Generally speaking, it’s not a good idea to tell your mom about your blog. It puts a certain cramp in your style in this age of full disclosure. The eternal question — what would my mother think? — loses much of its mystery when she tells you next time you go home to stock up on provisions. Sometimes, though, it’s entirely worth it.

Your blog adds joy to my life. Thanks!!! I will pay you back with the little balls of Swiss cheese.

– Mom, recently, in an email

A few days ago the Bulletin of Atomic Scientists moved the nuclear clock forward to 11:55PM, which means that we are five minutes from nuclear annihilation.  I find this kind of alarmist brinkmanship surprising, coming from scientists, though it has been moved seventeen times before since 1945, all the way up to 11:58PM. So I suppose in the scheme of things, we are fine — in fact twice as fine as before, when we were not fine.

Generally speaking, PETA and I get along okay.  I’m not a vegetarian, but I don’t like leather or fur and I support most pro-puppy initiatives.  However, PETA’s 404 error page freaks me right out:

4. Our Web server may be malfunctioning. When stun guns and “killing machines” in slaughterhouses malfunction, live chickens get dumped into tanks of scalding-hot water (for feather removal) while they are completely conscious, and workers cut the hooves off terrified, conscious cows.

Nothing says crazy like segueing from web servers to chicken torture.

For a while there, I was not a college student!  I managed to get dropped from all my classes by not paying tuition on time, proving once again that I fall apart when not constrained by to-do lists.  I’m glad to be in college again.
Ice Bat the UglyDoll has tapped right into the maternal center of my defenseless brain.  It needs to be cuddled!  I am uniquely qualified to provide this cuddling.

I updated my webdesign portfolio to include a pretty pattern and no information whatsoever. I also recently made a website for an Austin life coach.

So it turns out that high-pitched squealing noise was not a critical hard drive error or even my computer crying out for comfort.  Actually, my microphone was on, and the squeak was the feedback loop.  This was all very embarrassing.

Buying domain names is addictive. Now I own amoderngirl.net (abortively considered for this website) and maiasaur.us, a duckbilled dinosaur. I have plans for Maiasaur.us! You will see.

My laptop is making a high-pitched squealing noise at random intervals. I am concerned. I’ve backed everything up, of course. To be honest, I’d probably have just put up with it, preferring to have my nerves ransacked by the noise than to live without my laptop for a week, but since classes are starting next week and I am unwilling to suffer squeaky indignities while taking notes in class, I’m going to have to send it in to IBM.

Once again, I forget about domain renewal and this website crashes and burns around January 4th. I blame Netrillium for my problems. Their obnoxiousness as a hosting provider (e.g. renewing my hosting for me even though I cancelled it last year, ignoring my increasingly plaintive helpdesk tickets) is exceeded only by the obnoxiousness of their website, which plays a little drumroll every time it refreshes. Lately, I have been working a lot with Lunarpages, for a client, which comes with lots of little perks and amazing tech support, but also costs four times as much as my hosting provider, 1and1.com.  1and1 is pretty much the Wal-Mart of webhosting, except along with being dirt-cheap and as outsourced as possible, they’re also dependable and don’t annihilate small-town economies.  So I am pleased with them.