catching up

I apologize for my website of late, the performance is horrible. The page either loads incredibly slow, or times out altogether. I have no idea what’s causing this, but am fairly certain it’s nothing of my doing. I’ve been running the same pages with the same scripts for quite a while with decent performance… and all of the sudden things are gummed up. I’ve narrowed it down to any page which accesses one of my MySQL databases (as both this page and my gallery pages do), so it seems the problem lies there… somehow. I have noticed a sharp increase in the amount of spam comments the blog gets, up to about ~3000 per day now – and that might be the culprit. I wrote to my host’s tech support – but so far they’ve only offered me an upgrade package to a dedicated server (rather than the virtual slice of a server I now share with others). This sounds appealing to me, but also ticks me off… I should be able to expect my pages to work. For crap’s sake I only have a measly three databases and a handful of scripts that call them. So, dear reader, I’ll do what I can to fix the situation – but until then I apologize if your experience here is frustrating.

But, just to make it all the more frustrating – here’s a link to Keaton’s gallery, where I’ve uploaded some annotated snaps from our weekend in Oregon which you’ll read more about below. Oh yeah, today’s entry is mad disjointed… and I make no apologies, as it was written in fits over the last week, often for entries not posted (as the gaps in writing last week make evident).

Let’s get started with random paragraph #1.

The other night on TV 20/20 ran a story about a girl who had to have half of her brain removed, due to a rare brain disease that was causing her to have debilitating seizures. Yes, it was a storyline on a popular medical drama recently. Anyway, they showed video footage the girl’s family took when she was a baby – and cut to her parents saying how happy they were when she was born that they got a “healthy baby.” Yes, aren’t we all… it’s what we all hope for, a healthy child with ten fingers and ten toes. But, when this family’s little girl turned four – something went wrong. I think about that all the time, how things can look so normal and right for so long – and then, seemingly out of the blue, go so terribly wrong. I think about that with our daughter, how perfect she is, how healthy and happy and beautiful. Watching a show like that before Keaton tugged at my heartstrings, watching it now that I have Keaton – it full-on hooked my heartstrings up to the Concorde and took flight.

Continuing with random paragraph #2.

Showering at my folks’ place these past few days, I noticed that their guest bathroom is stocked with a bottle of “body wash” instead my preference a bar of soap. I never did get into the “body wash” thing, just doesn’t equate to a bar of soap to me… leaving my skin feeling all slimy when I draw my fingers across it, instead of the squeaky clean of soap that I like. Anyway, I picked up the body wash to check it out – and read the following off the back label:

We know how special your bath or shower time is…a place for you to be private, reborn, where creative thoughts visit.

Reborn? For me, my bath or shower time is more like a time for me to wash the stink off my ass, sweat off my balls, and grease off my face (although not necessarily in that order). Who are these people for whom bathing is a religious experience? Although, I guess, I can’t argue with the “creative thoughts” coming to visit part – as this whole bit was indeed inspired by a shower…

And, random paragraphs #3 and #4, written last week but never posted.

Why are large conference/meeting rooms always unable to cool themselves properly? It seems like every time I find myself congregated with a large group of folks in big conference room, I’m sweating balls. You’d think that engineers designing these big conference rooms for hotels and the like would take this into consideration and install cooling that could handle capacity. Ugh… now my face is greasy and I’m getting sleepy, thanks a lot hot conference room.

The trip to Oregon has been a huge success thus far. Keaton must have her dad’s genes because she traveled like a seasoned pro – making nary a peep and sleeping the entire time. Last night Sharaun and I slept with her lain betwixt us, which we’ve never done before – partly for fear of rolling over onto her mid-sleep. Well, we didn’t roll over onto her, and I really enjoyed the experience. It may sound dumb, but I loved waking up in the middle of the night and seeing her sleeping face just to my left, her little pink-clad arms flung up above her head just like dad does when he sleeps, her little chest rising and falling and making soft breathy sounds through her tiny nose. I want to describe it as “intimate,” but that sounds kinda pedo… so maybe I won’t.

Let’s end this mess just as randomly, shall we?

I’m so excited about the news that Thom Yorke is doing a solo record, I can’t wait to see what he does with his “spare time.” I certainly love the woodcut-esque flash animation on the frontpage of his solo-centric webpage – I the imagery there is in any way representative of the album’s vibe, I’m down. I’m also excited because the new Sufjan leaked… a full two months in advance of the album’s official release. I’ll write more about it once I’ve had the time to properly digest it.

Well, today (Monday) is the 1st of my two Lasik consultations, with surgery possible as early as this Friday. I’m so pumped folks, so pumped. Talk to you all later, Dave out.

---

Also written on this day...

• happy together - 2019
• THE MILENNIUM FALON! - 2008
• let me out - 2007