Tag Archives: blogging

When Lifelong Republicans become Democrats

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Look into your heart, Republicans. You may see what this man saw.

I saw an interesting tweet this morning and clicked the link to see what it was all about. Just as the title suggests, it’s an essay by political blogger and activist, Bob Schneider, author of the Politics Now column on the Chicago Now website, who has recently given up on the Republican party.

There’s a lot that makes me — someone who leans left — really happy about what this conservative had to say:

  • He talks about why he was a Republican for so many years. This helps me understand where Republicans are coming from. I’ve heard versions of his story before.
  • He clearly understands why, in today’s U.S. political system, there are only two parties that matter. If you don’t understand why, read his explanation. (Please don’t use the comments for this post to whine to me about it.)
  • He explains what drove him to make the jump from Republican to Democrat. It’s the same stuff we’re all seeing: dishonesty, betrayal, corruption.
  • He explains, in his section headed “Why I left the GOP,” exactly what Republican viewpoints turn him off. This list is the best part of the essay and, if you only have time to read part of it, read this part. He’s nailed it all, from the GOP’s view on the poor to their xenophobia and outright racism to their hatred of education and science.
  • He lists the reasons why he joined the Democratic party. For the most part, it’s the same reason I finally signed up as a Democrat last year. (I’d always been independent but I wanted to vote in primaries.)

This essay isn’t new. It dates back to July. I’m not quite sure why he tweeted about it today. Maybe it’s because there are additional essays available that refer to it.

It doesn’t really matter that it’s two months old. What matters is that he wrote it and he published it under his own name and he’s someone with a good political following. What matters is that it might help other Republicans do some soul searching and admit to themselves that the GOP isn’t exactly in line with their own personal convictions, especially about how other people should be treated.

Personally, I don’t care if someone is a Republican or a Democrat as long as they are capable of thinking for themselves based on factual information and doing the right thing. Blindly voting for party candidates, even when you know they’re “dumb as a rock,” as so many people seem to do these days, is about, well, as dumb as a rock.

I honestly believe that if far right nut jobs and their media outlets — yes, I’m talking about Bannon/Breitbart, Hannity/Fox News, Jones/Infowars, Limbaugh, etc., etc. — would just STFU or start presenting unadulterated facts for listener/viewer consideration, anyone with a brain would realize how bad things have become in the GOP and politics in general.

It shouldn’t be us vs. them. It should be us.

Got something to add? Great! Use the comments link for this post. But please don’t comment unless you’ve read Mr. Schneider’s essay first. I think you’ll find it as enlightening as I did, no matter how you vote.

The Joys of Having an Expired SSL Certificate

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A frustrating waste of time.

A few months ago, when it became clear that the Republican led congress was going to allow ISPs to sell our browsing history to the highest bidders, I got a bit more concerned about security. In my research, I came across an article that recommended that users never visit a website without an SSL certificate.

If you don’t know how to tell whether a site has an SSL certificate, the easiest way is to look at the full URL. If it starts with https:// instead of http:// it has an SSL certificate. Think of that extra character, the s, as standing for secure.

Also, some web browsers display a special icon — such as a lock — near the URL or possibly in the status bar at the bottom of the page.

One thing is for sure: You should only enter personal data in pages that are SSL-protected. So if you don’t know how to check for a secure page in your browser, learn.

Of course, at the time, this blog did not have an SSL certificate. I’d done some research in the past and decided it wasn’t worth the cost. After all, although I do get a few donations — thank you generous supporters! — it isn’t as if this site earns any money for me. Hosting costs enough money; buying a certificate wasn’t in the budget.

Still that article made me wonder if I were losing visitors because I didn’t have that certificate. So I did some more research and discovered that my WordPress host, Bluehost, offered a free SSL certificate for subscribers. I made a few calls, clicked a few links, installed a WordPress plugin, and voila! I had a coveted https:// URL.

And then I pretty much forgot about it. After all, typing in the old URL (without the s) still pointed people to the new one. And who types in the whole thing anyway? If you put in any combination of URLs to get to this site — or if you clicked a link that took you here — some sort of behind-the-scenes magic put you on a secure page.

Yesterday changed that. I went to check the site and was faced with the following message:

Page is Not Secure

WTF?

Of course, I discovered this about 30 minutes before a friend was due to arrive to detail my helicopter and I had about a half dozen other things I wanted/needed to do before he arrived — like get dressed? (It was 5:30 AM.) So I did the easy thing: I called Bluehost and asked them what the hell was going on.

The support guy I got was very fond of the hold button. I don’t know if it’s because he really needed help or if he was working on more than one call at a time. I was on hold for most of the 45 minutes our call lasted. While I waited, my friend came, I greeted him in my pajamas, I made him coffee, and I put a bowl of cherries in front of him, occasionally interrupting our conversation to speak with the Bluehost support guy when he came back on the phone.

My big concern was this: people would be scared away by that message. They’d click a link, get to my site, and leave, thinking they’d get a virus or something. I needed the problem resolved quickly.

I was told that Comodo, the organization that provided the SSL certificates, had sent me some sort of verification email that I needed to click a link in. I told him I’d never gotten a message, although it could have been sorted into spam and automatically deleted. He asked me to check a specific email address. I told him I didn’t have that email address. “Well, that’s where the message was sent.”

This made no sense. It was not the email address I had on file with Bluehost. It was an email address on my domain that I had never set up. I checked and verified that it didn’t exist. Comodo had sent an email message to an address that I’d never created or used.

Seriously: WTF?

Mr Hold Button told me to create the address, which I did while he waited. Then, after putting me on hold for a while longer, he told me they’d send a new message and that I should follow the instruction in it.

By this time, I was tired of dealing with the problem. I needed to get dressed. I needed to pull the helicopter out so my friend could get started on it. I needed to do the other things I needed to do. So I told him I’d check in a while and hung up.

And then I forgot about it.

You see, I have a life and that life does not revolve around dealing with computer issues. That was my old life. My new life is far more interesting.

Besides, I had no intention of adding that new email address to any of my email clients on any of my devices. That meant I had to sit at a computer and go to the Webmail feature on Bluehost to check the message. Not exactly something I’m likely to remember.

But I got reminded again this morning when it still didn’t work right. One of my readers emailed me. I also noticed when I attempted to approve two comments.

I checked that stupid email inbox. Empty.

I got on the phone with Bluehost.

This time I got a guy who didn’t like touching the hold button. He stuck with me while we worked through the problem. There was a lot of silent time. He was texting with Comodo. I was starting to write this blog post. Occasionally, he would update me. Occasionally I’d whine to him about how ridiculous the whole thing was. He was suitably sympathetic. I was as apologetic as I could be. After all, it wasn’t his fault.

In the end, the email message finally came. I clicked the link — but not after lecturing him about how we’re not supposed to click links in email messages. I entered the secret code. He confirmed some stuff on his end. I snacked on some cherries. When he said, “Try now,” I did.

The problem was fixed. It had taken 22 minutes.

We wished each other a nice day. When I got the survey at the end of the call, I gave him a good score.

So it looks like this site is secure again — at least until the next time Comodo decides it needs to verify me.

And yes, this did impact site traffic. I had less than half my usual visitors yesterday and started today at about one quarter the traffic I should have had by noon.

Blog Back After a Lost day

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Outages are never fun.

Well, it looks as if this blog was down for most of March 3.

It was initially reported to me by a friend on Twitter and when I followed up I discovered that he was right —  the blog could not be reached. I called my  hosting company and the hold message mentioned a maintenance issue affecting some customers — apparently including me.

I was very busy for most of yesterday and there was nothing I could do about it anyway. I certainly didn’t expect it to be down for so long. But now it’s back up, and hopefully my hosting company won’t have the same problem again in the future.

Right now, I’m on a little business trip in beautiful Turlock, CA, helping out a friend with his spray business. I’ve been pretty busy with this kind of work for the past week and can’t wait to write a little bit about it. If you follow me on Twitter, you’ll likely see photos and videos —  including live periscope videos — posted occasionally throughout the day. The work is exhausting, and when I’m done for the day I basically fall into bed with my alarm set for 5 AM to start another day of the same.  With rain forecasted for later today and all day tomorrow, I might actually get the chance to finish a blog post in progress and write about my spray loader work. Stay tuned — hopefully, the blog will stay up and running.

And, by the way, it feels great to be so busy after so many weeks of mostly idle time during my extended snowbirding vacation.

About the “Postcards” Posts

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Lazy blogging at its best.

At this point I think I owe regular readers a quick explanation. 

I normally write very long and drawn out blog posts about cooking, flying, traveling, etc. All kinds of topics — after all, the site is called An Eclectic Mind and I cover an eclectic assortment of topics.

Lately, however, I’ve been on the road traveling south for the winter and I’ve been doing a lot of driving. Although I have my laptop with me, I honestly don’t feel like sitting in front of it typing long blog posts about my travels. Instead, I’ve decided to share short stories about my travels with pictures I’ve taken along the way. That’s with the “postcards” are all about.

I will eventually sit down in front of my computer and write more substantial blog posts about the things I’m doing and thinking. There’s a lot going on in the news and I’m actually following it when I’m on the grid. I just spent two days in Las Vegas and I got really tuned in again. Soon I’ll be housesitting in Wickenburg and have a lot of time on my hands to get some writing done.

So I guess what I’m trying to say is this: don’t give up on me. If you come here to read my long, thought out blog posts, you will eventually see them again. But it might not be for a few more days. Until then, I hope you enjoy the postcards.

Back, on a New Server

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Better service, less money.

One of the things that has bothered me for some time now is the slow response time of this blog. It just didn’t seem to load as fast as it should.

I knew it wasn’t my connection — I have wicked fast Internet here, as I’ve reported (i.e., bragged about) elsewhere. It was definitely the server.

In the past, every time I’d call to complain or look for a fix, I’d been told it was because I was sharing a server with 20,000, 50,000, or 80,000 — it depended who I spoke to — other websites. That’s because I had a cheap plan. I don’t make money with this blog and I can’t really justify spending a lot of money to maintain it. Recommendations often include using a caching system, but although I’ve tried that several times I haven’t ever seen an improvement. I’ve also turned off a lot of the plugins I used to use, hoping to speed up performance that way. I never see a difference.

I called again yesterday and spoke to someone else. (He was a “sharing with 50,000 websites” guy.) He recommended a different service. When I asked what it was and what it cost, it turned out to be a better shared system — it had the word “cloud” in its name, so it must be better, right? — for less money than I was paying. Switching was a no brainer. He could do it for me with no effort on my part.

I asked how long the site would be down. A few hours, he told me. I asked him to schedule it for the middle of the night. He agreed he would. I thanked him and we hung up.

This morning, when I checked my site at about 7:30 AM, it was down. I was not a happy camper. Another phone call, another person. I was on hold a long time. I’ve learned to keep that time productive by putting my phone in speaker mode and carrying it around in my shirt pocket until the person comes back. I washed some dishes, made a second cup of coffee, and folded laundry. She returned and said that she’d spoken to the migration people and they’d told her that they’d been doing a lot of migrations that weekend — an obvious bullshit line they feed people in my situation. There was no problem with my site. It was just taking longer than expected.

I suspected that it was either queued up improperly or the sheer size of the site was giving the migration software/people grief. This site currently has 2,375 blog posts, well over 8,000 comments, and at least 4,000 images. The database alone occupies nearly 29 MB of server space; the other files that go with it occupy another gigabyte.

I told her I’d call again if it wasn’t back up by noon. Then I thanked her and hung up.

I got to work doing other things. I’m packing for a trip and today’s challenge was getting my kayak on top of my truck camper, the Turtleback. It was actually a lot easier than I expected to get it up there — using my truck as a lifting platform — but it took a while to fasten it down in a way that I wouldn’t have to worry about scratching the camper’s rubber-coated roof. (The last thing I wanted was a leaky roof.) By the time I was finished at 11:30, the only thing I wanted was a snack and a nap. (Seriously: when the days get short, all I want to do is sleep. That’s one reason I head south in the winter.)

So I treated myself to both.

When I got up around 2:30 PM and checked the site, it was back up. And it loaded so quickly that, for a moment, I suspected that it was loading a version cached in my browser. So I loaded a different page. That came right up, too.

Anyway, judging from the stats bar graph, which shows hourly activity for the past 48 hours, it looks as if the site was down from around 6 AM to 11 AM. Not exactly starting at midnight per my request. Whatever.

Curious about my results, I loaded pingdom.com, a service that can check a Website’s speed. Although my speed was noticeably faster, I didn’t get a very good “grade.” I can only imagine what my grade must have been before the change.

Speed Test Results
Okay, so my Home page was graded D, mostly because of under-the-hood issues I could probably fix by making changes to plugins, etc. Again. Looks like a spring cleaning project to me.

Still, I’m not complaining anymore — at least for a while. It’s faster and cheaper.

And I’m happier, despite today’s downtime.