If you’ve ever dealt with Lyme or even if you just like songs about getting to know someone, check out these lyrics to a song called Ticks, and then you can blame someone who isn’t me when you find yourself downloading country music.

I’ve had to borrow neighbors’ wifi a few times, and have searched for free wifi (the city of Worcester, MA has free wifi for some cool reason, if you’re ever there for a bus layover), you’ll have noticed how incredibly dull most network names are. If you’re looking to rename your wifi, check out these suggested names.

I’m trying to see more movies, and a friend recommended old movies. TNT had sent me some information on old family-friendly movies they are running on Sunday evenings, so I’m checking those out with the kids. But the ones I really want to see are the pre-Code movies, movies before the rating system was created.

Am I the last person to discover meebo? it’s great having all of my chat programs in one place. makes it easier to keep chat windows open, too. I have to watch out and not send things to the wrong people, though…. if you want to reach me I’m mia3mom on google talk & yahoo, imacmomR on aim. I seem to have gotten past my instant-messaging phobias

In other news, there are a couple new recipes floating around, and expect some more this week as I test a new recipe or two. Couple new reviews coming, too. yay!

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BG & MG and I have been voting in the shirt.woot! derby for the past few weeks, and since this week’s topic is turning text into art, we thought we’d take a shot at it. Our entry passed the “not lame” test, at least!

Oddly enough, the girls don’t have a woot! username, so it’s posted under my name only, despite the collaboration. Right now, our entry has more votes than can be explained by family voting! Our goal was to get a vote from someone other than me and B, and while anything else is gravy, it would be a great spot of light on a dreary snowy spring day if we got more votes!

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BG has gotten very interested in the Babymouse graphic novels, aimed at the tween-age. MG is also reading them, but BG is simply gobbling them up. Her (male) friends aren’t interested in the same books, but they all love comic books.

So, today at our homeschool coop, I let the kids use my camera, and the four “big kids” took pictures so they could create their own comic book next week. They jotted down ideas, staged their photos, and came up with their plans. Next week we’ll use Comic Life, their ideas, and their photos to make their comics. Cool! And a great idea for anyone who has kids that need to journal or write, but are lacking inspiration. Taking goofy pics of your siblings or friends and then turning them into a comic book is fun!

We got Comic Life on my MacBook, but there’s a free 30 day trial if you have a Mac that didn’t come with the software.

Sometimes I can just pull cool ideas out of thin air. I like those days. I also managed to tire everyone out with a long walk today – tired dogs & kids are good ones!

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The longer version is after the jump, but here’s the short version for those not interest in the geeky insider scoop.

We have had to change servers 3 times since November due to all kinds of weird stuff. We are settling in at our newest host, hoping to be staying permanently at Steadfast Networks. We highly recommend them: they are friendly, polite, helpful, and when something happens, they apologize. We do not recommend HostPenguin; while their mission statement says they will be gracious, they were rude and condescending, plus unhelpful and unstable.

We love people who can spell, use English correctly, and who apologize when they’ve made a mistake. It’s a Big Thing around here.

Our original host vanished in November after hosting us for about 6 years. I followed my Good Friend Sue to a new host. Good Host was fabulous and wonderful. I even wrote a review about how wonderful they were. From November through mid-February, I had 2 brief downtime issues, but otherwise no problems. Really accessible server admin, very responsive and just wonderful.

Unfortunately, there were behind-the-scenes problems and they ended up going under, and the Good Host set us up on the servers of a friend in mid-February.

From mid-February through early March, we were hosted by Host Penguin. I was dealing with my health stuff, the girls’ homeschooling, and general other crap, so even though I was a bit iffy about having a host that proselytizes Christianity on its homepage, I decided I’d move when things were quieter at home.

Things don’t really get very quiet here, of course, but it was a great concept. In any case, during the 3 weeks or so we were hosted there, we had to deal with having emails returned as blacklisted, database errors, unexplained downtime, and other problems – far more issues than I had ever had before. I had 1 support ticket with the Good Host, and about 6 in 3 weeks with this one.

I know it should be a minor a pet peeve, but I have issues with bad grammar and misspellings – not typo-type errors, but mis-using plurals, verb conjugations, word misuse, etc. Everything I received from them was filled with those errors, and in a giant block of text, which I find hard to read.

Another pet peeve – if someone makes a mistake I like to hear “I’m sorry”. It’s what I teach the girls, and it’s what I expect from others. Never in the myriad of replies for those 6 tickets did I get an “I’m sorry” for the problems or the downtime. They had errors after they moved the databases from the Good Host, but they said they weren’t responsible for data that was moved, nor for the files that were installed by the Good Host’s installer.

I got fed up quickly, got angry, and once my files were in a state where I could repair them myself, I backed up and moved my site ASAP. In short, Host Penguin sucks. Steer clear of them if you value good service and a reliable host.

While some might say “you get what you pay for”, I was paying the same amount for Good Host & Host Penguin. I’m now paying 5 cents less per month for my hosting with Steadfast Networks, so maybe you get the quality you search for – I based my choce of Good Host on Sue’s extensive research, and my choice of Steadfast Networks on my own research Googling and searching the Web Hosting Talk forum. I did no research before being moved to the suckage of Host Penguin.

I’ve been with Steadfast Network for about a day now, and while there were some problems with the databases after the move, the support staff was very helpful, polite, and knowledgeable. They guided me through the steps I needed to perform without a tinge of condescension. As a former tech support person, I know there’s a way of performing support that leaves the customer annoyed, and a way that leaves the customer happy, regardless of the end result. Steadfast definitely has “happy customer” skills!

Moving from one host to another is fraught with problems, so I was expecting a few. It turned out that some of the problems were because of a different naming convention that I didn’t notice, and when I told the support staff at Steadfast Network about the resolution, they apologized for being so busy on the weekend that they hadn’t been able to walk through it with me. Technical skills, politeness, sincerity, it’s all good. We like Steadfast so far!

I’ll update in a few months with a full review of Steadfast. In the mean time, let’s all cross our fingers that there’s no more yoyo-ing of the site!

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In other geeky-love news, one of my children (who has asked to remain nameless) said, “Can I have my allowance in Amazon money? I can’t wait to open my own Amazon account!”

Yep. We may be a bit computer-centered here…

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I gave up, and started looking for a Recipe design.  I pretty quickly found a template called Marc for Rachel’s Recipe Box.  After a lot of fiddling with colors and code, I tweaked the same template for the final redesign for A Gaggle of Book Reviews.  Yay!

OK, that’s done for now – redesign on 3/4 blogs, and I’m happy with how Spotlight: A Gaggle of Reviews looks. I should get some sleep – even if the girls are with my folks, I still need to get out of bed in the morning! (but then I can sneak back in and take a nap…)

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There are levels of fame I to which I aspire. I managed to be in Newsweek in October, admittedly just a quick quote. I’ve been on a couple podcasts (including Motherhood Uncensored on Blog Talk Radio).  Plus I’m now working with 3 great publishers reviewing their books! All of this is really exciting. I positively glow when anything like this happens!

When I was a kid, I daydreamed about being interviewed by David Letterman or any of the other talk show hosts. I never quite knew why I’d be interviewed, but I loved that idea. That had simmered in me for a while, and when I started hearing Terry Gross on Fresh Air on NPR, the old daydream reappeared. I don’t watch much any TV, but I listen to quite a few podcasts, including Fresh Air. I’d love to be interviewed by her! We have to find a reason for the interview though…

In the meantime, I can now claim 1 degree of separation from Terry Gross! She interviewed Carol Muske-Dukes about her novel Channeling Mark Twain. After I wrote my review, I was given the opportunity to do an email interview with Carol. Remember that the questions were sent en-masse, so some of her answers overlap. My interview is now up at Writers Revealed – please check it out!  Wow- Terry Gross and I both interviewed the same person…

I’m all excited. Thanks for listening to the brags, folks! You’ve all listened to the whining, so it feels nice to have good things to post!

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I know that Mir makes all kinds of wonderful, pretty suggestions, but for the 2 people in the world who don’t read that blog, and/or someone looking for a gift for a brother, dad, step-dad, etc, I’ve got some ideas. Mir covered some great guy gift ideas, but I need some in the under $20 range, not the $100 range. Plus, I’m trying to shop for a gift for my brother, so if you have great ideas for a fussy, single, city-dwelling guy in is early 30s who is not techy or outdoorsy, please leave a comment!

Of course, very few of these work for anyone in my life, or so I will say right now. Family may want to avert their eyes..

• OK, so the snowstorm has stopped us from actually picking up the PhotoBook from CVS, but if you’ve got a digital camera and a nearby CVS, it’s a great gift for anyone who likes pictures of you, your kids, or whatever.
• Two great books that taste look great together are The Daring Book for Girls and The Dangerous Book for Boys. Those might well be my default gifts for the foreseeable future.
• One of the best gifts I have ever given or received was a Leatherman Multi-Tool. If you can’t afford that, this Faux Leatherman and knife set would be great for most guys, and a lot of women, too – plus you can buy two for the price of one Leatherman.
• If that doesn’t look right, there’s always Swiss Army Knives – this knife even has a light!
• I will never forget the year Santa brought my step-dad tools. Tools in his stocking. Tools under the tree. Tools everywhere! If you’re thinking along that line, this set of wrenches would be great.
• After two hard drive crashes and a server that went kablooie, I’m all about having everything backed up in a few different places. So, nothing says “I love you” more than making sure your stuff is backed up!
• If you know someone who’s a wine person rather than a beer person, check out this tool to make it easier to pour wine. Though, in what wine-loving house does wine last two weeks?
• A great gift for anyone who isn’t my brother is a cool T-shirt for $10. The $10 sale ends the day after tomorrow, and then they’re $20. I can’t pick favorites right now – I love far too many.
• Hey! I might be able to find something for him here! Magazines on sale – it’s a gift that lasts all year! There’s ESPN magazine, Popular Mechanics, Discover science magazine, or even my favorite – Mac Life, which used to be MacAddict.
• Have you given up on finding the perfect gift? Did you cave and get a gift certificate? Wrap it up with this great gag gift, and then it looks like a regular present.
• Following the above idea a little a lot farther… If you’re buying for your husband/significant other/life partner, you could always pair these two items

It’s probably best to end there before my brain continues in that direction… If you want a great giggle, complete with lots of romance and magic(k) – or even just a Salem, MA stting, check out the book I just finished – Sex and the Psychic Witch. Lots of “Mr. Happy” talk. Check out her first trilogy, too.

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I quickly made my own comic strip using some photos that had seemed connected in my head. The comic strip’s called The Snowball Comic – it’s about when MG convinced Jack to catch snowballs like they were tennis balls. The series is starts here on flickr, if you want to think up your own captions! Comic Life exported it as html, so I can share it with all of you. MG laughed, so I hope you laugh a bit, too.

If you want to try it out, and Comic Life didn’t ship on your Mac, you can download a 30 day trial. Let me know if you make a comic!

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Step 1: Break his/her legs, sprain his/her back, or otherwise comprimise his/her health so that sitting at a desk is painful. (If you have any nearby ticks, Lyme disease will work, too)

Step 2: Give her/him a laptop. However, make sure that the laptop is unstable: give it a power cord and hard drive that malfunction repeatedly.

Step 3: Due to the laptop’s flakey behavior, suggest that the geek “back up” things online. DO NOT suggest that the geek back up the online databases from her/his 4 blogs.

Step 4: Work with the system administrator/server person at the geek’s hosting company/friend who has the servers. Arrange for the servers to be offline indefinitely, and do not reply to the geek’s emails about his/her websites.

Step 5: Plot a vicious Denial of Service attack against the geek’s new server, taking the (newly moved) sites offline for 12 hours within the first 48 hours after moving the site.

Step 6: Conspire with Google to crawl the site when all the pages are inaccessible. This way when the geek tries to resurrect the database from Google’s cache of the entries, he/she will not be able to get about 25% of the entries. Conveniently make sure that those are the entries he/she wants up the most.

Step 7: Watch and laugh silently as the geek spends 4 days using a plugin, a Google search term, and copy/paste to re-enter 3/4 of the 3 sites attempted. In a fit of sympathy, allow the geek to take a few painkillers for the repetitive stress injuries sustained.

Step 8: Sit on the sidelines as the geek mourns the 2700+ missing entries, 6 years of blogging.

I’m partway back from never-never land. Hope you’re all doing well… I’ll try to make more upbeat posts once my neck and hands are hurting less…

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