January 13, 2009

I hate being sick. Seriously. Last year I was so sick I had to take off December 31st. No, really. It wasn't some sort of party excuse. I could barely walk. This year I managed to not be sick over the new year, but I am pretty sick, now. It hit me like a ton of bricks on Sunday night. My schedule just changed, so I didn't have to take time off on Monday (I get Sunday and Monday off, now). Unfortunately, I got no sleep Monday night, either, so I wasn't fully rested when I got up. Congestion, sore throat, headache and body aches. Grumble.

January 3, 2009

First, the good news. I've once again been promoted. I really like my job and think I'm pretty good at it. Apparently, HR, the interim manager and the CEO all agreed. I start my new position on Monday. Obviously, I can't discuss the monetary compensation, but I will say I am pleased. More money for the house fund! As long as the housing market continues to tank, Mrs. splorp! and I should have a damned good shot at a house late next year, early the following year.

Next up: Screw you, AOL. After 12 years of hosting my X-Files Shrine, AOL shut it down, (as well as all other sites they were hosting), as of October 31, 2008. I had not only my X-Files Shrine hosted there, but several files I had available for download, including Context Viewer, an alternate color scheme for SCite and GeoBar skins. I'm sure I have those files somewhere, but it'll take me a bit to hunt them down. I did find a new link for PowerArchiver on oldversion.com. Make sure you use 6.1 (that's the last free version).

"But we gave you advanced notice!"

So what? My site was there for 12 years. It was relatively small and had little, if any, traffic. I only left it there for two reasons: I liked it and thought some old friends from AOL might like it, too. Plus, you idiots, you're not returning a 404 for the sites, so they won't drop out of Google's index. At least have the common courtesy to allow a redirect to a page of OUR choice, not yours.

Well, it's gone, now. AOL, you are dead to me.

I'll redo the X-Files Shrine and stick it in a subdirectory on this domain.

Lastly, I added a new site to my Interesting Sites page. MP3gle (a play on Google + MP3, of course) is a decent search tool for finding MP3 files. The legality is, of course, questionable, but enjoy while it lasts.

I also added another link to my Web Design Tools page. It's not a program, but rather a link to a useful page. It contains the HTML character encoding information for special characters. Sometimes, you can't use the actual special character, but need to use the HTML encoding to allow the character to display the same in everyone's browser. &amp;, &lt; and &gt; are examples of characters that sometimes need to be encoded rather than just typed (the ampersand for URLs and the < and > to allow you to type HTML examples without the code being rendered.

Below is Harley Quinn, our Green-Cheeked Conure


Harley Quinn in November 2005

To the left, you’ll see Drusilla,
the Vampire Parakeet, named after
a character on Buffy the Vampire Slayer,
because she bit like a vampire.
She passed away on 12/20/04.