Ramblings of the Mildly Insane

I decided it was time to upgrade to WordPress 2.0.x. The decision was actually made for me when I logged in and saw I had some 300+ spam comments awaiting moderation. I needed Akismet. Badly.

So, as I boldly think to myself “I don’t need no stinking back up. I can do this blindfolded with 3 arms tied behind my back“, somehow I managed to bork the upgrade.

Now that it’s over and done with, hindsight’s 20/20. I can look back over the entire process and pinpoint every mistake I made. Actually, it was only one: not deactivating the plugins before upgrading. It was on my checklist, just after make a back up, but for reasons not yet known to me, I decided to skip it.

A process that should have taken roughly an hour on the worst day ended up taking four and I’m fairly sure I lost about 20 legitimate comments in the process. On another note, why on God’s green Earth are spam comments not deleted, but instead stored in the database? I had no idea there were nearly 3,000 comments marked with a comment approved status of spam just chillin’ in my DB. (Yes, I’m aware I should probably review my databases more often.)

I’ll spare you the really pathetic details of how I probably lost those 20 comments, but suffice to say it probably wouldn’t have happened if I were wearing my logic hat before making my DB backup.

For future reference, in case I decide to inflict this torture upon myself again:

DELETE FROM wp_comments WHERE comment_approved='spam';

Now, though, must sleep. Eyelids…heavy. Plugins…upgrade…morning…

I make every effort to visit each site that links to me.

Some sites automatically link to me when they’re using one of my free WordPress themes, and I’ve discovered some really great blogs that have made it onto my blogroll.

Today was no different until I saw the word “pu**y” in the anchor text and I gasped. I thought it may have been some type of referrer spam until I realized it wasn’t a referrer, but someone actually linking back to my blog.

I clicked through on the link and damn near fell out of my chair. Not that I have anything against porn, but this site was even too much for me to handle. Let’s just say that it catered to a very special type of adult audience and I felt so defiled.

Sure, the theme is free to use, but I never in a million years expected someone to slap it up on an adult website. The theme doesn’t even have anything to do with the adult industry at all…in fact, it’s my Think Different theme, inspired by the Mac browser.

Am I wrong for writing politely to ask the author to take it down and use a different theme or am I being too harsh? I included a link to where she (I assume it’s a she based on the WHOIS data) could get actual WordPress themes tailored for the adult blogger.

Ugh, I feel dirty.

While searching for a new sketch pad, I came across a new section at Amazon*. They now carry teas from one of my favourite companies and this means I can purchase with my Amazon Prime and receive free 2-day shipping. Yippee. Kinda makes me wish I’d discovered it before I placed my order with Stash directly on Saturday, but I certainly don’t mind spending my money with the company.

Now, if only Adagio would hop on the bandwagon, I could get my Mango Passion Fruit fix and life would be extra sweet.

* I’m beginning to think I have adult ADD or I’m just too easily distracted…

People use the craziest phrases to find my online journal and it’s been a while since I’ve published some of them… (comments in parenthesis are my own)

1. bj’s gay crazy ramblings (I guess it wouldn’t be so bad if my name were BJ and I were gay.)
2. american express sucks (Yes. They do.)
3. “paul short” plastic surgeon (Paul, have you been doing something on the side?)
4. pillow fetish (Yes, I have one. So?)
5. whitney houston crack pictures
6. can i please read the island of blue dolphins (Dunno, can you?)
7. flat tummy tutorials (If you know of any, please share.)
8. crazy cat that talks
9. the sensations of pure rich chocolate (heeheeheeHEEHEEHEEE – I really was talking about chocolate.)
10. hormonal and insane!! (yep, that’s me.)
11. hoochies (I had some in high school)
12. bleaching cream and why do african americans use it (because)

I’ve only scratched the surface. Some of the more colourful ones were even too much for me to handle, much less post for the world to see.