Famille Du Pentium

I’m considering moving famille.org to a different web-hosting company.  Right now the entire domain is hosted by Yahoo, which is convenient (if not a bit embarrassing) because then my famille.org e-mail is in the same web interface as my Yahoo mail. 

But there are support issues with Movable Type, for instance this version of Movable Type (the software that runs the blog) is very old, and Yahoo doesn’t seem to want to upgrade it.  Instead, their users get constant upgrade reminders (which we can do nothing about), which interfere with running the blog.  Further, features like remembering commenters (so that their comments don’t have to be approved every time) and properly dealing with SPAM comments just don’t work.  

Worse yet, Yahoo charges a real premium for their hosting, which is fine for some folks with the services they offer, but not for me.

So when I was at Oscon, I talked to the guy who wrote Movable Type blog, and he pointed me to a few hosting companies that (1) charge  a lot less than Yahoo, and (2) actually support the blog product.

This is more of an FYI for my readers.  The blog itself will move easily to the new site, when we make the move.  The pictures section is going to be a different matter.  There’s no way to migrate Gallery 2 from one site to another, I just have to download all the pictures and upload them again.  That’s going to take time, and also all the links will change.  I also might just start over  with new pics. 

Well that’s the latest news.  I’ll keep you posted.

Even before Ike churns through the midwest, we are getting hit by a fairly substantial storm from the west that is flooding most of Chicago. 

We’re OK for now.  We took about an inch of water in the basement, but it was a fairly small section of floor and I was able to bail us out with the shop-vac.   For now, we’re holding dry.  The street outside our house, however, is now known as Lake Trumbull, part of a chain of lakes including Lake Lee and Lake St. Louis.  I just moved our cars to high ground, a few blocks away.

Now, we’ve just got to prepare for the after-effects of Ike.  Gustav dumped three inches of rain in six hours on Chicago.  We’re hoping for the best, my shop-vac is ready 🙂

Just a quick note, as we’re really busy with the start of the school year:  Aaron tried out and made the McCracken Middle School Junior Varsity soccer team.  You can follow the Hornets schedule and standings here.  More later.