Well, more like pulling hen’s teeth. I have taken several days off of code writing since getting this back on line. Now I have to tweak and tease and make it pretty. Add some non-breaking spaces here and there. Get more links to work, because I don’t know about you, but I’m already tired of looking at my Dread 404 error page.

This weekend I have to go to Stuart, retrieve the Number 2 Surrogate Daughter from her summer of indentured servitude and bring her back to Miami. As a reward for packing up my parents’ home, and in addition to her pay, I’m taking her to my favorite tattoo parlor for some ink work. She’s getting a molecule, and I’m thinking about a wrist piece featuring this flower.

Star knows this and in fact is coming along for the ride. Whether I can talk her into some ink is unlikely. Unlikely like me voting Republican kind of unlikely, which is to say when ice skating is Hell’s favorite sport.

Well, sweetiedarlings, was it worth the wait? There are still a number of elements that I haven’t gotten working smoothly, yet, specifically, my photo blog is still down, and comments can be a little wonky*, but here it is.

The new site, on a new server, using a new CMS. I only had to call tech support once, and if I’d been keeping a notebook of all the things I’d tried that failed (which I started doing after talking to tech support) I wouldn’t have had to call. It was a matter of variables, and I thought I’d tried every possible string, but I hadn’t. Once I started keeping notes, things went a little faster.

Anyway, the extended link isn’t up and working, so for now, all entries will be in the main window, but still and all. People, I have been pounding code since I crawled out of bed from the bronchial infection. I’ve been sitting at my keyboard from the moment I get home until I get to bed, and that time has been pushed back to 2 a.m. and beyond on the weekends. Tonight, the RLA and I went to the grocery store after work, bought something to eat, and then it was on to the code war.

And at 11:19 p.m. on July 30, 2007, I moved all the files, reset the path and sent this bad puppy out into the interwebs.

Did you miss me while I was gone?

* Hint for the comments. Try clicking on the title of the entry. Now that the main push is over, I can fine tune the code. Any help is welcome.

It’s not like I’m not trying. And it’s not like I haven’t been saving and notating and blah blah blah. For hours and hours and hours on end. Till 2 in the morning. Before breakfast. After work. But still, this new site isn’t pulling from its data base. Isn’t dynamic. Isn’t worth the pixels its printed on.

The other night, I woke up at midnight (gone to bed at 8 with this stupid lung infection) and couldn’t go back to sleep. The RLA was in the living room, watching “Meat Loaf: To Hell & Back” on VH1. While it wasn’t dreadful, it wasn’t good, per se. The guy who played Jim Steinman  reminded me a lot of the actor who plays Lucious Malfoy in the Potter series*, and one thing leading, as it so often does with me, to another, I ended up on the IMDB looking for both.

Which, of course, this being the web, led me happily from site to site until I ended up at Jim Steinman’s blog. YESH! He has a blog.

Which led to another half an hour of poking into various links and sub-sites and sub-sub-sites.

(Fade to Black)

VOICE OVER:

It was long ago and it was far away, and I was living in New York City. I had a friend, of sorts, an actor by the name of Richard Dunne, who had starred in the Miami road production of EQUUS. I went to see his band play at some dive in the Village and he was all excited because he had auditioned for something exciting…a musical based on Peter Pan.

(Dissolve to present)

I never really saw Richard after that, and never heard what happened with that play. Over the years, whenever Meat Loaf made yet another return to the music scene, there would be a story about Jim Steinman, and maybe 10-12 years ago I think I heard something about a musical he had done back in the 70s about Peter Pan. I remember thinking then that that had probably been what Richard had been so worked up about.

Today, in all the digging, somewhere in the Steinman site, is a scan of the original program from the Kennedy Center production of “Neverland” and starring in the role of Baal (the Peter Pan character) was Richard Dunne. And there are even photos.

Huh. Sometimes these interwebs are amazing things, are they not?

* Zachary Throne is definitely hotter than Jason Isaacs, though when placed side by side.

You have got to be fucking kidding. That’s it? That’s the way The Sopranos ends? Not with a bang (or a Badda Bing) and not with a whimper but with a fucking Journey song? Not even a Springsteen song, or a South Side Johnny number? A fucking Journey song?

Granted, Phil Leotardo had one of the “best” deaths I’ve ever seen on film/video, and fully deserved every second of it. Granted, the tension was excrutiating. Granted, Sil didn’t die, but our last shot of him wasn’t too hopeful.

But that ending? I’ve seen science fiction b-movies with better endings. I mean, why didn’t the credits just roll “The End?”

Pathetic. I feel dirty. Used. Fuck you David Chase. That sucked. And to add insult to injury, my last shot had to be of that useless twat Meadow?

Feh.

dragged my sorry ass to the doctor yesterday. received two prescriptions, a lecture and orders to go back to bed.

that is all.

well, except that i’m moving this site to a new host because my current host is retiring from the hosting biz. this is the perfect time to break out a couple of new skins. one is coming from the wonderful girls at moxie design studio and the other is the one i’ve been dicking around with for at least 6 months.

i’d hoped to be able to work on that (and a handful of quilts) while on this vacation, but the truth is i’m lucky just to be able to type an entry. too weak to hit the shift key, tho.