It works today 
Whee! Thank goodness the cache was refreshed or something. That means I can get back to working on my site! Now if only I could figure out which email is going where 
Those of you who had email addy’s through me…I’ll get to you in a sec. I just hope all my hosting stuff is going ok! You’ll get your ftp login/pass soon…please email me so I know that you got my message!
Author: etoiline
It’s back! Sort of.
StandardWell, welcome back to etoiline.com. I hope things are working more or less as they should, though the ‘dreamer,’ ‘content,’ and ‘realm’ areas of the site are not up and won’t be until I get a change to rewrite the php which caused the lovely downness of this site in the first place. And would you believe that I CAN’T SEE MY PAGE ON MY COMPUTER! This is not the normal computer I work on. Sigh. Quit caching my page, dammit!
Today is going to be hell. It was gonna be hell before I learned that our newly part-time tech Mark (the semi-cute guy) was sick today and won’t be in. Now it might be slightly less hell because we might not do a part of the exp since there’s one fewer pair of hands, but I’ve still got two different isolations to do today and Luigi can’t help since he’s busy upstairs. sigh.
Lovely to have a rant on the first day back, eh? By the way, Kate, if you see this…the Moonstone Chronicles are back up, as are the Decadence chapters
Anyone out there have trouble with installing Movable Type? lol. I feel disloyal typing that in Greymatter
What’s the deal? Part Deux
StandardSo you’d think I’d be posting to my livejournal more since my main site is down. Ha, I say. Me, post? Currently I’m dealing with the vagaries of changing my dns settings, which hopefully will mean my domain will resolve to my new host. Eeek! Also I changed layouts at my blogspot because obviously the pictures weren’t showing up. Alex says it’s too dark. I like my monitor settings, thankyouverymuch. take a look at aspire II and let me know what you think. Also try checking out etoiline.com…see if it’s up yet. it’s supposed to take a day or two for the dns settings to propagate through the internet so hopefully I’ll see something soon. That Server 500 error is really annoying. Wish me luck and cross your fingers…and don’t forget to vote for my site, even though it’s not up, because you can. Thank you.
The Friday Five
StandardWhen was the last time you…
1. …went to the doctor? um. sometime last year?
2. …went to the dentist? See above.
3. …filled your gas tank? last monday, before the gas jumped from $1.53 to $1.67; can you say insane? So glad I filled up early.
4. …got enough sleep? Hmm. I don’t know.
5. …backed up your computer? Well, I sort of backed up some of the PC I use today…sort of. but otherwise…er. never? So bad, I know. I should get one of those portable harddrives so I could just switch them out when I need space.
What’s the Deal?
StandardFirst off I’m sorry the pictures aren’t showing up. Reason below.
Some of you might have noticed that my main site is down. Most of you probably don’t care, but for the few intrepid souls who do see this website and wondered where the heck the Stars went, here’s your answer.
Apparently there was some hacking originating from my account so they temporarily suspended it. Without notifying me first, of course, so I was left all Sunday wondering what the heck had happened to the site until Monday when the sysadmins came back to work. I don’t have a timeframe on when the site will be back up, but I hope soon…there are just more and more reasons why I want to change hosting providers. If you know of a good one, let me know. Cheap but feature-ful is a good thing.
Anyone who’s hosted with me or using pictures (I hope you know who you are and you’re doing it with permission) I apologize. This just moved up the timetable on getting a new host.
x-posted to my livejournal. Figure it out if you really want to see.
The Friday Five
Standard1. Are you superstitious? Sometimes. I always wore the same socks and sports bra (washed, of course) for every track meet. Who knows. Maybe it helped.
2. What extremes have you heard of someone going to in the name of superstition? Wearing but not washing the same pair of socks for the whole season. Ugh!
3. Believer or not, what’s your favorite superstition? Probably the walking under the ladder bit. I won’t do it, but it’s more the danger factor than I believe it brings bad luck.
4. Do you believe in luck? If yes, do you have a lucky number/article of clothing/ritual? I think there’s some element to luck…I’m fond of the number 7, and if you know why I like the number 27 you’re very special 😉
5. Do you believe in astrology? Why or why not? Some parts of it I do. Quite alot of what they say about my sign is true, but then again there’s alot of bunk in there too. Although I can see how my previous relationships didn’t work out, and why I was peeved at my ex’s choice of a new gf 😉 It’s fun to look at but it’s not serious for me.
My dad knows his birthday
Standardwas yesterday and that I celebrated with him. I just thought I’d mention it here. You know, because not everyone shares a birthday with Abraham Lincoln.
Are you superstitious? It’s Friday the 13th
Did you hear that after 43 years Barbie and Ken are breaking up? Apparently she wants to pursue a more independent life, and go out with Blaine, an Australian boogie-boarder. Yeah. And what was Mattel thinking?
It’s really cold here. But not snowing! Sigh. This always happens. I’m somewhat unprepared for the cold weather and snow then I get prepared and it doesn’t snow again. Bleh. Snow! I want to go sledding again! Of course, our local groundhog was too scared to even come out on Groundhog Day much less to come out and be scared of his shadow…so it looks like winter is gonna be around for quite some time.
Kate (Leo & Alex’s friend) wants to do something for Valentine’s Day as we’re the single ones in the bunch. Maybe we’ll go out and get drunk. I don’t know. We don’t really have plans yet Any ideas? Happy early Heart Day 
I got a new mouse today
StandardNot a live mouse, silly, a computer mouse. It’s a Logitech optical mouse which makes me happy, though I think something was messed up originally so the comp was being a little wacky. And (mostly) unrelated to that, some of you might have noticed the site being down a bit in the last few days. This is because I was trying to use a referring script that was working for a while and then suddenly stopped…so I played with the htaccess for the main directory but alas apparently I can’t do that anymore.
Those of you who have changed hosting providers…what’s your experience been like? I think I’d really like to change providers and I’ll probably go with Moll’s, Surpass but I’m not sure. Anyone have good ideas? I’ve still got a few months with my current host, so I’m not concerned, yet…what does concern me is that apparently while I own my domain, I can’t administer it. I think this is because I bought the domain through my host, so they set it up…but in order to keep my domain name if I transfer hosts I’ll have to change things and I hope my current host won’t bitch about changing if I do decide to change. I should…I’d get more room, more bandwidth, for about the same price. Eh. I guess we’ll see.
ATTENTION! The Aspire Exchange is all new! I totally redid the layout, but no one’s joined recently so there’s not too much to do with content. I thought about switching to a PHP banner exchange to automate signups but when I tried to install it weird things happened. So it’s still a javascript exchange…if you have a button, or you’d like to make you a button so you can join, please please visit the link above and sign up! Thank you
Apt. update: for those of you who didn’t already know, we got a couch for the apartment! It’s old and used and didn’t have proper cushions but we fixed that. We got a slipcover that didn’t fit, then a slipcover that had water stains, then the proper size. Yahoo Target. Yeah. So now hopefully Leo will watch more movies with me I’m such a lazy bum. All sorts of other things I could be doing… but I have all these movies to watch! I’ve been a bad girl and spent lots of money at Borders and Best Buy on good dvds…good news is that I should get a pretty nice tax refund. Bad news is it should all go into my savings account so I don’t spend it! Money for grad school anyone?
PLEASE PLEASE PLEASE VOTE!!!! I need all the help I can get this week. Vote links are under each post or on the sidebar…thank you thank you 
The Friday Five
Standard1. What’s the most daring thing you’ve ever done? Er. Trying octopus at a chinese restaurant? I don’t honestly know. I guess I’m not that daring.
2. What one thing would you like to try that your mother/friend/significant other would never approve of? Snowboarding, skydiving, or (maybe someday I might want to do this) bungee jumping.
3. On a scale of 1-10, what’s your risk factor? (1=never take risks, 10=it’s a lifestyle) Probably about a 5. Sometimes I like taking risks but most often my life doesn’t require me to.
4. What’s the best thing that’s ever happened to you as a result of being bold/risky? Well, if you say being bold, it probably had something to do with psyching people out on the track. But as I noted above, I’m not really that daring.
5. … and what’s the worst? Confessing drunkenly to my crush that I liked him. Yeah.
Did you remember to wear read for Wear Red for Women day?
Superbowl Hangover; and Primary Issues
StandardOr at least that’s what they called it on the radio yesterday. If you know me you know I’m not a big football fan, but the Superbowl game was pretty darn lively. Poor CBS…the Janet/Justin breast-bare, the second-half streaker, and Richard Hatch’s tush on Survivor…not exactly family-friendly…although I didn’t mind. At least it was entertaining. And once again the team I was sort of rooting for, though they made a wonderful attempt, lost. Yes, even though the Carolina Panthers beat the hometown Rams in the NFC I still cheered for the blue and white. That was even before I remembered that Vinatutu or whatever the jerk’s name is and the Pats beat us a few years ago. Whatever. I had to go with the fact that I love panthers/cougars the animals…since I didn’t have a better reason to cheer for one team or the other.
And now for something completely different:
Today is the Missouri Primary for the presidential election. While you can rest assured that I will vote Democrat (remember how my mother said she’d rather vote for a monkey than have Dubya in the white house again), I’m not sure which Dem I’ll choose. I’ve got it narrowed to two: John Edwards and John Kerry. I think I like Edwards better…he’s younger and seems a little bit more optimistic and ‘for the people’ but Kerry seems to have better electability. He takes more of a hard-line stance on the issues, which I guess is good. He doesn’t seem quite as much of a people-person as Edwards. They’ve both got good sounding plans, but there are pros and cons to each. I feel bad because I really wasn’t up on the issues before yesterday…I mean, I knew that they were running but I didn’t even see campaign commercials for anyone but Edwards. I feel like I should be better about knowing the issues. And I wonder if I’m really gonna vote tonight. I should, because it’s important, but I worry that since there’s such a glut of candidates that it’s going to be split among them all and we’ll end up with Howard-YEEEEEAAAAAGGGGGH-Dean up against Bush, and I’d really rather not vote for him. But, recall the monkey. Yeah.
My mom mentioned that the big ticket would be Kerry for president and Edwards for VP. That could very well rule, and let’s hope that things work out that way. I sort of miss the Clinton-Bush 1992 race…we had to do an eighth-grade civics class project on it, and I was so happy that Clinton won…even made a last minute entry on election day showing early returns. On very few things do I like or even want to be political on, but we just can’t be a GOP-controlled country anymore.
So here’s my stump: Vote today (if you have to, or vote whenever you have to), an’ if it please ye, vote Democrat. This country really can’t take another four years of Bush. And if you’d like to know more about my two top candidates, check out :: John Kerry for President – 100 Days to Change America :: and John Edwards: Reak Solutions for America. Your country will thank you.