Site Move In Progress

I decided to give a new web host a try, and am in the process of switching servers. The site may be a bit flaky over the next 48-72 hours as the DNS changes propagate.

UPDATE: Testing the new site….

UPDATE #2: Looks like everything’s set. All in all, I’m really pleased with myself. I hit a few glitches, mostly related to file permissions and pathing, but I’ve gotten the blog, e-mail, file dump and archives all moved.

Please let me know if you find any broken stuff!

Paging All Podrunner Fans

If you haven’t heard the news, the Big Daddy of exercise podcasts, DJ Steve Boyett, has gotten a new sponsor. That’s great, but the downside is that his old, un-sponsored mixes are going offline.

So get over to his site or to the iTunes podcast directory before November 1 and download anything you haven’t already downloaded.

Two Years in Suburbia

This week marks the 2-year anniversary of our move out of San Francisco to San Mateo. If you’d told me, a few years ago, that I’d be happier in the suburbs than I would in a city, I would have laughed. I’m a city girl through and through, after all. I still am. But after 2 years here in San Mateo, it’s really clear to me: I was never truly happy about living in San Francisco.

I tend to judge city living by how closely it matches my NYC experience, and the bottom line is that for me, SF never measured up to New York.

There’s tradeoffs that you accept when you live in a city – like higher rent, more crowding, more noise, and less parking, for a start. But the flip side is the benefits – more activities, more restaurants, more shopping, and generally more exciting things and people. The problem with SF was I wasn’t feeling the benefits, because we lived so far out from all the good stuff in the city, and the mass transit options were such a pain. If I have to drive to go buy my groceries and get to the fun parts of town, if it takes 30+ minutes to get to work because MUNI sucks or doesn’t go where I need it to, then I might as well be living in the ‘burbs.

I still don’t particularly like living in suburbia. I have to drive much more than I like, and mass transit isn’t all that useful here either. But at least in San Mateo, we have a nice big apartment for less $ than we’d pay in SF. And we can walk to a really nice supermarket and a bunch of other shops, which we couldn’t do in SF. So all in all, the tradeoffs are better here.

Still, if the chance to move back to New York came along, I’d dump the ‘burbs in a minute.

That Time Again

In 5 days, I’ll either need to be set up and running on a new webhost, or I’ll have to fork over the money to my current webhost for another year of hosting services.

It’s been a little busy lately, and I don’t really have the bandwidth to get set up on a new webhost. And frankly, although my current host can be a little slow when it comes to server response times, by and large I’ve been satisfied with the service this year.

Still, it would be nice to have an IMAP server for my email. And faster web server response would be good, too. Maybe an easier to use control panel.

I’ve gotten feedback from friends, and searched the web for reviews, and I do have one hosting company bookmarked. I might pull the trigger and switch. But right now the odds are high that come Oct 30 I’ll still be parked right where I am.

How is This Helping?

After reading this USA Today piece, the phrase “needle in a haystack” comes to mind:

The [US] government’s terrorist watch list has swelled to more than 755,000 names, according to a new government report that has raised worries about the list’s effectiveness.

The size of the list, typically used to check people entering the country through land border crossings, airports and sea ports, has been growing by 200,000 names a year since 2004.

[snip]
Leonard Boyle, director of the FBI’s Terrorist Screening Center, which maintains the list, says in testimony to be given today that 269 foreigners were denied entry in fiscal 2006.