House Cleaning

Thanks to Twitter & Co., it seems that blogging is dying a slow death among many of my favorite bloggers. Sad as it was to do the deed, I have culled the blogroll and brought it down to those blogs that are still online and published sometime in the last four to six months. I also fixed dated links and added a few new links, though even with additions my new blogroll is much smaller than my old one was (and not even comparable to my blogroll back in '04 or '05 when it was a bit more cutting edge to be a blogger). Is the blogosphere still going to be around in five or ten years?

You will also notice I've added an “asisaid elsewhere” section. That is for when you simply cannot read enough of my writing (ha!) and decide you need more of it. Conveniently, it will take you to my articles over at Open for Business and also to my Facebook profile, not coincidentally, the two other places I am most likely to be writing something. I do have a Twitter page, but it merely displays my Facebook status, so I see no reason to link to it.

In any case, I plan to stick out blogging for the long haul, and am going to try to get back into a more regular updating cycle, so I figured asisaid needed some cleaning up.

Speeding By

Time is really flying by at the moment. I've had a handful of major projects for seminary classes to turn in while at the same time busily working on a project to write a relatively substantial chapter for a book due in less than two weeks. Needless to say, I've been written out before I get to blogging.

But I miss it here. Never fear, I will return. (Ok, so maybe you should fear, then.)

Incidentally, I've been blogging here for seven years as of late last month!

Whirlwind

This week has been a whirlwind. Today, on the other hand, was quiet. That can be both good and bad. The good is that with seminary being snowed out, I spent my time getting ahead in the readings. I'm now about a week ahead on one class and on track with another. I'd like to keep trying to get ahead, because there is a good likelihood one or more classes may expedite things next week, given the missing day (and the fact that two of the classes that were canceled are once-a-week classes).

I spent too much time thinking, though, and that can be a dangerous thing. I shouldn't think and drive. Or something like that.

So, how's the weather in your neck of the blogosphere?

Still Tweaking

How's the new look looking to you? I've adjusted my page navigation tool on top and added some Christmas cheer. Now if I could get done coding and actually post some stuff, eh?

Now With Multi-Page View

One of the major oversights in my initial design of SAFARI (my site's blogware) is that it could only show one page per category. So, given that each category shows the 10 most recent posts, anything older than the 10 most recent posts vanished. Now, I've added a search engine style bar to the top of every category page (including the front page) allowing you to move through all six and a half years of asisaid content, not just the most recent postings.

The new navigation tool is probably alpha grade, and I'd appreciate any reports of bugs you notice, but overall I think it is working well. Give it a whirl and let me know how it goes.

Need to Get Back to Blogging

Not all that long ago, I often blogged every day of the month. These days, it seems like this or that always keeps me from blogging, which is frustrating, because I always find blogging helpful — both as a sort of kartharsis in writing things and as an enjoyable way to interact with my friends in the blogosphere.

I'm going to try to write something several times a week again… or bust.

What Are Y'all Up To?

That's the question of the week.

How's that for the ultimate in simple posts?

Moving and More Hosting Specials

Hi everyone,
I promise not to make this a habit (Really! Please forgive me ahead of time), but I wanted to do one more run with the web hosting special, because I had an idea I found exciting after my previous posting. I hope this doesn't bug anyone, but feel free to let me know if I did. If anyone else wants to plug their services to balance things out from me, let me know.

My current server (the one these lists are on) is grandfathered in at a much better price than one could get it for today, I found out. With that in mind, rather than shutting it down (as I had planned) when I moved accounts over to the new server, it struck me that perhaps I should replace the hard disk and any other parts that might be in need of replacement and start it over fresh with just a few larger accounts on it that recognize that lower price, for those who would like something like a quarter or half server (like buying half a rotisserie chicken!).

So, I came up with two “semi-dedicated plans” for the soon to be “remodeled” server. My main goal for the server is to use it as a place to store some backups and be available for redundancy; as such, I expect only to have only a few accounts on it — meaning it will be fairly quiet and private on there, much more so than a normal non-dedicated hosting package (even my usual ones — and I am overly zealous on the idea of keeping the number of accounts on a server down). I would expect it will have less than 10 accounts — perhaps as few as two or three if a few of the XE30K, seen below, were put on it. None of the accounts are oversold, you would be entitled to use every last drop of space and bandwidth mentioned below. The soon-to-be-remodeled server is in Dallas, TX. I also have the older special deal plans below, the larger of which you could have in your pick of Dallas or Washington, DC (the new server), the smaller of which will only be in DC.

I could also work out something custom, like a plan that offered some space on both servers for extra redundancy or whatever other reason might amuse you.

Thanks everyone for bearing with me!

-Tim

Semi-Dedicated Extended Edition XE15K
- 15 GB Storage Space
- 250 GB transfers
- Virtually Unlimited POP/IMAP boxes
- Virtually Unlimited MySQL databases
- Virtually Unlimited FTP accounts
- Vanity Name Servers (ns1 and ns2.yourname.com)
- cPanel and Fantastico
- Located in Dallas, TX

$40/month paid quarterly or annually

Semi-Dedicated Extended Edition XE30K
- 30 GB Storage Space
- 500 GB transfers
- Virtually Unlimited POP/IMAP boxes
- Virtually Unlimited MySQL databases
- Virtually Unlimited FTP accounts
- Vanity Name Servers (ns1 and ns2.yourname.com)
- cPanel and Fantastico
- Located in Dallas, TX

$70/month paid quarterly or annually

Special Edition SE1000
- 1 GB Storage Space
- 20 GB transfers
- Virtually Unlimited POP/IMAP boxes
- 4 MySQL databases
- 10 subdomains or parked domains
- 2 FTP accounts
- cPanel and Fantastico
- Located in Dallas, TX or Washington, DC

$10/month paid annually

- Add Vanity name servers (ns1 and ns2.yourname.com) for $2/month

Special Edition SE100

- 100 MB Storage Space
- 5 GB of transfers
- Virtually Unlimited POP/IMAP boxes
- 1 MySQL database
- Several domains or parked domains (how many do you need?)
- cPanel and Fantastico

$4/month paid annually

- Add Vanity name servers (ns1 and ns2.yourname.com) for $2/month

I mention the term “virtually unlimited” on a few things below. That's just to say, I realize nothing can be unlimited — there's bound to be a point where the server software won't do any more, or it causes things to jam up or whatever. But, if it doesn't cause problems, and I doubt anyone would add so many POP3 accounts that it did (etc.), then go at it. There won't be an arbitrary limit, and I'm not the type to inflict something like that on you later, just what it takes to make sure the server runs smoothly. Concerns? Let me know.

Notes

Well, first, I should note that yesterday was the second time I had an opportunity to blog on my blog on a leap day! How exciting. I intended to say something particular about that, but did not! Oops.

Also, I realized my blog's birthday went by without observation. Yes, it was in the last week of February 2002 that the site eventually known as asisaid came alive. I need to bump up my “years blogging” meter on the side column to six!

Finally, it seems fitting, then, to wish a VERY HAPPY 30th BIRTHDAY to Christopher, one of my oldest blogging buddies. Hope you had a good one, Mr. WIT!?!?!

Almost Made It

One goal I continually float before myself as a blogger is that of posting at least a post a day for a month. I've done it a number of times — and gone on even longer stretches — but not in recent times, thanks to the schedule of seminary. Well, I almost made it this month while I was off, but forgot completely about posting yesterday. Oh well. It is kind of a silly goal, I suppose, but I'm still disappointed to have missed it. The helpful part about such a goal is that it forces me to examine life, the universe and everything and come up with something to say by the end of each day. Without that pressure, I'm more inclined to put off writing and have less of an array of topics covered here. As such, I think I will try again in February.