Had
you loaded Evidently last Saturday, you would have noticed a very
different look to the site. Instead of flowers and beetles, you
would have been greeted by the
Lovely Keanu Reeves and the cast of the Matrix. That’s right, I
got hacked. By none other than Net-Devil himself. I say that like I
know who this idiot is–but I don’t. And he is probably a they–known
only to the likes of the Geek half of the cast of Beauty and
the Geek. Let’s face it–they are gods (or demi-gods, or in this
case, anti-gods) in their own minds and no where else.
Unless. Unless they happen to choose your little site as a
target. Then your ears perk up and you pay some attention to
their stupidity. You have no choice–they have locked you out
of admin site by loading malicious code onto your platform.
If that was not enough to offend your sensitive ears, your site now
loads poor quality Arabic music on a perpetual loop all with a Matrix
calling card.

Note to Net Devil: Could you be any more creative? The Matrix is the best you can do? You don’t really think that Keanu is who I see when I think of you? Or that you even resemble the guy? Or that I think of you at all? Face it–you have no life other than hacking mostly unread blog sites. Tell the guys at McDonald’s I said Hi! Oh, and your mom too!

Now, something you should know about me, if you
don’t already. I hate the Matrix. Really. Hate. The
Matrix. More than I detest Star Wars episode 1. So, when
Net.Devil came calling last weekend I near enough lost it. I
discovered my new look about six minutes before Pam emailed me to ask, “Is it just me, or have you been hacked?” Much
jumping and shouting and general poor behaviour on my part ensued.

Since then, I’ve been compelled to update to a more secure
platform. An update that is full of glitches. Linking went
down. RSS feeds went down. For awhile IE wouldn’t load the
page. And on top of all this, my computer keyboard decides
NOW would be a good time to be productive! Why type
one letter “a” when two or three or four looks oh so much better?
You use the letter “a” only slightly less than the letter “e” which
meaant I haad aaa lot of extraa “a”s to eraaase. See what I
mean?
Fun fun fun. Is it any wonder I took all of this as a sign from
up above? Quit Now.

Or in this case… down below. Well, the devil can make me upgrade, but he can’t make me quit. Yet. Dear Pam
wrote lovely words and I stopped feeling so
sorry for myself. It’s not like jumping out my window would do
any real damage anyhow–it would just be more drama. A pointless
trip to the emergency room. A probable standing appointment with a
shrink, a HUGE medical bill… you know, the drill. Poor IZ has
enough to deal with without me adding any more theatrics. He was able
to remove the offending Matrix calling card within an hour however,
he spent the better part of his weekend
and all his free time this week sorting out the aftermath.

And my
keyboard that types extra “a”s? Well, I’ve discovered if I really
concentrate and will it to only type ONE–it works half the time.
I’m doing a lot of backspacing these days.

In the next instalment of “The Devil Made Me Do It” (TDMMDI for short) I will address this virus going about the Internets called memes. That is to say, I’ve been tagged by the glorious Ms. HG. to talk about my “weird habits.” This whole thing is proving difficult for me as I do not have weird habits. Me? Ha! I’m perfect. Stay tuned.
(more…)

A
great deal has happened in the last 72 hours. I will eventually
get to it all. But in the mean time you should know that this is
National De-Lurking Week according to Sheryl. I’d link you to
Sheryl, but my linking ability with the WYSIWYG editor is on the
fritz. Why? Well, that would require me explaining the last
72 hours. Let’s just say it has to do with the Devil and the Matrix and Terrorism and The Beancounter, Pam talking me off a ledge. I’d link Pam, but again, I can’t. And that’s all I’m going to say on the topic for the moment.

Instead,
I’m going to alert you to the button on the left and point out that it,
unlike the words Sheryl and Pam above, IS LINKED. And it will
take you to Darling Sheryl’s site that tells you all about de-lurking
and the health benefits associated with it.

Should you
choose to join the movement you will notice (or not…) that the
comment option on this page has changed slightly. You now have an option to
put your name into the name box where the word guest stands in as a proxy. If you don’t put your name in, your comment will be logged in as said guest. I wanted the proxy name to be asshole– but IZ
is of the opinion that you might not take kindly to be called
asshole. He might have a point–as it probably wouldn’t engender
loyalty or prompt you to comment. And, being that it is National
De-Lurking Week, encouraging you comment comes at a hefty cost.

I
certainly hope you will avail yourself of this opportunity to de-lurk
and actually comment for once. For starters, you can try begging
for information about the past 72 hours. You never know, that and
enough wine I might just relent and tell all. Or you can tell me
that I’m mean and grumpy and hormonal and need help. Or you can
be obtuse and philosophical. Or leave touchy-feely crap about your life
write about your feelings. I promise not to mock you. Too
much. Whatever–this is your moment to shine. Wow me with
your brilliance.

UPDATE: IZ fixed the linking!
(more…)

First Post, First Post! Oh, wait, this is my site. Sheesh.

Ok, so I’m tentatively back. Since I have access to the editor, might as well post. However, there are lots of site improvements still to take place and that means for the moment only the Front-page works. You can click all you want on the links in the menu bar but not much is going to happen. If you are like all those small lab rats who just has to “prove it for themselves” go ahead and click away. Unfortunately, I wasn’t able to rig a shock into the link so you should be safe. I think. Otherwise, you can take my word for it–I’ll keep everyone posted as all the new “goodies” go live. There should be far more than I want if IZ has anything to say about it. (Sheesh, give the boy a new toy. . . grumble)

Anyhow, I should be back and blogging full steam later in the week (also known as tomorrow!). Keep safe people, I know how you like to party on MLKJ day.

UPDATE: You may now leave comments. Currently, I’m nursing a migraine so commenting is as close to new material as you are going to get.

(more…)

When Pigs Fly

While I’ve been remiss at posting on this humble blog, I have been very busy crafting its replacement. I’ve decided to go ahead and launch the new site, even though there are still several elements that remain to be “perfected”. I’m opting for the “progress not perfection” model. It seems to work in real life, why not my blog? As well, it’s a practical decision to roll out the new site before it’s completely finished–it’s just too much of a pain to double post and try to keep two blogs rolling along. So… it’s official. Low flying pork ahead.

A few notes for those who head over to the new page. . .

Layout: As I mentioned before, there are some elements still in progress. Not every page you click on will load or load with the appropriate template. My apologies. I will continue to post updates on the site when new features are available. So, stay tuned. As well, since I use Netscape and most of my readers use Explorer, there might be a few programming glitches in the way things present themselves (i.e. headers too large, fonts look strange). I’m working to resolve this short of hosting separate sites for each of the different browsers. Hopefully, most of these issues will be resolved shortly.

Content: The blog (the only page plus archives at the moment) is not empty. As also hinted at above, I’ve been posting there most of January in order to test things out and get a feel for the new operating system. There are posts and comments from my lovely “BETA” testers. . . So, don’t let all the posts confuse you. I just needed to practice a bit before going “live”.

Features: Perhaps the largest change (beyond the obvious new template) is that I’m no longer using Blogger to host my site–This was an EASY decision. Perhaps more difficult was the choice to stop using Haloscan for commenting. I’ve been ambivalent about allowing comments and had decided when I moved to my own site, I would dump Haloscan and commenting altogether. However, after much grumbling from certain parties. . . the new site will have modified commenting features. Sometimes you will be given the option to post comments and other times I’m going to be the blog tyrant that I am and restrict access. This is a lovely new “power” bestowed by the operating system. So, what does this mean? Well, it means when you see a link to comment… PLEASE DO! Even if it’s off topic. If you don’t find a comment link under a post, feel free to email me. I will be posting the best of the comments and responses on a weekly basis. Yes, you can be famous! Ok, infamous, maybe!

Finally, I just want to say THANK YOU to all my readers (all three of you!) for your loyalty and patience as I’ve hacked away here for the past few years. I hope you will enjoy the new site and continue to read and post.

That about does it. Without further comment: THIS SITE HAS MOVED TO WWW.EVIDENTLY.ORG. Go there now!

Sweet is my surprise

Ok… at the moment I’m grooven to Venus Hum (Soul Sloshin presently in play) and just a little hyped on the win at monopoly (putting it mildly, I ROCKED!) and the bottle of Champagne I basically consumed myself. Hmmmm…. let’s just say I’m feeling fine. It’s been a quiet holiday… couldn’t have ordered a better week. I plan to drink my fair share of Champagne over the next few days…consider that my first New Year’s Resolution.

What the !!!! were you thinking???
While things have been slow around here on the home front… my site had a great deal of activity during the holiday. It turns out, if you want to be popular and drum up lots of interest in your site, you need only to do a few simple things. The first is… use the words “GONE WILD” in a heading or title and watch the porn seekers find you. So far I have been viewed by people seeking: Nerds going wild, Seminarians going wild, people with pets… you get the idea.

The other option is to stump the truly elite of the cyber world: Linux geeks. It appears that my (!) in my URL is a non-standard character–which should not have been allowed by Blogger in the first place. This means little if you, like the countless millions who ardently read my page, use Windows. But if you are of the tiny percent of geeky rebels who use a Linux based approach (or something similar) then you are fucked because the page won’t load. Your OS won’t recognize the non-standard use of an (!) in the address. IZ, being the techno militant that he is, posted this little anomaly on the Mozilla board for bugs (adeptly named “Bugzilla”… those boys are soooooooooooooooooooooooooo creative) and the debate raged for a few days. One side thought that it was a bug in Windows and its antichrist cronies to allow a gaf of great proportions such as an exclamation point in an URL. The other side was convinced that if Windows could do it, then so should Linux and what the fuck was their problem in the first place. This means little to me…except every last one of these guys had to click on my site to see for themselves. (I had 30+ hits on Christmas Eve alone!!!) I find myself strangely turned on by all this attention. The conclusion… that the lovely line with a dot should be banned and that this is just another attempt by the monster that is Mircrosoft to expand the cyber universe by breaking rules. And for crying out-loud…. the rules rule, damn it. Get with the program. Already.

Frankly, I was completely astonished that Blogger allowed me to use an non-standard character… but that was ages ago, and my guess (now that they have have been consumed by Google) is that they play by the rules these days. Then I was just being a bit rebellious… screw your codes and the IDN… who needs ya anyway? Now… I just think the ! is a pain in the ass to type. I never got that far in typing 101 anyhow… But after all this discussion on Bugzilla… I’m so tempted to rename the new domain: EVIDENTLY! Heh.

So, for the brief moment of popularity, I must thank the cutting edge anarchists out there who run Linux and assorted systems for your attention. Even if you just clicked to see if your system could handle me. All I can say is be thankful you only found my website. In real life you couldn’t handle this.

blogger hell

Building on a theme here… and considering this is hell week for me anyhow. I am struggling with blogger like crazy. Evidently, they won’t support Midi files on my site… unless I upgrade to Blogger Pro–which, coincidently, they no longer offer. This just BLOWS all my Halloween plans for the site. Joy Joy. They also seem to be refusing to support my archive template. Which, I recreated, repasted into the editor, relinked and republished… TWICE. Still no go. You know, while I love to stare at unintelligible strings of symbols, there is only so much free time in the day to look at code. HTML isn’t supposed to be this complicated. Is it just me, or has this solution gone to hell since it got bought by GOOGLE? UGH.

Ok… so that’s my day. Now, I have to go power sleep so I can get through the rest of my week (two exams and a paper) Someone just shoot me now.

Hiatus

Yep… the site is going down for a few weeks. Over-hauls and the like. Who knows, maybe when we come back we will have a fresh new face. Or maybe we will be lazy during our vacation and just jell and nothing will change. All I can say is… come back at the first of October to see! Don’t you love surprises?

Until then… I recommend reading the following:
Defective Yeti
The Morning News
Kottke
Nerdy Girl
Note: I disabled the comment link so I don’t have to check it. It looks active but it will indicate you are banned. So, sorry… it’s the lazy way of disabling it!

It appears that Haloscan is down… AGAIN. Time to make a move, I guess.

Once again Haloscan seems to be down. What can I say? Email me your comments and I will post them for you. If you dare. Bet you don’t. CHICKEN!!!

Way to go! Tonight, doing some “maintenance” on Haloscan (my commenting host), I noticed that there have been over 300 comments posted. Woohoo! Can we say… 400? I also noticed that I can “edit” comments. LOL… I feel so powerful. Good thing I don’t find power too appealing, eh?

Ooh… Iz… FYI… I did all the “updating” necessary. But I still need to change this URL. Any suggestions? Or do you want to just jump ship to my other site?