This Monday I found out that, while I was out in Surrey at the Conference, I had been used as a guinea pig in a bold and transformative experiment…
without my permission.
You can imagine how I feel about that.
You’d be wrong.
I can’t say I felt quite normal all weekend: for one thing, I was awake at seven-thirty or eight each morning. Or, okay, eight-twenty the day I accidentally switched my alarm ringer to “silent” (what the hell kinda option is that for an alarm, I ask you???). Still, there was coffee there and I managed to feed myself through a combination of cold, hard cash and making myself useful to the Board members, who plied me with oat cakes, fruit roll-ups, and a whopping big plate of mediocre buffet food on one glorious occasion.
Hey, at least the pasta salad is always a safe choice.
For another, I came down with the cold/flu bug that’s going around. So I was not quite feeling myself; still, it’s traditional that when the rains come so do the germs. I’ll get a hot water bottle and some advil and I’ll live.
I managed to struggle home and blog on Monday, whereupon I checked stats (I know: how unthinkable is that, eh? Me checking stats) and I found a whole raging snotload of hits from some WordPress official page called Trick or Treat.
I could not recall having posted to such a page, so I had no idea why 90-some-odd people were coming to my blog through a link there, so of course I figured I’d go and check it out.
I also noticed a simple comment: HA! from some guy named Andy. Turns out Andy is … hmmmm, if not exactly Mr. WordPress the way the dad was Mr. Brady, he’s one of the handful of wee Wordpressers; in other words, he’s living in the big house and closer to Mr. WordPress than Cousin Oliver: perhaps think of him as Greg. What weirds me out, though, is that he’s just left another comment: what has he done THIS TIME???
FYI: I’d like a small island in the South Pacific…
So here I am adding to my scrapbook collection of Inet superstars: Xeni down, Andy down, Scoble, you’re next!
But what does this mean? you’re probably asking, and not for the first or last time on this blog, let me tell you.
WordPress gave me a pressie: in fact, they gave me a promotion. I am now the proud owner of www.raincoaster.com, and this is it.
Yep, WordPress just up and gave me my own domain, which is more than years of Machiavellian efforts on my own behalf have been able to do, let me tell you.
The view is more beautiful now that it is mine.
raincoaster 
Hey, how cool is that, eh? Congrats!
Thanks. I’m pretty thrilled. I have a whole year to come up with the ten bucks to renew.
I noticed this morning…I thought it’d been like that for ages, but I just hadn’t been paying attention. So very cool.
(start saving now…$10 is hard to come by at times…)
Tell me about it!
I used to own the domain name, but that was back several years ago when I was still working at Starbucks. I tried to keep it going, but the responses from the registrar went into the spam box and I missed them; then they said they’d already sold it to someone else, but that eventually turned out to be me, but then they cancelled it for nonpayment because they’d notified the wrong person and collected from them. What a fucking nightmare.
I’ll trade you a scoble for a xeni.
Pingback: Domain hosting is fun « tumbleblog
But have you seen her without makeup? Prettier than Scoble, but not as hawt as Steve Jobs.
Oh, and that’s not a comment: that’s a direct link! Totally different order of magnitude. I think I’d have to collect five Xeni comments to make one Scoble link.
But hey, I’m a communist: let’s just share!
What’s the tumbleblog, btw? Just random selections of your surfing? How many blogs do you have?
This is how they get you! You’ve been co-opted now.
They’ll bide their time until the renewal comes up, then while you’re scrabbling around under the sofa cushions and checking the old plaid sock you keep under your mattress they’ll stand at the door humming pointedly and checking their watches.
Then they’ll say I’m certain we can come to a satisfactory arrangement. A-hem.
First they’ll ask if Google can plop a few subtle, “relevant” text ads in the margin.
Then they’ll drop in a few pixels worth of graphic “content”.
Before you know it your own Avid Fans won’t be able to tell your fetishitic GooTube postings from the adverts.
Next thing you know it’ll be “raincoaster@pepsi.com”
It’s been nice knowing you. Keep my number handy. When you get to the part of the movie of your life where you realize you’ve sold out everything meaningful in your life for a pot o’ message, where the rain streaks the glass like the tears coursing down your face, where the syrupy music builds as shots of you, growing three-day stubble, fade in and out across the screen, call me.
I’ll probably just burp into the phone and giggle in your ear, but you never know.
Nope, you’re way behind the times. They’ve been plopping ads on this fucker for months now without telling me; you should see my remarks in the forum on this subject.
Sold out the meaningful in my life? What are you talking about? I mean, that seems to presuppose there was something there…
WHOOSH! Ride that wave, gal. Good on you.
Thanks!
Yeah, tumbleblog is where I collect random thoughts and phrasings that I like. Stuff that wouldn’t fit on my main blog. There’s also http://wptheme.wordpress.com where I test themes and http://beatsentropy.com where my friends act like nincompoops and I continually fix bad HTML.
I’ve seen beats entropy a couple of times, but shall check out WP Themes as well. Thanks.
wptheme is only for test. Whenever they come out with a new WP theme I plop it onto there and break it.
I saw. Well that’s damn useful, cuz I wouldn’t dare try that with my baby here.