionaires in the game. But, alas, it's all over.

We have no money to speak of, so switching hosting companies is the furthest from my mind... I haven't been able to get to my website for a couple of days now. I never get informed on any outages and that just pisses me off. If you don't see me post for a while around here, it's usually because I can't get to the site. When I get a few extra bucks, I'm outa here...

I've been feeling bad the last couple of days. Weird-ass pains around my body, even the chest (NO - NOT THOSE KINDS OF PAINS). A lot of joint pain, my right foot feels like most of the bones are just slightly out of place. Some of the pain I think is just absolutely horrific posture that I just have to keep correcting whenever I can. That, and being overweight.

I'm exhausted and will be in bed by 9:30 tonight. When I get this tired, I get this weird feeling like something in my brain is yelling "STOP! SLEEP NOW! EYES! CLOSE! GET YOUR ASS DOWN BECAUSE IF YOU DON'T, I"M TAKING YOU DOWN!" and the associated sinking feeling and the need to collapse. Cool, eh? I think I'm just not used to actually working and driving about 2-3 hours a day.

Work was quiet - one of those "cat's away" days, but I kept busy. A bit quiet in the staging room. Listened to a little Harry James and Miles Davis.

Oh, crap... it's bad enough that I have to deal with spam everyday, but now I'm getting spammed in my blog comments???? Great. Guess I'm going to have to install a few things to stop these damn spam trolls...

Well, bloggers in the Chicago area finally got a directory to be listed by physical location, just like NYC Bloggers or London Bloggers.

And not only that, there are two of them:
Chicago Blogmap - Bloggers by CTA El/Subway stop
Chicago Bloggers - Bloggers by CTA El/Subway stop or Metra stop (for us suburbanites)

Over a week ago I made a blog entry about Ozzy Osbourne singing Take Me Out to the Ball Game at Wrigley. I posted a link to an MP3 of the catastrophe. Now, I just got a bill from my hosting provider for extra bandwidth usage for the month and I've got a feeling it's because of that one file. Time to move it to a much slower, cheaper server. Damn... I don't have the money to pay for a bandwidth bill...

The website was down 6 hours yesterday, 5½ hours today, always during the day when you want to do something... it's hell being unemployed and not have the money to switch hosting companies... Did I get any notification either before or after the outage? Hell no...

Taking over half an hour to post a friggin' blog entry. MovableType is just timing-out - I never get the "Rebuilding..." message. This has been happening off and on for about 3 months now. Everything was fine earlier today. I just have to tough-it-out and save a few bucks so I can move this monster.

The website is still sick. I'm looking at maybe trying to get this site limping along and find a new hosting service. At least I sort of got the website back. It's been going up and down (according to my monitoring service - Alertra). It was down for another 8 hours this morning. A few configuration changes to MovableType and my blogging is up and running again.

Hmmm... the website has been down for about threee hours this morning and now some of the MovableType scripts work... I'm going to have to take some time tomorrow to see what's going on...

I'm starting to look for new hosting. I'm pissed. I'm not getting ANY service at all. I haven't actually blogged for days. I'm writing things down so that I can add entries when I'm up but I'm getting no information and no support on why I'm getting 550: Permission Denied when I'm trying to FTP a few things. I get 500 Internal Server Errors every time I try anything in MovableType and everything was fine before the upgrade.

I was able to FTP everything back to a machine here in case I need to get to a different hosting service. I wonder if my MT databases (NOT MySQL, I'm afraid) will be able to be moved to a new server without any loss of information - I don't have any recent exports to work with. The most recent ones are from weeks ago.

48 hours and I still don't have full access to my website to blog, to FTP, to do anything. The site is actually up... I just can't change anything.

I love my hosting service.

I am soooo pissed-off at my hosting service right now. I got an email at 3:01pm Tuesday afternoon saying they were upgrading my server Redhat 7.3 on Wednesday, July 23, 2003, at 12pm Eastern Time.

My alert service shows:

Alert Type: Device Down
Alert Time: 07/23/2003 11:13:31 US/Central

There will be a few hours of downtime as the system is upgraded and we will do everything we can to minimize downtime and restore service as soon as possible.

Alert Type: Device OK
Alert Time: 07/24/2003 10:13:48 US/Central

Not only that, I don't have FTP access and MovableType is non-functional.

This sucks. No blogging. I'm pissed.

I'm so friggin' frustrated right now... it's taking up to 20 minutes to navigate page-to-page in MovableType to do some blog entries... so if you don't see anything here for a while, it's because I can't get in to do anything!!!!!!

Here's a nice article from today's paper on how media outlets just don't undertsand blogging - either what it is our how powerful it can be.

I had to jump in and get myself registered. Have a blog? want to "buy" some cheap stock? Check out BlogShares. It's not fully in production yet, but it's a place to "buy" and "sell" shares in your blog. Think blogging meets HSX. Could be fun.
Update: Out of Beta, into production. And I'm under a buck! ($ 0.96 with a P/E of 1.03 - and not a single investor!)

Well, I wanted to change the "feel" of this site, so I'm in the middle of a redesign. It's going to take a while to roll all the changes across to all of the pages, so please be patient and don't get too dizzy as you whip back and forth between the new gray pages and the old green pages.

Why did it take so long for AP to come up with an article on blogging? Was it Goggle buying Pyra that caused it?

I read Robyn's blog on a very regular basis - I've said that quite a few times here. She's actually returned to blogging after a hiatus for some very good personal reasons. Unfortunately, she's going to take her personal side private to a separate website that's only for her family and friends. This, to me, is not too big of a deal since I am neither (though I will miss hearing about that part of her life), but the thing that really pisses me off is that I feel that she's being forced to do it from the blogtrolls out there. She's been attacked way the hell too many times via comments and email, from people that are just plain mean. It sickens me to see people getting forced-out like this, under the veil of "If you write about your private life on the web, then you better be ready to let people express their opinions about your actions" crap. That's Bull, my friend. Just because someone writes about very personal matters doesn't give the right to any troll passing by to attack you. Just STFU and move on. So now, Robyn has cloaked her personal life from us "blog friends" and regular readers. I will surely miss that, though I will continue to read her mssives on her original site. (I'll miss that "personal touch.") (BTW, I love Quinn's little photo dedication).

First, it was the front page of the Chicago Tribune. Now, I'm actually quoted in the New York Times on, of all things, my GuestMaps.

One of the simplest and most effective map-based ideas is the "guestmap," which lets visitors indicate their locations when commenting in online guest books. Michael Lans offers several guestmaps in his Weblog (www.reallans.com). Suddenly the anonymous or faceless names of site visitors "have a sense of place," he said.

Well, that's one upgrade down. Had a little dicey time trying to upgrade to MovableType 2.62, but I guess I've got that over with.

A very interesting thing from over the weekend: Google buys Pyra Labs, the creators of Blogger. It must be interesting to be Evan. What will this mean not only for Blogger, but the rest of us bloggers out in the blogosphere not using Blogger?

The server that this website sits on had a drive controller failure 35 hours ago, so now I'm trying to play catch-up. I had carved-out a nice period of time to work on my MovableType upgrade (glad I waited because of the bugs) and to start work on a little redesign of the site. I sit down to start to work and - no site. Crap. Well, that was fun. At least I wrote everything down that I wanted to blog about while I've been waiting.

.. and quietly reach out and send your prayers, good thoughts, good karma and good mojo to a person that I've been reading regularly out there in the Bloggerverse - Robyn. I can't tell you how much I've enjoyed reading her blog, admired a bit of her design work and layout style. I was always taken with her loyalty to her sporting teams, her college, and her family and friends. Now, she needs time alone (away from us) and just needs some good, comforting thoughts sent her way. Actually, don't stop with her - send that warmth, love, and good karma to both Robyn and her husband Todd. Take the time - do something good for the people that blog, the people that you read, the people that need the support. Please.

I received an email last week that, quite frankly, touched me.

I've mentioned, over the past few weeks, that I write here because I want to. I just write about stuff that I do, stuff I'm interested in. Stuff.

Why? I don't really know. I have one main idea why (one that I'm not willing to share right now), but mostly, I guess I'm just writing and hoping somebody out there may have similar likes and dislikes and maybe, for the brief moment that someone stops by here, we make a brief little "connection" in our lives and we go on.

The Third Annual Weblog Award nominations, also known as the 2003 Bloggies, were announced yesterday. Take a look at the nominees, visit their sites and vote.

If you want to see the list of sites that were submitted to the judges for voting to come up with this year's nominees, wander over here. The list isn't linked, so you'll have to do some searching on your own for the URL's.

Went out to GeoURL.com and got my blog all setup so that it's now identified by my home latitude/longitude. The really cool thing is that the website pulls coordinates from everyone that registers and produces a list of my geographic "neighbors". Click on the button and you'll see everyone within 100 miles of me!

I am appalled, sick, outraged, enraged... Robyn is bringing up a situation where there appears to be a guy in Tampa who is - for lack of a better term - stalking female bloggers. It's happened to about four bloggers so far, including Robyn, and something needs to be done, as it looks like he may have latched onto a 14 year old blogger. Look, I write personal stuff about my life in my blog. Many people do. There's a sicko out there who is preying on this information and actually showing up at places where these women have said they were going in their blogs. With regularity so you just KNOW it's not coincidence. That is just SO wrong. There's other comments, too, about "inappropriate" things this guy is doing. Support Robyn, Sara, Sarah, Dania, and everyone else that has had to endure this asswipe's actions.
UPDATE: Dania outed the guy, so now he is known to the rest of us. Details about this guy are in the coments of Robyn's entry.

After thoroughly enjoying the pictures and stories of Robyn and friends just having a hell of a time partying in Florida (not to mention the entire Boobies to Florida campaign), now they're all in a hot tub - complete with live webcams. Jealousy ensues (on my part), but it's entertaining none the less...

In the battle between Mike and Erin to get to #1 on Blogdex, Mike wins.

OK, now my Blogmom Erin has a favor, too:

erin needs to be more famous... and faster than mike.

Mike at aka Cooties has just one favor to ask:

Mike needs to be famous... and fast.

How cool is this... if you read a blog regularly, and you want to know when it gets updated (NOTE: The Blogger must be pinging weblogs.com for this to work), you can use BlogToaster to get a Microsoft Instant Message to let you know when the blog gets updated! (And it really works!)

I think I'm up far enough to finally cutover MovableType into production. The comments and links seem to work so far, now I just need to spruce it up a little more (a lot of CSS work and adding a few things over in the sidebar on the left). I still need a way to import comments from YACCS - once YACCS gets its act together with the buggy export not getting all of the comments. So, MovableType is live at this site. I'm still tweaking, but it is live.

I've spent most of the weekend going over my blog entries in Moveable Type to add titles and categories to the entries. VERY laborious. I'm still worried about how MT is probably going to force a few things on me regarding naming of files and directories. I'm thinking it's not very forgiving. I'm not any closer to converting this blog to MT. I'm on my way, but it's not going to be quick and easy.

I'm starting the long journey of moving my blog from Blogger Pro to Moveable Type, thanks to a jump-start from Quinn. The biggest problem I'm running into is trying to incorporate MT into my existing website (which is more than just a blog, which MT seems to assume). I'm importing my Blogger entries now - it's taking quite some time (730 entries). So PLEASE be patient with me over the next week or so as I start moving things over, a piece or tool at a time.

Well, that took a while - I fixed the layout on my Blog pages. Sorry for the inconvenience.

No change in the screw-up on the layout on my blog pages. I'm still stumped, but will work through it... sorry, folks.

WHAT THE HELL HAPPENED TO MY LAYOUT??? Nuts... this is going to take forever to figure out... sorry for the screw up, folks... I'll get it fixed as soon as possible...

Christine is spreading the word about a new word that Mike coined:

blurker (BLUR-kur): n. 1. One who reads many blogs but leaves no evidence of themselves such as comments behind; a silent observer of blogs. 2. One who reads many blogs but has no blog of their own; a blog-watcher or blog voyeur.

Let me know you are out there!

Got my FTP back...

Hmmm... FTP problems with my host... can't update the site... It's been a bit spotty this weekend. DNS trouble last night, now FTP problems.

I'm sad. Erin, my BlogMom, has decided to leave us. *sniff* I hope she'll come back soon...
Update: That wasn't long at all - 8 hours... don't scare me like that...

Well, I'm at Comiskey, posting via WAP from my phone. I was able to get a seat behind the plate. Looks like a small crowd, but it's still a half an hour before game time. Will this be the last home game?

WARNING - DNS CHANGE IN PROGRESS - EVERYTHING SHOULD RESOLVE WITHIN 48 (maybe 72) HOURS FROM NOW

Here we go again!!!
I guess my hosting provider isn't happy with those Windows/IIS servers (Shock! Horror! Utter amazement!!!), so this site is moving still again.

So, if you don't see any updates here for a few days, you'll know what's going on. It seems like I'm getting bounced around a lot, but I'm willing to ride it out for a while.

Last weekend they started selling Pepsi Blue at Comiskey. Had my first one and loved it, though I think it's best to drink it as cold as possible. Carol bought me a couple to have at home. Cold berry cola fusion. Thinking about having one now. Did you know it's caffeinated, the same as Pepsi? (37 milligrams per 12 ounces). Hey - someone has a blog about everything Pepsi Blue...

Well, the blog has been up for quite a few months now, and I have to fess up. Why did I start blogging? Well, I started reading a few online and it just seemed like something that I would enjoy doing. Who was the one that got me hooked? Erin. There was something about how she wrote and the site design that I really enjoyed and I started reading about her and her life and I couldn't stop. Go figure. Why confess now? Well, it's because of BlogTree. It attempts to produce the genealogy of blogs. So, I had to go register and declare that, indeed, Erin is my BlogMom. And, hey! I've got siblings!

Here's a staff reporter for the Chicago Tribune that wrote an article in today's Tribune about his Blogathon 2002 experience.

Wha..? Salon is starting-up a Blog service (using Radio UserLand)? Even a press release...

Great assessment of "the State of the Union" of Weblogging software products at The Microcontent News Blogging Software Roundup.

More Blogging articles popping up, like at Information Week - Are You Blogging Yet?, a small mention in what's right with America in The Lights That Didn't Fail at the Wall Street Journal, The trees fight back at The Economist, Blogs helping cartoonists draw a bigger audience at the San Jose Mercury News, and Using Blogs in Business at Blogroots.

Hmmmm... Blogchalking... I guess I have to say this...

Google! DayPop! This is my blogchalk: English, United States, Hoffman Estates, Hoffman Hills, Michael, Male, 41-45!

Oh, before I forget, be sure to wish Erin a Happy 32nd Birthday today before she heads down to the Jersey Shore for the weekend...

That's it - I've had it. This website is now on an IIS server, thanks to my host. I hate Microsoft. No, I HATE Microsoft. With each day that passes in my life, the rage against this company increases as I find out more and more pieces of their arrogance, stupidity in security, and what appears to be disregard to internet standards. Period. I've been struggling with some SSI coding for this blog, only to read, buried in a discussion form on Blogger, that Microsoft really doesn't adhere to the full SSI spec, so I can't include a stupid file with any intelligence. Bastards. I've had to hard-code some pages because I'm also having ASP problems. I feel like Ben Stiller as Mr. Furious in Mystery Men... and just as effective.

WARNING - DNS CHANGE IN PROGRESS - EVERYTHING SHOULD RESOLVE WITHIN 48 (maybe 72) HOURS FROM NOW

What the heck is going on NOW??? My site is changing servers again, this time I didn't know about it. All of a sudden this afternoon I can't get to the website. A couple of hours later, I got a notice that my server was taken down, the accounts are being rebuilt on a new server and it's going to to require a DNS nameserver change. Great. So, I guess I'm down. You're not going to be able to find me for a few days, or until I get a new server and the DNS changes propagate around. Sigh.

OOoooooo... a very cool comparison table of Blog Tools...

WARNING - DNS CHANGE IN PROGRESS - EVERYTHING SHOULD RESOLVE WITHIN 48 HOURS FROM NOW

I'm just changing servers. We'll see how long things will take to change over, so if you see some odd changes happening over the next few days, you'll know what I'm up to.

He did it again. I missed this yesterday, but Mike did another great parody at his Blog - this time it's Joan Osborne and 'One of Us'. Go listen to the midi, read the lyrics and sing along with Blog (Like One of Us).

I received an EMail recently that just made me feel warm inside. A former coworker of mine has been reading my blog quite regularly. It was something I hadn't thought about, but she said "I feel like we are still working together and seeing each other everyday." I hadn't thought of a blog giving that kind of connection to people that you used to work with. Even though it's a bit one-way (even though there are options on each post to make a comment for feedback), it feels good to know that there's a connection. On top of it, since Barry is mentioned a bit in my blogging, she's vicariously keeping in touch with him as well. I really enjoyed my time working with Peggy. She's a great woman and a great worker. I've missed her dearly since my time at Brunswick. One of the last times I saw her was at Comiskey Park almost two years ago for Elvis Night. She had her daughter with her, so I snapped some pics. These are for you, Peg! Hope you keep reading.

Great article about the birth of the "Blogosphere" and the concept of a biological Media Ecosystem at Microcontinent News. Never thought of this: "blogger : journalist :: tick : sheep" (from Doc Weevil). Then there's the Corporate Web Log... and the possibility of making a living from blogging and the "intersection" of Wi-Fi (802.11 wireless Ethernet) and Weblogs as a "disruptive technology".

The flipside of blogging are the assholes out there. Yes, they're there. I'm fortunate, because no one reads my blog. My traffic is pitifully low, which I totally accept. Hey, I know my life is boring - I live it every friggin' day. So, I get my joys in life from my family, my friends, our hobbies and sports teams, and even our little "girl" - Indy, our rabbit. Now what would make a guy call my Bunnies! webpage "bunny porn"? Or even say "People really do post some shite on their weblogs" when there is absolute crap on theirs.

Perhaps this is just another aspect of blogging - whatever "I" do is cool and whatever "you" do is crap. Though, quite frankly, I wouldn't just go out and talk trash about somebody's personal website - I'd rather say nothing (sort of like when you were younger and your mom would tell you "If you don't have something nice to say, then don't say anything at all.") Well, tough. Screw you Adam Currie.

I saw this in Erin's blog and I had to go check it out. It's the blog I always wanted to do - In Passing... There's been so many times where you just overhear snippets of conversations that are just odd, strange, hysterical, shocking. Why not commit them to a blog?

Damn. I've always thought my life is boring, being unemployed and all. It's bad enough that I say it, but now I've got another blogger saying that I'm more boring than him. Great. My life is whole. Gee.

More Blogging articles: Wired, Salon, CNET, US News, The Guardian Unlimited, and an interview with Evan Williams at the Online Community Report.

I couldn't help myself. I just get so pissed off at some other drivers as I'm driving, that I've decided to start a blog of My Driving Pet Peeves. Things just piss me off and I feel like I have to write about them. There're idiots out there - you've seen them (I hope you're not one of them!).

Well, here I am at Comiskey Park, actually sitting in my seat, using my cell phone to post this via WAP. Too cool, but really too time consuming keying-in text using the keypad. The Sox are playing Oakland. It's a pitching duel - sort of. Oakland scored in the first... Oh crap! Jose Valentin just hit a triple with the bases loaded! I think I had better stop playing with the phone and watch the game - we're winning 4-1!

For those of you who me (or actually, know us), you know that I've been married since 1979. That's right - over 22 years. You have no freaking idea how funny this page is when you look at it with 22 years of married life under your belt!

Got to bed late after franticly switching the blog away from Blog*Spot on onto my own website. I was on a roll, and had the adrenaline pumpin' and just couldn't let it go, so I just went through it and got it up and running here. To those of you just finding me again, welcome! And, oh BTW, I didn't plan to be part of the May 1st Reboot, but it looks like did (but let's be honest - I ain't no designer, and the site is just a personal website, so no biggie, right?)

Been trying to find out out my buddy Barry. He called me yesterday morning to let me know he was going into the hospital for "intravenous antibiotic therapy". Huh? Well, it turns out that his right hand has swollen-up (really bad) from what is being speculated as a spider bite. He had it lanced and packed (Ew and OOUUCCHH!!!!) and his hand is more swollen now, so off to attack the infection. We haven't heard back from him or his wife (Buffy), so we're a bit concerned. Left voicemail - hopefully we'll hear what's going on.

Made my bi-weekly call to IDES (the Illinois Department of (Un)Employment Security) and the automated guy didn't tell me when my next call date is. This probably means that my unemployment benefits have officially run out.

Crud.

WE'VE MOVED!
It was time to grow up and move out of the house!
This blog is now in its new location here at this website.
PLEASE CHANGE YOUR BOOKMARKS FOR THE NEW LOCATION AT REALLANS.COM:
http://www.reallans.com/mmml.shtml
If you are still pointing to: http://mundanemidlife.blogspot.com/, please change your bookmark/favorite/link.
Thank you for joining us here at our new site!

I am getting friggin' inundated with hits from Google searches looking for Laughlin, Hell's Angels and Mongols, just because I blooged about Harrah's Laughlin on Saturday (not to mention people looking for photos of Lisa Lopes dead). Weird. People, I just commented on these events - there's nothing to see here - move along, move along...

Oh my God, I had to try this... Posting to my blog from my brand new Samsung Sprint PCS phone!

Two days of 88° weather. It got a little breezy today, though - but still, ain't this great for April? Of course it'll be down in the 50's for the weekend when we go back to Comiskey Park.

Spent most of the day working on my new website - (yes, this Blog will be moving within the next week or so to my own domain). Hey - anybody that knows PHP & MySQL got a few minutes to crank out a quick app for me for displaying images (my photo collection)?

More Blogging articles are popping up (other than Dvorak's stab at it) - MSNBC, and Ev's interview at Internet Magazine.

Wait... I'm in Blogistan? Or am I in Lower Blogovia? I think Alex Beam in his Boston Globe article is a little bit off-base on blogging. "Welcome to Blogistan, the Internet-based journalistic medium where no thought goes unpublished, no long-out-of-print book goes unhawked, and no fellow ''blogger,'' no matter how outre, goes unpraised." Fortunately, others have replied. Of course, it happens to be a blog. And John Dvorak has decided he's going to blog, so he's written his Eight Rules for the Perfect Blog in his article Deconstructing the Blog.

Another series of Blogging articles seem to be making the rounds. This time in the April 2002 issue of Fast Company, on the show Tech Live over at Tech TV, and at Microcontent News.

Hmmm... the marriage of Blogging and Knowledge Management (which I'm interested in, since I'm a Lotus Notes guy) - What is a k-log?

Wow... more Blogging stuff...in addition to the stuff I found on February 5, there's Wired News, Business 2.0, the Far Eastern Economic Review, and David Weinberger of JOHO THE BLOG!, did an NPR commentary on blogging. Here's a RealAudio link to the piece. He mentioned Dan Gillmor's eJournal of siliconvalley.com

More: Former MTV VJ Adam Curry, A List Apart's How to Write a Better Weblog

Wha....???? ERIN GOT A JOB!!! Look, I don't know her personally, but I read her blog religiously. She's been out of work as long as I have, so I have a certain empathy for her. And then, what appeared to be pretty suddenly, the interview/contacts started coming-in, and voila! she's got a full-blown job offer and re-entering the workforce on Monday. Wow. It sounds weird, but I'm proud of her! (which is weird since I don't really know her, but trying to get back into this crappy job market is tough and she made it!) Congrats to Erin!

(I guess the flipside of this is the hope that something will come up in the job market around here... I feel like I'm being left behind...)

Wow. Tons of articles on Blogging... what's going on? There's the article in Time Magazine. Then BBC (along with The Guardian). Then friendly curmudgeon John C. Dvorak in the recent PC Magazine. How about Wireless Blogs at Wireless Week? Or a little nasty spin on payling for publishing (i.e. Blogger Pro) in the New York Post? Or the San Jose Business Journal? Jeez... even the National Review and Fortune.

The National Anthem Of Bloggers!!! The whacky Canadian Mike at aka Cooties came up with this... UltraSuperHyperMegaUberBlogerrific!

Trying to catch-up with my Blog of Las Vegas Update, but Blogger is giving me fits trying to publish. Could be some fallout form Ev's reconfiguring.

Responded to a job posting on computerjobs.com. Probably won't hear a thing. Headhunters can be such assholes...

Wow... no Blogging due to security breach at Blogger... damn the bastards...