If you thought the lapse in time between rants was bad with the previous post, well...this lapse was nine times that one. And I have no excuse (at least not a good one). I've been working from home for almost two years now and even though there's a lot more to do than there was in June of 2020, I still spend most of my time at home behind a screen, slowly vegetating - but not posting anything here. That's not to say there haven't been things worth mentioning over the past many months. I guess I just haven't really felt much like sharing.


A new Home for Badbartopia

I received notice from GoDaddy a few months ago that they would no longer include email accounts with the cost of their domain registrations or hosting plans. Starting in November (a couple of weeks ago), all their once-included email accounts would be migrated to Microsoft 365 accounts that require an annual payment, in addition to the hosting costs, domain registration costs, SLL Certificate costs, and teh cost of a few fuller-featured email accounts with much more storage space (which have now doubled or tripled in price) that I was already paying for. So I decided I'd finally had enough. I host multiple sites with my hosting plan, and each site has at least one email account and some of them have several associated email accounts - so this change was going to drive the cost of my web hosting up a lot.

I had long been searching for alternative hosting due to other complaints I had with GoDaddy, but the hassle of moving to a new host had always outweighed the many annoyances of hosting with GoDaddy. So I returned to the results of my slightly dusty and outdated research and freshened it up a little. After comparing costs, features, and user reviews for the various hosting options, I decided on HostGator. So that's where we are now. I hope I don't have to go though this all over again should my trust is HostGator prove to be unfounded.

So, I'm sure you're asking yourself, why is moving to a new hosting server such a massive endeavor? Well, as I mentioned, I host quite a few web sites with my hosting plan - and each one has its own database. And most have their own domains - at least the sites with domains that haven't lapsed. And of course there are all the files for each site. And let's not forget all the email accounts. And SLL certificates ties to domains (only one site actually has a certificate because they are so expensive through GoDaddy that I've never been willing to pay for any of the other sites - not even my own primary site: Badbartopia). Oh, and on top of these things, the versions of PHP and MySQL on GoDaddy is many, many versions behind. So there's some incompatibility when moving to a new host that has a much more current version of both PHP and MySQL that needs to be worked out. In addition to updating the code to remove all the deprecated syntax,

I've also been fixing stuff that didn't ever work very well or work at all, was unfinished, and touch-screen unfriendly. So Badbartopia should be a little more functional from now on. And I've only scratched the surface of stuff that needs to be updated. And by "needs," I mean I need to do it for my own peace of mind, not because anybody else cares.

So, as you might guess, I wasn't super-excited to change web hosts - not until my hand was forced, anyway.

And now, on with the non Hosting-related blathering...


Books, books, and more books

Since the pandemic started, I've spent a little more time reading than I had over the previous few years, though I'm still nowhere near the voracious reader I once was. I laid all the books I'd read recently, and had planned to mention here at some point, on our spare bed on July 13 and snapped a photo of them all together, secretly realizing I would likely never give them each the mention they each deserved. Sadly, none of these are very fresh in my memory at this point.

I could add several other books (including a couple of Harry Potter re-reads) to the list from the most recently read stack, but why revisit history?

Here are the books in the photo:

• The Final Day by William Forstchen
• Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker by Rae Carson
• Star Wars: The Last Jedi by Jason Fry
• Star Wars: Alliances by Timoth Zahn
• Pawn: A Chronicle of the Sibyl's War by Timothy Zahn
• Knight: A Chronicle of the Sibyl's War by Timothy Zahn
• Queen: A Chronicle of the Sibyl's War by Timothy Zahn
• The Dinosaur Knight by Victor Milan
• The Dinosaur Princess by Victor Milan
• A Study in Emerald by Neil Gaiman
• The Facts in the Case of the Departure of Miss Finch by Neil Gaiman
• Only the End of the World Again by Neil Gaiman
• The Sleeper and the Spindle by Neil Gaiman
• Numero Zero by Umberto Eco
• The Silver Arrow by Lev Grossman
• Camino Winds by John Grisham
• The Reckoning by John Grisham
• The Guardians by John Grisham
• The Cuckoo's Calling by Robert Galbraith (JK Rowling)
• Origin by Dan Brown
• The Patriot Threat by Steve Berry
• Tony Gwynn: He Left his Heart in San Diego by Rich Wolfe
• All You Can Worry About is Tomorrow by R.D. Hubbard
• I'm Your Emotional Support Animal by Adam Carolla
• The Pioneers by David McCullough
• The House of Secrets by Brad Meltzer
• The Tenth Justice by Brad Meltzer
• The Book of Fate by Brad Meltzer
• Black Chamber by SM Stirling
• The Sky-Blue Wolves by SM Stirling
• Medusa's Web by Tim Powers
• Forced Perspectives by Tim Powers
• Legacy of Ra by Maciek Sasinowski
• Daughter of Ra by Maciek Sasinowski
• The Illustrated Eric by Terry Pratchett
• You're Never Weird on the Internet by Felicia Day
• Huck Out West by Robert Coover
• The Rise and Fall of D.O.D.O. by Neal Stephenson and Nicole Galland
• Almost interesting by David Spade
• The Magic of Terry Pratchett by Marc Burrows
• King of Ashes by Raymond E Feist
• Queen of Storms by Raymond E Feist

I really wanted to rave about the following books: King of Ashes, Queen of Storms, The Magic of Terry Pratchett, Almost interesting, The Rise and Fall of D.O.D.O., Huck Out West, You're Never Weird on the Internet, Medusa's Web, Forced Perspectives, Star Wars: The Last Jedi, all three of the Sibyl's War books, and the Dinosaur books. I flagged way more quotable passages in each of these books than I would have every used.

Each of them was great in their own way. And all the others (well, most of them) were also uniquely great, but it takes a lot of effort to blather on about a book - at least in the long-winded way I do it. So...in the coming weeks, maybe I'll ramble on about some of these book in more detail so you can appreciate each book's greatness.


More Vinyl Acquisitions (and a few CDs)

I never loved vinyl when I was a kid. In my early-mid teens, it was all about cassette tapes (micro-cassettes even, for a while). And then CDs. If it wasn't for the ease with which I can transfer my vinyl to digital files that I can listen to anywhere, I probably still wouldn't be a fan. Vinyl is also more expensive, so...that's not great. But there's just something about the crackly-poppy sound of an album on vinyl that makes it something special. And more fun than a CD.

Here are the recent record acquisitions in the photo:

• Juliana Hatfield Sings the Police, Juliana Hatfield
• Juliana Hatfield in Blood, Juliana Hatfield
• Unplugged in New York, Nirvana
• Acoustic Hits, The Cure
• Sounds of Summer, The Beach Boys
• Van Weezer, Weezer
• Greatest hits, Go-Gos
• Jane Wiedlin, Jane Wiedlin (debut album)
• Christmas Classics, Bing Crosby
• Synchronicity, The Police

As I mentioned, there have been several CDs added to the ol' collection, so I may get to praising those one of these days, too.


And everything else

I still haven't mentioned the last couple of trips to Disneyland we took before the pandemic lockdown, trips to downtown Disney during lockdown, the trip to the Salton Sea, visits to Universal Studios (after the lockdown ended and during lockdown), trying Hello Fresh, all the puzzles we've been working on since the pandemic began, my beautiful and talented Emeli's super-amazing artwork, and a million other things that I had planned to share, but never got around to. I have a bunch of photos to remind me to share them someday, though - so it might happen.

Oh, and if you made it this far....Happy Thanksgiving in a couple of days.

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