Category: Blogging

Fuckin' Apple.

If you're using Safari as your browser, I've noticed a bug. (A bug with an Apple product? Impossible!) If you refresh my page, the header image (which is supposed to randomly select an image from my library and display it) doesn't refresh. I haven't tested this with IE or Edge (and really don't have any way to, since the only place I have access to those browsers is at work and my site is blocked there, so any of you IE/Edge users please let me know if it's working) but it does work fine with Chrome.

UPDATE: Well apparently it isn't a bug after all. Refreshing to get a new header only works when I'm logged in under my administrator account. So I don't know how the refresh thing works now. Is there a time limit between new images? I guess I may have to contact the template designer for clarification.

I've been with my current blog host for a little over four years now. I originally switched because I had issues with the service and reliability—not to mention the corporate philosophy—of my previous host. I don't think I need to name this Phoenix-based company; they're infamous.

My current host, while not cheap, has been rock steady, lets me post whatever the fuck I want (obviously), is very WordPress friendly, and when things have infrequently gone sideways, they've been fixed almost immediately.

That being said, they are a business whose job is to sell, sell, sell. Their website is confusing as hell to navigate and find what you're looking for. My current hosting plan was due to expire in two days, so Friday night I logged in to renew my plan for another three months as I have been wont to do for these past four years. This time, however there was no "renew" button available, just "upgrade." Oh great, I thought, they've changed their pricing structure.

Sure enough, clicking "upgrade" took me to a page with horrifically priced plans, all billable only on a yearly basis, none of which was in my budget.

I didn't relish the plan of switching hosts because of the hassle of actually moving the website, but I asked Ben what host he was using because I couldn't afford to stay where I was if these "upgrade" plans were my only choices.

I checked out their plans and they were dirt cheap in comparison to what I had been paying. I got signed up with them and with Ben's help we transferred the domain name and hosting without issue. We ran into a problem, however, when we engaged the company to actually move my WordPress installation. I received a very curt email from their technical support:

Hello Mark,

Thank you for contacting [Hosting Company] Support Team.

Per our check, the voenixrising.com website violates our Hosting Acceptable Use Policy that you may find at https://www.[Hosting Company].com/legal/hosting/aup.aspx , namely Paragraph 8, Prohibited Activities:

'By using any Services, provided by [Hosting Company] You agree: not to use [Hosting Company] services to host any website, other content, links or advertisements of websites that contain nudity, pornography or other content deemed adult related'.

Thus, before we assist you with your website migration, we would ask you to delete the content that does not comply with the above.

Feel free to contact us back anytime.

Well fuck that. I replied to the email telling them that was their prerogative and it was also my prerogative to spend my money elsewhere because of it. I asked that my hosting be cancelled. They responded with a link to cancel the service (which of course turned out to be a hot mess), but I eventually found what I needed and cancelled the hosting. I understand I'm stuck with the domain registration through them for 60 days because of ICANN rules, but I can live with that.

Seeing that I was growing increasingly angry and frustrated, Ben discovered another host that didn't limit what could be posted. I checked them out, but they were the same price as my original host's new plans and also could only be billed in yearly installments.

Reluctantly I returned to my original host's website and looked at my renewal offer again. This was when I noticed that next to the "upgrade" box, there was also a link under what was showing as the price of my current, soon-to-expire, bill-3-months-at-a-time hosting.

When I clicked on that, it took me to a page that gave me the option to simply renew my current plan. Clicked and done.

Why couldn't that have been on the original landing page, clearly marked?

Because they're job is to make money. That's why.

While looking over old posts I'm discovering that not only are many of the music-related YouTube videos I've posted now missing, so are quite a few other, seemingly copyright-innocuous ones as well. I've thought about actually posting the names of the videos under them on future posts—allowing me to readily locate other versions should they disappear—but I think the only way around the problem of the disappearing 'tubes is to download the videos and post them directly. Cumbersome, yes, but it makes sure they're still available years from now…

After reading this, I've decided to return to the native WordPress commenting engine. I had no idea that Disqus cataloged, cross-indexed and obviously monetized its users to such a degree, and while I personally won't stop using it myself, I won't subject my readers—as few as they are—to such intrusiveness.

If you'd like to me return to Disqus (there is a certain convenience in it, after all), let me know since at this point I haven't removed it from the site, I've just deactivated it…

I sent off links to this here blog thingie (and my other active social media accounts) to a couple friends I've at least superficially reconnected with after years of silence, and out of curiosity I started looking through the past few years of posts just to see where my head's been at.

Other than seeing how so very little has changed with the batshit craziness the republicans have been spouting since—well, forever, the most glaring aspect of looking over all these old posts is seeing what's missing.

YouTube videos that have been taken down for whatever reason are one thing, but because I am an idiot and deleted my Flickr account about six months ago, all of the personal photos I've posted over the years that were linked directly to my account (in order to conserve hosting space on the server) are now gone.

I suppose I could go back and find all the broken links and upload the the images directly, but honestly, who has time to go through 4500 entries and figure out exactly what's missing? Not this guy, that's for sure! Hell, I don't even have time to go back and locate all the references to YouTube videos that are no longer available in order to delete them!

After yesterday's last post, I realized that I needed to take a break from obsessing over the downfall of western civilization and made the conscious decision to step away from that nightmare-I-have-no-control-over for a while.

To that end, I'm just going to be posting a lot of pictures.

I'm attempting to organize my photos library and I realized that I have hundreds of pictures that have caught my eye over the years that I downloaded with every intention of reposting. Like with a lot of things however, it never quite happened, and they've been languishing in storage ever since. So for the next several days (unless something truly major happens on the political front to break through the now-usual effluent spewing from 45's administration), this here blog thingie will be nothing more than a stream of visual consciousness.

Enjoy. Or not. Whatever…

I've changed to the Disqus commenting system. I got tired of WordPress never notifying me when someone left a comment (even though everything was properly set up) so I said fuck it and made the conversion.

What this means is that in order to leave a comment here from now on you'll need to set up a Disqus account. It's simple to sign up.

It seems the most recent WordPress "upgrade" has broken something. Again.  I'm no longer receiving email updates when comments are left on posts.

As you can see, I have the proper boxes checked off in the control panel, and the email address they're being sent to is valid (nothing has changed), so I'm wondering how to get this working again.

Any ideas?

I realized a few days ago I hadn't been receiving any comment notifications via email from this here blog thingie and is the reason I posted Is This Thing On a couple days ago. Everything seems to be set up correctly on the back end, but nothing is working. We're going on 7 days now.

The Google has been less than helpful.

Tap, tap, tap…

It never fails. I come up with the most amazing ideas for blog posts when I'm laying half-awake in bed at 4 am, but I never bother writing anything down at the time and after I fall back asleep and wake up later, with very few exceptions, I can never remember what those awesome ideas were.

Deal with it.

I know that's kind of an odd title for a blog post, but it's true. I miss being able to sit down and actually write, instead of posting a photo of some half naked man or regurgitating some internet meme I've run across. I miss being able to properly express myself in regards to current events without sounding like old news. And most of all I miss the sense of community those early years of blogging afforded.

The loss of community became abundantly clear a few days ago when I realized I hadn't uploaded any photos to my Flickr account since our trip to Atlanta last spring. It wasn't that I didn't have anything to upload; it's just that Flickr had dropped off my radar, supplanted by the ease of uploading and the instant gratification of Instagram. (I'm convinced that if Instagram let you post photos directly from your desktop device Flickr would close up shop because of the ungodly mess it has become.)

But I digress.

For shits-n-giggles, I started looking at the list of Flickr members I followed. A disturbing (although not surprising—based on my Instagram observation) trend I noticed was that a majority of the people I followed had not uploaded anything to Flickr not just in months, but in years. Names and faces I used to converse with regularly and counted as friends came flooding back—along with the realization that we had totally lost contact with each other in the years that have transpired.

I fear the malaise that seems to be overtaking a once-vibrant blogging community actually comes from the internet itself. Through the availability of instant gratification and equally instant dismissal of anything that doesn't pique my interest, I seem to have developed the attention span of a gnat. Getting me to sit and read anything that spans more than one or two pages is a major undertaking. Click, swipe, click, swipe. I can't stay focused long enough to read 1000 words; how do you expect me to write that many?

Additionally, I've reached the point where I don't seem to have anything unique to add to the ongoing conversations regarding events in our world. So many others have already voiced my opinions more eloquently and succinctly than I could ever have hoped, and cutting and pasting their quotes seems so much easier than attempting to say the same thing in a slightly different way.

I am very thankful to those of you who still come around and occasionally drop comments, but even if my readership dropped to zero I doubt I could ever close down Voenix Rising and give up blogging altogether like so many others have done. After all, it was through this blogging thing that I met Ben—and even though I feel I don't have much to add to the conversation right now, when I do, I still want a place available where I can.

…that I've been quiet of late. Not to worry. Ben and I have just moved to new digs and I've been too exhausted to even think about posting anything, but regularly scheduled programming will resume shortly.

When I started this blog all those many years ago I did it as a public extension of the private journals I had been keeping since the late 1980s. It was a way for me to vent my frustration at the way any number of things in life—particularly the political landscape of the Bush years—were heading.

I have been doing a lot of bitching and moaning about my personal life lately, and while those posts make up a really small portion of the overall blog, apparently some people are getting annoyed and are threatening to stop visiting my site.

My response? I don't care. To those people I say no one is forcing you to come here, and frankly if you stopped, I wouldn't even know. I don't track my visitor stats, so your threats to stop reading are akin to telling an Atheist he's damned and going to hell.

And lastly to paraphrase that famous line from The Rocky Horror Picture Show , "I didn't make it for you."

So until further notice, commenting has been disabled. I have enough bullshit to deal with right now without also having to deal with people whining about what I write.

Because I'm trying to keep an enormous rant at bay…

As those of you who come here directly (vs. using a RSS reader) may have noticed, I've changed the visual theme that the blog uses. It has only recently come to my attention that you can no longer comment directly from the main pages, but instead have to open the individual posts. Sorry for the confusion. You're still welcome to leave your thoughts…you just have to go through an extra click to do it.

An extra click? OMG, I know, right?

The move seems to have been a success…

Voenix Rising may be…unavailable…for a while. I'm going to attempt to move it to a new host because GoDaddy sucks.

…this seems to be the attitude of the majority of the people I know in real life.

So much for my break from blogging. That certainly lasted, didn't it?

I think now that I wasn't so much burnt out on blogging itself, but rather on the expectation that certain things would be posted on certain days of the week.  For that reason, I won't be doing any more of the scheduled weekly "theme" posts.

But there will still be political and social commentary, a healthy dose of snark, and more than enough hot menz to keep you pervs satisfied.

Spontaneity! That's the ticket!

I've been amassing have a lot of stuff over the past week that I want to share, so don't be surprised if a dozen or more posts appear in the next few hours.

I'm burnt out on blogging. When I first started doing this thing eight years ago it was a way of venting my frustration at the direction the country was going, but lately it's just become an excuse to bitch about life and repost pictures of men in various stages of undress.

I'm over it. I need a break.

I don't know how long this will last. It may be days, or weeks, or even months until I'm fully back into it. I may still post occasionally if I happen to run across something online that I think is share-worthy, but the scheduled features are done.  I may pass on some interesting tech tidbit I happen to run across, or opine on politics now and then, but even there I'm suffering from severe outrage exhaustion. At this point I can't even go through all my politics feeds without hitting "mark all as read." The level of stupidity infecting this country on all levels has left me emotionally and mentally drained.

So keep checking back.  I may surprise you.