I am evil and I gloat and am catty
Feb. 24th, 2011 02:50 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
botiasI was volunteer webmistress for a local org for a number of years. A few months ago they let me know, kindly, that my services were no longer needed as they had a shiny new volunteer who had promised them all kinds of goodies. They even gave me a free year's membership as a golden handshake and it was all good. A more closely involved volunteer was good move for them as I was only peripherally involved with the organization any longer.
The shiny new volunteer has been lame. I am evil, for I am gloating. The new guy ditched ALL of the old (custom) code and replaced it with a WordPress site. That's fine except that the spiffy new web person (he's a pro you know) apparently doesn't know diddly about .htaccess files and 301 redirects because he jettisoned all of the organization's excellent search engine rankings along with the old page addresses. Also, the one-size-fits-all template has lots o' unnecessary HTML and a tiny bit of actual content. This is bad for rankings. Please allow me this gloating. I bought a house in Sept. 2005 which shows you how unworthy I am to criticize anyone for not being all-knowing, yet it may also illustrate how much I am in need of free entertainment.
This was all called to my attention today because the new webmaster's wife (?) emailed me. It seems that some very old info on our server, that used to be buried in the rankings, is showing up as the top ranked page now that most of my old pages have dropped off and the new ones have failed to take their place. She was expecting that the new site would rise to the top once we got rid of this old data.
I made it inaccessible right away, but explained that this would only increase the rankings of the new pages by one and suggested doing some forwarding.
In other news, I am enjoying The Scarlet Pimpernel. It's not like 'wow' everyone go out and read it, but it's nice classic fluff that I probably would have liked even more as an early adolescent.
I planted four varieties of poppies around the first of February and all of them have sprouted. So far so good! And the agrostemma I planted in November looks very happy. I planted it way too densely in my inexperience and have been shifting little plants to other spots around the garden. They don't care for this, pouting even when I take a big root ball with them, but a good rain seems to restore their good humor. However I have been too chicken to plant the fancy seeds I bought and spoke about. This must change! Odds of germination are certainly better in my inexperienced hands than leaving them in their little envelopes. Mostly I've worked on my tenant's yard lately, planting some landscaping shrubs that should provide them some privacy in a few years and also provide birds with berries and habitat, and there's also a blueberry bush and a native huckleberry in the mix that might provide some fruit to people.
I spent the last of a gift windfall on four 'Sunshine Blue' blueberry bushes for my own yard. These are just spectacularly lovely to me as foliage plants. They are evergreen and right now the cold has made the leaves purple/rose/bronze. They are blue-green the rest of the year with lots of tasty berries. I hired a 'gardening coach' with money from selling a book on animation that had turned hard-to-find and valuable since I bought it, and she gave me some interesting suggestions and has inspired me to create more 'year round interest' i.e. the blueberry bushes. I also added another artichoke at her suggestion which are very cheap bareroot right now and are really neat looking in the winter/early spring when other stuff is dormant.
Now it's time to go to the beach I think. I heard a rumor that it's snowing on the coast about 45 minutes drive to the north and that's a once-in-a-decade-if-that phenom around here.
The shiny new volunteer has been lame. I am evil, for I am gloating. The new guy ditched ALL of the old (custom) code and replaced it with a WordPress site. That's fine except that the spiffy new web person (he's a pro you know) apparently doesn't know diddly about .htaccess files and 301 redirects because he jettisoned all of the organization's excellent search engine rankings along with the old page addresses. Also, the one-size-fits-all template has lots o' unnecessary HTML and a tiny bit of actual content. This is bad for rankings. Please allow me this gloating. I bought a house in Sept. 2005 which shows you how unworthy I am to criticize anyone for not being all-knowing, yet it may also illustrate how much I am in need of free entertainment.
This was all called to my attention today because the new webmaster's wife (?) emailed me. It seems that some very old info on our server, that used to be buried in the rankings, is showing up as the top ranked page now that most of my old pages have dropped off and the new ones have failed to take their place. She was expecting that the new site would rise to the top once we got rid of this old data.
I made it inaccessible right away, but explained that this would only increase the rankings of the new pages by one and suggested doing some forwarding.
In other news, I am enjoying The Scarlet Pimpernel. It's not like 'wow' everyone go out and read it, but it's nice classic fluff that I probably would have liked even more as an early adolescent.
I planted four varieties of poppies around the first of February and all of them have sprouted. So far so good! And the agrostemma I planted in November looks very happy. I planted it way too densely in my inexperience and have been shifting little plants to other spots around the garden. They don't care for this, pouting even when I take a big root ball with them, but a good rain seems to restore their good humor. However I have been too chicken to plant the fancy seeds I bought and spoke about. This must change! Odds of germination are certainly better in my inexperienced hands than leaving them in their little envelopes. Mostly I've worked on my tenant's yard lately, planting some landscaping shrubs that should provide them some privacy in a few years and also provide birds with berries and habitat, and there's also a blueberry bush and a native huckleberry in the mix that might provide some fruit to people.
I spent the last of a gift windfall on four 'Sunshine Blue' blueberry bushes for my own yard. These are just spectacularly lovely to me as foliage plants. They are evergreen and right now the cold has made the leaves purple/rose/bronze. They are blue-green the rest of the year with lots of tasty berries. I hired a 'gardening coach' with money from selling a book on animation that had turned hard-to-find and valuable since I bought it, and she gave me some interesting suggestions and has inspired me to create more 'year round interest' i.e. the blueberry bushes. I also added another artichoke at her suggestion which are very cheap bareroot right now and are really neat looking in the winter/early spring when other stuff is dormant.
Now it's time to go to the beach I think. I heard a rumor that it's snowing on the coast about 45 minutes drive to the north and that's a once-in-a-decade-if-that phenom around here.
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no subject
Date: 2011-02-24 11:12 pm (UTC)And yay for blueberries.
no subject
Date: 2011-02-25 07:23 pm (UTC)Indeed! They are purty.
no subject
Date: 2011-02-24 11:13 pm (UTC):giggle: about the gloating.
no subject
Date: 2011-02-25 07:50 pm (UTC)I am awful! XD
no subject
Date: 2011-02-25 02:35 am (UTC)we grew artichokes on the Oregon coast. they took a couple of years to get established but eventually they really took off. I adore artichokes, and the plants were neat too!
though I'm jealous of your flowers and yard. I have snow, and they're currently calling for 18 degrees tonight!
no subject
Date: 2011-02-25 08:26 pm (UTC)18 degrees! Cuddle up! :)
no subject
Date: 2011-02-25 11:53 pm (UTC)Fresh blueberries, what a treat! We can grow raspberries, but we have to water the holy heck out of them to get much fruit. I've given up on anything but peppers and chards and broccoli.
Quite a few people here planted artichokes last year and then just let the artichokes flower! I didn't know any of them and never saw them in their yards to ask, but I wonder if somehow they didn't taste as delicious as they should or if people in Central Texas are unable to deal with the wonderful fussiness of eating a fresh artichoke.
Oh, I hope you took pictures of the snow. My brother is in Tahoe this weekend and I see that snow all the time!
no subject
Date: 2011-02-26 09:54 pm (UTC)I let my artichoke flower. I planted it for the leaves. My grandma is scandalized and it sounds like you are a bit as well! They are just big thistles so it seems like they could tolerate heat and dryness well. I just am not experienced preparing artichokes the two or three buds that I get in the shady spot aren't quite enough to tempt me. Especially since they were attacked by black sooty aphids last season.
There was no snow it turns out. I knew it was a long shot, but a good time was had anyway.