Issue #92 My country for some cough drops
Hack. Wheeze. Cough. Wheeze.
Dear Internet,
I’ve been down with something for the last week. Flu? Cold? Covid? Who knows! I had every symptom available of all the things: vomiting, headache, fever, coughing, etc. etc. We were unable to get covid testing until today when we drove to Walgreens for our PCR tests. It was the second time in six days I’ve left the house. The first time was earlier this afternoon to take the dog out.
TEH banished me to the bedroom for the incubation period beginning this past Tuesday where I slept, ate, and did not much more. He slept on the couch, wouldn’t get six feet near me unless he wore a mask, took the dog out three times a day, and made sure I had everything I needed. I spent my days sleeping, reading, playing Animal Crossing, or watching telly on my laptop and iPad. I was not devoid of entertainment while I hacked up snot, coughed a lot, and broke a fever.
I need a chaise to dramatically lay on.
We decided Saturday that if he still hadn’t caught whatever the hell I have that he could take his mask off and come into bed with me.
Now he’s sick.
I was about Dayquil, NyQuil, other drugs, a spit cup for my phlegm, tissues, and my sugar free cough drops. He’s about limeade (which goes stupendously with cherry vodka) and Starburst.
I’ve canceled everything on our calendars (PT for me, dog grooming for the dog) and moved them to the following week. So! This upcoming week we’ll continue not be leaving the house unless it’s to walk the dog and ordering Grubhub if we get hungry and don’t want to cook.
I’m never quite sure to see if people follow me on social media in addition to the newsletter (I do know some people read the newsletter when I post it on social media). Regardless, I decided in some sort of sickened dream to transfer all three of my websites from Wordpress.com (where I’ve been paying for hosting) to Bluehost. The reason for this shift was that the deal I got with WordPress for each site and that deal turned out to be a onetime thing. The price is outrageous, roughly $300 USD for each site, per year. I can’t afford this.
You’re probably wondering why in the fuck was I hosting with Wordpress in the first place and why was I paying so much when I could move to Dreamhost, Bluehost, or Namecheap for 1/10th of the price. Well! I was on Dreamhost for nearly 20 years and had the super fancy access to the backend service which TEH managed. Because he does this for a living, he discovered that Dreamhost was not quite forthcoming with what they were allocating customers for memory and space and that their servers was at least one or two generations behind. It was decided that since Dreamhost wasn’t going to do anything and I couldn’t get beyond first level of support for issues, we’d move the whole kit and caboodle to a cloud server TEH has so he could be my sys admin.
This worked out well in the beginning–he kept up with patches and upgrades–but his anxiety was starting to become more pronounced, and he was starting to hate doing my tech support. I decided “Fuck it” and moved everything over to Wordpress.com and got on their business plan to have full control of the front end of my websites and alleviate his stress.
With the renewal coming soon, in my fevered state, I thought it was a good idea to move the sites now, pay $100/year for all three, and be done with it. I had back-ups of the sites so all I needed to was find a new provider, transfer the DNS over, and quickly upload the back-ups and viola! Site is live.
Well, not so much. WordPress is used on nearly 50% of the sites on the internet and each hosting provider who sells the service builds in their own apps, branding, and bloated content. I expected going in and just uploading the back-ups and instead I had to navigate a labyrinth set of tools and options (some not in WordPress but on Bluehost’s configuration tabs) and I was getting more frustrated by the moment. I was on their tech support chat twice to get issues resolved and finally after spending all day on getting one of the sites up, I pulled everything down, canceled the service, and returned back to Wordpress.com.
Now that TEH’s anxiety is under control, and we have at least a month before Wordpress.com expires, he’s going to spin up containers for me to host the sites where he’ll be back to doing sys admin and I’ll take it from the front end. He has cloud server access that he uses for experiments and odd things, so this is not as stressful as before.
If you don’t know about http://pookiebear.industries (a legit URL), it boils down to this:
Exit, Pursued by a Bear: original online diary with entries going back to 1996 (Twitter, Facebook)
Excessively Diverting: a Jane Austen, and sometimes the Brontë s, blog (Twitter, Facebook)
We’ll Read Anything Once: my book blog
A Most Unreliable Narrator: this newsletter
I spend a solid 4-8 hours a week writing and updating the blogs. The numbers are small but mighty.
If you read through the techno babble, all of this is to stay my sites were down for a day this past week. My apologies.
Things I Recently Wrote
Wonderful Thing
PBS!
I watch a lot of British (and other non-US centric) shows. For this I have Acorn and Britbox in addition to PBS but PBS is probably the nearest to my heart. I cannot remember a time since my youth many decades ago when I wasn’t watching at least one PBS show a week. When we owned Throbbing Manor and were sucking off the teet of TEH’s work (AT&T), I was DVRing PBS shows left and right. But now that we’re almost completely cordless, I’ve opted to throw $10 a month for PBS Passport to get my fix.
Interesting Things (or things to buy)
In that vein, this week’s interesting things is specific PBS shows. Kristin and I watch two shows a week, one episode a week, to get our cozy and wholesome kick going on. This is just a sample of what we’re watching or have watched. There is a lot of stuff to watch on PBS.
All Creatures Great & Small S2 just dropped last week and we’ve been super excited. It’s also been confirmed S3 and 4 have been ordered. Based on the books by James Harriot, it tells the semi-true story of his life as a vet in the Yorkshire Dales in the 1930s.
Grantchester S6 has just ended. Set in the late 1950s Cambridge, a hot mystery solving priest and his best friend, the police detective Geordie, solve murders in the shire. Based on the books by James Runcie. I’m reading book one.
Frankie Drake Mysteries Take Miss Fisher’s Murder Mysteries and set it in 1920s Toronto. It’s not as good or a well-acted as Miss Fisher but it’s fun and full of cheese.
Poldark Set in the late 1700s, it tells the story of Russ Poldark who comes back to Cornwall a haunted man from the American Revolution. Based on the 12 book (!) saga by Winston Graham.
Links to Read That Are Not (Terribly) Depressing
They bought a blender. Three weeks later, their cats continue to hold it hostage.
Who built the pyramids and how? The debate rages on YouTube.
Get vaccinated and mask up! There is a pandemic going on.
lisa x