Tuesday, April 28, 2015, Country House
It has been a grand day!
The paperwork is almost, but not quite, under control. Just a few more piles to go! I need to move a few of the files to secure locations in anticipation of people wandering through our house when it is for sale. The problem is, when I move them, I forget where they were moved to! I am still thinking about it, and plan on recording the list of what I moved on the computer, so I can refer to the list when I cannot find things I need.
The sun shone brightly all day, and it was warmish, 17C outside. By mid-morning the windows were flung open, letting in the cool breeze, birdsong, the whispers of pine boughs, the rustle of dry leaves. On a day like this is hard to think about selling this house. One thought about winter though, and I am hard at work getting it ready to sell. Someone belongs in this place, and I hope they find their way home!
Mist enjoyed having the windows open. She awoke from her nap, on my easy chair, to sniff the fresh air, then followed her nose to the open sliding door. There she sat and groomed herself, content. She is a happy cat.
Over the winter the new stain on the deck peeled. The peeling stain was unsightly. The vacuum cleaner, with the carpet beater bar, did a great job of lifting off the peeling paint, to leave a flat surface.
Some of my sites garner an infinitesimal income from ads via Google and other ad companies based in the USA. To be paid these very small sums (we are talking in the realm of $10 US) the tax forms for the IRS must be filled out, and filed with the companies that pay out for the ads. This legislation came into being in 2010, but hasn’t affected me until now because it has been that long since I have been owed a payment. The process took a large chunk of the day! That “paperwork” is done now though, thank goodness.
Next on the agenda is to move this site to the root directory, to comply with Googles new mobile policy. Right now the old html site is served from the root directory. It needs to be moved to a sub-directory, and this newer compliant blog software moved to the root. Sigh. It is a big job. I’ve done it a few times already this winter, and I do get better at it, but it is still a time consuming task.
The URL for my daily entries will change slightly when I accomplish all this, and I am hoping to manage a seamless redirect to the new file structure after the switch.
The process has begun but won’t get into full swing until tomorrow, when I am more alert. This requires focus, and by evening my focus has fled. I could make myself do it, successfully, but why force myself!
Attila is spending his evening finishing the job of replacing the bathroom floor. Mist is in there “helping” him. He is extremely patient with her, even though she insists on sitting on the exact spot where he needs to work. She knows how to get attention, does our Mist.
Later this week, Attila will replace the malfunctioning water pump. I am really looking forward to that update!
Thursday, 30 April, 2015, Country House
I finished the paperwork yesterday, although Attila has a few odds and ends that can only be processed by him, and they are on hold until he has a break from sprucing the place up for the realtor.
The bathroom floor was completed Tuesday night.
Attila and I spent Wednesday evening attending his appointment in town and shopping for supplies. He shops for himself at grocery stores, because he eats at least four times as much as I do, and his tastes are quite different than mine. He stocked up on condiments. I think Attila may be the condiment king! He bought sauces, pickled peppers, and olives. I like bland food, Attila loves acidic and hot spicy food. I cook basic recipes and Attila adds his own flavouring. I eat the basic food, and enjoy it. Attila is now stocked up on what he regards as taste bud essentials. I bought a package of mushrooms for myself, which were on sale. Otherwise, everything I need is here at the house.
Yesterday, Wednesday, I attempted to clone and move the Maggie Turner blog. I used a plugin for the server software. It was a complete mess! The plugin rewrote files to a ubiquitous user called nobody, making them inaccessible to me. That necessitated some interaction with the domain host, who adjusted the ownership on the files so I could access them. It took all day, and at the end of the day I was a little bit further behind than I had been in the morning.
Today I finished cleaning up the mess on the server, and abandoned the cloning plugin, choosing instead to do a manual move from the sub-directory to the root. That worked, except that I skipped a step, which caused untold grief. I had to work backwards, back to the beginning, then start again, including the missed step. Everything worked fine, except for a few of the pages. I searched everywhere trying to figure out what the problem was! I even ended up poking around in the mysql database, to see if the field for the url was correct. It was. In the end I tracked it down to the .htaccess file, corrected that, and it all worked as it should.
NEW URL for Maggie Turner: Page by Page is http://www.maggieturner.net
I hadn’t been getting any hits from search engines in the last while, so I decided not to bother with the permanent redirects, except for the main site, and let Google take its time to re-spider the site and correct the records.
Attila has come home, we have eaten a quiet meal of leftovers, and spent the rest of the evening puttering with our respective projects. Attila is tweaking the bathroom floor project. I have done a mountain of dishes. I’ve paid some bills. The evening is beginning to lower, the eggshell blue sky is dappled with clouds, some of them dark, promising overnight rain.
After carefully watching Mist’s activities, I took advantage of her jaunt to stretch her legs. I cleaned my easy chair today, which is now Mist’s easy chair. It was matted with cat hair, and bits of loose litter. Mist sniffed at the clean surface when she returned for her nap, looked disgruntled, settled into the chair, and went to sleep. All is well in Mist’s world tonight.
Just a last little note to say that the cursed auto-correct has ceased to torment me. I did not find one single erroneous word in this entry, not one! Maybe auto-correct got better with the last few operating system updates, or maybe I was successful in disabling it. As long as it stays gone, I don’t need to know what happened to it!
Worldly Distractions
Weather
Country House
17°C
Date: 7:00 PM EDT Thursday 30 April 2015
Condition: Cloudy
Pressure: 101.2 kPa
Visibility: 16 km
Temperature: 16.5°C
Dewpoint: 6.3°C
Humidity: 51%
Wind: WNW 11 km/h
Quote
“Anonymity is the truest expression of altruism.”
Eric Gibson
*grin* I had to smile at the connection about the hot and spicy foods. I don’t like my foods truly bland, opting usually for spiciness between mild and medium, but DH is a spice eater. At his place on our table is Tony Chachere’s Creole Seasoning. On the spice shelves are cayenne and hot paprika. And just this weekend we came home with the new French’s Hot Classic Yellow Mustard, which also contains cayenne. DH says it’s a little hot but not really hot. 😉
You’re definitely a bit hardier than I am – or maybe it’s just that I’m downstairs most of the day. Our upstairs was 74F, so quite comfortable even with the kitchen window open a bit. But downstairs was quite cool and I got rather chilled.
You’re definitely further along with websites than I am. SQL and I don’t even meet in passing. I’d have to hand that over to DH, who works in that for programming.
I have an IRS form I had to fill out for one site this year, but for my designing work, not for Google Ads. I’ve made a grand total of 68 cents on my Google ads in the last 6-8 months. LOL! All the same, I will have to fill out US taxes this year. That’s one of the next things on my agenda. Fortunately, I have a 2 month dispensation due to living outside the US.
Sounds like you’re just about caught up with all you had to do in heading up north. Yay!
Teri, you found the entry! I hadn’t sent out an email message to the mailing list, because I am only allowed one a day, and had sent one out to announce the new web address.
I love having the windows open, and find that if I bundle up in heavy socks, a down vest, and a scarf, I can manage 17C for a little while. It was a bit warmer than that I think, although the outdoor temperature was 17, the sun was bright, the south facing slider allowed it to heat the deck by the open door, and the interior of the house where it shone on the floor and furniture. By early evening the house was shut up tight to hold the heat.
Teri, I worked in IT and developed a taste for it. I ran a LAN at home with four computers for Terra and her friends when she was a teenager, and I ran my own server for a while, from home, but decided it was too much bother because I had to watch the security myself and it took up a lot of time that I wanted to spend on other things. I don’t know everything (no one does), and so far I’ve been able to teach myself anything I needed to know very quickly.
Almost there with the web sites! I have a few links here on this site to update, which won’t take too long, and one more ad company to deal with, which may take some time as they have always been problematic. Then it is on to the genealogy book!
If you put a box for the paperwork down at the bottom of your dirty clothes hamper, I guarantee you that no one will go looking for them there! And when you do the wash each week, you will see that box and remember… xox
Good idea Bex! It would be a mighty thin layer of dirty clothes after the stack of files went into the basket! We will have to have his and her laundry baskets to do expand our storage!
ROFL! about expanding to his and hers clothes baskets to expand file storage.
Maggie, I usually follow links to your base journal page from my or other journals/blogs. That’s why I had no problem finding the new post. I don’t receive emails for the blogs as that would just add to my burgeoning email box. Instead I do rounds of the blogs when I have time.
We have a LAN set up here for my and DH’s computer that also links to 2 other computers that are down most of the time.
I think our temps here are supposed to hit 20C (68F?) this weekend. That will definitely be time to open the windows.