Off Topic With Ashley

Having my plans of a long bike ride foiled by the most untimely of Sunday rain showers, I decide to fall back on option two: Fix up my web site.

As a pre-cursor to that though, I get distracted.

I sit down at my computer and start writing an ironic first-person blog post about my day so far. I have great plans, and intend to weave in a moral story and present it as some kind of feel-good instructional guide to better living. I’ve nearly caught up to where I’m at in real life, which I anticipate will require a shift from first person to conversational second person (my least favourite style of writing, just so you know,) but before that can happen and error pops up.

It doesn’t say anything per se, it’s more the kind of silly and improbable error you see in the movies which pops up against every UI design sensibility to driive the plot, makes the screen glitch a whole heap and looks like someone’s woven the text of Mary Had A Little Lamb through the DVB bitstream of CSI Miami then fed it back through a digital tuner in reverse. It’s a nonsensical screen glitch which makes it very clear that something’s gone horribly wrong and the article I’ve just written is most likely going to be lost forever.

I despair for a moment.

I continue despairing for another moment after that, before taking a further moment to contemplate whether or not that amount of despair is enough to buy me a few good karma points from the on-line shop of life.

Some quick detective work shows that my web host has suffered some kind of glitch, and my site (along with hundreds of others) has been knocked off the Internet. I’m disappointed, but expect it will return momentarily.

I give up on my blog post, and decide to confront item two on my to-do list: Work on my site. It takes me a moment to realise the problem with my plan. In fact, I fiddle for about five minutes before realising that I can do very little while my web host is off-line. The rain taunts me outside my window.

Five hours pass and I’m still sitting around doing nothing. Stubbornly, and with complete resolve I don’t do any work, but I don’t do much else either. Technology and the elements have indeed conspired to foil my best laid last minute plans. I feel very fragile.

The end.