When I found Wordpress I was excited about its ability to be customized fairly easy and have more of that “website” look and not all the ads and stuff of other blogs. Unfortunately, when I came across Wordpress and subsquently blogged I was either logged into the internet through my work VPN at home or blogged during lunch from the office. This kept me from realizing that while the Wordpress home page can be viewed and accessed within China it’s blogs cannot. The Mozilla Firefox has a add-in that allows a bypass around the Great China Firewall, unfortunately it doesn’t always work and keeps people from being able to comment.
So in my infinite wisdom, I thought I would acquire another domain and convert my blog to the same hosting service in the US that we are using for our website . Great idea but horrible execution. I switched packages which allows a second domain and hosting for all of an additional $12 dollars a year but I chose the wrong package and lost our website while it “converts” to a Microsoft hosting package that doesn’t support the Wordpress format. Fortunately, I had just backed up our website to our computer and portable storage device. Unfortunately, the switch can’t be changed for 30 days unless I cancel our original plan and start all over. Apparently they are willing to refund our first package under their 90 day no hassle guarantee even though it says if you upgrade packages the guarantee is void - because they must think you are happy…But because I was so nice, calm and sweet talking on the phone they said no problem.
Maybe, just maybe our website will be back in a few days along with the new home (and I promise final move) for my blog… Worst case scenerio is our website will be offline for 29 1/2 more days while I wait out their you can only switch packages every 30 days policy. Lesson learned? The machine is smarter then man!
I received this email the other day, guess seafood won’t be apart of my diet for awhile….
U.S. CONSULATE GENERAL GUANGZHOU
American Citizen Services
“Red Tide” AlertThis is to alert American citizens living in southern China that there has been a growing “red tide” in the coastal waters of Hong Kong and Shenzhen. It is possible that the fish and shellfish from these affected waters might be contaminated with algal toxins that may cause adverse health effects if consumed. This is the third such red tide reported this year and the largest ever in the waters surrounding Shenzhen.
If the current red tide is caused by harmful algal blooms, consumption of contaminated seafood from affected waters could lead to paralytic shellfish poisoning or ciguatera fish poisoning. Symptoms of harmful consumption include tingling, numbness, burning of the lips, rash and fever; these could appear as rapidly as one hour following the ingestion of contaminated seafood.
American Citizen Services
U.S. Consulate General Guangzhou
This email is UNCLASSIFIED based upon the provisions of E.O. 12958
For as long as I can remember my sideburns have always been a little uneven. Regardless of whether I had my hair cut or trimmed at a shop or did it on my own it seems as though one side is always just a little shorter then the other. Then when trying to even them up the longer one becomes the short one, so the original shorter one needs to be trimmed up some more and then becomes the shorter one again. A vicious cycle that often led to no or very short sideburns.
I have tried to let my sideburns grow longer, I don’t quite have Elvis style porkchops but they are stylish in their own right. This seems to magnify the uneven dilemma which led me to ponder what is uneven? According to Merriam-Webster’s online dictionary, uneven besides meaning not even also can be defined as: varying from the straight or parallel ; and not uniform.
Well that kind of defines me! I would rather be uneven then unbalanced any day…
Hard to believe almost 4 weeks have passed since my last blog entry. My intent was to blog about each of the stops during our US trip but obviously that didn’t happen! We had an awesome trip and a great time with friends and family. Will try to write some thoughts and highlights about our trip and upload some photos over the weekend.
Doesn’t the picture say it all??
