To anyone that didn’t receive this gift from me, here it is for the taking.

Alright so today was a total nightmare. If you don’t know anything about Wordpress or MYSql databases, skip the following paragraph because it won’t mean anything to you. If you do, skip it anyway because it’s boring and I’m just ranting…

Once again I had to do a Wordpress update, but I hate doing it manually, and since Dreamhost made changes to their site since I originally installed it using their “One-Click Installs”, they no longer recognized it so I couldn’t just use their handy “Update” button to let them do all the work for me. So to save me time and effort in the future, I spent SEVEN hours today trying to make a fresh installation of the new Wordpress which meant having to backup and take down EVERYTHING in my root directory and all my database information. That part wasn’t a problem, it was PUTTING EVERYTHING BACK that brought on the horror. I had made a regular XML export of posts and such so that I wouldn’t have any database conflictions in importing those, but I was having to go through and change their permalinks, and fixing all my settings, and trying to get my plugins reactivated properly–several of which I had made custom modifications to and they weren’t behaving–and then my stupid REFERRER script. Oh how I love and hate that script. It uses a database to record all its information, and because I’m so SMART I had it mixed in with my wordpress database and since I didn’t know how to separate it out of the file, I had to go to Dreamhost to restore a backup, then make a new backup file with just those tables, then create a new database, but I couldn’t import the data because the file was too big so then I had to figure out how to do it using Putty with SSH, so finally did that, then had to change the names of the tables, then change the database information in the files that access them. UGH. And then of course I lost my most recent changes to my header.php for this theme so I had to go and change that again. To make ALL MATTERS WORSE, my server started getting overloaded, either just because it felt like it or because I was working it too hard (most likely the latter) so then it started going REALLY SLOW as well as all sites on my hosting (Sorry Megs lol) and even stopped working altogether for a short while. Eventually sped up again and is all normal now, and I’ve got everything all up-to-date, and future Wordpress updates will now only ever require the press of a button…*knocks on wood*

I have some bad good news though…now that my mad Photoshop skills have gotten even madder, I’m re-enhancing all my Photography pics. Yes, I said ALL. So now I have that in addition to the ones I haven’t even done yet. That puts me at a total of about…880 pictures I have to work on. I did 30 in about 4 hours last night, so you do the math *sigh* At least they’ll 1. Look much better 2. Have a larger resolution 3. Have a consistent border because I know I kept changing it everytime I added a new set and some didn’t even fit all the text in x.X I’m going to finish the new pictures first though, cuz I know you probably are more interested in that, I know I am ;)

I got new pencils and paintbrushes so I’m going to be doing some traditional art as well…yeah updates are gonna be small and random and scattered haha. It’ll be worth it though. I’m really trying to bring this site back to life. Trying to bring my life back to life too heh.

I cleaned up my affiliates since many seemed to have fallen off the planet, and added a new one:

Well it’s getting late (late to us working people) so I’m probably going to paint for a bit then head to bed…

Thanks for dropping by, ciao!