according to jeff

As if cowboys weren’t already better than pirates anyway, here’s one more great reason to celebrate Talk Like a Cowboy Day rather than that other day.

I’m in the market for a new work of fiction to add to my Kindle. Any suggestions for me?

I’ve recently finished Ted Dekker’s Thr3e and was disappointed with the ending. I enjoyed his Black/Red/White trilogy, but thought that Red and White didn’t quite live up to Black. I’ll read Green when it comes out.

I thought of Sigmund Brouwer’s Double Helix, but it isn’t available for Kindle.

I’ve thought of some classics, such as the Three Musketeer series by Alexandre Dumas.

But perhaps you have some suggestions for me?

Celebrated on September 20 every year, International Talk Like a Cowboy Day is only a month away. Help spread the word by writing about it at your blog, facebook page, etc. And, of course, don’t forget to talk like a cowboy on September 20.

To help with your promotion, use the official International Talk Like a Cowboy Day logo.

Official Logo

Follow these detailed instructions.

1. Download the logo.
2. Upload it (that is, the logo) to your blog, page, etc.
3. Use it in your official promotion article, to be published on September 20.

If you use the retro-black-and-white logo in your promotional material, which is highly recommended, you must include the following small print.

International Talk Like a Cowboy Day is observed on September 20. International Talk Like a Cowboy Day Official Logo © 2007 by Jeff Wheeler. All Rights Reserved. Because Cowboys are Better than Pirates ™ Jeff Wheeler. Portions of clip art licensed from the Clip Art Gallery on DiscoverySchool.com.

I look forward to your participation again this year!

For pretty much most of the past ten years, my typical Friday has included lunch out with my Laridian associates. Since Laridian doesn’t have a central office, Laridian staff all work from home offices. Those of us located in the Cedar Rapids area met at a local restaurant around 11:30 for a weekly social session and staff meeting. We tried all kinds of restaurants, found some that we’d return to, and found a few for which once was enough. I often blogged about our lunch experience and may have introduced you to some possibilities that you might not have been aware of otherwise.

Alas, however, after ten years or so, the era of Friday Lunch has come to a close. Oh, I’ll still be eating lunch on Friday, but it won’t be the same Laridian Friday Lunch. It will just be lunch. And, as such, it might be just a tad less interesting to you than before. Somehow,

“Today’s Friday Lunch consisted of a turkey sandwich and a peach.”

just doesn’t seem as mesmerizing. (Let me know if you disagree.)

Many life transitions are bittersweet, and this is one. I’ll miss the Friday Lunch, but am enjoying the new era: the coffee shop era.

I’m curious whether any of my faithful readers are making the switch from google to bing, and, if so, what your experience with bing has been.

I just tried to try it (bing, that is) for the first time earlier this evening, and it froze Firefox and my entire PC. I’m unsure if this is a nefarious plot by Microsoft or a symptom of heating/RAM problem I previously discussed. In this case, I’d really prefer that it was a nefarious plot by Microsoft…

My 8-year old NetVista PC (that’s about 88 in human years) has begun serenading me when it reboots. During the RAM test, a series of different toned beeps are emitted, leading me to suspect that some RAM is starting to fail. Interestingly, after the machine has been turned off for a while, it quietly boots. This makes me suspect that the problem is heat related. Until just a moment ago, I wasn’t having any unexplained crashes, so I’m hopeful that this will be easily corrected.

The fan has been louder than normal lately, so I think my first strategy will be to open the case, blow the dust and dog hair out, and confirm that all fans are spinning.

If that doesn’t resolve the problem, I suppose I could try to decode what RAM it uses and order replacement chips. Ugh. I wonder if replacing the motherboard is feasible? Souping up the processor and RAM in one fell swoop sparks a little bit of interest.

This may come as a surprise to those that know me, but I’m not really excited about the possibility of buying a new PC. It raises too many questions:

1. Do I want a desktop format (easier to maintain) or a laptop (for portability)?
2. Do I want to wait for Windows 7? (I don’t like Vista and XP is hard to find, so the answer is probably “yes”.)
3. Is my software — some of which is quite old — 64-bit compatible?

I’m going to try to avoid needing to answer these questions; instead, I’ll just make sure I have good backups of my data.

Last week, I noticed that my blog stopped working, out of the blue. I hadn’t made any recent changes, but instead of my faithful blog appearing where it should, an error message about not being able to connect to a database appeared instead.

I suspected that it was a temporary outage from my host (BlueHost) and that the problem would be soon resolved.

Alas, however, it wasn’t. So I did some independent research and then opened a support ticket on Saturday. On Monday, a BlueHost agent suggested that I had changed my database user accounts and needed to reset them. Of course, I didn’t change my database user accounts, but my independent research had also suggested that the SQL user accounts were corrupt. Sure enough, when I added a new user and connected WordPress via the new user, the problem was resolved.

Mildly annoyed that the BlueHost technician had suggested that I had caused this problem, I asked BlueHost to let me know what they had done to cause the problem. Sure enough, today I received a reply that they had performed an OS upgrade and run a SQL repair utility that resulted in some SQL user accounts being corrupted. The technician assured me that my SQL data was complete.

But I’m not convinced.

It looks to me as if some recent articles have been lost. I’m pretty sure I’d written a few articles after the “gramps” article and before this one.

Unfortunately, though, I can’t quite put my finger on any specific articles. Maybe you, my faithful reader, can?

I’ve been mostly happy with BlueHost, but it is disturbing when a company corrupts my data, doesn’t let me know, suggests that I must have done it, and finally fesses up only when pressed. I’m not necessarily upset about the mistake that corrupted the data, or even about a few articles that may have been lost. However, suggesting that I had caused the problem rather than taking responsibility for the mistake wasn’t the “stand up” way to resolve the problem.