Did You Know?

Did you know about whatsmyipaddress.com where you can find out instantly what your I.P. address is?

How about downforeveryoneorjustme.com? You can plug in any web address and find out if the website is down or if it's your connection or internet provider that is preventing you from getting to that website.

And hidemyass.com -- did you know you could use this free web proxy to travel the internet with your identity hidden?

How did I find out about these websites?

Well, I run several websites using Godaddy.com hosting services. This morning as I was working on Horror Books with the Undead Rat, the browser suddenly couldn't access the website at all. It looked as if the entire site had crashed.

When my wife called GoDaddy, they had her use whatsmyipaddress.com to find out what I.P. Address we had.

Then he had her use downforeveryoneorjustme.com to see if Intent was actually down or if it was something that prevented us from seeing it. The website told us that Intent was still up and running -- which was a great relief to me.

Finally we used hidemyass.com to verify that the website was up and that for some reason we were being blocked from seeing it. Sure enough I was able to see and interact with my website about horror books.

Minutes later, GoDaddy had fixed the problem and I could access Intent without a proxy. Happiness is restored.

And I learned about three great websites in the process.

Why I missed a couple day's posts

I took Wednesday off to take my autistic/albino son to the eye doctors. It was actually a whole family affair. It was a long drawn out affair because my son hates the eye drops that dilate the eyes and was uncooperative from that moment on.

The next day my wife and daughter were sick. My daughter got a morning appointment and we discovered she has pneumonia. That is a nasty illness to have at seven years. When I got home with Little Miss Sickness, I had to turn around and fetch my son from school as he was covered in spots and the school nurse was certain he had scarlet fever.

My wife had the next doctor's appointment. I was worried she'd have pneumonia because her symptoms seemed to mirror my daughter's. Well she only had strep throat. Not good but not the big P, either. Finally I took my son to the doctor. To my relief he did not have scarlet fever. He was having an allergic reaction to the Amoxicillian that was prescribed last week to fight the strep that both kids had.

Afterward I had to get medicine from a pharmacy that had never heard of the benefits of good customer service. I wasted a lot of time waiting for meds.

By the time I got home I was too beat and too miffed to focus on writing a post. So I let it slide. I am sorry I posted nothing (except for a pre-made post in Buy Books the Holidays) until today. However I felt no post was more desirable than a post of poor quality.

So let me ask you, did I make the right call?

Down with the Sickness

Once again my family is sick -- except for me. My son ran a fever of 102 and my daughter is about to cough up a lung or two. My wife, always dealing with chronic pain on the best of days, seems to be coming down with the fever-sickness that led to strep in both my kids.

Me? I seem to be untouchable.

I have sinus problems -- always have and I have a good system for keeping them in check. Beyond that, the only sickness I seem to get is self-inflicted -- such as the inability to fall asleep before 4:00am and having to wake up at 7:00am.

Obviously its that good old undead constitution. Not much viruses can do with reanimated tissue. Except . . . maybe become undead themselves?

And if they're undead, can antibiotics even slow them down any more?

Is that what is laying low my family for the past few weeks?

Been Busy

This has been a pretty busy week.

I added blogging duties at Buying Books for the Holidays to my list of things to do -- not because I have the time but because I really believe in the message of that particular blog. So I'm making time for it.

Amy gave the best expression of what BBFH is all about here.

Some of the material I contribute will be reprints from The Lair and With Intent but some will be new stuff. When I asked Amy of My Friend Amy what she'd like me to do for BBFH, she said graphic novels. So I'll be giving you bunches of lists of graphic novels.

Beyond that, I'm getting ready to make massive changes to the library blogs (You can see most of them here.) The library is purchasing a new theme which will allow more flexibility in how the blogs look. I'm looking forward to it but it will be a lot of work for me in the start of the new year.

I guess you can call that job security.

Buy Books for the Holidays

Because I haven't quite taken on enough work to fill a full 36 hours of my 24 hour day, I am now posting at the Buy Books for the Holidays blog which was started by Amy of My Friend Amy and several of her book blogger friends. My first post will probably go up either tonight or tomorrow.

Do you have questions about finding books to buy for a loved one this holiday season? Stop by Buy Books for the Holidays and ask out legion of experts. We'll help you help the book publishing and book selling industry out.