Help, my discussion boards are down!

If anyone’s looking for them, no I don’t know what’s up yet. Seems to be a hosting issue. If it doesn’t change soon, I’ll have to start screaming. Or whimpering. I’m not sure which yet. My most recent attempt to backup my database failed, so I’m none too happy about that, especially just now. I have older backups, but it would mean wiping out several more recent posts, ouch!

What a start to the weekend.

Well that posting was unexpectedly difficult. It kept cutting off the end of my post. Very frustrating.

I was going to add that now I really ought to get transcribing, but I don’t think Ariel is going to take her nap, so it looks like I’ll just have to work all the harder tonight.

Yes, again.

Another new website.

This isn’t so much about my lack of focus on a given project as it is about my not being able to resist using a free domain name in conjunction with my free hosting. It basically came down to “why not?”

It’s a pretty competitive area, but since it is all free, I won’t be marketing this one as hard… unless it starts to pay off. The site is Compare Satellite, and just as it sounds, it deals with the ever popular satellite television offers available online. The affiliate programs are pretty good, so I may as well try for a little search engine traffic in the area.

I’m focusing on a couple of offers, one from DirecTV, the other from Dish Network. If you have given any thought to what can be done with one of these programs, you can take a look at two of the most popular affiliate programs by going to VMC Satellite (a 3-tier program!) and Rapid Satellite (2 tiers, but higher pay on your sales).

Finally a solid day to work on medical transcription!

My mother-in-law had hip replacement surgery a few weeks ago, so she hasn’t been taking Ariel once a week as she usually does. She’s well enough now that she’s able to do that again. It’s so nice!

I’ve gotten some decent work done already. Hope to get lots more done, but I’m concerned that today will run out like yesterday did. If it happens, well, that’s website development time, of course! But I’d like to do well on the transcription.

Time for politics!

My oldest sister and I have a tradition. Every year shortly before Election Day, we get together and go over the propositions and candidates with each other, and sometimes a couple others. It’s a great way to see if either of us has missed anything, misunderstood anything, etc. This year we have our ex-stepmom joining in the fun. Our views are just different enough to keep it fun, without getting into serious arguements generally.

Voting with a toddler in tow is going to be interesting, though. It’ll probably be a cross between keeping her from running all over the place and telling her no, she can’t mark Mommy’s ballot for her.

New look for my blog.

Yes, that’s right, it looks a lot more like the rest of the site. I finally got sick of the blah Blogger template I’d been using and edited it to look more like the rest of my site. There are still some changes to be made, but for the moment I’m quite happy with it. I’ll make the other changes when I do the rest of the site, to ensure that it’s all consistent. Mostly I need to decide exactly where I want the newsletter subscription box to go, since I more or less booted it from it’s old spot.

My email through the hosting for some of my sites seems to have finally calmed down. It was still a problem this morning, but looks much better now. Hopefully they’ve fixed whatever the problem was.

I have one wound up little girl today. Can’t say I blame her. Yesterday she got to go out with Mommy to play, and we took a walk together earlier, but she’s still been cooped up quite a bit due to the weather.

Ever wonder if the whole internet is trying to make your life difficult?

Ok, maybe not the whole thing. But one of my email accounts has been giving me trouble all day. I’ve downloaded the same emails twice today, and it’s trying to get me to download them again. Naturally, the server won’t let me on to remove at least the deleted ones from it through webmail.

I finished the work for my one website client, but my payment processor’s site is down too. I also need to get into my email account for this project to tell the link exchanges they had me add to their sites that their links are up.

But, I did get another page added to my jewelry website, always a good thing. It would be better if Google would actually index my content pages, but it seems to have focused strictly on indexing the store, and has yet to touch all but one or two content pages. Go figure. And here I thought Google would appreciate my original content more than my store.

Well, I’m starting to see a few links from the Ad Co-op. Not as many as I’d like, but they’re steadily appearing. Ever feel like the search engines are teasing you? Just kidding.

I have to admit, I’m getting anxious to find a place to move to. I have so many updates I want to do to improve my site, but I don’t want to have to stop in the middle for a move, and many of the changes aren’t exactly things I can finish in a week, especially with medical transcription to be done. I’m trying to satisfy myself with taking notes on changes I want to make, articles to write and so forth, but it isn’t easy.

One of my old website design customers contacted me for a bit of work. I’m not doing much of that anymore, as I much prefer doing my own sites, but for an established customer, yes, I’ll do it (for now, at least). The requested work shouldn’t be too hard anyhow, and we can always use the money.

What a change in the weather. From setting a record for no rain to more than 2 inches since the rain started. Ariel has been scared by the wind and rain; no surprise, it’s probably the first real storm in her memory. I’m about to head out and take her to the play area in the mall for her to have a little bit of fun today.

One more month…

Until I can find out if this baby is a boy or a girl. Which is exactly what I expected. The OB said that with their equipment, he recommends waiting the extra time, even though it could be done now. Best way to get a good look. I don’t mind, it’s exactly what I had anticipated.

Yep, we made the no-rain record.

Of course, today it’s completely different. Pouring rain is expected, possible flash flooding in areas… we’re making up for lost time. Started raining early, early this morning.

Announcing the possible flash floods caused them to use the Emergency Broadcast System, and the person running it made a little goof – they forgot to turn it off right away. Ariel was watching a little TV, and it just would not go back to the sound from her show, which really annoyed her. It lasted a minute or so on a guess, and if you’ve heard an emergency broadcast, then you know how poor the sound quality is (why?? Is their equipment that old?). Considering the extra broadcast was clearly from a call-in show, I really want to know where that show is, so I can hear how bad it is.