Four-point-six seconds. That’s how long it takes for this site to load, according to Google, at which point it admonished me with a red exclamation mark. I felt ashamed, insofar as small, crimson punctuation marks can shame a man, and promptly went to work, securing a new registrar and, most importantly, another host. The domain name transfer went smoothly enough–it’s live now!–and you simply have to know that, unlike last year’s hiccup, a site will actually materialize when you punch “secondhandrants.com” into your favorite device.
Migrating hosts has been a more tortuous path, and I’ll need to enlist the Professor for his craft. I gave GoDaddy one last try two days ago, whereupon they told me to go fuck myself in the politest terms possible. You see, we’ve been Milton Waddams’d. The hosting tier we’re on is apparently super-old, and they’re phasing it out. They just never bothered to say anything. We’ve effectively been moved to the basement for a few months now, and the only way out is to pony up a few more dollars each month–a pittance, to be sure, but completely offensive to me.
My provider search was fueled, like most decisions on the Internet, by xenophobia and forum chatter. Companies had to be based in North America and not suck. We’ll see how Geekstorage fares. I’m particularly interested in seeing how this site feels with SSD under the hood. In layman’s terms, SSD is hard drive technology that is light on vowels, but heavy on magic. That’s enough tech talk for now, though. I felt completely out of sorts today, and it’s time to turn in. There was a momentary crisis of perseverance during my morning workout, followed by a gluten-free bun during lunch, which tasted of despair.
In a delicious foil to my weekday morning routine, where I sweat shoulder to shoulder with fellow Texans, I’m completely sedentary at Snug now, sitting side-by-side with friendly strangers, driven by the singular goal of consuming, rather than burning, an embarrassment of calories. This seating configuration is new, and I’m fully aware of its purpose: to foster spontaneous conversation and the meeting of new friends. This is precisely why I’m hunched over my laptop in detached silence, hissing at any who would dare approach my pimento-and-sausage sandwich, as I toil to bring you the very best in web content.
Metabolism in your 30s just fucking sucks. This is fact, and I’ve mentioned this before. Gone are the days when I can slim down simply by thinking and wanting it. Now, results call for effort. A lot of effort. In the mere turn of a few years, the default state of my body has transformed into a kind of Hoarders for calories. It boggles the mind, frankly. It’s, like, “Easy there, buddy! You’re not a bear, nor is winter approaching. It’s fine to let go.” Doesn’t matter how many times I say this, though, because the ear parts of my body clearly aren’t working, and it insists on doing the exact opposite.
Gruntilda didn’t show up at the fitness center on Friday, but in his place were four other bodies. Two guys were some flavor of bro, and I could’ve sworn they were either jogging sideways or possibly backwards on the treadmill. I was envious of the level of physicality, of course. That wasn’t the case for the other two people, who were mainly talking and watching teevee. Normally you see a spike of attendance in January, for instance, when the public at large resolves to not be fat. You see a similar phenomenon on tennis courts, too, around Wimbledon and the U.S. Open, when locals try to channel Nadal.
I’m fully aware that complete silence in a shared space like this is an unreasonable expectation, so I regard noisier days as chances to hone my focus. I find myself looking out the window at a flock of ducks who land in the pool, right around 7:40 AM, like clockwork. There’s something inspiring about their presence. Ducks don’t give a shit about schedules or health regimens or Outlook. They’re guided by instinct, and I’m trying to take a page from their book. When second thoughts about the elliptical invariably hit around the 1.30-mile mark, they are my refrain. Feathered kin! I know not why we come here, same time every day–only that we must.
There will be a special Saturday edition of Secondhand Rants, but its publication won’t be driven by a deep love of writing, nor will it herald a new schedule for us. No, it’s because I owe you a post. Simple as that. I owe you a post because on Tuesday, which is usually when this word farm spools up, GoDaddy shat the bed and this site went down like a sack of doorknobs. We aren’t talking about a minutes-long outage, either. It was hours of downtime–an eternity in Internet terms, and an utter travesty when the content payload is text.
I knew the contours of the choice I had made, when I picked GoDaddy. I wanted the scale of an evil empire. Sure, hosts like Site5 have that scrappy start-up feel, and customer service seemed responsive enough, but I had to make use of the helpline a little too often. I want tech I can forget, tech that just exists. And GoDaddy met this need for a while–until it didn’t, of course. When attendance is the sole feature you ask of a service, rendering judgment gets pretty easy.
I’m not quite sure what to do next. Part of this is because I’m trying out a food embargo at 8 PM as part of my health regimen, per a suggestion from the Professor, and I’m pretty fucking hungry right now. It’s time to turn in, too, if I’m to make it to the elliptical tomorrow morning. I’ll figure it out then. I had a fantastic flash of insight about work this morning, somewhere around minute 13 of my exercise routine, and this transpired despite the presence of a grunter. You know the type–every rep, every footfall punctuated by deep, needless vocalization. Never seen the fellow before, and his presence damaged my calm. Perhaps he’ll give up tomorrow, whereupon I can have my silence again and think, as I whir away on my contraption of misery and revelation.