Unless you’re grossly unobservant, you may have noticed how things are slightly different around here, with ch-ch-changes occurring from corner to corner. We’ve moved. I originally didn’t want to move, not to this degree at least, and I waited until the very last minute to fire up Blogger’s Migration Tool. You might say the results were mixed: migration was an utter failure, on one hand, but on the other hand the douchebag of a process was a “tool” in the truest sense.
Turns out sticking with Blogger would’ve been a headache. Between learning about missing files hosts and futzing around with CNAMEs and other heinous elements, it certainly felt like the digital equivalent of removing charred pieces of clothing from a burn victim. The final kick in the teeth was that goddamn Blogger bar slapped on top of every one of their sites. Sure, there’s a way to remove it by mucking around the HTML, but just the idea that it was mandatory was distasteful. And then I thought about future posts disappearing into a black box at Google somewhere, and that was that. I faced the monolithic blogging platform, as Moses might’ve done, and declared, “Let my blog posts go.”
Here we are. The promised land. I won’t lie to you. There were vulgar oaths sworn when I first logged into the WordPress interface, whereupon I realized I would have to edit frickin’ lines of PHP to get anything done. PHP! I got an “F” in Intro to Computer Science, if memory serves, so I couldn’t begin to tell you what precisely PHP is, except that it is a language bereft of vowels. When I finally figured it out–which, let’s be honest here, meant copying and pasting other people’s code and yoking their industry to my own dark purpose–the very first thing I did was disable the commenting system, thereby disenfranchising you. Now, as always, I absolutely do not want to know you visit this site.
There is much work to do. You’ll notice links to older posts still go to the legacy site. The sidebar is, shall we say, minimalist, duly lacking the explosion of icons I had on offer previously. Oh! And the site is kind of ugly. On the plus side, it’s simple enough to drop in modern amenities such as a search box. I mean, this is the kind of shit they rolled out of Area 51 back in, like, ’97. Who could possibly fathom what technological marvels await you in the coming weeks? Lend me your patience, and in return I shall give you text, paragraph upon paragraph, presented in a way that offends your eyes the least.
You may recall my cultural inclinations, which we’ve addressed in prior discussions, and some junk mail I retrieved today brought the topic back to mind. It was a glossy ad from Vonage that began with a mass of indecipherable Asian characters, followed by a patch of English: “Stay connected with your loved ones. Unlimited calls to China, Hong Kong and Taiwan.” The text was bookended by iconic depictions of what I presumed were famous skyscrapers from those countries. It bears noting that these buildings were woven out of–how to describe this?–Asian string, the silky kind you’d find in a tassel hanging from an authentic bamboo fan.
The purpose of this ad, I imagine, was to stir emotions of family and home within me, but it achieved an entirely different response. It wasn’t a strong response, mind you. I wasn’t righteously indignant at some grave racial injustice committed against my person. Mainly I was annoyed that someone at Vonage thought I was even literate, or that I would even want to speak with extended family in faraway places. You might say I wasn’t their target audience.
This piece of mail aside, I honestly haven’t been reminded of my ethnicity in a while, and for that I am grateful. I’ve mentioned before how I gravitate to environments where I’m the clear minority. The major perk here is a competitive advantage, with the major drawback being the potential for racial friction. The overt racism I’ve heard and read here these past few years lean toward the antebellum variety, though, the brunt of which is directed toward black people.
I do have one pet peeve, and it involves when Mandarin is spoken to me. An example, if I may: one of my neighbors asked me where my parents were born, and after telling him Taiwan the elderly fellow proceeded to greet me with a “Ni hao.” I’ve never understood why people do this. I don’t call every Hispanic person I see “amigo,” nor do I blurt out “Guten Tag” to every German I meet. I’m just not sure what is expected from me, you know? If it’s praise, then well done. Well done, you dumb shithead.
But like I said, by and large it’s been smooth sailing. The most racist comments frankly emanate from my own mouth. When I went to a Japanese joint for lunch with King Calm, for instance, I found the soup suspect and pushed it to the side.
“You don’t like miso soup?” he asked.
“Nope,” I replied. “I know. Miso uncultured, right?”
And when there is discrimination, it tends to be favorable. I’m expected to be smart. To calculate tip quickly. To evince an aptitude for the technical. It’s a free pass, like having a British accent or wearing glasses, and it suits me just fine.
In a just few days, the ax will be dropped on FTP users, effectively ending a glorious era of old-fashioned blogging and heralding a more streamlined way of managing all this text. Initially I was indignant at the mandatory change. How dare Google alter their free service at will? The nerve! I pored over the comments from fellow FTP users, dour cries of a thousand frowny-face emoticons, and briefly considered joining the protest. Then it dawned on me that this would require participation in not just a community, but an online community, the prospect of which was even more offensive.
Let’s face it. Pointing Blogger to an FTP? That’s so 2003. I certainly felt clever when I got it to work, but it’s a royal pain in the ass to maintain: remember one password for the client, another for the hosting account. Don’t forget to renew. Hosting costs increased to what now? Ensure I’ve uploaded icons to the right folder. Check the HTML in my template for URLs pointing to nowhere in particular. Verify the flux capacitor needs new plutonium rods, and divert more power to the main generator, and oh holy shit don’t cut the blue wire.
This setup is a relic to be retired, rickety infrastructure that really has no place in modernity–it’s like discovering, in the age of iPhones, two rusty cans connected by a long piece of string. You try to multitouch that business, and tetanus will fuck you up. In preparation for the big move, I’ve had to delve into old posts, making sure all my links are pointing to places that make sense, and it’s been a trip, a real blast from the past. Honestly some of it makes me cringe, though I plan on preserving it for posterity. It’s almost like someone else wrote this stuff.
I can only conclude that Secondhand Rants has grown. And so have I, in a way. I’m sleeping far more reasonable hours these days. I’ve got a tighter handle on my finances. I’ll need to sign off in short order so I can ready a shirt, with an iron no less, in preparation for a business meeting tomorrow morning. At a coffee shop. Don’t entirely know why I scheduled it, but I’m going to go anyway. How and when did these changes happen? I’m not exactly sure, but in this shift–to become big people–I suspect I may be wholly complicit.