WordPress 26.2

With the 17th anniversary of the blog coming up next month, I see the 5,000 mark has been crossed. Those aren’t as many posts as there are stars in the galaxy, but they’re more than I ever thought I’d do. This is post number 5,012, although there were actually more than that. A small number of them were deleted or hidden from view for one reason or another.

2008 Boston Marathon
Expanding dograt.com from a domain name with e-mail into a WWW site was purely a technical exercise for me. In 2002 there were a dozen Web pages that I laboriously put together with Microsoft’s FrontPage software and lots of HTML 4 tailoring that was done by hand.

When considering my Web 2.0 options away from static pages, Movable Type seemed to be the more advanced and stable product, but I was looking for a DIY challenge, and I found it in WordPress 2.0.2. The latest version of WordPress, running here now, is 6.2.2.

Every time I feel like giving up, I find an excuse to keep going. The last big snafu forced me to run an outdated version of WordPress for a couple of years, and the site began crashing. After gritting my teeth and finding my way through that mess, I’m no longer hot on fixing technical problems. If another one of comparable difficulty hits, and Prattling Before the Pratfall breaks again, that’s when I’ll shut down.

Saying that reminds me of my years running the Boston Marathon. After crossing the finish line in agony, I’d tell myself “NEVER AGAIN!” By the time I was sitting on the bus half an hour later with my juice and cookies, waiting for the ride back to the starting line, I was thinking, “NEXT YEAR!”

Caching Out

An update somewhere in the software stack changed the caching code, and new posts were taking hours to appear, so I have disabled the WordPress cache. This might slow down the site, but that’s preferable to having a stale presentation.

A Girl Group of One

An hour of Sexy Pet, as she was called in France. It’s on Glynis GirlGroupGirl’s show ‘From Crayons to Perfume’ on WFMU.

Note to listener: This player may start automatically, depending on your browser. Especially if it’s Firefox.

Note to Glynis: It’s pronounced “Peh-too-lah.” Petulia is a 1968 movie with Julie Christie. Petula appreciates that “Pet” is a term of endearment, but she prefers being called by her full name. I know that because she told me herself. 🙂

Glynis played a later recording of “I Couldn’t Live Without Your Love”. This is the original, one of her perfect 60’s Pop singles.

He’s King Midas in Reverse

Trump has been indicted again, but this time it’s the big one, about the January 6 insurrection. His new defense strategy is to blame Rudy Giuliani, Sidney Powell, and Clarence Thomas protĂ©gĂ© John Eastman, while at the same time insisting he did nothing wrong. It’s their reward for being loyal.

Trump continues to be the likely 2024 Republican candidate. Like moths drawn to the flame, Republicans are refusing to see that he is throwing the entire party under the bus. How’s that for a mixed metaphor? It must be true that you can fool some of the people all of the time.