Frustrations? Yeah, I got 'em

As opposed to everybody else, whose lives are nothing but one series of unencumbered splendiferous moments after another. But this is all about meeeeeeeeeeee!

It's not all that bad a situation, and, if you apply Dunn's Third World Rule to it, isn't even worthy of noticing. But I've always been more of a preacher than a practicer when it comes to advice, and I'm not correctly applying DTWR. So sue me.

What it is is that I'm having trouble with some domain mapping over at The Other Blog. Since that's where I bring up retro things to snark on them, I used my incredible grasp of the obvious and bought the domain name retrosnark.com a while back. Yesterday, I decided to take the plunge and make that name redirect to TOB. TypePad, which hosts TOB, has an exhaustive set of how-to pages, even if they're not written all that clearly. But I soldiered on, making sure the Buckley eigenvalues were properly calibrated to the molecular rhombus, applied L'Hopital's Rule to the repeating squidget denominator, and of course deleted the Krelmer flange remainder. (That last part goes without saying.)

And lo and behold, everything worked! If you typed dowhatnow.typepad.com in your browser, you got my site. (If you typed it in your coffee, however, no such luck. ) If you typed in www.retrosnark.com, it worked. If you were less industrious and left off the www part, and just typed retrosnark.com, it worked. Blow the gardenias and sound the crumpets! All is well in the cyber portion of Dunnville.

So I dashed off a Tweet to tell everyone that happy days were here again, that we all now had renewed reason to jump out of bed in the morning, and that, no doubt, the economy would soon be thrumming on the head of those demons Recession and Layoff.

At which point, as you've probably already inferred, everything went to a bad place. The old URL led you to a page that didn't display properly, and the new URLs just led you to cyberlimbo. I believe that the Firefox error message said that the problem "would never resolve."

So, it's off to TypePad tech support. A scant SIX HOURS after firing off an email, I got a speedy reply. Using the tips the helpful (she really was) tech sent me, I was able to get the old URL to display properly. While the new ones still don't work, they at least just give you a blank page, instead of the "You are totally hosed, dude" error message they were generating. "Hopefully, that will be resolved today," he typed, gritting his teeth and willing himself not to pound the keys hard enough to melt them. Have I mentioned that TypePad is a paid blog host, not a free one? Because that's kinda relevant.

On a happier note, Jacob has now received his trial by fire, canine-wise, and passed with flying colors. Two trials, actually. Tuesday night, I was taking him for his afternoon perambulation (I love that word) when we approached the yard of a neighbor down the street. Said neighbor, Tim, had his Boston Terrier, Otis, out in the yard. Otis was indulging in his own afternoon perambulation, so to speak, and as soon as he had finished perambulating on the yard, he lit out for Jacob, as fast as his little legs would propel him.

Now, I'm familiar with Bostons, since I used to work with a woman who was as crazy about them as I am about Pekingeses. I know that most of them are friendly, but I also know that they're prone to getting a wee bit too excited at times, and even a 10-month-old raised with 12 paws around him at all times can get intimidated by that much snuffling canine attention, especially when that attention is coming at him at Mach 1. But Jacob didn't so much as flinch. In fact, he leaned forward in the stroller to get a better look at Otis. He's daddy's little canine-loving boy

While this was going on, Tim was of course sprinting after Otis, who only wanted to lick Jacob, not gnaw on him, and caught up with him shortly thereafter, apologizing unnecessarily and profusely. (Personal note to Tim: Hope everything goes well today with the birth of Lydia Grace.)

Yesterday, same afternoon perambulation (I love...), different dogs. Hoover and Gustav, two Basset Hounds we're familiar with, were out and snuffling around their yard. Neither dog is what you call a rocket, motivation-wise (Hoover's pulse rate is measured in presidential terms, so laidback is he), but they're both good-sized Bassets, and they both had to check out Jacob in his stroller. Again, no problem whatsoever. I love this boy. We're gonna have fun.