Posts made in June, 2010

WordPress 3 Upgrades – Smooooth.

Posted by Karin on Jun 25, 2010 in Wordpress | 0 comments

I’ve been doing script upgrades on our hosting servers, upgrading various & assorted versions of WordPress 2.x to WordPress 3.

One word: SMOOTH.

I don’t do a mass one-time operation that upgrades everybody at once. I know there are hosting co’s that have written custom scripts to do that. I don’t trust a mass script to touch & modify many websites without a person’s direct & express interaction. I believe it is imperative that a human being physically looks at the website post-upgrade to make sure it’s not broken… or if it is broken, to do some basic troubleshooting and let the site owner know what’s going on. Can you imagine opening your website one morning and finding it had been broken by an “upgrade” done by your hosting company?  UGGHHHH. No way do I want us doing that kind of thing. So I sit with my laptop, SPEED Channel on, and toggle back & forth between a terminal window and cPanel. Back, forth, back, forth. It is relaxing sort of “work” … to be honest, I don’t even consider it work.

But the actual upgrade process to WP 3 is as smooth and trouble-free as any of the version 2 upgrades were. I am really impressed with how the WP team built in so many core changes and updates, and yet they didn’t break themes, and they didn’t break the essential functionality of the script! I also haven’t yet run into a plug-in that it has broken (at least, not that I use… but I try very hard to use as few plug-ins as possible).

It literally has not added any extra steps or any work to the process. It is just like any other upgrade. :) Start-to-finish, it takes a smidge over 60 seconds to upgrade the script. Of course that doesn’t include going back & forth, marking things off on the spreadsheet, sending upgrade notifications, or cleaning out extra copies of old versions folks have tucked away here & there. (Backups are great, but there’s no technical reason to keep an old version of a script. I promise. *grin*)

If you are an Agile Hosting customer and are running WordPress, we’re happy to upgrade your WordPress to version 3 for FREE! Just open a support ticket here and we’ll take care of it right away. It’s fast, it’s easy, it’s FREE :) and it won’t break your stuff. ##

BP Oil Spill traces straight to Bush/Cheney

Posted by Karin on Jun 7, 2010 in Oil Spill | 0 comments

There is plenty of blame to go around when it comes to the Gulf Oil Spill, but I’m seeing a lot of people getting on the DEATH TO BP bandwagon without giving the forefathers of the disaster any due credit. As explained in this article, although President Obama has plenty of his own errors to answer to, this isn’t “Obama’s Katrina.” This is Bush’s Katrina #2:

Vice President Dick Cheney, fresh from his days at Halliburton, had presided over the weakening of drilling regulations, including the exclusion of remote-shut-off switches (commonly used in the North Sea oil fields), which might have prevented the disaster. The Bush Administration’s petro-bias and antigovernment sensibility soiled the Minerals Management Service (MMS), the agency charged with regulating offshore drilling.

An outstanding (if uncomfortable) analysis by Joe Klein at TIME.COM:

How to Give a Cat a Pill

Posted by Karin on Jun 3, 2010 in Cats, Cats, Cats | 0 comments

How to Give a Cat a Pill

1. Pick up cat and cradle it in the crook of your left arm as if holding a baby. Position right forefinger and thumb on either side of cat’s mouth and gently apply pressure to cheeks while holding pill in right hand.  As cat opens mouth, pop pill into mouth. Allow cat to close mouth and swallow.
2. Retrieve pill from floor and cat from behind sofa. Cradle cat in left arm and repeat process.
3. Retrieve cat from bedroom, and throw soggy pill away.
4. Take new pill from foil wrap, crad le cat in left arm, holding rear paws tightly with left hand. Force jaws open and push pill to back of mouth with right forefinger. Hold mouth shut for a count of ten.