Webbage

It's been all over my friends' pages for the past couple days... but Diary-X is no more. For various reasons, both explained and not, it's not coming back. Everything's lost. Apparently some of the more devoted DX'ers are going to try to put together a replacement... and I wish them the best of luck.

Yeah, I'm a bit sad. Mostly due to the connections I'd made there. I mean, hell-- in just over a month, I'm going to the wedding of two people I met through DX... and who met each other through DX, for that matter. Until the end of 2004, my entire relationship with Erich was written about as it developed.

Erich lost everything he'd written there. I've done an archive search for some of his stuff... and did find a few writings, which I saved to my computer for him. But for the most part, everything's gone beyond what I had the sense to cross-post to diaryland or LJ. At some point, I know he'll set himself back up. I've (of course) offered whatever he wants on measi.net.

Le sigh....

But it's time to move on, as many others are doing. In my case, that's getting around to finally making my journal how I want it. I've found a WordPress template that I like, and it's uploaded and live. I just need to get the entries transferred over there, and then move everything into the blog folder. It'll take some time, but it's stuff I want to do.

As I work on that, though-- I need updates for webpages so I can update my links. I've found some on the DX form that was set up on the old site. But if you haven't added your info there and are reading... drop me a line and let me know where you've moved to so I can find you again.

~ Mel.

Hermiting, for many reasons

We truly have been spoiled most of this winter. My birthday? Was 50 degrees. Mid-January. For the better part of January, in fact, it was warm enough to arguably be late October temperatures. I was loving it, even if I did have a slight (shhhh) wish to see some snow.

This weekend, the arctic blast hit with a vengeance. Snow squalls hit Friday night, never amounting to much on the ground, but giving everything that dull, dreary grey-white look of frigid winter thanks to ice crystals, dirt, and the road salting mixture that gets into everything.

In a way, it is nice to actually have winter be... winter. But two minutes behind the wheel of Erich's car tonight as I went to pick him up at Chris & Sara's house, and I was already tired of it. My teeth were chattering. My hands (in mittens) were shaking. And I was hunkering down over the steering wheel as if I were suffering from severe osteoporosis, cold as hell while I prayed for the car heater to come on.

Other than attending Tau Beta Sigma's 3rd degree ceremony (congrats, Alpha Gammas!) today, I've been a hermit all weekend. I played some World of Warcraft. I did a small amount of chores. But I just didn't feel like being sociable.

I'm definitely in a homebody mode recently, with no desire to do any contacting of anyone. I think I've just reached my occasional "tapped out" phase with being sociable. Prolonged social situations always exhaust me. Despite being able (usually) to put on the appearance of being an extrovert when I'm out and about, I'm definitely not one. It literally takes every bit of emotional energy to put forth that appearance of being outgoing. Most of the time, it works, though. I may feel awkward as hell the entire time, but I try my best to talk with others and not be the silent awkward girl in the corner (where it's most comfortable).

Even though it's probably not accurate, I feel like we've had a huge social calendar since Thanksgiving with something happening every weekend. I just don't have it in me. I need to recharge myself by retreating within from time to time.

I was overdue.

Okay... this cheered me up a bit...

I received this in email from an unnamed friend, along with an email that states...

"I don't have to tell you what this is, because you'll figure it out in about five seconds, and I know you'll start laughing."


Yeah. I really did. And so will anyone else who gets the guilty pleasure remake that this is...

"Thunder in My Heart" video, by Meck


heh.


I totally have to curl up in PJ's and watch the real thing this weekend....

Big time wedding blues

I think the weather is completely affecting my mood-- I just am completely pppppbbbbbhhhhtttt about everything these days. It bothers me, too. I want to get things done. I cannot motivate myself to do things. I just don't care. At all.

A lot of this comes from the wedding. Any time I think of it, it just puts a stormcloud over my mood. It shouldn't, but it does. Maybe it's because the last mingled family gathering was my college graduation, and other than at the drink fest after the celebration, I just wasn't happy with everyone there. The entire situation put me on edge the whole time. I've become used to my parents being divorced. Having the two sides of the family together is uncomfortable. It doesn't happen often. And this time around? We have my dad's wife to add to the equation (who I don't care for, and from what I've gathered, neither does my grandmother).

With the little spat between my cousins over being my bridesmaids-- before I've even begun planning the wedding and my mom doing the two step "you need to do what you want.. but oh, I don't think Grandpa (read=her) will be happy with XYZ..." I was completely turned off to the idea.

Yeah... I'm just not wanting to do this. I know I have to. (and yes, I DO have to...) I look at the amount of money to drop on a wedding and just think it's a waste. I'd honestly rather spend the money on getting a new roof on our house or pay someone to strip out the wallpaper. But there's this underlying knowledge that planning a wedding is an obligation for me. If I were to run away and elope, I would never, EVER hear the end of it. My parents still give me shit for crap I did when I was seven, despite my annoyance (and telling them so) to knock it off and move on. Scooting around them on my wedding? Yeah. Lifetime shit-giving.

That, unfortunately, is my current motivation for planning the wedding. I'll suck it up and go through with the ceremony and reception that everyone is expecting me to do. Mainly because other than a private handfasting (read-- with friends only, no family), I just have no clue what I would do. My version of parties still ranges in the somewhat post-collegiate realm. Friends, beer, and bringing platters of munchies. I prefer quietly sitting in the corner, observing and occasionally engaging in conversation when I feel comfortable doing so.

If it weren't so fucking expensive, I'd hire a wedding planner to do the whole damn thing and just show up.

*sigh*

The Silver Lining

So despite a few emails that piss me off regarding my opinion on Diary-X, I am in the process of making things better for myself. And I've found that stereotypical "silver lining" to the disaster cloud.

And believe me-- despite a few inklings on comments sections, I've been keeping my opinion on the matter VERY much to myself. Yes, I read the LJ forum that's now front and center for DX'ers. I can say for certain that my eyes have a full range of motion to the amount of completely sappy, over-the-top "Stephen love" going on there. But yeah, my comments have been restrained. For lack of a better reason, I'm well aware of the elitist DX-only crew out there, and just don't want to deal with a lot of the crap. I don't get all of the love. I really don't. But then again, since I'm One Of Those Who Left, my opinion is a dark cloud on the fluffy rainbows of DX-dom.

Anyway... onto the good stuff. My discovery of the Silver Lining came out of this frustration. I've had three issues that I've been thinking about for a while with my current journal. I want to improve it. I want to better organize it. The layout annoys the crap out of me. So I did the traditional pros/cons list.

There are three things that I really don't like about Blogger.

1) The layout coding, I'll deal with slowly. This issue is just as equally my lack of time to commit to it than the actual coding setup. I understand somewhat how the Blogging coding works. I've messed around with new templates. For the most part, I can make them work. But it definitely goes much slower than I've dealt with in the past.

2) The Archive System If there is ONE thing I miss about being at DX, it is the split archive system that was there. it was clean-looking and well-organized. I don't like how Blogger has things done-- especially that the archive listing on the right is in opposite order (with no ability to alter it) than it makes sense to appear. I *would* want the most recent months first. Sorry, no can do. This issue could be fixed, again, by some elbow grease time on my part. Recreating a split archive by hand isn't really that much of an issue. It just takes time.

3) Tags (or categories, depending on where you're using them). Since having them on LJ, I've come to love them. They really are quite handy when archiving and organizing. I read my old entries quite a bit-- and finding them by topic is wonderful. Unless there's something I'm missing, I just don't see this feature at all at Blogger.


When I started really thinking about making the "plunge" to a blog on my own named webspace, I downloaded several different programs. Greymatter, Moveable Type, WordPress. I've used Diaryland (which has the same uptime/downtime issues as DX) and LiveJournal.

I couldn't figure out Greymatter and MT and how to get them installed. The instructions made me very nervous. WordPress, on the other hand, I got up and running. It works okay, but again.. the template thing drives me a little nutso. I found a basic one (ironically, the same one that Linda (aka Hooligan from dx days) currently uses... based on what I saw while doing some surfing a few weeks back), and it works.

I had to remind myself-- this will be for my ARCHIVES. I don't need to keep everything in blogger forever. Eventually, I probably will transition entirely to WordPress. But for now, the most important thing for me are the following:

1) An archive of all of my journal entries on MY webspace

2) The ability to tag past entries so they can be found by topic (let's face it... I do write a lot of boring, daily entries that don't matter in the long run. They just keep me writing. They can be skipped if things are sorted by topic).

3) An archive that's in the right order-- most recent months FIRST.

Yesterday, I took my WordPress experiment on my site and started doing the old fashioned "cut and paste" method to add my old entries to my site. March-April 2001 is now done. I'll work May-July 2001 this weekend, and slowly just go through everything. Tag each entry, clean up the exterior links in them (since so many no longer work or had DX shortcuts).

It'll go slowly, but surely. It's not perfect, but it will be better. And right now, that's what I'm looking for.

Ugh, annoyed

I found out this morning that Diary-X crashed soundly sometime over the weekend. Apparently Stephen, who is the owner of the service, hadn't backed up the server since December 2004. But the kicker is that I'd originally planned to move everything over here into archives. But I'd never gotten around to downloading a backup.

It's my own damn fault for not backing up my own journal, of course. I do have back to January 2003, because I was cross-posting to LiveJournal at that point. And I thought I was safe because I *had* kept a backup at Diaryland.-- but it crashed hard at some point-- and everything prior to 2004 is gone there. (whee).

So at this point, unless I do have a weird backup somewhere on my computers at home, everything from 2001 and 2002 is gone. It sucks, because I'm pretty sure I'd saved the very first email from Erich there (also known as the "how we met" story). But again-- it's my own damn fault for not backing it up.

Edited to Add: D-X is still down, but my backup is intact at Diaryland. I'm sure that I'm missing a few entries here and there that I wrote but never actually linked to my journal. But for the most part, everything's been located in working order. Archiving and backup-ing will be a pet-project for the week and weekend.

I have been meaning to make a complete archive on measi.net anyway-- this is the swift kick in the ass I needed.

Le sigh.

Erich also had a DX journal that he didn't use as much... it's probably completely gone.

I can be a bit annoyed with Stephen for not doing a complete site backup since December 2004. Oddly, though, I'm not that surprised for an unknown reason, though. Perhaps it's my memory of what happened with Nervousness under his care. (which is why I'd switched a copy to Diaryland, BTW)

It sucks... but what can you do?

~ Mel.

I'm here... I'm alive

I'm recovering from a cold which hammered me this weekend, but alive. I'm still over-stressed and running in circles, but the house is slowly getting back to a state where we don't have to potentially classify it in the first stages of squalor. (it probably wasn't quite that bad... but it was getting rather *ew*).

I'm running in a semi-mopey state these days. A good portion of it is due to being on cold meds... I'm okay, really. Just overwhelmed and overdrugged. So please don't read into this any over-depressed tones. My meds really are just keeping me at about the lowest running state I could be at and still function.

Superbowl-- meh. Watched the first half. Was bored. Commercials didn't impress me, either. We switched to the Kitty Halftime show on Animal Planet, and that basically broke my interest for the game. I wandered upstairs after watching kittens go apeshit on a big cat tower and went back to playing World of Warcrack.

I still need to call Andi, who left a message two weeks ago announcing the birth of her second baby. :) Since Andi and I are sisters via adopting each other, I'm an auntie of two now. :) Of course, I'm the shitty sister/auntie who hasn't called, but illness was the excuse... so I'll be trying to catch up later this week once I'm secure in the strength of my voice and a lack of coughing.

Anyway...the big (and really only) news beyond happy events with Andi is more info with the wedding--

The original place we wanted for our reception is a bust at $200 a head plus rental fees for the space and personnel (ah.... no. g-bye.)

So, being clueless... again.... we went to a bridal expo over the last weekend of January in Cranston. There were tons of vendors there, and we picked up lots of information. Some of it was very helpful, but between the poundingly loud msuic and just SO many vendors, both of us went into information overload within a couple hours. We fell in love with a couple of places that presented space for receptions. I'm worried that they'll be too expensive again (if they're featured in Gourmet magazine, my guess is probably... yes. But I'll check it out anyway).

The $15,000 flat fee for a 25 guest wedding planned completely by a wedding planner in the Carribean is entirely too tempting. As is eloping... STILL. But I'm trying my best to work on the wedding here.

And the saying about making a good impression to secure a customer truly does work-- because the biggest thing that sticks out from the day was a negative impression I received. Late in the tour of vendors, Erich was looking at a cigar vendor as I was checking out the tux vendor across the way. The sales rep asked (as so many had that day) if I were the bride. I said yes. He asked who would be responsible for tuxes, and I said my fiancé. And then the guy said "yes, but who will be picking out what he's wearing?" I repeated that Erich would be. And the man gave me a look of shock and then that amused look that said "no really, chick. Don't lie... you'll be picking them out, won't you?"

Immediately my thought was What? It's so wrong to be letting the groom pick out the tux he wants to wear for his wedding? Are men not allowed to dress themselves? I continued to look at him with all of the honesty of the answer I'd given him, my expression turning slightly annoyed at being asked the same question twice.

The guy definitely noticed my annoyance, changed his line of questioning, and asked when the wedding was. And I stated that we were still open-dated. Hoping for this autumn, but had not yet booked a reception site to secure a date. As soon as I said that, his tone immediately became one of shooing me away because I was not worth his time, insisting that his discounts could really only be used if we had a date and could sign up with him on the spot.

Great way to get customers, buddy.

I of course was as gracious as possible and apologized that no, we didn't have a date. But thanks anyway.

Ass.

Seriously-- is it so far-fetched to accept that yes, I can and do trust the man I'm marrying to be grown-up enough to dress himself? He's thirty-one, not four. It's not like I pick out his clothes for him for work every day. If he asks my opinion in the store on a color or style, I'll give it-- but he's perfectly capable of picking out clothes that he likes and feels comfortable in. I mean... will I be involved with the tuxes? Somewhat-- I can work on coordinating color, if need be. But other than a goofy high-school joke for a Sadie Hawkins formal where my boyfriend and I went in reverse-color tuxes, I don't wear them. I'm not a guy... obviously... and I don't have a clue how they should fit a guy.

Maybe I'm just not type-A enough to understand some unwritten faux pas of wedding planning, but it seemed a given that unless asked by Erich to handle it, he was responsible for picking out his tux because to presume to tell him what to wear without giving him first dibs seems so condescending.

It could just be me, though.

~ Mel.