They Multiply Like Rats
I just bought another domain name. Actually, three. Three more domain names.
Why? For the love of baked bread, what am I going to do with three more domain names?
You don’t have to answer that; I already know: Nothing. Not. A. Thing.
One’s purely an investment, because somehow the fact that no one has bothered to buy this domain name yet has convinced me it has actual resale value. Heh. I know; logic never was my strong suit.
One’s brand protection. Not that I have a brand, mind you, but if I ever got one, it would be protected.
And the other… the other. It’s a whim. Nothing more. I didn’t need it. I don’t have any real plans for it. My hosting partners will probably mutiny if I attempt to host one more personal site on our account, so I can’t really even do anything with it.
But I own it.
You are not as anonymous as you think you are
My websites run a popular statistics program. It came with my hosting package; it’s not like I went out and found a program to do this. But consider:
If you are viewing my sites from a college campus, I can generally tell which building the computer you used was in. For some colleges, I can tell the room and/or the computer number. For others, I can tell your college user name.
If you click a link on another site to visit my site, I know which site you came from. If that site was a search engine, I know what search term you entered to find my site.
If I look at the raw logs, I know exactly which pages you viewed, in what order, and how long you stayed on each one.
If you have a static IP address (i.e. just about everyone except dial-up users), I can tell how many times you visit my site.
I also have a pretty good idea of what operating system and browser you were using. If I could be bothered to install a plugin, I’d know if you have javascript turned on or off. (Of course, if you’re like me, you set Firefox up to tell websites it’s IE. Just because.)
I can map the location of your IP address. Generally, that means I can map the location of your internet service provider. However, if you’re using a local provider, that may mean that I’ll get a city within fifty or sixty miles of your house.
All this from the information your browser automatically broadcasts… feel like you’re being stalked yet?
I’m not saying you need to be paranoid, I’m just saying that if the only reason you’re willing to say a certain thing on a website is because you’re “anonymous” and won’t get caught… you’re wrong. Unless, of course, you know how to cover your tracks, in which case you’re right… until someone better at uncovering those tracks than you were at covering them up steps into the picture. Then you’re wrong again.
(This is not, by the way, directed at anyone in particular; I just had to look up some info in the raw logs of a site recently and realized how much information I have at my fingertips. So… What are we going to do tonight, Brain? The same thing we do every night, Pinky: Try to take over the world. Bwah-haha!)
But seriously: the .net thing
This post refers to an old domain name that I no longer own or use.
When I bought this domain, the idea was to really capitalize on the whole .net concept. You know: a multi-faceted website. Not, to pull a contrast completely out of thin air and without any basis in reality, an irrelevant blog.
An irrelevant blog could be part of the multifaceted, glittering site I was imagining, but there was also supposed to be other sections.
Mmm.
“Other sections.”
You see my problem right there: I had no idea what I was going to do with this website. Given the state of things right now, I suppose we’d have to go with practicalities, rather than dreams.
So one section would have to be the irrelevant blog, but to counteract its inane ramblings, there would have to be a very important, serious blog as well. I think I’d have to call it “Pookie’s Perch.” It’d be one of those… you know things… where the person pretends to write as the pet: “My slave slept in until 5 p.m. today. Amateur. I put in an extra three hours before I got up and shredded her socks.”
An irrelevant blog, Pookie’s Perch, the recipe section. Theoretically I could get going on the One Woman Reading thing (that sound you hear is my laughter echoing over the miles and, for that matter, hours and minutes).
If I were truly ambitious I could resurrect “The Professor” and I seem to remember an abandoned “Adopt a Poet” thing as well. Wasn’t I writing The Procrastinator’s Dictionary?
That’s what I call a .net site: completely, utterly random sections. Only, except for the One Woman Reading thing, I can’t imagine anyone really wanting to read any of them on a regular basis, and I’m not convinced anyone else wants to read OWR either.
Which leaves us… here. Exactly where we are. A .net domain relegated to single purpose irrelevancy.
To make myself feel better, maybe I’ll get going on Pookie’s Perch. I know MMM, at least, is dying to read a regular cat blog.
On a related note: NaNoWriMo. The Novel I’m Never Going to Write. It could happen.
Quit laughing—or I really will write Pookie’s blog.
Now We’re Cooking with Oil
All right. I’ve imported all the posts I’m planning to import. From 400-some posts, I picked 30 or 40. Even for me, that’s a lot of irrelevant material to cull.
Comments… comments will take longer. I can’t import all of them (there are 1000+ in the two databases, and I don’t have the software to auto-sort them for the posts I did bring over, convert them to the new database structure, and then save them here. Nor do I have time to do it all manually.)
I’m sorry… I really do value your comments, but they aren’t all going to make it into this new system. Some of them will, but not all.
Please don’t hate me.
What in the world happened?
Nothing. Everything. I don’t know. I decided to try WordPress. This could turn into a disaster or be a really good thing.
Why am I doing this? Good question. For now, let’s go with “because I can” and/or “according to the developers, I can do something I really wanted to do with my old site but hadn’t figured out how to do, so we’re going to try it and see. If it works, you’ll find out what that something is. And if it doesn’t work, you’ll never miss it, on account of how I didn’t have any way to implement it on the old site either.” If that’s not a good enough reason, I don’t know what is.
The plan is to bring over the most interesting of the old blog’s posts (and comments!) over to this blog. It’ll take time because I have to do it all manually, but that’s the plan.
Also, I’m currently using someone else’s theme on this blog because I can’t be bothered learning all WP’s features and figuring out their dreaded theme Loop at the same time. Eventually, I’ll create my own theme—that is also part of the plan.
Now, assuming it won’t take more than a day or two for me to figure out enough of WP’s features to get bored with the new system, which to do first: migrate old posts or redesign?