What fun. I’m doing training in Charlotte for the week, which means all the usual - a small hotel room, bad restaurant meals and sporadic internet connections.
What this also means is that, god willing, I’ll be able to take photos of things other than Duke University, downtown Raleigh and my dog.
More tonight after I’ve run around like a lunatic.
For some reason I became everyone’s Wordpress bitch over the past few weeks. And that’s fine; my friends know that I’m good with Wordpress, and I enjoy helping bloggers get the most from this platform.
I also learned that some of the older versions of Wordpress have some rather exploitable vulnerabilities. A few of the blogs I’ve upgraded have been compromised, and one blog even had its template files wiped out.
Some of these hacks can also expose the database password for your server. If you use the same password on the database that you use elsewhere, you could be more compromised than you think.
I decided to offer an upgrade service to my blogging friends. Here’s what I’m offering:
You get all of this for a measly $15 US.
And - if all else fails, I will ensure that we can “roll back” to the last version you had before we started.
To do this, I’ll need FTP-level access to your server and a login into your Wordpress installation. This is something we can work out after-the-fact.
Feel free to email me if you have any questions or concerns!
I got a little surprise in the mail yesterday … a bill from one of my healthcare providers for $306.77.
Seems that my coverage changed last year, and there’s a new $250 deductible *and* a 10% copayment up to $2750 out-of-pocket.
It’s times like this I’d much rather be back in Canada.
So guess where my stimulus check is going?
Look at what I found nestled into my bed when I came in to go to sleep tonight:
It’s funny how a single motorcycle trip can change your life.
When I was in high school I was certain I wanted to study engineering. And I was smart enough in math and science to do it. Engineering seemed like the right thing to do, and it’s certainly not something that a parent would try to dissuade a young adult from doing.
One of my favorite relaxation techniques was (and still is) to throw a dart at a wall map of Ontario, and ride my motorcycle out to wherever the dart landed. It was a great way to see parts of the province that wouldn’t normally be a destination, and it taught me that the journey can be just as much fun as the destination.
And on one spring evening in 1992, the dart landed just outside of Woodview, Ontario, on a little green square called Petroglyph Provincial Park.
The ride out there was magical; through some of those wonderful twisty Northern Ontario logging roads that ache for a motorcycle. I remember I had U2’s Achtung Baby playing on my discman, and it seemed entirely appropriate.
But nothing could prepare me for the power of the petroglyphs. For two hours I slowly circled the rock, carefully watching as the steward made an offering of tobacco and sweetgrass.
Within a few months I decide to major in anthropology and Canadian Native Studies at Trent University. How that turned out is another story for another day, but I’m thankful that some First Nations rock carvings moved me that deeply.
Ironically, I never made it back to Petroglyph Provincial Park. Sounds like a fantastic trip to blog about sometime …
