The Capital City

I have never truly moved away from my hometown. I grew up out in the country, and the nearest small town, where most of the "action" happened, was also where I went through a rather sheltered, liberal arts college experience. It's true that I put in plenty of party time in Cleveland, and spent a few summer weeks working in Pittsburgh - but I've never, in twenty-five years of life, pulled up stakes and permanently moved to a new city.

Now I am in the process of relocating to Columbus, Ohio. Not exactly the other side of the world, but it's a switch. And not just a switch from region to region, but to city life from country/small town life. Columbus may not be everyone's epitome of the bustling metropolis, but for a girl who grew up a mile down the road from a buffalo ranch, residing the same distance away from a Starbucks instead is a bit of a change. The Ohio State University alone, where I now work and where I will eventually be completing my undergrad degree, has more students than twice the population of the entire town from which I just moved.

And I already am enjoying it. Country peace and quiet is all very well and good, but after a lifetime of it, I am more than ready for the activity of a city. It's a pleasant thing to not have to plan a two-hour journey for a range of great restaurants, art galleries, or films. I like the novelty of busyness and purpose and drive. It makes me want to go and do and explore things. As if there's a constant, collective energy generated by so many lives and minds moving together in one place, and that you can tap into it for yourself.

It might be difficult for anyone not raised in a small town, especially a working-class Midwestern small town, to understand what exactly the big deal is about. But coming from that background, it doesn't take a whole lot to bring alive opportunities that always seemed out of reach. At the moment I am still staying with family outside of town, but soon will be living right in the thick of things - and I can't wait to be a city girl at last.

[Photo credit: click @ morguefile.com.]

In Which I Destroy My Tech-Savvy Reputation

I present: the latest tale of website woe, the saga of my hosting account.

I host my website with GoDaddy. Yes, I know there are better web hosts. I've stuck with them because they're cheap, I can pay monthly, and I've never had any serious problems with them. In fact, I still haven't. Sadly, I can cause problems all on my own.

Somewhere along the line I was gifted with a few free economy hosting credits for domain names I've bought. Recently, when I needed to make a payment on deliberatepixel.com, I had the idea of using a credit. Perfect, right? But alas, these mysterious credits are for hosting setup only, not monthly hosting and bandwidth fees - a fact which you can only discover by trying to use one, since the rest of the site and help section seems convinced they don't actually exist. And despite the fact the system told me I could not set it up on the already active dp.com, it apparently did just that anyway, thereby obliterating all of my previously uploaded files. So my website right now is basically gone.

It's not a huge deal - of course I have backups of everything, and I have a new design I was going to upload soon anyway. All things considered, it actually helped to clear out a bunch of junk I didn't need anymore. But it's frustating I have to rebuild everything, and that I still can prove myself to be so technicaly incompetent that I erase my entire website. The geek pride smarts.

In better computer-related news, my work computer is brand-new and super-powered, AND I have a twenty-inch widescreen monitor. 1680 by 1050 anyone? It's yummy.