Busy Week

Home Front

My husband still doesn't always get it, Bless His Heart, and when he arrives home he most often thinks that I haven't done anything because the house is still messy just as it was in the morning. This will be chapter four in my book Never Marry A Scientist. These guys, and gals, just don't seem to understand regular life. Unless you are a Nobel Laureate they just won't respect you, and if you do pull that off, they will undoubtedly talk about you behind your back and say that you were actually the second person or group to come up with THE idea and so and so should have gotten the award rather than you.

Actually Hubby is sweet, even though he thinks having German Apple Streudal from La Baguette Bakery counts as having fruit for breakfast.

Anyway, Hubby went back to school this week. So I actually got a few things accomplished. He is a teacher and researcher and has been writing grant proposals and articles and conducting business, loudly, over the phone from home between semesters. But the new semester has started, thank the Goddess!

Web Tech

I found the freaking #&@ problem that was causing my BoomHer.net site to occasionally, like half the time, refuse to load for me and others. Just try launching a beta test “magazine” type site with that problem. I double dawg dare you! I have been working on the site since late November. I heaved a huge sigh of relief after “dns glue” issue was resolved… but let me tell you about the last interaction with my hosting company through customer support chat before I learned about glue and stickiness.

Me: I am having problems with DNS settings (Dynamic Name Server settings) and it is causing intermittent loading problems. This is my 4th chat with Big Name Hosting Company Customer Service. Last time, yesterday, I was told that the problem must be server load, but the customer rep had given me several things to read and I have now done that and I can say will all assurances that everything is fine with my nameservers, the registry of my name servers through eNom, and I have run the diagnostics she suggested and am pasting those here: I inserted several lines of diagnostics that essentially said, “you are having problems with your DNS settings.

CSC: Hi I'm Tiffany. [ Does everyone in the Indian sub-continent service industry customer representative have to adopt a “Valley Girl” name upon being hired?] How can I help?

Me: I am having intermittent problems from something in my DNS settings

CSC: What does your screen look like?

Me: It looks like my web page.

CSC: I'm seeing it fine as well.

Me: I said it was intermittent.

CSC: Have you checked your internet connection?

Me: Yes. It's fine. [We're on chat you nincompoop, and bits and bytes are zipping back and forth instantaneously around the planet with no problem, how does my internet connection seem to you?]

CSC: It may be a problem with your registrar.

Me: [cutting and pasting from initial description of the problem] …the customer rep had given me several things to read and I have now done that and I can say will all assurances that everything is fine with my nameservers, the registry of my name servers through eNom

CSC: Who is your registrar?

Me: eNom. [Did you have to go to school to learn to act this dumb, or were you born that way.]

CSC: Have you checked with them?

Me: [Banging my head into the screen while politely typing.] I have 43 domains registered through enom as a reseller, and registered my own name servers there, and manage my own account. No other sites are having this problem. I just RE-checked everything before starting this chat with you.

CSC: [After a long pause during which time I think a supervisor became Tiffany] Sounds like a DNS glue problem.

Me: I don't know what glue means in this case but I know that something doesn't match up in my hosting files and settings that is causing a problem. I know this because the informed rep I chatted with during Chat 2 told me this. I have looked through all the records that I know how to look through and I just need you to help me find the place where the DNS records have an error! I can't find it.

CSC: Let me try to fix that.

Me: Thank you.

CSC: [five minutes later] I found X and Y [not the real record names] names that did not match and corrected the error.

Me: Thank you. I and some others will test it out today and see if the problem is fixed.

Me: [after another 2 minutes with no response from CSC. Chat customer reps usually remind me to rate them and get a copy of the chat by filling out the email blank in the chat evaluation form, but not this time. ] Gotta go. Thanks again.

App of the Week

Everyone wants my $5 or $10 a month for the best app every writer/businessman/marketer ever saw, but I am wont to try things before buying and to only purchase things I wil actually use that make my life easier or takes me to a new level. I love HootSuite Pro. It works better for me than TweetDeck. I work from my iPad and my Desktop and not so much from my phone. (The iPad is easier on the old eyes than than the phone.) If it doesn't drain my Blackberry's battery like other apps when I eventually use it for emergency tweets and posts, I have not tried that version yet, I may sing its praises even louder.

Crap. It is Saturday and I have to go discover surfaces in my house and maybe even clean some, but I had wanted to tell you about all sorts of other stuff, but I've run out of time and my bath water is getting cold.