One of the reasons I sometimes don’t write as much on Funny Strange is because I don’t want to bore you with technical things, but that’s what I’ve got today, so that’s what I’m going with.
So—can I just throw this out there? Why, exactly, does a software upgrade to my iPhone result in the phone LOSING ALL OF ITS CONTACTS, INFO, ETC so that I have to set everything up again from scratch? Isn’t Apple supposed to be all efficient-like and user friendly? Is this why I waited 156 bajillion minutes for the download of the new operating system to complete? Is this why I allocated an ENTIRE AFTERNOON to the iPhone/ iPad updates? Gah! Now I am having to look on my phone bill to see if I can discern whose number is whose and program them back into my phone, because you know what? I don’t know anyone’s phone number anymore, BECAUSE I RELY ON TECHNOLOGY FOR THAT, and it is richly ironic that I’m now searching for pieces of printed paper to remedy this situation, is it not?
Oh, and if you’re going to comment that I should have first created a backup, then restored from that backup instead of doing a native install on the OS, I TRIED THAT AND IT DIDN’T WORK, and you know I don’t like these kinds of questions because it just aggravates me more, and I don’t want to have to smack you when you came here to laugh and be entertained. Oh, and if you’re a person with whom I text message regularly, if could send me a text message right now, that would be great, because that would keep me from having to find your number in my phone bill and re-program it into my phone.
So, there’s that. And, did I mention I am still rebuilding websites from the crazy wave of WordPress hacking that’s been going on over the past couple of months? If you have a WordPress-based website, can I recommend highly enough that you go in and update the security settings right now? You might even want to lock down your admin panel so your .ht access file won’t be able to be automatically updated. Or, even better, maybe you might want to go over and sign up for ZippyKid or some other managed WordPress hosting, where you then wouldn’t have to worry about getting hacked. Did you happen to know that if you back up a website that’s already been hacked, then you try to restore from a backup, you will then restore the very same malicious code that you are trying so hard to obliterate?
Yep, it happened. Over and over again. On the bright side, I am now super-fast at rebuilding websites, so that’s awesome. I also am hard at work on a whole report called “Care and Feeding of Your WordPress Website,” where I will detail all of the security-type things that you’ll need to do to keep the Russian mob out of your databases.
Can I also recommend that even if you have a hosting account that claims to be “unlimited” you not take that literally and put 40 or 50 websites on that one account? That is probably not a good idea, and I should probably take my own advice and learn to diversify. In fact, I believe that is the lesson I am going to take from this whole experience. Diversification! Backup! Preparedness! Technology!
Oh wait, that’s where I started. Griping about technology. Maybe we ARE actually better off writing things down on paper after all. I kind of wish I had an old-school paper backup of all my phone numbers, email address, and website content right now.
Also, the writing prompt for today’s “NaBloPoMo” was: “What kind of food would you eat if you knew it was your last meal?” I am too weird to respond to a writing prompt like that, so I will simply display all of the thoughts that pop in to my mind when I see that question: My obvious answer is “If I can see into the future, why would I waste time eating when I could actually do something to prevent my imminent demise, thus giving myself many more years to eat french fries, steak, and pizza?" Why would a person even be hungry if they knew they were going to die? That is wrong. Questions like that are weird to me since they so obviously lack context. WHY is it your last meal? Are you in prison in this fantasy scenario? If so, they’re probably not going to go to BOA in Santa Monica to get you a piece of Kobe steak, or maybe they would, depending on what you actually did to get there. Or, maybe it’s your last meal because you have a terminal illness, but that doesn’t make sense because terminally ill people usually can’t eat, right? How am I supposed to enjoy that meal if I know it’s going to be my last? That’s pretty much guaranteed to give you indigestion.
In closing, my mind does not work in a normal way, and please text me to help me restore my phone's lost info.
