What an exciting new year, so far!

Shortly after the New Year, I left for Canada, then Costa Rica. During the Presidential Inauguration I was scaling the side of a mountain on an All-Terrain-Vehicle, and subsequently jumping off a 20-foot waterfall in the rain forest. It seemed a worthwhile diversion from the political scene… but I try to keep my finger on the pulse, so after unpacking and sorting laundry and taking care of the bills, I sat down this morning with a nice breakfast to watch what inaugural footage I could find on the internet. (C-Span coverage on YouTube)

And now, a disclaimer from The Critic Who Counts: I am a little in love with Barack Obama. As my loyal readers know, I am Canadian but have lived in the United States for almost my entire adult life. Although I am not a citizen, I take the notion of ‘community’ very seriously. I can’t vote, but I do participate in the civic aspects of American life more fully than many Americans. I follow the news, I volunteer in my community, I make lots of charitable donations, and I try to keep my less-informed friends caught up on issues that affect them as well. If I had had the right to vote, I would have cast my chips in with President Obama. There are a multitude of reasons – but honestly, the most salient (to me) is this: The man is charismatic. As an outsider to this country, I understand how myopic America can be. We (yes, I count myself here) have believed too long that America is the most powerful country in the world – and we’ve lost our manners. For crying out loud, Yosemite Sam has been running the joint for the last 8 years. President Obama inspires me. I think it’s safe to say that he inspires the majority of Americans – and even safer to say that he inspires the global community.

So now that you have a tiny glimpse into my passion for the man, it hopefully will not cause too much wonder that I am sitting here now, with tears in my eyes, and my breath caught in my throat, breakfast forgotten. I’m disappointed that I didn’t get the opportunity to ride the wave of human emotion that is so obvious in the C-Span footage of his speech. I wish I had watched this live with my friends and family, and then immediately discussed how We The People can help Mr. Obama achieve his dream for our nation. So I’m doing the next best thing – I’m gonna write down all my thoughts and bring them to you.

Imagine Twice This Many People.

From start to finish, this election has epitomized all that I personally think is great about America. Participation. Diversity. Leadership. Hope. I loved seeing those things come to life in the faces of the  crowds in Washington*. I participated in a huge protest march in April of 2004 , with over one million participants. I could never have imagined the press of that many people had I not been there. More than twice that many people squeezed onto the National Mall to hear Obama speak. Please, let us bring this level of participation back into our local communities. Let’s stay involved. Let’s keep the passion.

In addition to the reactions of the crowds, I was also inspired by the Obama family. They are either Oscar-worthy actors, or they genuinely enjoy one another. Yep, I realize this is completely subjective, and in large part a successful image carefully crafted by a perfectly run campaign. I am making a conscious decision to allow myself to be swept up in the glory of this great American moment. It’s kind of like the initial, swoopy phase of a fresh relationship. You kind of have to let yourself trust in the tide of emotions, or it’s just no fun at all.

Not to mention, I could really use some hope right about now, couldn’t you? I’ll be turning 34 in a few months – which means that I clearly remember the materialism of the 1980’s. My grandparents remember the Depression. As I look forward into my personal future, I wonder if we will be able to find a balanced world between those two extremes for my children to grow up in. Our new President opened his speech by commenting on the current difficulties faced in our nation. He spoke of the ’sapping’ of American confidence. He stated that the next generation fears that they must lower their sights. This is the real fear of my heart, and I am clearly not alone. It is one of the several reasons I maintain my Canadian citizenship – America is at a turning point, and if the wrong course is chosen, I reserve the right to take my toys and go home.

But right now I’m here, and I would choose to make this very corner of the world a better place. This year in my life I am taking up Mr. Obama’s challenge: I will set aside childish things. I will pursue the full measure of my own happiness. I will extend a hand to anyone who is willing to unclench their fist. I will find meaning in something greater than myself. I will reject as false the choice between my safety and my ideals. In me, virtue and hope will survive.

There are many detractors and skeptics around us who believe that America cannot change rapidly enough. I hear scoffing that Obama will inevitably fail because he won’t be able to ‘get enough done’ in 4 short years. America has overcame slavery in little more than 50 years. Sure, racism still exists – but that’s not unique to Americans. Human beings can be racist all over the world, at every level of society. But The United States Of America, as an institution and as a community, has overcome a socially sanctioned, perfectly legal, horrible institution. Just imagine what we can do in those four short years, if we put our minds to it. I noted earlier that I think President Obama inspires – and that this is his most important asset as a leader. So the question becomes, what will he inspire in us? What will we be inspired to become? How will We The People make this an America we can all be proud of? Let’s roll up our sleeves and get to work, folks. And in the meantime, we’ve got the hat to keep us smilin’.

* I’d like to shout-out to the folks at the Dulles airport. I flew through there on the way home from Costa Rica, the day after the inauguration. The staff I met were clearly exhausted, but they were kind and helpful to this poor flight-missin’ world-traveler.

© Copyright 2009.

All Rights Reserved. All Wrongs Avenged.

Migrating The Critic Who Counts from the Evil Empire of Bluehost to the Peaceful and Prosperous Land of GoDaddy has been an exhausting and educational process. I’ve implemented the fairy-tale monikers both to entertain myself and to attempt to explain the entire process to a friend of mine. I think we all have this person in our lives – the technological hermit. He for whom the cell phone is still a new fangled device, she who rocks the dial-up connection… the folks who feel as though they are on islands, surrounded by technology they don’t understand. Of course, the rest of us know that they aren’t on islands at all, and that the only way to learn about technology is to pick it up and use it – and connect.

A good friend brings beer to dinner... a panacea for all internet ills

I was about 3 weeks into the process, which had been beset with an array of complicated side-projects, serious screw-ups, and a nasty virus, when I had my friend over to dinner. He’s a really good friend, and takes a genuine interest in the crazy meanderings of my life. So it was with very good intentions that he asked me how things were going with the website, and if I was back up and running yet?

I gave him the ‘Reader’s Digest’ version of the troubles I’d been having, which had culminated, the previous evening, in my accidental download of a nasty virus. McAfee had trouble killing it, so here I sat (moments away, I thought, from successfully getting the site back up and running) in safe-mode, running strange virus-killing software I had downloaded from the internet. I stayed up all night waging war against this virus – I had finally gotten everything up and fixed again, and would be damned if this was going to be my undoing! I grabbed an hour of sleep and upon waking decided to back up my hard drive, feeling rather dumb for having let over a month go since my last back-up.

During that month, while the site was down, I had been diligently writing the column, looking forward to posting en masse once I got the infrastructure fixed. Ooh, it pains me to type this next bit. While backing up, rather than copying my writing to my jump drive, I accidentally moved it. And didn’t realize it. And then decided while tidying up the jump drive that it had been copied to the wrong location. So I deleted it.

You know that feeling, just as the car door closes, that you realize you’ve locked your keys in? I won’t describe my ensuing emotional reaction, as it wasn’t pretty. In any case, now that you’re caught up, here we are back with my friend, cooking dinner, trying to explain why he can’t get my website to come up on his computer (because it’s broken, my dear…). He latched on to exactly one word – the one word he thought he understood. The virus. By then of course, I had killed the virus and was trying to mourn the loss of a month’s worth of work. So I broke it down in a language he understood. We’re trying to get to the Peaceful and Prosperous Land of GoDaddy, and along the way, we got attacked by the hydra and we’re trying to kill it. Every time I fixed one problem, I explained, I got two more for my troubles. ‘Oh,’ he said, comprehension dawning, ‘So the virus is just one of the hydra heads?’. Yep. ‘Well, that’s no trouble. You’ll kill the hydra and everything will be OK’. Yes dear you’re exactly right. Except this morning, my sword slipped and I killed the damsel in distress.

So here we are, successfully migrated to GoDaddy. We’ve had some collateral damage, but it’s nothing we can’t recover from. The good thing about living in an imaginary world is that I can just dream up a new damsel in distress. Thanks so much for your patience, dear readers – Hopefully we won’t have these troubles again (the eternal optimist, over here).

I do have one final note about Bluehost. This morning, after ensuring for once and all that the GoDaddy migration had been successful, I called Bluehost to officially register my complaint, close my account, and ask for my money back. I transferred into billing, and the phone was answered on the third ring. I briefly explained the nature of my call and told the woman on the other end that she could go ahead and transfer me to her supervisor if she needed to. ‘No, that’s OK,’ she replied ‘I’ve already cancelled your account and I’m refunding your money now’. Sometimes, getting out of a relationship is the easiest thing about that relationship. I like Bluehost a whole lot better now that I’ve broken up with them.

© Copyright 2008

All Rights Reserved. All Wrongs Avenged.

Back about three weeks ago, I decided to sign up with Bluehost for my internet server needs. They came highly recommended, and had a 24-hour service line, staffed with friendly folks who spoke real english (read: American). I was delighted – the price was right, so I signed up for two years. And paid in full.

We were supposed to launch the column promptly at 5:00 PM EST on October 17th, but were delayed almost 48 hours because of some massive technical problem which I will now attempt to distill into normal-people talk:

Somewhere in the world, probably in Asia I am told, there lives a hacker. He (we are going to assume he is a he, because I am a she and I want much distance from this evil being) was hacking someone who has a website on the same server as mine. Bluehost’s response to this was to shut the server down entirely until they could discover which website was being targeted. Their plan at that point (so they told me) was to kick the poor website under attack off the server to restore peace back to the rest of the land. So… Little Johnny is playing quietly by himself on the playground. Big bully Ike comes over and knocks Johnny over the head. And the recess teacher tells Johnny to leave the playground. This sounds unfair in the extreme, but still the point is this:

My poor, beleaguered website is now collateral damage in some War of the Geeks.

So we launched late, but happily – expecting the problem had been solved. Well, this Friday – one whole week later – the exact same thing has happened. We’re finally back up and running this morning. Perhaps they didn’t throw Johnny off the playground. Or maybe I’ve somehow gotten in with the mafia of web hosts – perhaps we’re just continually under attack in these parts…

I’ve gone from feeling proud (OK, cocky) about figuring out the whole internet thing to being pretty bummed out and a little lost. But I’m going to move the darned site to another host, and as soon as I understand better what has been going on, I shall write a scathing review of Bluehost! Stay tuned…

© Copyright 2008

All Rights Reserved. All Wrongs Avenged.