preraphaelitepunk.com

For various reasons, I find that I am feeling rather stupid tonight. The latest instance occurred while I was browsing through the WordPress Lessons, which I really wish they’d had when I first started using WP, and I learned the definition of a trackback. Oops.

I’ve only gotten one trackback, in reference to problems with TagCloud,[1] and it freaked me out no end. Embarrassingly, I had no idea what it meant except that someone has written something related to something I’d written and I was mysteriously being notified of this, and was so startled that I panicked and deleted the trackback from the comments. Now, to my shame, I realize that the trackers-back were simply trying to share more information with me about something I’d whined about, not trying to make me paranoid. Mea culpa. Mea ignorantius culpa.

It seems that, sometimes, just occasionally, it’s good to RTFM. Alas, I tend more toward the “What does this do? Well, let’s try it and find out” school of thought, which is more fun but definitely more haphazard.

Additionally, I’ve been trying for a few days to get del.icio.us to post my new bookmarks to my blog, and progress has been absolutely nil (despite following the instructions[2] gleaned via Lifehacker to what I swear is the letter). I’ve made a few tweaks tonight, and hope that it’ll actually work this time, but who knows?

The most annoying thing is that my PDA has stopped talking to my computer. I’ve checked the connections, unplugged and replugged everything, updated ActiveSync, looked at the settings, and nothing. My PDA, whose name is Severus, is aware that the computer’s there, or at least that he’s connected with the cradle. My desktop, though, continues to snub Severus no matter what I do. I suppose that’s another thing I’ll try to sort out this weekend; I found a MS troubleshooting article, but can’t be bothered to plow through it at the moment. At least I can still transfer files using the SD slot in my desktop — I absolutely adore having the slots built right in, so you don’t have to mess with connectors or adapters or cords that get tangled and so on. And at least I can recharge.

Not being able to synch is somewhat nerve-wracking, though it does bring up another oddity: last month, when I was still able to synch, I’d have to do a soft reset afterwards before I could use the Start menu or the Switcher Bar. Most annoying, but presumably something to do with having a borderline geriatric PDA trying to work with newer software. I’d guess that’s it, at least; I haven’t researched that much yet, either.

Wow. The tasks for this weekend are just piling up: plow through the WP Lessons, figure out the del.icio.us automatic postings, figure out why Severus can’t synch, and then figure out why he needed a reset after synching back when he was able to do that much. And that’s in addition to the homemade seitan I want to try to make, and possibly the cashew-based truffles I was going to make last weekend but never got around to making. Oh, and watch “Serenity,” which finally arrived with RD season 3 on Tuesday.

I think I need a nap.

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[1] After checking my standalone TagClouds, I can confirm that my feeds still haven’t updated since mid-November.
[2] In this case, the “push the button and see what happens” approach just wouldn’t cut it, because the interface is, shall we say, not of the most intuitive. In fact, “Huh?” is a fairly accurate description of how well I grasp what data should go in which fields.