It looks like we're back. Fingers firmly crossed.

[still from Clerks, posted by jeremyv]

The short version?

domesticat.net's been parked on omnipotent.net, a machine under Gareth's control, for years. Jeff's been wanting his own space to play, and we liked the idea of parking our sites on the same box. We were in the process of slowly moving domesticat over when a couple of database errors during our vacation caused me to move up the timeframe.

When we got back from [ Washington / Arkansas / Mississippi / if it's Tuesday we're where, exactly? ] I decided to get started on the process. We migrated my mail to gmail ... years and years of inane little emails, all now offered up on the altar of the Goog ... and tarballed all the files on the server.

The good news is that my retinas are okay. The bad news? None really; my vision is stable for the second year in a row and my eyes are fine. I'll call that a win in just about any playbook.

I had a scary incident a few weeks ago. The vision in the central portion of my right eye blurred and began to do what I can only describe as 'sparkle.' There was no pain and no other change, just an area the shape of a crescent moon in my central field of vision that was strangely prismatic.

It went away that same afternoon. Geof was right to question my blood pressure -- low as usual -- and there were no side effects.

I was glad to confirm that all was well. Ever since my mother had her cornea transplant thanks to Fuchs' dystrophy, I've been more aware than usual of how fragile my sense of sight is, and how lost I would be without it.

At long last, it's happened -- the final two drupal modules I've been hoping would be upgraded to version 6.x have received those upgrades. I am now making preparations to make the major leap from drupal version 5.x to 6.x.

In the tradition of all upgrades, this is surely going to cause cat.net to explode. However, better cat.net than my workplace's site. Fewer of you are likely to call my house in outrage.

At least, I'd like to think that's the kind of relationship we have, right?

More updates when we're^H^H^H^H^I'm done. [send tea plz?]

Update, 9:30pm local time: We're not fully back up, but the site is upgraded and most of the modules are functional again. %*@&)! gravatars.

Update, 10:00pm local time: Gravatars still dead. Alphabetical archives live. Monthly archives grring at me. %*@&)! gravatars.

I finally remembered to add gravatars to cat.net. Logged-in users only, though.

If you don't have one, you can make one very easily at gravatar.com.

If you do have one, then look to the right and find the "my account" link in the right sidebar. Edit your info, scroll down to the bottom part of the page, and check the option that says 'Use my gravatar in comments.'

If you're seeing this, the site is back up now. The past two days have been, shall we say, "unfortunately instructional" regarding drupal.

That's the polite way to say, "I know something's wrong, I'm trying out ways to fix it, and it's driving me crazy."

Drupal and I have not been friends this week.

"Utterly meaningless!

Everything is meaningless!"

Just so you all know - commenting should work properly on cat.net now. Suffice it to say I'm a dork, and I should be a bit more careful when I upload files. Carry on. Comment, or something. (I already hear you getting ideas, Mr. Cavanagh. Quiet, you.)

While I have your attention, I'd also like to note that should I get my hands on the previous owners of this house (preferably while in the jurisdiction of a country that has no laws on murder) I really should do some unspeakable things to their corpses.

Just to make a point.

I'm thinking of extending my oh-so-geeky touch a bit further out into this InterWebNet thingy, and could use an opinion or two.

As most of you longtime readers know, domesticat.net isn't exactly your home for the latest and greatest linkfood. (All adverbs, all the time!) I've toyed with the idea of creating something shorter and snappier - a place to just post links.

Your questions are….

Welcome back from the rather suddenly-imposed hiatus, everyone! Glad to see that a few of you are still around and kicking. We at casa domesticat are doing the happy dance, now that our web server is back online.I'm pleased to report that you've missed virtually nothing in the meantime. The cats are still rotten, the house is a bit cleaner than it was last week, and everyone (except Gareth) has gone home (alas, geekfest is over…).

Brad announces that he's getting ADSL soon. That means I have to get back to work on domesticat.

What many of you don't see is that Brad's been responsible for me doing many of the cool things to domesticat that I've done over the past year. The friendly design rivalry between us extends back for almost the entire time I've known him.It began as a geeky game of one-upsmanship: upon seeing what one person had done to their site, the changes inspired the other to make similar changes to theirs—and then go a step further.

Thus domesticat went from a static page to a dynamic one. PHP and strict style sheet usage got thrown into the mix. Song lists were shown. Favicons. Daily entries. Better graphics, quicker download times, more cohesive themes. Search functions. Webcams (I swear mine will return soon).