Sick Leave and the Return Therefrom

[lwood]

Last Wednesday through this past Saturday:

I was sick. I got a cold, and shut down Absolutely Everything so I could focus on getting well before Pantheacon makes madmen of us all around here. So, I've not so much as touched a keyboard in that time, and if you've e-mailed me for anything up to and including Ragnarok, I haven't seen it yet. Hopefully I will this week, but I again refer you to the upcoming Weekend of Greater Madness in case I don't manage it.

Post ahead has many ranty bits, and content for computer geeks, DLP fen, slashgirls who believe in beta readers, Bay Area Pagans, and Norse religious geeks. We have thus rated it P-for-Public. Onward!


Yesterday, Sunday

The Universe let me know that I was back from sick leave:

• bellacrow called to let me know that pantheacon.com had let its registration lapse, and people were, understandably, in quite a panic. Actually, pantheacon.org and pantheacon.net didn't work so well either. While the other calls of the early afternoon were being fielded, I determined that while I'm sure the payment for .com had gone through, the change clearly hadn't been noticed by the WHOIS database as yet, and such change would take awhile to wend its way through the Internet.
  
  .org, which had been paid (and transferred to Domain Registry of America by their favorite underhanded method, may the fleas of a thousand camels host the World Cup in their armpits and pubes while they are struck with diarrhea ten days' walk from the nearest latrine, and may it be out of toilet paper, gods forbid^*), was pointed at the wrong name servers, but that I at least could and did fix.
  
  .net, on the gripping hand, was completely out of service, having not been renewed at all, and was no longer registered for anything, but at least it could be reclaimed and hadn't been hijacked by some pop-up pr0n site, gods forbid that too while we're at it, only here with rather more sincerity, I confess.



• grendel_todd, before I fell ill, suffered a critical hardware failure and got stuff replaced. Somewhere in the cascade of thermal issues, the boot block had gone pear-shaped, FUBAR, SNAFU, Tango Uniform, et cetera, und so weiten. A well-meaning friend with half a technical clue had tried to repair his installation by applying XP Pro from his store over something I'd done myself that was of a certain maritime provenance. Repair didn't work like it ought, so they installed over, which, of course, wanted to be activated through channels and was most persnickety about its channels. I applied the band-aid of installing a less persnickety build over that, urged Grendel Todd to back everything up he cared about, and then came through with a vengeance, an fdisk, a format, and a Scorched Earth Policy. Actually, I recommend reformatting one's system every year or two as a matter of course, rather like getting a complete cleaning at the dentist, but I digress.
  
  Yesterday, he asked if I would please come over and re-established his swift and simple shortcut to his FTP server and his e-mail access, both of which were entangled by the simple problem that he'd completely forgotten his password.
  
  This was fixed by resetting his password, re-establishing his bookmark, and reconfiguring his e-mail program. While I was at it, I also made it so that XP didn't necessarily remember his password when using FTP in the hopes that he'd not forget it this time, and so were all content.



• Y'know, the problem with being competent is that everyone who wants competent people wants you to please come be competent in their yard. In the depths of my near-delirium, there'd been a minor flap over getting someone who was on both CAT and Seidhjallr available for the seidh rituals at Pantheacon. I thought I'd passed the buck, but checked up on the buck and found that it wasn't quite passed properly, so I poked the affected party until said party got the kerfluffle passed to parties who could deal with it Through Channels, yay. I mean, I do prefer to go Through Channels when I can, unless the Channels are, stupidly, agin' me.



• But the need to poke at Grendel's computer got me over to Greyhaven for the most pleasant and civilised activity of Sunday Tea, where munchies are served and good conversation is had by all. DLP came in later, and was actively delighted to see me up, about, and enjoying bread with cheese (I surprised her!). Topics of conversation ranged even further afield, for the revisions to the latest Avalon book are now done, meaning we can finally get back to Westria, which, you know, Eats Her Brain. This book's even cooler because in this case, lori, lferion and I get grapefruit spoons with which to try and help. DLP has never had betas before, and is enjoying the concept throroughly. Oh, ye /grrls who believe in betas, believe yourselves thoroughly vindicated therefore, amen.
  
  Talk eventually turned to dreams-and-related. I cheerfully pointed out that I talk in my sleep. "Do you remember me saying anything, Diana?"
  
  "Er, no? I'm usually asleep at the time, so I don't remember much except the most ladylike snores. Do I say anything?"
  
  "Well, my mom tells me that I used to spell out words for she and her friends' Scrabble games in my sleep..."
  
  "Oh! Say, you should be here the next time firehair28 and bearmum are over for Scrabble." Boggle was also suggested, but DLP has never played Boggle, so this might have to be tried for variety.



• starfire6910 is guiding nithogg at one of our small oracular seidh sessions to be held in the Asatru Hospitality Suite at the con. As Nithogg doesn't hold much with the extreme ritual gingerbread of full Hrafnar-style, and has been trained to see from a different place anyway, Starfire has had to jiggle things around a bit, including turning a set of bullet points handed down from the originator of Hammer Oak's variant into a proper pathworking/guided meditation/journey to make sure the audience is along for the ride. She wanted my opinion of her work, so I volunteered to head over after Tea.



• But while I was there, it turned out that nithogg, lionessmoons, emberleo, and onyxdubh were all also Scheduled to Appear. It was rather more people and complications on rather shorter notice than I wanted, as weak and tired as I was, but I figured it would be more lines of input for Starfire's benefit, especially as Nithogg would actually have to be the recipient of the thing once Starfire was through with it...
  
  It worked out rather well, although there were a few minor wrinkles that I'm quite confident will be worked out by Saturday.



• Then (watch my account go all oblique), some possessory and god-wrangling practice was achieved, and this meant I did not leave the venue in question (which may or may not necessarily have been Starfire's abode or involve anyone in my last bulletpoint). That didn't wrap up until after one. However, the lady of that house had some computer trouble. I'm woefully poor at teaching computer newbies to fish: there's a lot of "whaddya mean you don't know how to _____?" so that meant that I sat there and poked at Norton Anti-Virus's quarantine corral myself, ran Ad-Aware myself, and then offered some other advice on Starfire's pathworking (she was with me, y'see) and that didn't get me homeward bound until after three, gods help us.

To explain a reference above: Domain Registry of America, as well as register.com and the 800-pound gorilla that is Verisign/Network Solutions, had/has an interesting way of gathering new clients. They send you a "bill" for renewing the registration of your domain. Most people see a bill and pay it, not noticing that it isn't actually a bill, but really a stealthy way to transfer your domain from whatever registrar you use... to them. With stealth and under cover of darkness. Website owners with as much as one-half of an overall web clue have been known to fall for this, to my great wailing, rending of garments, tearing of hair, and gnashing of teeth. Apparently this was fallen for in the case of two of the three domains, but only actually completed in one of them, which caused additional complication to slog through.

But many thanks to camwyn, pearlshadow, and dasubergeek, in order, for the curse used above. Grr! Asshat fucktards! (DRoA, not the aforementioned worthies!). Okay. back to the story.

Yeah. Definitely back from sick leave, thank You Universe.

P minus four days... and counting...

-- Lorrie

Comments

Re:

[temve.livejournal.com]

Post - and the e-mail's in your inbox, along with the millions of others :)

Looks like I'll be staying with Raven for some of that time too, so you'll get your sleeping-in time without me ghosting around your house being on a weird time zone! ;)

But yes, meet we must!