Sunday, December 04, 2005

and something really cool

my wallpaperStanley is hanging wallpaper in our downstairs bathroom. It’s a beautiful jacobean pattern by Thibaut, and I got it for an insanely low price on eBay from Bargains by Barbara. I’m so excited! I’ll post a picture of it when it’s done and we have the curtains hung ... but the picture here is pretty close to what it looks like. What’s even better is having an expert wallpaperer doing the work—Stanley is damned good at this.

posted by lee on 12/04/05 at 01:53 AM

miscellaneous everything • (0) commentspermalink 

second fooey this week

I’m glad coffee is good for you because I refuse to give it up. At least, today it’s good for you, sharpens your memory, has more anti-oxidents than tea, blah blah blah. I drink it daily, at least two big cups per day, sometimes an entire pot. I love Kona and Blue Mountain when I can afford the real stuff. I love Green Mountain’s Nantucket Blend, Harvard Blend, and Heifer Hope. I like Dunkin’ Donuts coffee, the regular stuff, a lot (I won’t touch the sweet stuff—if there is even one grain of sugar in my coffee, I can’t drink it. I don’t like coffee ice cream even.)

But my favorite coffee is French Vanilla from Coffee and Tea Warehouse. It’s the best vanilla coffee I’ve ever had, even better than the Melitta French vanilla, which is also very good (though I haven’t been able to find it in whole bean form). I like it so much that I joined their coffee club, where it’s shipped automatically every ten weeks or so. I never get tired of it.

So imagine my shock when the owner, Russ Lundgren, sent out a newsletter telling everyone he’s dropping flavored coffee. Damn. Doesn’t pay to be loyal. I have one more shipment that went out on November 23 (which I haven’t received yet ... wonder where it is?) and that’s it forever. I aksed if there was another source for this flavor, and didn’t get an answer. I know my $150 or so a year is but a drop in their bucket, but there must have been a lot of other customers who like it since Russ told me it was their most popular coffee. I guess that was then.

Hell hell hell. Since Melitta Vanilla is hard to get when I want it, I decided to try the stuff at The Coffee Fool, which I’ve been curious about. So I ordered a bag of their vanilla, along with a bag of their pumpkin spice and one of Panama Boquete (the pure stuff, no flavor added to it). They claim their coffee is so fresh that after I try it, any coffee but theirs will taste like swill to me. I’ll report back when I’ve tried it.

If anyone knows of a good brand of excellent vanilla flavored coffee beans, I’d love to hear about it.

posted by lee on 12/04/05 at 12:38 AM

news • (0) commentspermalink 

Saturday, December 03, 2005

fooey number one

WestportNow’s website has been having problems: pages not loading on the first try, veeery slow load times, etc. ValueWeb, where westportnow.com is hosted, told us the only way to stop the pages from throwing off “too busy” notices was to move it to a new server because the server it was on has too many domain hosted and since it’s so crowded, things are not working as quickly as they should, and the move would be seamless, I won’t notice a thing except the site will suddenly start working again ... I thought this was a load of horseshit, but what am I gonna do?

Well, the move was not transparent, and the problem became ten times worse. So I get on the phone to Florida. Big talk-talk about how the tech is referring it to The Administrators so they can troubleshoot and find out why it’s so messed up. After hours of allegedly examinatin’ the problem (sorry, Three Stooges is what’s running through my mind right now ... ), they tell us “The script is making too many calls and slowing down the whole server, so we had to restrict some of the calls. The only solution is to fix the script, move to one of our dedicated servers, or switch to our [illegible] platform which would require the nameserver to be change.

Fix the script? ExpressionEngine runs just fine on thousands and thousands of websites. “What,” I foolishly ask “do I need to fix in the script?” Well, they don’t advise on how to fix a script. So, I asked, can I get a copy of the log or something to find out what is going on with the script? “Sure,” the ass lied, “I’ll put in a ticket right now and you’ll have it in 24 hours.” Yeah, right.

I asked if moving it to one of their dedicated servers or moving it to the new platform, whatever the hell that is, would solve the problem. Since the answer was “We don’t know,” I knew it was time to leave this bulk hosting farm where customer service is bunkum.

I did find out what the problem is ...

More "fooey number one"

posted by lee on 12/03/05 at 11:40 PM

web stuff • (0) commentspermalink 

Thursday, December 01, 2005

in my email from stanley

Stanley sent me this:

After numerous rounds of We don’t know if Osama is still alive, Osama himself decided to send George Bush a letter in his own handwriting to let him know he was still in the game.

Bush opened the letter and it appeared to contain a single line of coded message:

370HSSV-0773H

Bush was baffled, so he e-mailed it to Condi Rice. Condi and her aides had no clue either, so they sent it to the FBI.

No one could solve it at the FBI so it went to the CIA, then to the NSA.

With no clue as to its meaning they eventually asked Britain’s MI-6 for help. Within a minute MI-6 cabled the White House with this reply:

“Tell the President he’s holding the message upside down!”

I don’t know where he found it and it’s probably posted on five million blogs, but I like it so I am posting it too. Baaa.

posted by lee on 12/01/05 at 09:37 AM

miscellaneous everything • (0) commentspermalink 

garishity

Garishity. I think this is a good word. I made it up—I can’t find it on Google, so it must an original. You read it here first.

It means a gaudy quality, the transformation of one’s front yard into an unavoidable, obnoxious, and often energy-wasting tribute to a holiday. As in all the crap plastic monstrosities people put on their lawns and roofs in a lame attempt to celebrate seasonal conspicuous consumption. It means garishly shitty hence garishity. It also applies to the overuse of bling or bad eye shadow applications.

I think if people are going to decorate for xmas, they should go all out and put so many lights and other decorations up that the yard is visible from the moon OR decorate it all then take away 90%.

The really offensive crapolas are those huge snowmen or other figures and those big plastic fake snowballs with the fake blowing snow. You know, the crap that is at least eight feet tall. Would love to use a bb gun on all of them, but I don’t own one. Drive by deflatings. Not that I ever would—it’s a fantasy.

I do like lights. Lights are all you need, a pretty string or two in a tree or around the door. That’s nice. A ten foot sled on a roof complete with Rudolf with a blinking red nose and a giant santa waving is pushing it way too far.

posted by lee on 12/01/05 at 09:11 AM

miscellaneous everything • (0) commentspermalink 
Page 2 of 2 pages  <  1 2