I updated the backend on this site two nights ago, and it seems to have gone pretty smoothly. I also updated all the other sites on this server over the last couple of days (though not Bryan’s, because his template is too big for a simple upgrade - he’s not using it right now anyway.) As a result, the “next/previous” buttons at the very bottom of the page now work properly everywhere. That means that if you search for something, you’re not restricted to the five most recent hits anymore, which is a nice bonus.

What’s kind of funny though, is that the comment spammers found the new version of the site right away, and the new breed of comment spam that I was getting wasn’t exactly as nice as the texas holdem goofs. Once again, none of it got through, but there were about a dozen that I had to moderate.

The commenting system has changed a little bit too, which means that maybe more comments will wind up in the moderation queue at first. There’s a whitelist feature, so once you’ve successfully had a comment approved you shouldn’t have to wait for me to approve future comments. Of course that would be really easy to manipulate, but I’m still running all my other anti-comment spam arsenal, so if someone decided to turn evil on me, they’d probably still have no luck.

What else is new? Well, our new dishwasher has turned out to be a real lemon - the fine folks who sold it to us are replacing it early next week because it doesn’t do anything anymore (other than sit there and take up space.) Unfortunately it was discovered to be broken when it was full and ready to be run, so I got to pull all the dishes out of it and wash them by hand. Wasn’t too bad though. Imagine what life must have been like before such modern conveniences ;)

I remember when I was a little kid, and my mom would talk about how they didn’t have TV (or whatever technology) when she was a kid, and I’d think - wow, life must have been a lot different then. Well, looking back to when I was a kid, we didn’t have a lot of the things that we take for granted now - computers being the primary one, but there are lots of other things, like digital cameras, mp3 players, cell phones, satellite tv, dvd players - heck the VCR was a major revolution in my lifetime. It’s hard to imagine what William’s list will look like when he’s approaching 30.

Simpson’s quote of the day: “And then they realized that they were no longer little girls…they were little women. (sniff)” - Moe