Blogging

Blogging

MS, Blogging Snakes – Rats, Traps, and Zaps

This blog is by no means what would be considered a successful blog in terms of ratings.  I get excited when someone comments for goodness sakes! But that said, it serves my purposes,  I have shared with a few great people whom I call friends – internet friends – and I can read older posts of mine and take a trip down memory lane – a short one I know.

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A blog after all is an online journal, a written record of personal experiences and observation.  So what is up with all the finger pointing, mean spirited comments, personal attacks, etc. in many sectors of the blogging community? I have been hacked before,  relieved nasty emails, and once someone taking offense to a post I made actually showed up at my home.  So what is that eh?  Most of these things came out of posts that were of a political theme or current event.

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Now, since being diagnosed with MS a whole new can of sneaky snake worms have appeared. Some on message boards, some in forum discussions, and yep some bloggers. Once again, I am new to this “community” and have spent the last 7 months lurking around forums and reading the blogs representative of the whole MS blogger community. Some blogs were so over the top either religiously (if you are not well you don’t believe enough) while others push cures ( bee stings, diets, goo roo’s , some for free and some for a fee.

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Come on folks! I have enough of a time getting my brain and body to function on some level of normalcy to weed through all this rubbish.   I don’t choose to use the DMD’s but if you do I respect your choices. I believe that positive thought/attitude can go a long way but I do not believe that someone having a bad time is neccesarily negative – like I don’t get up in the morning in pain because I had negative thinking – it is usually a balled up muscle. I sure don’t set myself up to go  out to get lost and confused so I can pull a poor me.

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I have read many blogs full of hope, humor, and information.  I have read some that frankly just piss me the F off. Seems that some of the ones I like are getting a dose of snakes  –

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I don’t get it? if you don’t like a particular blog – then stop reading it!

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If you don’t like someones comment on your blog unless it is nasty, threatening (other than to your purse), or you just don’t like the person who left the comment – why delete it? I admit that sometimes I don’t post a comment because I can not figure out if it is spam or not – but I dont not approve a comment because I think the persons point of view sucks.

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Then again I do not get a lot of comments anyways.  But this is a journal for me really and those who share in my journal journey with me are welcome.

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On a side note, the ants are not as bad now, I think I have just about gotten their tiny butts irradicated. On a more pressing issue, the dog food left out next door is attracting freaking RATS!!!!!!!!!! I saw one in the back porch as Annie and Catfish tried to catch it I was freaking out – augh no dont get that yucky dirty creature into you jaws. Oh gads. B and T are here this weekend again so we all went to the hardware store and picked up three electronic traps – cause I so am not using poison as it could hurt my woofy dogs.  So here is to hoping the traps go zap in the night.

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I dislike wild rats, the cute pet ones are OK, but the ugly ones in the ghetto here are so unwelcomed.  We have all garbage cans sealed tight, leave no food out, etc, now if only the freaking neighbor would get a clue.  The rats are running from their yard along the common fence and have dug a few routes to our small yard and have apparently gnawed into the shed. The ate the leaves off my fake ficus tree I stored in there – so somewhere some baby rats are snuggled all up in the leaves of my defunct tree. Oh happy joy joy what a delightful thought. I am so glad to contribute to their warmth and well being -NOT!!!!

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On the funny side, B accidentally turned on the trap while loading the batteries.  I heard a zap noise, B jumped, and as I was looking at him I saw the hairs on his arm stand up – the look on his face – priceless.

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My DingBat SQL Moment

Sometimes you can just outsmart yourself. I do this a lot lately. I spend the afternoon deactivating all my plugins, removing all the used widgets, went to the basic default theme, and took a coffee break. I then tried to access my database via the PHPMyAdmin application. Of course, as usual, my yahoo dashboard made me reinstall it again. Once connected to the database I deleted all table entries that were left over from long ago used plugins. So far, so good. I then changed back to the theme I am using, and individually activated on plug in at a time checking if the theme would break in IE. After checking every plugin, every widget, the blog was not broken on IE anymore WOO HOO I am thinking.
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I read my newsreader feeds and then went back to the blog. Instead of a login page I got the dreaded unable to connect with the database error. Eh? I have not done a thing. Maybe it was a cookie thing so it worked and then when I came back it was broken?
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Went back to PHPAdmin and guess what – no connect to the database. After much help file reading etc. I came to the conclusion the mysql was just not there.
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I finally gave up and called the help desk. Usually this is not a good thing – push button – then the next button – hold -listen to awful music – hold – and so it goes. But, this time when I did get a tech they were actually nice – nice and helpful. After I convinced him that I thought the database the actual MySQL was gone he looked and went ugh did you delete it? He said he would have the engineers give me a call in the next 24hrs.
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Now, I am not wanting to wait no? So I chatted it up with him and finally convinced him that I really wanted the database reset. He was not wanting to do this as it really is a site reset and he thought I would get wacky I am sure if my site went bye bye. I explained and convinced him that I had backups and would not mind restoring everything. Site reset. Passwords verified to work -all is good.
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I restored my database for WordPress and viewed my site – yeah – it is all there up except maybe a few comments that were left after the backup. Dinner, television, time to write a post. Now I go to log on and it says: no such user password whatevers. …
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I open the database and find that the tables do not have all the rows like my other sites database – mysteriously missing: user meta data and users. Well, I guess if the database say I don’t exist …..
So, more reading, going nuts, I found an old backup I did that was text and scrolled through a zillion lines till I luckily found the table entries for the missing data. I followed some instructions I found on the net and recreated the entries. Re importing the backup was no joy so I had to do it via the sql quires.
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All looks good for now except – AUGH the dang theme is broken in IE again – the Gods have spoken – it is gonna stay that way. So get Firefox, Netscape, Chrome, or deal with it LOL.
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So to Ranehir in India – thank you – you were super – you were the best tech I have ever dealt with. I sent a letter to your boss telling them how great you were too.
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To Me: how the heck did I delete MySQL???? I think I am turning into a dingbat. Like Edith. And I just noted that all my categories are gone – – – Ding Bat – – –