It was one helluva busy weekend. Friday afternoon, we went with my parents to Springfield (3 hr drive one way) to see my sister play in a really great wind ensemble concert, then drove back. We got back to our place around 2:45am. Boy was that past my bed time! Then, we slept in (definitely needed it) and got the cats to their appointment at the vet's office at 2:15pm. It was odd, in spite of the fact that Pele is the outgoing one, and Zephyr is the shy one, and Zephyr had to not only get the same two shots Pele did, but he also had to have Q-tips dug around in his ears, Zephyr took things in way better stride. Pele became cuddle kitty for the first time and snuggled up on J's lap. It was cute, she was trying to completely disappear in his sweater. Anyway, so Zephyr has a bacterial ear infection, and might still have ear mites (they found what might've been an egg, but that's it). So since we're going to be leaving tomorrow afternoon for NJ and won't be back till Sunday, we'll start his medications a week from today so my parents won't have to mess with it.

Sunday was a LOT more fun, hehe. Had money stuff to do (bills to pay online and off, checkbook register to upate, etc.) Then was cleaning the cats' litterboxes. I use scoopable litter, but the litter still needs a full changing every so often. And this time it was overdue. There were areas where the litter never dried up and clumped, which I'm not really sure why, except maybe it got buried too deep and the wet couldn't evaporate. Whatever the reason, the boxes, one at a time, got dumped, scraped, hosed down w/ hot water in the shower, soaked & washed with Dow bathroom cleaner (scrubbing bubbles to the rescue!), rinsed, dried, and filled with fresh litter. Boy did that screw up my sinuses for the rest of the day. Wow...

Add to that, I also had lots of clothes to put away, mail to shred & pitch (all those stupid credit card offers, ya know), and general straightening of stuff. Also, J did laundry (bless him for doing that so I don't have to), which of course meant more clothes to put away. I even finally hung up all my hanging clothes I'd been putting off to the side for "later". We had dinner at my parents', and they let us borrow their Oreck vacuum cleaner, and Jeremy vacuumed the place (it sucks way better than ours; we probably need to clean or replace the filter in our heavy-ass bagless I was dumb enough to buy). I'm seriously thinking we ought to just try and sell ours used (put an ad in a newsgroup or something) and replace it w/ an Oreck (one w/ attachments though; my parents' doesn't have 'em).

With all that, and all the sneezing and nose blowing I did because of the litterboxes (I finally took something, but I had to fight sleepiness because of it), I'm pretty wiped today. And tonight we've got karate class (usually Wed. nights, but no one could make that this week), plus I need to clean up the "bill desk" (where I do bills, etc. -- it's a mess of paper!), and do as much packing as possible. Then tomorrow, I have my 9:50am dr's appointment, and need to go to the bank and do some last-minute shopping (not clothes, just odds & ends). All that, eat lunch, and finish packing, by 2pm. I really hope I can sleep in the van to NJ, 'cause I'm gonna be tired, and it's gonna be a loooong trip.

LOTS of stuff to be happy about today. First, MovableType works fully again. Yea! Basically the limits were raised bit by bit until it all worked (full capabilities). Heh, now I can test out the new version (when the problems first started I tried upgrading to version 2.51 from 2.21 hoping that would work). I'll have to read about the changes again and see if I can make use of them.

Second, and really awesome: my whole team at work, plus a few people that work very closely with us, got awarded very nicely today. I got to work this morning, and there was meeting scheduled thru Outlook to meet for a few minutes in the conference room, then to go on to lunch. I thought, "Huh." No one knew what it was for. Evidently, our team's system so impressed some big important VIPs that they decided to reward us. We each got a certificate, our immediate boss took us all out to lunch at Bandanna's, and the group who awarded us authorized a *cash reward* in the form of a very nice sized check! Of course, it was taxed at the highest tax rate, but so what? That's a chunk o' change none of us had before today. And if we don't need it to help with J's next semester of school (we shouldn't but who knows?), then it'll go towards saving for a house.

And to think, I didn't want to roll outta bed this morning. (And the weather was nice too, especially for late November. It was around 60 degrees, not too windy, and fairly sunny. Yea! Too bad it's all down hill from here, but still... a mini-Indian Summer.)

Hey, if this works (without an internal server error), that means MT is up and running again. Wouldn't that be awesome? Anyway... just posting to see if it works. I may delete it later if I can (if "edit entries" works) but I may not. We'll see.

Edit: Adding a bit more to this now that it got posted successfully (didn't the first time 'round) to see if saving an individual entry works.

There is a very good reason there have been no updates in the past few days, including no Friday Fives or Saturday Scruples. It's not that I haven't had the time. Rather, ever since early this past week, I haven't been able to run MovableType, which I use to manage a good portion of my site. There were site upgrades on the main host servers (I'm being subhosted by a friend; it's his host that was upgraded). Basically, MT and the server don't get along, because MT tries to use more memory than the server allows for. It used to allow for it, obviously, but doesn't now. I'm certainly not going to complain; I'm just stating facts.

Anyway, so this entry right now is being made manually, rather than through MT. Not a big deal, but much more tedious. Instead of typing it once, and having it automagically write all my files, I'm typing it, formatting it as per my templates would have, and pasting that in three different places, plus editting other places like my calendars. I may end up having to do this manually myself indefinitely, or running MT on my machine instead. This would entail setting up an environment for CGI and MySQL to run, installing MT on it, and having it publish the pages to my hard drive, and then uploading them myself, which isn't a bad solution really. I might actually try setting that up as a test, to see if it'll work, just in case I need it.

Basically, what that comes down to, is until I resolve the issue one way or the other (either it starts running again on the server, or I set it up at home) I won't be making nearly as many updates. Incidentally, besides entering everything onto all my files, I'll be copying this post and others into the MySQL database, just so they're there. (If I'm lucky, even if the main hosts won't turn off the memory limits, maybe they'll turn them off for a very short amount of time so I can log in and do an export of all the entries, which I could then import into an MT installation here.)

So, I won't be doing this past week's Friday Five or Saturday Scruples, and won't until I can use MT again, because they'd kinda be an extra pain to do manually. Wish me luck!

(Oh, and also -- comments don't work either. I'm not going to try and take out every single comment link, because that would be hell, but just know you'll get an Internal Server Error if you try it. Sorry!)

I will be so amazingly happy when election night has come and gone. I'm so goddamn sick of people calling to either ask me who I'm going to vote for, or to ask me who to vote for. Grr!! By Saturday, we'd decided to not answer the phone if the caller ID box said "unavailable" with the "---000---" phone number. It's gotten to the point that Jeremy's hanging up on people and machines alike (if they're not people we know of course), and just now I picked up the receiver just barely and slammed it down again immediately (another "unavailable"). I swear, it's tempting to NOT vote just to spite all those assholes! Between that and the piles and piles of political junk mail, it's just sickening. Damnit, when I vote, I'm gonna do it the way I wanna do it, regardless of what someone tells me to do. And it's none o' yo damn bidness who I'm voting for!

*sigh* Okay, that felt good. I shoulda done that sooner. Oh well, less than 24 hours till the polls have opened and closed again, and we'll go back to only the phone companies and charities soliciting. Oh, and the cable company trying to switch us to digital (when we're this close to dropping them anyway). BUT... that's the usual day-to-day stuff that we're used to by now.

... check out Cthuugle. It's the "complete HP Lovecraft search engine." I haven't tried it (I've never read any Lovecraft, so I wouldn't know obscure stuff to test a search with), but at least look at the front page, 'cause it's neat.

My mom called me this evening, and my grandmother's in the hospital again after having fallen. Her pelvis is cracked in two places. They're starting her on therapy already tomorrow. The first day will be sitting up. She's kind of dreading it, because it hurts to move anything at all besides her arm and head. She'll be okay, but it's still not good she has to be there.

Also, my grandfather's older brother, who lives quite a distance away, is very sick and in the hospital (my grandmother went in the hospital in the early morning, and he found out the afternoon the same day). He's not doing well at all. So my grandfather's torn between flying out a couple days to see his only living sibling, and staying with my grandmother. It is possible for him to go, because she'll probably be in the hospital through Thursday or Friday, so he could fly out a couple days and be back before she needs to go home. My mom said she'd take care of her while she's still in, bringing her things, visiting, etc., but he's worried if something happens, or if any decisions arise that he needs to know about.

My mom and I both agree he really should go out and see his brother, because my grandmother will be fine and we'll all be able to visit her while she's in the hospital. Also, this might be the last chance he gets to see his brother. It's a real shame all this is happening at once. *sigh* Just sad, bumming news at the end of a cold, dreary weekend.

I told ya it'd be up shortly. My Funny Forwards section is now up and ready for its public. As it's also managed by MovableType, you can comment on those too. If you find any obvious typos (that weren't typos that made an item funny in the first place), or other errors, please let me know so I can fix them. Enjoy!

1. You like and respect your boss. He's fired unfairly and you're asked to take his place. Do you?
   Well, for starters, I wouldn't want to be a boss anyway, but it'd be a tough decision to make. I guess if there was a good chance that if I didn't take it, someone else no one liked would get it, then I'd take it, especially if there was no getting the fired boss back. However, if there was a good chance he would get rehired into the position (after the unfairness was shot down, or whatever) then I'd take it "interim" to keep the position open for him.
2. You're a cop. Fellow cops are selling illegal drugs. The Chief's in on it. Do you blow the whistle?
   Ouch! Well, I'm definitely the type who would, but I'd have to know where to blow it and who to trust. Possibly I would go to another force that I was pretty sure wasn't doing such, and then blow the whistle.
3. You and a colleague are competing for a promotion. You discover he made a serious mistake which can be corrected. Do you alert him?
   It depends what type of mistake, but I probably would. The cynical side says, others would find out about the mistake and that I'm the one who found it and "did the right thing", giving me a leg up in the competition. However, mistake in my type of work usually is something that would negatively impact a customer using our software, and it would need to be fixed, otherwise the customer could end up unhappy, which would reflect badly on the entire team.

This is a day late 'cause I spent yesterday working on my Funny Forwards section (which isn't quite done yet, but it'll be ready & linked shortly). Anyway, here 'tis:

1. Were you raised in a particular religious faith?
   Nope. Mom's a lapsed Catholic, and Dad wasn't brought up in any particular faith.
2. Do you still practice that faith? Why or why not?
   Um... guess my answer for this would be n/a.
3. What do you think happens after death?
   Not really sure. I have a feeling something happens, but I'm not a big believer in the Christian concepts of heaven and hell.
4. What is your favorite religious ritual (participating in or just observing)?
   Well, I've not had a chance to witness or participate in many rituals. I attended a Catholic midnight mass once, and that was pretty interesting actually, though I definitely could never be Catholic. I'm not sure I really have a "favorite", due to sheer lack of experience.
5. Do you believe people are basically good?
   Hmm... well, I'd like to. But every day something, or several somethings, prove otherwise. I'd say most people try to be good, or what they believe is good. Of course, there are plenty of exceptions to prove this rule, and human nature definitely does not dictate an overall goodness by any stretch.