“The RoseBouquet”

We’re off to a funeral this Wednesday morning in the city, so I’m preparing this ahead.

I used to think funerals were all boring and much the same, and didn’t think I needed to go unless the deceased was really close to me, or I needed to be there for someone who was grieving. Over the last 10 - 20 years though, and by personal experiences with Gr’ma’s and Mom’s funerals, I’ve learned that there are other reasons to go to a funeral.

The family members will tend to huddle together, and I may not even get a chance to speak to them. That’s okay. When they get together afterwards they will be discussing and reminding each other who they saw present at the funeral. They’ll say, “Oh, she came? Isn’t that great!” Simply being there is a vote saying that you care, even if you don’t get to touch them.

If I can, i try to bring a card and leave it in the basket by the guest book. That’s where I can add thoughtful comments, or words of encouragement that can bless them many times over, when they go through those cards.

If I do get a chance to speak to any of the family members, my face usually scrunches up with tears, but that’s okay. All i have to do is hold out my arms, and give them a hug, and whisper, “I’m praying for you.” If they want to talk, I listen and respond sympathetically.

A year ago in May, Mom’s cousin, Rev. John D. Friesen, died and there were two services for him. He was well-known and loved far and wide. His wife Mary, who was also Mom’s cousin, but from the other side, died five days later. As a child I was taught to call them Uncle John and Aunt Mary. They had twin sons, Reuben and Ernest, and two daughters. Johanna is a year older than me, and Magdalena was a year younger. (Magdalena died at age 7).

Both Reuben and Ernest have had a serious lung disease and have had organ transplants. Reuben had it done twice! But these health problems set them back, and aged them a lot. I think Reuben looked older than his Dad last year at their parents’ funerals. Now he has been able to go Home to Heaven too.

I remember Reuben was the very first person to send me an email when I began online. He sent me some pictures I had him scan for me, and by email he coached me on how to open the attachments, and see the pictures. I was thrilled.

Last week I told you about becoming a hosting provider and transferring seven sites to a new server location. Right after I posted that blog/ezine, I discovered that the Support Desk could not solve my problem with the Generosity-alive site. I had to wipe out that account and start over from scratch! I installed the newest version of Mambo, and spent the rest of the week rebuilding the sections, categories, etc. I still have to add news items, blog entries, etc., but I’ve decided this week to return to a more normal schedule and will work on the rest of it on Wednesday nights, which I have scheduled for that site anyway.

If I may be so bold, I would dare to say I think it is turning out better than it was.

We had a parade here in town on Saturday, and a power outage over the afternoon and evening, then a Sunday School Picnic on Sunday, at which I was in charge of a craft for the kids. We did marble art with melted wax crayons. Zip! A weekend can go by so fast, right? (By the way, the heat wave I predicted HAS come!)

I did get in a bit of time to fix things at my genealogy site, and a client’s despite all that. But I don’t feel quite in the swing of my usual schedule yet. Interruptions do that.

Maybe because there are unusual developments over at Adlandpro…. I’ve belonged to that for five years, but sort of let it slip to the background. Well, there’s a community formed there, and I’ve been getting these invitations to “Be Friends.” Tuesday I suddenly was swamped with these invitations! Seems the owners decided to hold up my profile or draw attention to it. Of course, everyone wants me to check out their links too. A new marketing gimmick?

I guess I should go investigate this more thoroughly. What if it could work to my own advantage as well? Ah-ha! What if?!

In case you can’t wait until I am ready to reveal my discoveries when I re-explore the potential of AdlandPro, you can visit my link, and poke around. AdlandPro

You need to be aware that the ads are considered more effective there than any other classifieds site, and that all the members are there to promote their programs. Some you will like, and some you won’t, and some might not be the kind you should sign up for. It takes some discernment, or a friend to give some guidance.

I know you can learn a lot by trying out and doing things, but I’d hate to have it on my conscience if you should be mis-lead. That’s why I want to caution you to proceed very carefully if you are inexperienced with programs. On the other hand, you could find fantastic, and super-helpful friends there! Take your brain and your heart with you.

On Saturday, our country is celebrating it’s national birthday. The Americans will have theirs next Tuesday.

We Canadians are known for our lack of political involvement. I’ve got a theory about how that came about. I also have some opinions on political matters - I might even persuade myself to share them before I’m done here.

Why are so many Canadians reserved about their political leanings?

A lot of us are the offspring of Mennonite immigrants of the waves since the late 1800s. Most are no longer with the same church their grandparents were, but we still have this “attitude” that politics is dirty and secular, and we should stay out of it. We should be the “quiet in the land,” a phrase that has been used many times about Mennonites.

Other ethnic groups such as the Hutterites, Doukabours, Quakers, maybe the Asian groups too - all have a similar “attitude.” Some of these have a history of having martyrs for their faith in past European history. They really don’t want to antagonize authority figures. Oh yes, we’ve got a modern education, and many of our people have risen up to be teachers, university professors, business owners, and even government workers. Yet there’s this undercurrent in our souls that says, tread carefully. Don’t stir up trouble.

So what exactly are my political leanings, and opinions?

Hey, somebody asked!! At last.

1. I’m glad I live in Canada. It isn’t perfect, but it still strikes me as a great place to live. it is wonderfully beautiful and diverse in it’s range of beauty. It goes from coastal seascapes, to big modern cities, to flat prairie parklands that look like vast manicured lawns as far as the eye can see, to rugged high mountain ranges, and pristine ice flows up north. No other country can boast all that. I am grateful.

2. I am - if you haven’t guessed it - conservative by nature. Naturally, I’ll choose to vote for Conservative politicians, but even among them, I look for higher standards. I want to see evidence of good ethics, faithfulness to promises, and a life and manner that shows the person lives by Biblical principles. Particularly in respect for life, and financial truthfulness. We have been fortunate in our area to have Conservative candidates to vote for that seemed to measure up in these regards. I am grateful.

3. Personally, I believe it is God that raises up governments, or puts some down. Often He uses one to do that to the other. We’ve had decades of a Liberal party in power, and very secular politics. I think they’ve made some serious mistakes, such as legalizing abortion, and same sex marriages, doing away with the Lord’s Day Act, and many other little things, that will make us subject to God’s judgment one day. God recognizes individuals who have a different mindset, however, and will not toss out the righteous with the tares (unrighteous). I am grateful.

4. I have tried to listen thoughtfully and vote at each election since I finished high school. I have been active in pro-life, mainly in fund-raising and one-on-one advocacy. I have even been a volunteer scrutineer at the federal election a year ago. I have prayed for various levels of government, but realize that there is room for more.

Even though we usually don’t do much differently on Canada Day to celebrate what we have, I’m going to pledge to spend some time this Saturday just to sit down and count my blessings, and ask myself, “what else can I do to prove I’m grateful for my Canadian blessings?”

People around here are getting a little tired of all this rain we’ve been having in June. When I have an opportunity, I explain it this way; remember all that fog we had in January and February? Well, my Mom used to say that if you count 100 days forward from a foggy day, you will have rain on that 100th day. I recall thinking during our winter, “Boy, we are going to have one wet June this year!” So it is!

Mom also used to say that when the New Moon comes the weather will change. I should be tracking this on a calendar, but when I take time to notice, I do see that if we’ve been having a cold spell, or a hot one, or whatever, on the date that the calendar shows a new moon, or close to it, our weather spells takes a turn for something else.

So minor weather prophet that I am I predict that this coming Sunday the sun will come out for our Sunday School picnic, and a hot summer will finally begin!

How about you? Have you got little weather-predicting guides like that too? Perhaps handed down from earlier generations?

Meantime, besides bailing water out of our potato storage pit in the basement, we are rejoicing at how good our garden looks. We’re eating radishes and lettuce and green onions already! When we can tiptoe through the mud to reach them.

YES! I found a new host. Not only that, but I have signed up for a reseller hosting package, which means I can now offer hosting packages myself, set my own prices, and so forth. I want to proceed cautiously with this, because I don’t want any illegal, spamming, gaming, or other nefarious sites on my IP address. Word of mouth may be my best advertising method, but I do hope to sign up enough paying customers to cover my own expenses, and to be able to carry some missions’ sites for free.

I spent most of last week Wednesday and Thursday, and even Friday morning shopping intently for this. I thought I’d found one terrific bargain, but when I tried to reach them, no answer, and when I went checking for what others say about them in forums, I found they were very weak on support. I switched to exploring those with the best reputations for support services.

Finally I decided to go with HostGator. ( HostGator) Their excellent KnowledgeBase in their Support section had already shown me how (after I had set up accounts for each site), I could go back up each at my old host to my computer, then upload and restore in another move from the CPanel of the new ones. The larger sites, of course took a bit longer. Some from 2-4 hours.

By Saturday night it looked like I had done the heavy work. Seven sites moved. I took Sunday off for Father’s Day, but Monday morning I discovered that not everything was working well. One bit of advice in Support said that every username and password should be in lowercase, so I had taken the opportunity to change all of them. However my scripts didn’t all know that. So I deleted most of them, and did that upload and restore thing all over again. As they got done, I went to GoDaddy and changed the DNS addresses. We’re told to allow 48 hours, but by Monday night, all seven sites were showing up on the new host.

Only now I discovered that the emails weren’t working! I spent the better part of yesterday (Tuesday), re-setting passwords for the emails and making sure the settings in my KMail matched. I also went to fix several forms and mailing list scripts.

The biggest problem was that the one site, using the free and popular content-management-system (CMS) called Mambo was not working right. I was getting strange error messages about missing database tables. When I had tried everything I knew to do, I entered a support ticket at Support at HostGator. Time to see how good they really are!

In moments I was getting replies by email. It took a while for them to grasp at what stage I was with my migration, and what my problem was, but by supper time, our exchanges were more specific, and one of them, said he thought he could fix it for me. Over the evening nothing, so he must have gone off shift. But this morning someone else wrote and asked me to ‘create’ a blank database on the site. I did that. So far nothing, but if they can’t fix it, I’ll have to re-install Mambo tonight and feed in the articles and stuff I had already entered over the past year. Time-consuming, but it might be an improvement.

To those who have had emails bounce back this week, when you wrote me, - I’m sorry. They are all fixed again. I confess I’ve ignored most personal emails to focus on this migration. It IS a big deal for my business, an advantage for the sites I look after, and I hope it will mean increased income. My life should return to an almost normal “dull roar” of busyness by tomorrow, I hope.

I recommend you do some serious Googling for a few days, and learn all about what hosting is and is not. HostGator has an excellent page of tips to help you avoid being scammed. Or if you have a host you are not happy with - how to slip away and set up on a new host and have it running before you close your account at the old one.

Review the hosting-review sites, but remember that they might be doctored up. Look for more than one. Make notes. Compare facts AND your gut reactions.

Look for recommendations from happy customers. Usually, if the host provides forums, you can have access, and can see if they have more than a few people complaining of problems.

Lastly, prices are dropping all the time. Server space is cheap. But it’s the Customer service that matters! Go where you can trust they will do their best to help your solve problems.

If you know me, you know that I bend over backwards to do all and more than is expected of me. I can fix a lot of ordinary details regarding a site, but I do have access to the Support Desk if my clients have problems too big for me. So if you want to talk to me about hosting, let me know. We might be of help to one another.

If you are not sure I’m capable enough, go up to HostGator! HostGator

[Note: This week has been too busy to write a new article, but this older one seems perfect for this issue and where my mind is at right now. Hope it helps you].

Oh Webmaster, What Have You Got Yourself Into!?

When you first try to design a small web site you don’t realize what you are getting yourself into. Unless you have specific web design training, I bet you were not fore-warned. Let me brace you.

Learning and remembering the HTML codes is easy compared to what comes after your site is up.

1.Checking your links

Besides uploading your pages and making sure the links work, you need to schedule regular checking or else get someone else (usually for a fee) to notify you if they need to be fixed.

2. Fixing your links

Most of the time fixing links is simple. Sometimes something has gone wrong, and you need to ask help to sort out the mess. Desperate to have your business pages functional as quick as possible, you may stay up late to re-build an HTML section or several pages.

3. Submitting to search engines

This is to announce to the cyber-world you exist. but often you must re-submit again every month, and you will continually find other engines and directories. When you revamp your site, you must start all over again.

MORE… to read rest of this article’s 12 points go to: Oh Webmaster!

I have been busy - BUSY with photos, but no, I didn’t get that photo story ready in time for today. Last night I was printing out batches of photos for two of my aunts to whom I had promised a package.

Whew, I sort’a knew that having a digital camera would mean I’d have to spend time on the pictures before I could print any. Now I wonder if that time investment is not equal to the waiting for development time. There are also other factors to be concerned about, like too much magenta ink in the color cartridge, and all the photos come out with a blue-purple tinge.

Oh, just a sec! I did get a two page photo story done up on Monday night for our Western Tract Mission Walk-Jog-Cycle for Jesus fund-raiser. You can see that here; Rainy Walkathon What with the digital camera, we don’t have to wait weeks for them any more. (Dad changed his mind at the last minute and decided not to go in the rain).

Two things amazed me. One, people were willing to walk that distance in rainy weather. Mind you, the really big drops didn’t start pelting down until after our barbecue picnic was over, but there was an off-and-on mist falling. Two - we raised $5,891.30 (more than last year), despite the rain! Praise be to God!

Sure enough! I did play photo studio all by myself on Sunday afternoon. With about 3 presses of my thumb I can set the camera to delay the shot for 10 seconds, followed by another shot 2 seconds later. Parking it on a shelf at a level with my face, pressing the shutter button and then backing up into position was all it took.

I haven’t had time to work on those pictures yet, but look forward to it. I suspect most will be deleted as experimental. I tried out lighting, positioning, different smiles, Now to learn from all that.

I’ve finished the articles and short story sections in my Sharing Library on the Ruthes-SecretRoses.com site, but realized that I’d forgotten about the media section. I’ll need to tackle that next, and maybe make some original greeting cards for my cards division, and last will be the revamping of my Resources or R/ department into a new Gifts and Resources Shopping area.

Two other sites just need a new sitemap, and I’m going to look into the one by Google.

However, I’m shopping around for a new host for all the sites I look after. It appears that server space is going cheaper and cheaper. But finding a host with excellent Support services is the most important factor now. I narrowed down my research to about one or two yesterday, and want to ask some questions today and maybe tomorrow, and get a taste of the attitude and helpfulness of their staff.

One of my sites, and another I look after are due for renewal this month and if I’m going to make a move I want to make it before then so I don’t end up paying twice. Of course, I have to trust the Lord to provide funds for a year’s worth of hosting in advance, so this is an exercise in faith too.