Slogging Along

This week, the focus has been on trying to update the website my mother and cousin had me set up for my late uncle's artwork, Shades of Zade. The past year it has been languishing, as the current webhost has horrific customer service, and I couldn't get the site updated. Never, never, never use Name2Host. They truly suck donkey balls. Metaphorically, of course. I switched to HostMonster, for hosting at least, and they are awesome! Today, out of the blue, a real, live, human person called me to confirm the switch and see if I had any questions. Wow! I need to figure out how to switch the domain to them, as well, because they've been so amazingly easy to use. I mean, I found the information and got the site switched over and working in less than a day. And that's on Laura Work Time, meaning 20 minutes here and there in the afternoon, in between playing with the boys, feeding them, trying to get our computer printer to work so I could print out something for Hutton's school, etc.

I still have some snags on the site to work out, as I made it several years ago on FrontPage, which is now pretty outdated, and I can't get some things working right, as I forgot what very little I ever knew about HTML within a year of making the site. My main issue is to get the domain away from Sucktastic Servers, er, Name2Host, but they conveniently enough do not return emails or phone calls. I tried to transfer the domain last year, and it didn't go through. This year, I started a month in advance, and so far, Name2Host has not responded to any of my requests. I think their modus operandi is, "Don't ever engage in customer contact after signing them into Domain ownership. That way, when the domain is up for re-enrollment, they can't transfer it away because there's no way to do it without us. They'll have to re-enroll, rather than letting the domain run out and be charged a lot more to get it back." Sigh. Yes, Name2Host, you truly outdo yourself in douchbaggery. I'm going to write my fifth email today asking for the EPP authorization code so I can transfer the domain. Yeah, I'm sure this one will be answered.

Other than that, I'm looking for a pet/house sitter to come out for the holidays to watch the brood. I figured that would be cheaper and easier than taking them all to a kennel. Plus, I don't think Sally will be very excited to go to a kennel ever again after last year., when she ended up with a herniated disk in her neck. Sure, it could have happened anywhere, but it happened at a kennel, so after paying the $700 for the kennel, we had to pay $4500 for vet bills. Ahh. Good times. Hopefully this year, we won't have pet bills that cost more than our holiday travels.

We're going to go to Nashville again for Christmas, and probably drive to Charlotte to meet our new niece, and down to Pensacola to visit Hubby's family. I'm already dreading it a bit, but I'd be bummed if we didn't visit family over the holidays. As it is, this week has felt very lonely, as Hutton's ABA therapist #1 is on maternity leave, and #2 went on vacation and will be gone next week. The week following is Thanksgiving, when Hutton is out of school the whole week, but it's too expensive to travel two months in a row, so we'll stay here. I miss my dad at these times, as he and my stepmother used to come up here for Thanksgiving, and I like spending holidays with family, but this year it will just be me, Hubby, and the boys again. I think I'm getting the winter blahs already. The fact that it's gray and almost dark at 4:00 might have something to do with it.

Oh, Hutton and Harrison decided to fix the lights. We have some old, crappy track lights in our office that have been burned out for a long time. The boys stacked up some plastic storage boxes in a very precarious way, and have their tool kit out. It's very cute. At least until the plastic boxes crash to the ground.