Lift Up Your Hearts!

This has been going on long enough I'd better post a notice here: our phones have been out since some time after 3:30 p.m. today. This is the biggest problem we've ever had with our almost entirely delightful AT&T CallVantage Voice Over IP service. It's not a local problem, as other CallVantage customers in the midwest and on the west coast have reported the same problem. Apparently when you call us, you get the "All circuits are busy" message. If we try to call out, we have a dial tone, and the phone appears to dial, but the connection is never made.

We can still access the Internet, except for getting our phone messages; we can't access the CallVantage site, which also tells me this is a major problem, and that it is AT&T's, not ours.

I'll post here when service is restored. In the meantime, I have my cell phone on, and you can post messages here (via comments) if need be.

For those of you to whom this matters, I've added syndication links (RSS, etc.) to the right-hand panel. I'm a complete novice here, but I know that there are various programs out there that you can use with this to let you know when certain websites are updated. SharpReader was recommended to me, though I haven't tried it yet because I have to install the .Net framework first, and I just haven't bothered. For now, the Live Bookmark option in FireFox works pretty well.

The statistics for this blog tell me that I have had over 1400 unique visitors so far. Since only a handful have left comments, it leaves me wondering who you all are. I know the number is inflated, because it only counts IP addresses, and often the same person comes back with a slightly different address. I also know that a number of the visits are from faceless robots. But surely some of them represent real people.

Most of the vistors have been from the United States, but others have come from Antigua and Barbuda, Australia, Bahamas, Belgium, Canada, China, Croatia, Czech Republic, the Dominican Republic, Egypt, Ethiopia, the European Union, Finland, France, Germany, Great Britain, Guatemala, Hong Kong, Hungary, India, Indonesia, Iran, Ireland, Israel, Italy, Jamaica, Japan, Jordan, Luxembourg, Macau, Malaysia, Mexico, Namibia, the Netherlands, New Zealand, Norway, Pakistan, the Philippines, Poland, Puerto Rico, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, Singapore, South Africa, South Korea, Spain, Syria, Taiwan, Thailand, Trinidad and Tobago, Turkey, United Arab Emirates, Venezuela, and Vietnam! I might be able to account for Italy, Hong Kong, and New Zealand as well as a few from the U.S., but who are the rest of you? How did you find my blog? Are you a one-time visitor, or do you check in regularly? What do you like, or not like? Please leave a comment and let me know. You don't have to identify yourself; just let me know you are a real person! I certainly hope that most of my "readers" aren't just robots.

I've been using Mozilla's Firefox browser for some time now, and have recently added their Thunderbird mail client. Not that I have any complaints about my Netscape mail program, but whenever I do an upgrade, Netscape adds a bunch of unwanted junk to my computer, and I'm hoping the more basic Mozilla product will retain the good features without cluttering up my already-overloaded machine.

What I'm really waiting for, however, is for Mozilla to bundle the two products and release them as the Firebird Suite. :)

Lime Daley is the name of Jon Daley's Internet hosting and embedded hardware and software systems company. It is also the name Porter gave to a great drink Jon and Heather invented. For the curious, here is the recipe for a Lime Daley:

ice to taste
3 tablespoons lime juice
2 drops Boyajian lime oil
1 twelve-ounce bottle Blenheim “Old #3” (red cap) ginger ale

Put ice in a tall glass. Add lime juice and lime oil. Slowly pour in Blenheim. Stir well. Be prepared for the strongest kick a non-alcoholic drink can have. (To remember the proportions, think “3, 2, 1, blastoff!” It’s appropriate.)

(I predict LimeDaley.com will be a powerful business.)

Microsoft is challenging Google with its new search engine, now in beta form. I'll admit to a prejudice against Microsoft because it is so big and monopolistic (though Google isn't exactly small), but I decided to check it out. "Msnbot" keeps sniffing around my sites, and I wanted to see what it had found. Lo and behold, "Lift Up Your Hearts" returns this blog in the #2 spot, and "Linda Wightman" finds the Sursum Corda Home page at #1. The descriptions seem to be more useful than Google's. I was really impressed when I typed in "Warren Langdon" and found his book reviews from the Sursum Corda site, although I later discovered that I can also find them through Google; I just hadn't tried before.

I do all my blog work in Firefox, and my secondary browser of choice is Netscape, so I didn't realize the site is fouled up in Internet Explorer until a couple of kindly readers complained. I apologize to all of you IE users, and will try to figure out which of my changes could have made such a mess.

Once upon a time, I thought it would be good to learn HTML and how to create a web page. What does a computer specialist-turned-homemaker, who has been out of the job market for 25 years, do when she begins to think about earning money again? What field has changed more in the past quarter century than computing? My knowledge of punched cards, JCL, and PDP-12 assembly language might qualify me as a docent in a History of Computing exhibit of the Smithsonian Institution, but no more. But web pages, now, and HTML: that would be fun to learn, and certainly there's a market for that. Or maybe not. (More)

I've added a statistics section for the blog (thanks, Jon!). It's not as accurate as I would like, as apparently it only considers a post read if you've clicked to it directly: clicking on "more," "comments," "permalink," or one of the direct article or comment links on the sidebar, or coming from a search enginge -- anything that gets you to the article itself. For some reason, the computer can't tell if your eyes are scanning an article on one of the pages that shows you several at one time. :)

Thus articles that can be read completely from the main page are underrepresented in the count. But I still think the statistics will be interesting. Another useful thing is being able to tell how many visitors are online. So when I see that it's only one (that would be me), I know I can experiment with the format without driving someone else crazy.

I'm experimenting with different colors and styles for my blog, so don't be shocked if it feels a bit like a boat in rough seas for a while.

We have been found. Try typing "sursum corda" wightman in Google and hit "I'm Feeling Lucky." If you just type "sursum corda" we're 5th on the list. Now I really need to clean up the pages so it says something intelligent in the description....

Don't be surprised if you see posts appearing with long-past dates. I'm gradually collecting some of my old writings into this blog.

Thanks to a great deal of help from Jon Daley, I am venturing into the world of the Blog. It sounds rather like something from an old science fiction movie. My first step in having an online presence was the making of my home page, which I greatly enjoy, and which I've used—among other purposes—to keep friends and family informed of our adventures during Florida's recent hurricanes. I could be content simply to keep expanding my webpages; there certainly is a lot to learn and much that can be done. However, what I really like about the blog software is its ability to let other people add comments. Since I hope this will become a forum for the exchange of ideas as well as information, it seems a worthwhile project.

I am only splashing in the shallows of these waters as yet, so please be patient with problems and changes as I set out on this new adventure. (More)