I’ve been as busy as a beaver lately, but now that I’ve set aside a few minutes to blog here, I can’t remember what I did five minutes ago, let alone what I’ve been doing for the past week. My head’s in a fog, I’m chronically tired, and the whole world seems hell bent on working my very last nerve.

So, what to write about? Well, I’m here at my desk at work, munching on some chicken fingers and using toilet paper as makeshift napkins. The Eagles are playing off my laptop, and I’m just sitting here, wondering about my life, and what it’s become.

*cruuuunch* Mmmmm, good chicken…

Fridays at work always seems to be a bittersweet day for me. On one hand I have the office to myself, I can relax and surf the Internet or watch TV. Sometimes I’ll order in some pizza and garlic rolls, then chow down while I check my email and blogging stats.

But it’s also a day when the reality of how lonely my existence has become really sets in. While everyone else is making plans for a fun night out with their loved ones and friends, I just sit here at work, with only a lukewarm pizza slice and a dead cell phone to keep me company.

I can’t help but wonder if I’ve finally managed to dig a hole deep enough that escaping it has now become utterly impossible. This seems to be my lot in life, as it has been for the past seven or more years. Nothing has changed, and nothing will ever change. It seems the only thing left for me to do is resign myself to my fate, and hope something like cancer will finish me off early.

What a waste of human flesh I’ve become.

Tags: beaver, blogging, cell phone, chicken fingers, chow, death, depression, eagles, fate, five minutes, fog, friday nights, Fridays, garlic, job, last nerve, life, loneliness, napkins, regrets, toilet paper
Categories: Lincoln's Personal Log
 
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For some time now I used to have this perplexing problem where I simply couldn’t access the administrative section of my blog without it timing out on me. I couldn’t figure out what was causing the latency issues, and I also noticed that if I tried to access it from a different browser or different IP address, the issue would usually clear itself up. It was an anomaly that only occurred every now and then, so I wasn’t too worried.

Then yesterday it started happening again. Only it got worse. MUCH worse. So bad in fact, that I couldn’t access the Admin page at all. Then I started getting 500 internal server errors after trying to access my admin from different browsers and different IP addresses. Nothing seemed to work.

I finally submitted a ticket to my hosting service, Hostgator. I was a little worried that I would get some half baked tech support dude, but these guys really rose to the occasion. After scouring over every nook and cranny of my blog, a network admin emailed me to let me know they they had been experiencing a lot of issues with WordPress blogs that day, and the only common denominator that they could find was that we all had Akismet installed. They since learned that it was an issue on the manufacturer’s side. The network admin then deactivated my plugin and asked me to check my blog again.

Instant access! Yaaaaaay! My admin page was now loading, and it was smoking fast too. I couldn’t believe it.

But now I had another problem. I no longer had protection from comment spammers, and my blog suddenly became open season for these scumballs. I was already getting comment spam while I raced to my options page and set all future comments to moderated status as a temporary fix.

I then went to the home site for Akismet (which is developed by Automattic,) to see what news there were regarding this issue that was apparently affecting quite a few WordPress based blogs.

Nothing. There was no update to speak of, and the Akismet blog itself hadn’t even been updated in a month. So I used their contact form to send them a polite note inquiring about this issue and how soon it would be resolved. No response. So not only did they hose the administrative portion of my blog, but they blow me off on top of that?

Suck it, Automattic. It’s obvious your support system isn’t worth a hill of smelly beans. This was a problem that had the capacity to lock out God only knows how many WordPress users from accessing the admin portion of their blogs, but this seems to matter to you, not at all.

I suspect this might have something to do with using an older version of the Akismet plugin though (I was using 2.0). When I upgraded to 2.02, everything seemed to work fine. But just by going to their website, you’d have no idea that there had been any updates since 2.0. There’s no changelog or even any other basic information, except for a download link for “2.0″ which in actuality was really 2.02.

This wouldn’t frost my cookies so much if it had been any other typical third party plugin, where you can only expect so much support from its developer. This was a plugin developed by the makers of WordPress itself, and one that required API access to their servers. If something goes wrong, it’s liable to create problems not just for them, but for your blog as well.

So… how about a little bit of courtesy here for us little people, mmmm-kay?

Tags: akismet, anomaly, automattic, blog, blogs, bug, common denominator, downtime, half baked, hostgator, hosting service, ip addresses, issues, open season, plugins, spam, spammers, tech support, web hosting, wordpress
Categories: Blog Fog
 
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My latest link discoveries and finds for today:

• The Top Ten Ways To Tell If She’s Into You (And the 6 Signs That She’s Not!) – Yep, I’ll be damned if I’ve ever seen any of the GOOD body language they list to show that a girl was interested in me.
• Make Money Online: 100+ Tools and Resources – Man, Mashable is starting to turn into a link farm, but this is a pretty good list of some of the most popular moneymaking sites online.
• EBAY TOOLBOX: 50+ Tools for eBay Buyers and Sellers – If you’re an eBay fanatic, this link’s for you.

Tags: advertising, blog, blogging, blogs, body, bookmarks, dating, del.icio.us, ebay, language, Links, love, mashable, monetization, monetize, money, resources, romance, shopping, tools
Categories: Lincoln's Personal Log
 
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I’ve been checking my blog rankings here and there on the web, when I noticed this at Truth Laid Bear’s Ecosystem:

I think they need to fix that.

Tags: blog, blogs, ecosystem, glitch, humor, rankings, truth laid bear
Categories: Blog Fog, Comic Relief
 
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Wow, I can’t believe a whole week flew by since I last blogged. Oops. Guess time flies when you’re having f… ahhhh who am I kidding, it was a pretty crappy week. My whole daily routine has been shot to hades for some time now, and try as I might, I just can’t seem to get a rhythm going. A lot of it stems from staying up till 3AM because I just gotta check my email one last time, just one more time, and then I’ll head off to bed, but oooooh, somebody else just visited my blog! Gotta see who that was… ok I’m done, now it’s off to ooooh, just got an IM from a friend in California, let’s see how she is! Ok, NOW I’m gonna sign off and, oh wait, it’s been 15 minutes, let me see if anyone responded to my thread on one of the forums I belong to… ok nothing yet, but let me just check my email one last time…

Next thing you know the sun is up and I still haven’t slept yet. Mother, I’m even doing it now.

I have to stop this. The lack of sleep and poor health is draining any energy I might have to blog at all. It’s also affecting my job performance as well, but that’s not really important right now. I’m a government employee after all, so not doing any work would actually be par for the course.

I do need to set a routine for myself that will put me back on the road to good health again. So starting tomorrow (uh, today) I will resolve to going to bed at a more godly hour, finally getting myself the sleep that I so desperately need.

But let me just check my email one last time…

Tags: 15 minutes, 3am, addiction, blog, blogging, good health, government employee, health, internet, job, one last time, rhythm, sleep, Sun
Categories: Lincoln's Personal Log
 
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