Ennovy.org

It looks like 43 Things is open now. I got invited to try it a week or two ago, and I’m using it to make a list of my future goals. (For the new year, and for more long term goals too.) You can read more about 43 Things here and here, and you can also check out my (unfinished) list.

And so this ends my last post of 2004, I’ll see everyone in 2005. Happy New Year, everyone!

(Trying saying the words “site zeitgeist” 10 times fast, hehe)

Since Google has published their year end zeitgeist, I thought I’d post the results for my own site as well.

Popular Queries (via search engines)
- yvonne
- ennovy (I’m #1 on Yahoo and MSN search!)

That’s really all the queries, because I block the site from search engines. I don’t really want to be #1.

Common Misspellings (from people that have linked to my site)
- envoy
- ennvoy

Eh .. I find it funny. It’s not a real word anyway, so people are more likely to spell it wrong.

Common Searches (on my site)
- smileys
- color
- email

This isn’t really official, it came from looking at the most recent searches (code was provided by Lynda).

I need to mention something about “color” - if you search my entries using that word, it may not bring up all of the results, because I usually spell it as “colour”. A long while ago I said I’d try to write both colour and color in each entry, but I haven’t been doing that. :p

Most Visited Article
- Fotobuzz and ExpressionEngine

To be honest, the most visited file is my RSS feed. And there are still many requests for my old RSS feed (at /index.xml) which doesn’t exist anymore since I started using EE.

( To finish it off, the stats )

Well, several days after the earthquake near Indonesia and the resulting tsunami, I finally made a donation to the Canadian Red Cross. As did the rest of my family members. It’s been really horrific watching as the death tolls rise. I really can’t imagine what the people who were directly affected are going through. Also I can’t help but wonder what it would have been like if it happened late at night, when everyone was sleeping. *shivers*

Besides watching the local news, I’ve been keeping up with the relief effort through these websites:
- 2004 Indian Ocean Earthquake page at Wikipedia, there are tons of links there
- Tsunami Help
- WorldChanging

Gravatar is being used on this site now, thanks to a plugin by Les. A gravatar stands for a globally recognized avatar. Member avatars are gone now. The gravatar is linked to the email address, so if you’re leaving a comment and you want your gravatar to show up alongside your comment, please don’t munge your email. The email won’t ever be displayed, anyway.

Regarding that spam I was so upset about a few days ago - it seems to have stopped. I’m so relieved. The only spam I’m getting at my gmail account now is dictionary spam.

Lastly, while checking my site stats I noticed something similar to this post happening. The worm tried to access my index.php file - but I don’t have an index.php file, so it just generated a 404 error. This has gotten me paranoid though, especially with the other worms which have been showing up lately. I’ve got to remind myself to back up my site more often.

holiday:: lots and lots of food!
fault:: earthquakes
beep:: road runner
bubble:: bobble
needle:: sew, a needle pulling thread, la, a note to follow sew….
fare:: bus
treat:: kindred spirit
express:: polar
webcam:: portal
capital:: hill

(from Unconscious Mutterings)

I hope everyone had a very Merry Christmas! I have had very little sleep these past few days, and a whole lot of food.

One of the gifts that I got was a reindeer waterball/snow globe ornament. When I opened the box that it came in, though, and took out the ornament, everything was sopping wet. The glass from the waterball had cracked and there was this huge clump of ice that was melting.

What happened probably was the water inside the waterball froze, and since ice expands, it shattered the glass. The friend who gave it to me was from out of town, and it took several hours for her to drive to Toronto in below-zero weather. The glass must have broken then. This shows how cold it is right now.

There is a lovely picture of the ornament on the box, so I can always admire that.

Ray Charles and Betty Carter - Baby, It's Cold Outside

Guess what I read just now! In September 2005 they’re going to be releasing The Complete Calvin and Hobbes collection!

From the publisher’s website:

Composed of three hardcover, four-color volumes in a sturdy slipcase, this edition will include all Calvin and Hobbes cartoons that ever appeared in syndication. This is the treasure that all Calvin and Hobbes fans will seek.

It costs $150 US ($200 CAN) but Amazon is already selling it at $94.50 US! Aaahhh I’m so happy!

I’m all set up at my new host now! Everything seems to work fine.

Someone has been using my gmail account to sign up for offers at freeipods.com! At first I got an email asking me to verify my email address. I didn’t click on the link of course. Nevertheless, immediately afterwards I got a whole bunch of spam from what I assume are third party partners of freeipods.

I’ve read about people signing up for an account at freeipods and then getting lots of spam in their email (see this Wired article for example). This is ridiculous, because I never signed up for anything! Some idiot did!

I’m extremely wary about adding my email address to the Do Not Send list because to me it’s more of a Let’s Send More Spam To This Innocent User list.

And you know those spam emails? The emails have links to websites, and two of the emails have the person’s personal information encoded in the URL. If that information is correct, I know this person’s name and full address.

I obviously didn’t read up on domain transfers that thoroughly before I initiated a domain transfer - it takes up to 7 days to complete. Grrr.

I’ve done a couple of stupid things lately. Tonight, I was trying to figure out how to lock my cell phone so that anyone who wanted to use it had to type in a PIN code. I checked the phone manual, and it listed the default PIN, so I entered that into my phone. It didn’t work. I tried a couple more times, and I managed to lock myself out of the phone! There was a message saying I had to contact customer care. One of the option on my phone, was labelled “SOS”. I thought that would connect me directly to the customer care number. Instead it connected me to the police. I was so embarrassed when I explained to the operator what happened. I still can’t sort this out yet because I can only call the customer care people during office hours.

The other stupid thing is with regards to my alarm clock. I have two alarm clocks - the first one is my stereo alarm, and the second my radio alarm (which goes off half an hour after the first one does). For the past four days, the first alarm clock has failed to go off. At first I thought that the power might have gone out during the night, and reset the stereo timers. We had been warned by our electricity company that they were planning power outages, but only for a short period of time each day and only in the daytime. But this couldn’t possibly happen four times in a row at night. Finally I got the idea to check my stereo. It turns out I set it to play a CD when the alarm goes off, but I hadn’t put a CD in! So the alarm couldn’t play anything. :p