If you came here looking for this week’s Wordless Wednesday post, it’s here.

It’s a bit before six in the morning, and I should be sleeping. In fact, I was tired before one, but lingered online until Fuzzy came to bed around two, chatting with a friend. It’s been raining – a slow, gentle, soaking rain – pretty much constantly since about five yesterday afternoon, and since the temperature was in the mid seventies, I actually turned off the a/c, opened up the house, and let in the moist air and the sizzling sound of the rain falling into the pool, combined with the thicker, wetter sound of raindrops against leaves, cement, and wood.

We slept under fresh-from-the-dryer sheets until Zorro woke me up around four, asking to go out. It was still raining, and he doesn’t like to get his feet wet, but I knew if he had to pee badly enough, he’d deal with the wet. Apparently, this wasn’t a bladder emergency, because I tossed him gently outside, closed the door so he wouldn’t bolt right back in, and proceeded to watch him stare pointedly at the point where the sliding door meets the wall for five minutes, in that very focused chihuahua way of his.

I gave up, and let him back in, rubbed him down with a towel, and told him he was an impossible little dog, but I loved him anyway. I don’t know if he understands the words – dogs, like people, are capable of selective listening, and will respond to ‘treat’ and ‘walk’ in the same day they pretend not to understand the word ‘no.’

Walking back to the bedroom, I decided the house was stuffy, so I clicked the a/c back on. (Amazingly, our electric bill for August, the hottest month of 2007, so far, was almost $100 lower than usual. Because of this, I do not feel guilty about having the a/c set to my version of cool, instead of Fuzzy’s, though lately I’ve been really sensitive to cold. I wonder if that’s an unwritten side effect of alli.) I closed the bedroom window, took my own elimination break, and then crawled into bed.

At that point I realized there was actual thunder and lighting outside – of the sort that is not at all ominous, but rather like the weather is murmuring comforting thoughts. “Let your creativity shine,” the lightning says, in pale flickers, and the thunder adds, “and don’t worry so much if about what people like. Write what you like.” In my head, Michael “Worf” Dorn is the voice of the thunder.

I like to watch and listen to storms, and I was kind of awake at that point, and hungry, so I’ve been sitting up in bed since then, visiting Wordless Wednesday participants, and trying to use words and water to kill the hungry feeling, so I can snatch a couple more hours of sleep.

And on that note, I shall close the lid on the computer, snuggle up with Fuzzy, Zorro, and Miss Cleo, and see if there might not be time for another dream or two before I have to get up for real.

If you’ve been on the Internet for any length of time, you will, at some point, consider changing – or choosing – a hosting company for your website or blog. If you’re like me, you begin this process by polling your friends.

But what if you aren’t blessed with geeky friends? Or what if you’re turn between two of their recommendations? What do you do then? The answer is simple. You go to http://www.webhostingunleashed.com/, and use their newly re-tooled site to do some objective research.

Web Hosting Unleashed features a searchable database of web hosts – a host of Hosts – if you will. You can search by type (vps vs. reseller accounts, for example), or alphabetically, and even better than mere searching, you can also compare several hosts, to see how their features differ.

User opinion is a big part of this site, and I spent a good half-hour reading reviews of my own hosting company before I sat down to write this post, to see if what was posted meshed with my own experiences. By and large, it did, and I was happy to see that negative posts are represented, because it tells me Web Hosting Unleashed is about real information, and providing good service.

As I said, I’m not in the market to change web hosts – and I am blessed with a bunch of friends who are at least as geeky as me – but I’d recommend Web Hosting Unleashed to anyone seeking honest comparisons, and ease of use.

(WordlessWednesday is the next post down.)

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A slightly fictionalized account of What I Do For a Living, as told to my mother and aunt, via email..

One of the parts of my job is to write articles on command. I don’t usually get to pick the topic, just the angle. M2 (who is in charge of selling links) will email me and say, “I need 500 words about hybrid technology for a green website” or “Please write 1200 words about different anti-theft measures for cars.” Generally, my turnaround time is 4-8 hours, when I can easily research stuff on the ‘net.

On Thursday, M2 said, “I need you to write something technical about vintage pickup trucks for this website.” He gave me the URL, and I went and looked, and it was really overwhelmingly technical. Stuff like, “How to modify a flat six engine in a 1949 truck.” or “How to replace the hinge in the windshield of a 1941 truck.” I was a bit daunted, but I love a challenge. “Okay,” I said. “I’ll write something, but I need the weekend for something this specific.” Making my task even more difficult than I originally thought was the fact that the website in question, is THE AUTHORITY for restoring vintage pickups. Everyone links back to them. No pressure.

I did what anyone would. I begged a friend for help. “Rana,” I said to my friend who grew up in West Texas, and knows the difference between types of shotguns the way the rest of us know the difference between Dolce & Gabbana and DKNY. “Rana, I’m a city girl. You say ‘truck’ and I envision something with ‘FedEx’ emblazoned across the side. I have no clue what to write about – they’ve even covered upholstery.” (No pun intended.)

We brainstormed on and off over the weekend, and finally we hit upon an untouched subject. “Radios,” she said, “No one wants a truck without tunes.”

“Oh, good idea,” I said. “They were still using tubes back then, weren’t they? It was pre-transistor.”

So I fired up Firefox and Blingo, and found some information about radios and trucks, partly from some links Rana found, and partly from my mad Blingo skillz, and put together 381 words on “common technical problems with vintage truck radios,” including a lot of stuff about tubes and vibrations and capacitors…and as I was writing, I was back in Grandpa’s basement watching the wavy lines on the oscilloscope.

So what began as the assignment from hell ended up an interesting trip down memory lane.

Thanks, Rana.

I grew up watching MASH, and I remember very vividly an interview in which Alan Alda said that the dog tags the cast wore belonged to real soldiers. I thought that was cool. I also remember a time when dog tags were used as a fashion accessory. I remember wanting some.

Now, there’s a company, Quick Trophy, offering fashion colored dog tags as an alternative to medals or participation prizes for school or community sports teams. I don’t play any kind of sport (well, unless improv counts), but I liked the idea of using these dog tags as a form of advertising for my website, especially after I learned that one of the colors available is pink.

I first had to choose my sport, because each tag comes with a little icon, representing the sport or event in question. I selected LaCrosse because I think it’s an underrated sport. When I order more, I’ll probably pick cheerleading or music. Since I was ordering only one tag, I only had to fill out one set of engraving information, but the website is set up to allow customization within each order, so if you want different names on each of ten tags, you can do that.

The interface was easy to use and intuitive, and I received an email confirming my order after I’d completed the checkout procedure. A few days later, I received another email telling me my order has shipped, and a couple of days after that, my pink dog tag was waiting for me in the mailbox, with the 18″ ball chain sealed in a baggie, just as promised. (Each piece is wrapped in plastic, so that nothing arrives scratched.)

The chain was a little bit tough to link together, mainly because I didn’t want to break a nail, but it snapped into place, and the shiny pink tag can be worn around my neck with no fuss, and no discomfort because it weighs almost nothing. The color of the pink, by the way, is the same as the pink iPod shuffle.

I would definitely use Quick Trophy again, as I had my tag within a week, even without special shipping, and I really liked the ease of use of their site. As well, I like that there are discounts for ordering items in larger quantities.

Of course, they sell other sorts of prize trophies as well – including actual medals.

But I really like the dog tags.

1. The quarterback is the most important player on a football team. He controls the action, and the responsibility for the team’s success is on his shoulders. Which musician is your choice for musical QB?
   It’s completely cheesy, and totally dates me, but I have to say Billy Joel. If you’ve never seen his episode of Inside the Actors Studio, you’ve missed a treat.
2. What album scores a touchdown for you (i.e. it’s just the best)?
   One of my favorite albums EVER is Barenaked Ladies’ Stunt, but right now I’m really digging the newest offering from Mandy Moore.
3. What song needs a game ejection?
   There are only two songs that I’ve had intense negative reactions to, and neither are terribly recent. The first was Uncle Kracker’s “Follow Me,” and the second is the Kid Rock/Sheryl Crow duet “I Put Your Picture Away.” It’s the lyrics I have an issue with, especially – the first actually has kind of a kicky melody.
4. Football is about intense, bone-crushing excitement. What song or artist gives you that same feeling?
   All summer I’ve been listening to this ancient Eric Carmen song “Make Me Lose Control” – it just has that summer sun-sand-surf bonfire on the beach, retro chording sort of feeling. It’s exciting in a nostalgic sort of way. Otherwise, I’m kind of partial to Robbie Williams’s “Let Me Entertain You,” and have been ever since I heard it used in a skating show several years ago.

Wanna mambo too? Go here.

I say… And you think…

1. Scrabble :: triple word score
2. NyQuil :: drug store absinthe
3. Roadtrip :: mobile sing-alongs
4. Idiot :: summer
5. Bandages :: Mummy
6. Series :: World
7. Summer :: in the city
8. Prompt :: Coax
9. September :: Morn
10. Chicken :: Dance

Like this meme? Play along here.

When I used to do tech support for a certain computer company with a fetish for cow spots, one of the things I was often asked was “how do I share my data?” It’s something my husband, the network engineer, has to deal with on a daily basis. How do you safely share files, back up critical things, without resorting to less-than-great security, or easily misplaced flash drives? The other question was, “My computer crashed, how do I get my files,” to which our first response was always, “well, did you back up?” You’d be surprised at how many people said no.

An excellent solution for this is an online backup service, such as iDrive. For no money at all, you get access to 2 GB of space on their server. For $4.95 a month, or $49.95/year, you get unlimited storage space. It’s enough to back up all the data on the average PC (something most people don’t do, but which everyone ought), or share files with remote users in Rome, Paris, San Francisco, Tokyo, and Dallas, without allowing remote access to your own machine.

Even if you already have the contents of your hard drive backed up, iDrive is great as a backup solution. I’ve always been told that crucial data should be backed up multiple times, with at least one copy stored off-site. This is a great way to do that, without having to make periodic trips to dusty storage units, or remember which file cabinet in the office holds your disks. Also, since they have almost-instant backup of their own servers, your data is doubly secure.

Even if you don’t use iDrive, make sure you back up your data on a regular basis.

But if you travel, share files, or live in a place prone to electrical failure, consider iDrive. iDo.

(One thing: iDrive isn’t Mac-Friendly.)

According to the calendar, summer doesn’t end until the autumnal equinox about three weeks into September, but Labor Day Weekend always feels like the fiscal end of summer, even if I no longer measure the year according to school vacations, as I did when I was a child, and as many do who have children now.

In our neighborhood, the school children disappeared from the streets in mid-August, which seems unusually early, but they also get out in late May. I’m not sure why. All I know is that the beginning of their school year brought an end to the sound of laughter as they chased each other around the neighborhood on impossibly small bicycles, stopping to greet my dogs if we happened to walk down the block where they were congregating that day.

Soon, I know, other endings will come: the end of hot, sunny weather, the end of leafy green trees, the end of nearly infinite twilight, and the end of an undecorated park, because there are no holidays between Independence Day and Labor Day for the Homeowners’ Association to celebrate with kitschy ornaments and seasonally colored twinkle lights.

While summer may be over, however I don’t see fall as any kind of ending. I find renewal in the turning of the leaves, refreshment in the cooler weather, inspiration in the earlier nightfall, and comfort in cozy evening spent at home, dressed in pajamas and fluffy slippers, and sipping tea or hot cider, while a fire crackles, and soup simmers in the crockpot.

Summer is not soup weather.
Summer is for salads.

If fall is an end to anything, it is the end of the time when I happily choose salads over warmer, more substantial foods. Bring on the pot pies and meatloaf – I’m ready for meals that require two utensils, instead of merely one.

So, while this weekend may be the end of summer in some senses, it is not the end of summer clothing, iced espresso drinks, or pink hair. I drink iced espresso throughout the year, summer clothing and winter clothing overlap greatly in our climate, and the pink hair is here to stay for a while, because it also signifies an end, and a beginning.

The end of stagnation.
The beginning of creative freedom, and personal fulfillment.

The end of summer.
But not “The End.”

September:

The morrow was a bright September morn;
The earth was beautiful as if newborn;
There was nameless splendor everywhere,
That wild exhilaration in the air,
Which makes the passers in the city street
Congratulate each other as they meet.
– Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

Sleep: I went to bed before midnight last night and, except for a brief time awake when Fuzzy came to bed around 3:30, slept through til eight, then stayed in bed til nine. My head feels less spinny, my brain more focused. I don’t feel like I was skimping on sleep this past week, but perhaps I just wasn’t sleeping well.

Salon: Today I go to get my har re-pinked, and the bangs cut, but I don’t think I’m going to have her trim any length from the rest, except perhaps to keep it healthy. I’m ready for long hair again, with fall coming.

Sugar: I meant to make chocolate chip cookies last night, then decided I was far too dizzy and disoriented to be dealing with measuring and hot ovens. Perhaps I’ll make some this morning. I wonder if we have any parchment. A piece of parchment on top of the cookie sheet keeps the bottoms from burning, while the tops are browning.

Shakespeare: I caught a bit of last year’s version of As You Like It on cable last night, and have the showing tomorrow morning set to record. I like the concept of using 19th century dress for it, but while I understand that Branagh probably had all the actors affect English accents so that the accents all “matched,” I really dislike it when Americans use fake British accents for Shakespeare. It’s silly. It’s also wrong, since Shakespearian English actually sounds more like certain pocket accents in the Appalachians than it does modern British pronunciation. Repeat after me, Bryce Dallas Howard: I do not have to be English to do Shakespeare. (I enjoyed, btw, the performance of David Oyelowo, who played Orlando. Also, he’s seriously nice eye-candy, as is Adrian Lester, who played Oliver.

Stage: I’m on stage at ComedySportz tonight. Likely to be my last show for a while, as September is a weird month for us. I wish I could say I’m looking forward to it, but right this moment, I’m really not. I’m sure that will change as the day progresses, however.