Just realized Jetpack hasn’t been working 100% correctly since I changed URLs. Got it working correctly and I think I lost all my old stats. Oh well.

For more or less the first time since mid-June, last night Scarlett slept the entire night without needing her blanket fixed, her hair-tie fixed, or a cup of water. It was nice to get some rest.

I’ve been working with my host to try and figure out why my relatively low traffic site has been having issues. So I’ve rejiggered WP Super CACHE to work well on the site and I’m using Cloudfare on most, if not all, of my Wordpress blogs. Yet I’m still getting some periods of time where the site’s offline. So, after many years I’m getting rid of Sociable and YARPP (which produces related posts). YARPP, in particular, if often called out as a plugin that requires a lot of resources. Here’s how things looked before I changed it:

I love when newspapers predict things that are hilarious in hindsight:

I continued listening to artists alphabetically on my computer and randomly on my phone.

1. Childish Gambino (92 listens) - Came across his music in my alphabetic romp. Currently conflicted. I enjoy the verbal jiu jitsu, but find a lot of it whiny (after hearing for the 15th time) and just so overly aggressively sexual I feel wrong listening to it with my daughter around. 2. Billie Holiday (64 listens) - long-time readers know that Danielle and I listen to pretty much everything from the latest music to the oldest music. Billie Holiday is awesome and more people need to listen to her. 3. Danny Baranowsky (61 listens) - Listened to the Super Meat Boy soundtrack. It was fun. 4. Chance the Rapper (47 listens) - Still really enjoy Acid Rap and don’t enjoy #10Day. 5. The Black Keys (46 listens) - I always start off happy listening to The Black Keys, but the sameness drags on me by the end. 6. Alan Menken (45 listens) - for Scarlett. 7. Celia Cruz (44 listens) - I can listen to Celia Cruz at any time. Really enjoyed revisiting these songs. 7. Brave Saint Saturn (44 listens) - Although the first album’s a tad cheesy, I really enjoy where Reese took things for the second two albums. I continue to hold out hope that he will do another one. 9. Mandy Moore (43 listens) - Scarlett wanted to listen to a lot of Tangled this quarter. 10. Anberlin (31 listens) - Maybe it’s just the quarter in which I bought it, but the last album failed to make a lasting impression. I’m sure, with time, I’ll come to enjoy it as much as I enjoy the other albums. 11. Christafari (30 listens) - The music is a great groove. I have the first two albums and I think I like more songs in the first one, but I do like a lot of the second one. Although no longer an evangelical, I still find it to be pretty uplifting. 12. Ben Shive (29 listens) - There’s a certain timelessness to the songs. Some of them remind me of a subdued Billy Joel. 13. The Chipmunks & The Chipettes (28 listens) - Playing some Chipmunks for Scarlett. 13. The Weeknd (28 listens) - I know there are issues with some of the lyrics, but I do like the sound of a few of the songs. Especially “High for This” 13. Ben Prunty Music (28 listens) - The FTL soundtrack. Quite moody. I enjoy it.

Last night I had a dream that combined Games of Thrones and Perl programming. Like it was in the GoT world, but we had to do some Perl programming to defeat the Lannisters.

Poker Night 2 (3 hrs): Before going on my recent business trip I wanted to take  a small break from school work so I played PN2 the night before my trip. I reached the point where I’ve heard all the in-game dialogue so many times that I don’t even listen any more. I can generally last a while, but I wasn’t able to win any tournaments. I usually got knocked out by the last man standing.

American Gods by Neil Gaiman

My rating: 4 of 5 stars

If you take Terry Pratchett’s Small Gods and combine it with Scott Snyder’s American Vampire, Vol. 1, you’d have a pretty close approximation of what this book is about. Given that this book has been out since 2001, I’m not going to bother with marking spoilers. I’ll say here at the top that I really enjoyed this book and recommend it to anyone who enjoys mythology. Also, not for the faint of heart - lots of profanity, violence, and explicit sex.

For all those who say the only way to stop a bad guy with a gun is to have a gun…..

“William Coleman III of Gresham, Oregon, was robbed of his Walther-brand P22 handgun. The gun was stolen by a young man who walked up to Coleman, pulled out his own gun, and said, ‘I like your gun. Give it to me.’”

I hope it’s a little more mature in Windows 10 - I’ll definitely consider it when I update my photography hard drive.