New look, with dinos

Whaddaya think? Shiny, yes?

Behold the power and the glory of the Atahualpa theme. It’s so powerful I seem to’ve barely scratched its potential for customization. And it’s so user-friendly that – well, look.

However, what WordPress just did to me is inexcusable. I logged in less than an hour ago. Then when I tried to save the next paragraph I wrote here, it made me log in again – and lost what I’d just written. Bullshit, WordPress. (It’s in tune with the rest of the last 24 hours on the tech front; see below.)

As I was trying to say … question for you: do you find the page loading slowly now? It seems to on my middlin’-fast DSL. Then again, that seemed to start happening when I installed the Tweet This WordPress Plugin for Twitter.

I snagged some nifty dinosaur art from Wikimedia Commons. Then I took a slice from each image to  drop in the new theme’s Headers directory. I even managed to get Ol’ Horny, my Blue Triceratops Head logo, up there at the top. The effect pleases me. You? (And thanks to Happy Curmudgeon for already casting a favorable vote on Twitter.)

So today I was going to get a lot of writing done on Deathlands before hopping online. First I decided to burn off a CD of the directory where I keep my writings for security’s sake, as Joe urged me to do. It’d sting to lose the newly-finished draft of The Dinosaur Lords to a disk crunch.

And what I found was that the CD-burner program that comes with WinXP is especially handy for transforming blank CDs into coasters.

Frustrated with that I went online in search of a nice – yes, and free – program that’d actually work. And encountered the second Tech Pissoff of the day.

I belong to the Amazon Associates program – as no doubt you’ve noticed thanks to the less-than-subtle (I hope, anyway) hints I pepper my posts with suggesting you consider buying stuff through this site. I realized yesterday I needed to change my email address, since the old one’s going away soon.

It turned out the process is what seems to me unnecessarily complicated: you have to invite your new email address in as a new user, accept it, and then delete your old account. Worse news: it doesn’t work that way. Not for me, anyway.

Here’s the message I sent the Amazon support team:

I’m trying to change my primary email address. I follow your instructions and invite my new email address. I get the email at my my new email address. I follow instructions to confirm my new email address. And when I get to the “Add a New User” page it shows an “outstanding invitation” to my old email address.

I’ve tried this twice now. Same result both times. Effort wasted.

Since it’s apparently impossible to change my primary email address using your online method, how can I change it, please?

A little tart, perhaps. But I’m getting pretty gorged on things not working.

So in my inbox I find this gem waiting from Amazon.com Customer Service:

I’m sorry for the trouble you’re having trying to change your primary e-mail address. For security reasons, we do need you to make this change yourself.

What you’ll first want to do is decline the invitation that was sent to your old e-mail address and try starting over. Make sure you send the invitation to your new e-mail address.

For your reference, I’ve included the instructions again…

And it then proceeded to reiterate the procedure I’d followed unsuccessfully.

Okay, help me out here, please, if you’d be so kind. In my original message, would you please point out to me where I invited my old email address? Because it sure looks to me as if the helpful Amazon.com Customer Service team told me to try the very procedure I was complaining didn’t work.

Just for S’s & G’s I tried it again. And for what was then the fourth time, it failed. Surprise!

I sent a brisk response. We’ll see if it elicits something more than a boilerplate response from some drone who scanned the first line or two of my first post for keywords and hit a button.

Has anybody else had this problem?

In connection with this, for months I labored under the apprehension that nobody had actually bought anything through my Amazon Associates links. Then I happened to click through from the monthly email statements and discovered that, no, some of you in fact have been buying through my site all along. Thanks!

The amount due to me just hadn’t yet hit the $100 level that triggers an actual payment. But thank you, my readers, for your kind and generous efforts to support this site.

Speaking of kind and generous … I’ve been eating out a lot the last few days on the generosity of friends buying me meals to celebrate the completion of DinoLords. I mentioned Steve Kubica doing it Friday at Nothing But Noodles. Sunday Joe bought me late breakfast at VI, and then Larry bought dinner at Los Cuates. Thanks very much to all of you.

Moreover Saturday night John and Gail Miller hosted a movie night, and grilled us excellent steaks. Steve and Jan Stirling brought one of Steve’s exceptional salads, and Lynn Kaczor brought a fine cake. Turned out to be a birthday cake: it was John’s birthday, which I had crassly spaced out. Sorry, and Happy Birthday, bug guy!

(Per request I brought garlic bread. Bought the bread at Smith’s; it’s not bad and they bake it daily. Then I cut it into  chunks, slathered it with butter, and added about a clove of crushed garlic per chunk. I’m serious about my garlic.)

We watched Balls of Fury, the 2007 Enter the Dragon parody that substitutes ping-pong for gongfu, starring Christopher Walken as the villain (in Chinese drag) and a long time fave of mine, James “Lo Pan” Hong. Oh, and Maggie Q – can’t forget her; wouldn’t want to. (Her real name is Maggie Denise Quigley. Guess I don’t hold the stage-name against her.)

So that was good. And writing about it reminded me not to let minor annoyances fuck with my serenity. Bonus.

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