Fool’s News

Okay.  For the past six months, I have been a horrible blogger.  However, in my defense, life has been pretty crazy.

As you may know from earlier posts (currently unavailable), I am no longer a resident of the United States.  Citizen yes, resident no.  We are living in Zurich, Switzerland.

I have been here since January 25, 2006 – more than six months!  So, I have a new city, new country, new job, new friends, and overall a new life.  It has been quite exciting.

In addition to packing up an entire house, making tortuous decisions about what things to take across the Atlantic, what things to store, and what things to throw out, we’ve also spent a lot of time getting the new apartment in order.

Moreover, I now have a new job.  Well…I am basically self-employed.  I have opened by own trademark law firm – with an office in New York and, shall we say, a satellite office in Zurich.

Getting all of this together has left little time for blogging.  It’s a little unfortunate since during the past 6 months, there have many many things to discuss – both persoal items, and global items.

I tried to log in about a week ago to begin posting again.  Unfortunately, though, my Movable Type installation was completely f*ed up.  When I tried to log in, I was asked to click an “upgrade” button.  That didn’t work.  Then, after much back and forth with my host provider and MT support, I was no where.  My MT database tables were non-existent.  Well, that’s not true, they existed but I could not access them.  My host basically told me I needed to reinstall MT.  That is not a fun proposition.  Of course, further internet investigation suggests that my host may have switched servers and screwed up the permissions for my MT database.  Which is fine, but they have been most unhelpful in fixing this.

Also, directories in my web site were renamed, and I did not do it.  The only other “person” with access was my host provider.  Despite asking repeatedly, no one there has explained these mysterious changes to my files and directories.

As a result, I have left my previous host provider and done away with MT.  Neither was particularly helpful, so I shall use neither anymore.  Too bad for them.

Since I want people to know, my former host provider was TotalChoiceHosting.  Despite their promises of great customer service and up time, I didn’t find them to be helpful at all.  At this point, I do not recommend them at  all.

Likewise, I have switched to WordPress from Movable Type since WordPress is much less bulky than MT and is a cinch to install.

With a new home, job, host provider and blogging software, I thought it was appropriate to redesign the site as well in an effort to simplify.

So, Fool is back.  Depending on my time availability, I may try to recreate my old MT posts.  We’ll see.  On the flip side, there are many new things to write about these days.

I’m back. So, you check back often.