Moving Again

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As if I haven't had enough of it in my life, I'm moving again. :)

Griffen, the cartoonist for whom I write Morty, and I, plus Griff's partner Danny, will be taking an apartment together in September. It's only a few miles away so I can continue to keep an eye on my Mom, which is good, and I'll be spending almost half my time here at Mom's. But I've discovered I really can't do much creative stuff with Mom in the same house. <sigh> Never could, I've always done my writing in coffee shops when I live with Mom.

Moving expenses will run about two thousand dollars. I've got the money, but frankly, if donations for BigCloset were more up to date, I'd be less worried about something going wrong. As it is, I'm going to have to put the September ISP and hosting payments on my credit card and try to pay the balance back down to zero in October. Since I'll be maintaining ISP connections in two places now, I'm going to have to raise my monthly target for donations to $400 for September. To justify this, I'm going to be doing a lot more writing and posting myself and asking others to post to BC. I appreciate everyone who has donated in the past, thank you very much!, and I hope no one is offended by me mentioning finances here in my blog.

Here's the current breakdown:

BC server $121
TS server $ 99
Home (highspeed) ISP $ 49
Roving ISP $ 29
Domains $ 7
Landline Phone & Misc. $ 45
Total $350

The last of June's $350 came in today, but I still need July and August. I wouldn't ask for donations but my income right now is just Social Security of about $1100/month. After September 1st, expenses will go up by a 1/3 share of another landline phone and another highspeed ISP connection, about $30; round up to $400.(Which will mean a tithe of $40 to othr TG websites.) On the plus side, my share of donations for our cartooning will start counting toward the total instead of donating them to the artist.

Thanks for any support you can give. -- Erin

Comments

But I've discovered I really can't do much creative...

.. stuff with Mom in the same house. Never could, I've always done my writing in coffee shops when I live with Mom.

Solution
Turn part of Mom's place into a coffee shop with wi-fi internet connection. Call it Mom's Coffe and internet Zone. :)

Konichiwa

Wouldn't work...

erin's picture

...Mom is the problem, really. She doesn't mean to but she's very inhibiting on the creativity. :)

- Erin

= Give everyone the benefit of the doubt because certainty is a fragile thing that can be shattered by one overlooked fact.

Formatting

Rachel Greenham's picture

FYI on Firefox in the last couple of days the formatting of the site's gone somewhat screwy. The left-column is taking over the world!

--
Rachel

Firefox and mothers

I find Firefox works fine here and I'm having no problems at all. However, over at FM I find everything's OK, except the text of stories, when it all gets very small. It's easy to overcome, if a trifle tiresome; I simply cntrl+ and increase the text size. It makes the rest HUGE, though :o). Trouble with computers is they do exactly what you tell them to do, rather than what you want them to do. I just wish I knew what I was saying at least some of the time lol

I don't know what mothers are like - I haven't had one for over 60 years - but I can imagine. I hope you manange to come to a satisfactory arrangement, Erin and keep going. JK Rowling famously succeeded with her coffee shop writing, I don't think I could, but it obviously has worked for you.

best wishes

Geoff

Geoff

Something has changed?

There is something different lately. It's stopped logging me in automatically for one thing. Also I now don't get the right column when I log in but it comes back when I go to the 'Home' link. Hmmm.

Emma

Right column

I've never gotten the right column when I first log in (Firefox on a Mac). What's more, when first I hit the Home link, it takes me back to the logged out page, so I then need to reload the page to see it correctly.

Amelia

"Reading rots the mind." - Uncle Analdas

Logging in and browsers, too

erin's picture

I've seen that behavior, too. And not just on this site but on some others. I'm not sure what causes it, but every now and then, I spend an hour or so trying to figure it out. When I do, it always stops doing it in the middle of experimentation and I wonder if I've fixed it or it just went away. That behavior makes me think it is an ISP/Proxy problem interacting with the software and I've no idea what to do about it.

- Erin

= Give everyone the benefit of the doubt because certainty is a fragile thing that can be shattered by one overlooked fact.

Logging in and browsers

erin's picture

Logging in automatically can be a browser setting, you have to be accepting cookies OR possibly your browser or ISP/proxy has cached the wrong page. The thing with the right column disappearing after login is a problem I've seen before but can't figure out. Try hitting reload.

- Erin

= Give everyone the benefit of the doubt because certainty is a fragile thing that can be shattered by one overlooked fact.

Logging in

Ok but neither problem was happening for me a week ago. That's why I mentioned it, in case something had changed in the site configuration.

Emma

Site changes

erin's picture

The only thing that has been changed on site lately is the order of the left column blocks. Have you installed any new software, especially anything from Microsoft or Apple? Both companies are bad about messing up your default settings for browsers, though MS is about the worst. Are you on AOL, another company that can cause proxy and browser problems?

I test the site frequently on eight or nine browser/platform combinations. I'm going to have to replace the monitor attached to my PC and Linux machines, though, it went out last night. That's one of the reasons for the Miscellaneous category in my detailing of expenses. Fortunately, I have a spare monitor at the moment.

- Erin

= Give everyone the benefit of the doubt because certainty is a fragile thing that can be shattered by one overlooked fact.

Nothing changed here

The only thing that has been changed on site lately is the order of the left column blocks. Have you installed any new software, especially anything from Microsoft or Apple? Both companies are bad about messing up your default settings for browsers, though MS is about the worst. Are you on AOL, another company that can cause proxy and browser problems?

Lol! Aol? No thanks. Seriously, I've been with the same ISP now for several years. I haven't touched any software in the last week.

It's possible my ISP has done something to their transparent proxy I suppose but I haven't noticed anything happening on other sites.

I test the site frequently on eight or nine browser/platform combinations.

Ok, that's more than most people do. The problems I'm seeing are fairly minor anyway, they don't stop me using the site. Its just an extra click.

Emma

Default browser

erin's picture

Firefox is my default browser, I'm not seeing any problems. The only thing that's changed in the last few days is I changed the order of the blocks in the left column. I'll change something and you tell me if it fixes things.

- Erin

= Give everyone the benefit of the doubt because certainty is a fragile thing that can be shattered by one overlooked fact.

browser...

Rachel Greenham's picture

It seems better now, yes. Also different is the "Please Donate" progress bar that's been reset. I wonder if that pushes things wide when it's nearly full?

--
Rachel

Browser problems

erin's picture

The bar had been reset before. What I did was move it down one in the order in the left hand column. The graph is done with a table, I suspect that having the block with the table first caused the problem. But perhaps you don't have the most recent Firefox since I haven't seen the problem you had.

Glad it's fixed, tho. :)

- Erin

= Give everyone the benefit of the doubt because certainty is a fragile thing that can be shattered by one overlooked fact.

Browser...

Rachel Greenham's picture

Me? Not have the most recent version? With *my* reputation?

:-) (1.0.6)

--
Rachel

Move complete...

erin's picture

...more or less. :) I spent my first night in the new place and got up this morning to discover hackers had broken into the TopShelf site (this one). Well I remvoed their little wormy residue but this week, I will be upgrading software when and as I can to make sure this does not happen again.

My mailing address will remain the same for the time being since that is just a forwarding mail box.

Hope you are all well and safe.

Hugs,
Erin

= Give everyone the benefit of the doubt because certainty is a fragile thing that can be shattered by one overlooked fact.