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Bloody Great!

I'm still waiting for my website and email server to come back up. I wondered will the email simply sit and wait, or will it be bounced as undeliverable? So, I sent a test message:

I'm sorry to have to inform you that your message could not be be delivered to one or more recipients. It's attached below.

For further assistance, please send mail to [postmaster]. If you do so, please include this problem report. You can delete your own text from the attached returned message.

The Postfix program
<articulate@prw.url>: Host or domain name not found. Name service error for name=prw.url type=A: Host not found 

Which, of course, means... the emails (if any) will simply be lost, and anyone who has attempted to contact me via email will discover that I no longer exist, will possibly have no other means to contact me, and [SIGH] who knows...

I wonder, how tacky would it be to email everyone I might have liked to have received email from to inform them (once the server comes up again, of course) that indeed there were email problems, but they have been resolved?

I think that's a rhetorical question, but the answer is probably, VERY! [SIGH] The problem is, I simply can't know who might or might not have emailed me during this interminable period, and sending a note to the 98% of people I would have liked to have heard from, but who most likely hadn't attempted to contact me would be... tacky.

Damn damn damn! It had to happen NOW, right? Ah well. It will pass, and life will go on. And if I lost contact with some people... let's hope there are occasions for me to renew that contact and let them know I still exist. All I can do really.

Vanished

This morning, I couldn't access my primary email account, which is on my Personal Research Website (PRW). I couldn't load up the site. Sometimes it goes down, unexpectedly. The host is cheap, but occasionally unreliable. Mostly however I'm quite satisfied. But it was down, for hours.

I finally called... and got a voice mail that said they only deal with emergencies via email, but fortunately a site being down qualifies as emergent. Also, fortunately, I have other email addresses off the PRW that I can access. They responded rather quickly... checking... then... your domain name has expired, please renew.

Apparently, my webhost sent 90-, 60-, and 30-day renewal notices... but I didn't get any of them. See, they had my old email address, one which was provided by our old ISP in Paradise, but since they don't service our area near Rocket City, we changed ISPs. I didn't think to check with them, and unfortunately, my permanent email forwarding address (at my first graduate institution) was set to forward to that old email as well. Aaarggh!

I wonder how many emails I've missed. Nothing for it, now. I renewed the domain name (I had prepaid for 2 years on the hosting contract, but the domain name was only registered for a year, I guess). But it may take "up to 72 hours to propagate worldwide," meaning, I suppose, that I may lose 3-4 days worth of emails. [SIGH]

Nothing for it. Let's just hope nothing important slips me by.

Never trust an estimate

Friday evening the adapter for my laptop died. It just stopped working. I had noticed an odd behavior for a day or two before, that the cable was losing connection or had a short, such that if I wiggled the wire a bit, the power would connect again. I could tell because my monitor is a bit dimmer when running on battery.

Saturday morning, I called Dell to order a replacement. I'll upgrade you to next business day shipping at no cost, which will get it there... as soon as... on Monday. [SIGH] Monday came... monday went. Dell and DHL continued to show the estimated deliver date as 2/12. After several calls which couldn't confirm the package's location, nor it's actual scheduled delivery, they assured me it would be put on priority and they'd get it to me as soon as possible Tuesday morning. The website tracking updated to "by 3:00 pm" even though the estimated date remained 2/12. It finally arrived yesterday around 4:30pm.

What a relief! I had access to our home desktop, thus giving me internet access to my email. But do you realize how much of my life is kept on files on my laptop? I don't really like that. I think I'll get an external hard drive to back up both the laptop and the desktop. That should help.

Á la former students

Okay, this wasn't from a former student, but it's nice nonetheless.

Hi Articulate... I wouldn't be surprised if you don't remember me but probably a good year ago I emailed you mentioning that I was interested in using an idea of yours about [concept] in my master's thesis [details of thesis]. Well, I've finally filed the thing and am sending a copy along to you in case you'd like to see what a [subfield 3er] might do with it. I credit you on p. [#], and use the idea from around p. [#].

Anyway, thanks for the idea! Be well,
Derrick

Put a smile on my face. Nice to berelevant.

Commute the commute

Yesterday, returning home from my language class, I spent 30 minutes driving the distance from campus to the highway on-ramp. Yes, really. We're talking about 1-2 miles tops! As I sat in traffic (wishing I had Ianqui beside me to snap a photo, because I just know she would have loved it), a fellow jogged by, with a simple yellow t-shirt, the bold letters clearly custom made on the cheap:

I HATE CARS

was all it read. At that moment, I wanted to abandon my vehicle, chase him down and hug him. I hated cars too.

I listened during the infuriating drive (two and a half hours before I stopped the engine in my driveway), to NPR covering the UN Report on climate change. And I thought to myself just what the hell am I doing here? Granted, I could in fact (most weeks) take public transport, but that would guarantee a minimum of two hours each way, with a transfer to another bus, assuming they keep schedule, which I seriously doubt. Meaning, I could be stranded halfway there. Not like the public transport in the Old World.

Okay, I confess to another thing: I am pretty good in this language, pretty good at understanding what is said to me, pretty good at making myself understood, and pretty good at making sense of what I read... well, with the assistance of a good dictionary and a reference grammar. I'm actually pretty awful when it comes to producing the right grammatical construct. Admittedly, I studied the language for all of 8 weeks, a decade ago at a summer workshop. I've been to the country several times, including 10 months as a Fulbrighter.

This class is for me, not for a requirement, for the instructor, nor for credit; it's for me to improve my skills, period. Point being: the commute, to sit through an hour and a half of hand-holding and impatience, simply doesn't sit well with me. Of course, I've paid for the class, so I suppose I can propose that we communicate via email re: my independent project (which is actually relevant to my dissertation-to-book project). Whatever, I don't think I can sit through that traffic again, knowing that I'd rather be spending Friday evening having a relaxing dinner with my family, contributing less to global warming and pollution. I am working nearly every day with the language, so I expect that my skills will necessarily improve.

I think this might be for the best.

Oh, nothing free lasts forever

Three weeks since I wrote Office Internet. Sad to say, they've moved, today. I am once again internetless at the office. (I came home for a visit to check email and such). Another neighbor in the building agreed to set up wireless access to his connection, if I bring a network transmitter. I guess that's still my best bet, since it'd be $60-100/month to set up my own connection, and possibly a minimum of a year contract. Since I'm hoping against hope to be somewhere else by the time my nine-month lease expires in August, I'd rather avoid that.

***Updated to add:

Nothing Free lasts for ever, part two

Remember my ethical dilemma from October, regarding the stereo received we bought ourselves for our ninth anniversary, when the company sent us two, then credited our account when we returned the second? Well, they finally caught up with themselves. I got a voice mail yesterday evening saying they needed to clarify the situation. When I called back it was explained that they had somehow inadvertently sent us two receivers. ("No, duh... look at your notes, I called, explained the matter, then returned the second one"). But they apparently figured out (two months later) that the customer service agent I spoke with had written things up wrong, and thus they processed the return, and credited us for the one charge. ("Uh... yeah"). So, now they'll be sending us a new invoice for the receiver. ("Um... yeah, sure... we're happy to pay for it.") So, that is that.

An exhausting day

Exhausting, yes. Work related, no. I spent the day getting some warranty work done on (and a new battery installed in) my car. The dealership is about an hour away. So I took the three year old with me. We went miniature golfing, then wasted another 2 or so hours, because the dealership was bad at estimating time.

Life is sometimes rather mundane. But you know, I really enjoyed spending the day with my son. Being a parent is many things (both pleasant and unpleasant) but it is almost never mundane. And I didn't really miss the work that much. Frankly, my work is completely self-directed, meaning I could go in any of a dozen directions with it. It's difficult at times to decide which path to work on. Mostly, I'm hoping and waiting for a job interview, so I have a better sense of what kind of department would be interested in my work, which would sure help me decide which path to follow.

That's not to say that I don't do any "work" most days. I just have about four projects going concurrently, and I make piecemeal progress on each of them. Sometimes taking a break from all of them is just what I need to get some better perspective. And that was my day.