1. I’m not going to stress about title capitalization anymore. I instinctively know those rules of English grammar that make sense, but I’ve gotten sick of having to look up the rules of proper titling every time I write a post (or use short titles to avoid looking up said rules), so from now on I’m just going to use sentence caps.
2. I’m absolutely sick and tired of spam, and I’m going to try to find ways to use reCAPTCHA to help avoid some of it. I’m trying out the WordPress plugin for comments here, and then I’m also toying with a home-grown, in-your-face email filter for unknown senders. Of course, common wisdom on the topic says not only will it not work, but it’ll also likely piss off some of my legitimate contacts to boot. Well, whatever. I have to keep them stirred up about me.

Anyway, there’s lots of important stuff to post, but I haven’t felt like messing with it for a couple of weeks. Hopefully will get to that soon…

I got my more expensive plan at pair Networks cancelled this week, but as I’ve previously complained, it was too late to avoid a whopping fee for being a few hundred megabytes over my disk quota. It really irritated me that a 20% overage over a span of 15 days would cost me 300% of my monthly service price, and I thought about trying to argue it down or shift some blame or refuse to pay the outrageous fine or whatever. But then, when I finally got around to cleaning out my rented FS, I came across a forgotten .rar file (rarchive?) that, had it not been sitting there, would have saved me a big fine.

The culprit? An episode of 24 that I had downloaded and for whatever reason stuck out there on my web host.

$45 is steep for a fine, I guess, but I’m getting off cheap if that’s my only penalty for all the software and media thefts I committed over the years. And it’s a better wage than death.

The good news is that I no longer have to be bothered with the distraction of reading my personal email at work.

I especially like the strongly-worded verbiage that makes clear my importance to the company.

UPDATE: the 2008 list has been broken out into its very own page… 

Big Carter (as in, not my son-to-be, but rather the fully-growed’n with whom I’m sometimes known to hang) told me that if I posted some top-10 lists my blawg would get all crazy busy with folks who like things like that, and that I would forever be remembered as a cultural icon and not just the guy who egged a bunch of his school-mates 20 years ago for no apparent reason.

He’s usually wrong about that kind of stuff, though, and I’m not going to listen to him. So instead of spewing my top 10 favorite things about 2007 (most of which I would have probably made up anyway), I’m just going to forget about last year and start a new happy/sad list to weigh this new one. I’ll probably lose interest in it eventually, but my plan right now is to keep adding to it until, next December 31st, I’ll have clear evidence of whether 2008 was really worth the hassle. Why? Cause I’m all about hope and expectation, that’s why. A sad 2008 would make me hopeful for a happy 2009, and that would make me happy. A happy 2008 would make me expect a happy 2009, and that would also make me happy. Not being able to remember much about 2008 would make me sad, though, and I probably won’t be able to remember what I don’t write down.

Happies in 2008:

• Our good friends Carter and Adeline helped us celebrate New Year’s Eve, and were still there making us laugh for the first hour or so of 2008.
• My unborn son turned head-down right on schedule, and is still a healthy and active little person. Lynn and I have gained new insights into his behavior, and are more amazed than ever that we’ve been blessed with such a miracle.
• I didn’t have to look for a job during the slimmest time of the year for choices of technical openings.

Sads in 2008:

• I was sick on our 12th anniversary and caused us to delay our romantic dinner out. I really hated doing that to Lynn, and it was a much worse feeling than the crappy whateverits running their course through my sickly body.
• While I was moving my stuff to the cheaper plan of theirs I just signed up for, Pair Networks charged me an outrageous overusage fee for disk space. It was affordable, but getting fined 3 times what I pay in a month for service for my first ever infraction just made me absolutely nutsy.

I guess the happies outweigh the sads by a pretty good margin right now. I’ll just hope that trend lasts!

UPDATE: the 2008 list has been broken out into its very own page… 

I’m switching my websites from Pair Networks‘ standard platform to their new pairLite service. I won’t be giving up much, but it’ll be about half as expensive for me and I won’t feel so guilty maintaining my web toys after Lynn quits her job to stay home with little Carter.

So, during the migration process, stuff might disappear for a while… but I’m keeping all my domains and junk, so everything should be back just like it was (or will appear to be, anyway) pretty soon.

I’ve been all sickly since Thanksgiving, and have mostly been in relaxation mode since then:

1. Watching my grandfather watch game after football game in high def.
2. Finishing up The Shiva Option by David Weber and Steve White.
3. Burning copies of an interview with my grandpa about his POW experiences.
4. Sending invitations to the next Simmons Eat-n-Greet about a week late. 
5. Playing Dawn of War and getting all pissy with the Eldar.
6. Eating lots of leftovers.
7. Trying to stay warm (which is an uncharacteristic need for me).
8. Cleaning up Trapper’s desktop, and finding random stuff like this endorsement of me.
9. Getting excited about getting back to work on Project One.
10. Napping. A lot.

Tonight Lynn and I broke into Wayne’s and Meya’s (I’ve always loved that name) and left them some goodies for when they return on Sunday.

I just hope the poor dog-feeder-slash-mail-bringer-in doesn’t mess up our beautiful arrangement. Or freak out and call the fuzz. Or discover what I did in the back yard. Hopefully the dogs won’t get hung up in my artwork, too…

I went and shaved my beard off again this morning… and am now in the process of growing it back again. I had it for over 3 years, and I just keep forgetting how much uglier I am without than with. With isn’t much better, but it’s enough. 🙂

I think I’ll try wearing it long again over the winter, even though it doesn’t look very neat on me that way. It’s good and warm, at least… my poor naked cheeks have been freezing all day.

I had an interesting dinner date tonight (or supper, as my grandaddy Israel would call it): I met with my father to tell him in person he’d be a grandfather next year. It actually went pretty well, and we spent an hour and a half pretty much just chitchatting like regular folks.

I think he’s felt uncomfortable around me ever since my renewed contact with that branch of the family a few years ago. It’s almost like he expects me to bring up some aspect or other of our unfortunate history together… but the most obvious feature of our shared past is an almost complete lack thereof. The past is gone, and I hope he’ll eventually come to realize that there’s nothing left for me to hold over his head.

I stayed pretty angry with him for a long time for being absent during my childhood, and I actually changed my name the day I turned 18. I realize now it was a mistake, but it’s one that can’t realistically be undone. My motives were wrong, too, because wanting to put a painful past behind me was only part of the equation. I also wanted to hurt him badly. The biggest problem with that, or the second biggest thing, rather, right after the wrongness of my intent, was that it wound up hurting grandpa Israel a whole lot worse.

Anyway, none of that matters anymore, and I hope he accepts that someday soon. He’s going to be a grandfather, after all, and I don’t want my own children to suffer from the same lingering disease that corrupted my family so badly. They’re going to need their grandpa, and I intend to clear the way for him to fulfill that need as thoroughly as he wishes.

Viva la famille.