Panic Returns

As you may have noticed, I figured out how to import all the old blogger posts and comments into this reincarnation. All 585 posts and 2500+ comments.

(The process was a bit memory intensive due to the way that the data is parsed in. Not something one would want to run on a server without sufficient memory. PHP on large files and odd parsing scan be resource intensive, but i am just glad that most of the effort was already done by the fine people working on WordPress.)

That takes one more item off the bucket list to get this beast whipped into shape.

Hello world!

This the follow-on blog/website/technical journal to my original blogging site, “The Art of Panic”. I grew tired of the limitations of the pure blog format of blogspot.com and so pulled everything back to my own servers. Once I get the theme here adjusted a bit and other such issues settled, I’ll see if I can import the old posts so the record will be more complete.

And now back to getting everything to work and look like I want…

Long live the dead bull!bloglogo

I’m Back …..

After being tied up and too darn lazy to post for a while, I’m back. (Not that you cared, but …)

After weeks of winds up to 60 mph and higher than normal temperatures, it seems to have settled down to go directly into summer without bothering with spring. It is the warmest this early in the year in my memory. Goes along with the fact that the start of the year has been the warmest in recorded history, especially the month of March. Hard to believe there are still some clueless people who don’t believe the climate is changing. So now it is time to turn on the water to the sprinkler systems, etc. Really early, but the upside is that we might have a long enough growing season to grow some longer growth period melons.

In other news, the Easter Bunny made it through another season without getting shot, unlike these cousins in New Zealand. (I wonder how the New Zealand residents take the fact that Google marks their country as a misspelling?)

(You can read the full story of the Great Easter Bunny Hunt here. )

And I thought the local denizens were odd!

Well, time to get back to real work. More later.

And Now For Something Completely Different …

Including apologies to Monty Python. Of course it isn’t true. It is really more of the same.

I still have not received the mysterious envelope of the last posting. Maybe the anti-terrorists at the USPS have decided to keep it for their hall of shame. Maybe they just cannot find me now that I am on the lam. {*grin*} (That is what they get for calling and warning me.)

Then there is the weather. After a dry and warm January with many days in the 50s, February has been cold and snowy with many a snow storm and all sorts of cold. But at least today it started a fast melt. This is the view on the back patio as the snow begins to melt and re-freeze.

Shoveling the snow from last nights flurries sounded like I was working in a waterfall as the snow started melting off the roof.  It was kind of neat.

That brings us to Valentine’s Day tomorrow. L and I have never been real big celebrants of the holiday. Usually just a card with the occasional meal out or flowers or … Given that this will be the 40th Valentine’s Day we have celebrated as a couple, we’ll undoubtedly do the same old things.

One of the reasons we don’t get too excited about February 14th is that my birthday is on the 17th and L’s is 5 days later. So we tend to get excited later in the month.

Interesting …

Yesterday I received a call from the anti-terrorism unit of the U.S. Postal Service. That was a bit of a surprise since I wasn’t even aware that there was such a unit. After a round of twenty questions to establish that I was indeed who I am and they were indeed who they claimed to be., we got down to the reason for the call.

They wanted to know if I was expecting a large manila envelope. Another game of twenty questions ensued to establish that the envelope *might* contain a book. When I admitted that yes, I had recently won a copy of the Everyday Happy Herbivore from Little Miss Blogger over at A Little Blog About Nothing things went downhill even further. Trying to explain that you won a book from a blog and that that is what might be in the envelope in question to an anti-terrorism agent is an interesting exercise in futility.

Needless to say, some time later we had established that:

  • I was not a terrorist.
  • The sender of the book was probably not a terrorist.
  • The U.S. Postal Service should go ahead and deliver the book to me.

Now you might wonder what really triggered this insane sequence of events. (I know that I sure did!)

Near as I can figure out, the whole sequence was set in motion by the fact that whomever sent the book to me (the publisher???) somehow neglected to put either postage or a return address on the package. Thus the postal people saw an anonymous bomb sized envelope suddenly appearing in their system which triggered all the anti-terrorism red flags.

The final upshot of all this: I won a free book, but will undoubtedly have to pay postage for it when it gets here. Certainly worth it to me for the interesting conversation with the agent. I am also impressed that they found the right phone number for me. All they had was the physical address and my name and they found the right number to call on the first try. (I have at least 6 phone numbers associated with me and my address – even more if you believe the errors that Google has propagated from time to time.)

Any one else live such an interesting life?

Things Done Right