This blog has that “new car” smell

Overall the switch has been faster and somewhat easier than expected. My new host, Laughing Squid, has everything set up beautifully – I was able to grok all the information I needed through their initial email and FAQ on their website. And WordPress is just as slick as my friends have said (thanks again, Craig, for coming by the yarn store Monday night and giving me a tour – I look forward to seeing Rhea this morning when she comes for Mr. Kitty!). The hardest part was setting up email, but even though it took me almost half an hour I didn’t have to ask for help. MY GEEK FU IS MIGHTY.

Somewhat frustratingly, we weren’t able to suck in all the old Snarkland posts and comments. I’m waffling between feeling all “hey, new start!” and “I have failed you, losing all of your fabulous answers to the Question of the Weeks”. My old host just made it GD near impossible to access the database and copy everything, and when I felt my blood pressure rising I thought it would be ultimately easier to my psyche to just… walk away. I was able to copy and paste a few things into documents and will be reposting old favorites here and there; and possibly trying to recreate others as I was able to get a list of all of my previous blog post titles.

All of my old knitting and spinning posts are gone – I will not bore you by reposting a few hundred finished objects, but I may make general posts here and there such as “knitting completed in 2006” and the like.

Oh, WordPress, how I love that SpellCheck button I just saw!

It’s really sort of funny. I started blogging in about 1999 or so (or at least running a personal website wherein I would upload via FTP a new file every day with a new daily journal entry, saving the old ones in an archive folder, hahahah oh, HTML, how I don’t miss you…). I started mostly to have one place to keep in touch with family and friends who don’t live near enough to chat with every day, as I am notoriously horrid with sending letters. Remember letters? And stamps? Ten years later and most of what I’ve said will soon be only viewable on the Wayback Machine. Here I am, starting over practically from scratch – which I’ve done twice before. Three times? When I moved from the old old old earthlink site to my first Snarkland domain (still then hosted on Earthlink) in about 2001, I lost all those original pages. Then I lost all of the old old Snarkland stuff when I moved to what was then pMachine in 2003; it all imported smoothly into Expression Engine then in about 2006… and now in 2009 I am again a blank slate. I have that “new car” smell!

So, friends. Thanks, in case I haven’t said that recently, for sticking with me. What a long strange trip it’s been, said the wise man. And now… where shall we go from here?