Well I finally got around to installing the Email Whitelister plugin and just tested it and it works, yippee! I even donated the suggested five bucks to the author.

So what this means is if you've commented on my weblog in the last year or two, your email has been added to an automatic comment approval list and you won't get the pending approval message anymore. The new version of Movable Type changed the way comments were screened and I suddenly started having to moderate everything one at a time to keep the spammers out.

If anyone has any problems with it, please email me. Unless you're a spammer, then just go away.

I've been getting hit with a lot more spam trackbag pings and denied comments the last few weeks and I just found out why - MT Blacklist has been discontinued with the arrival of the new and apparently very spam-resistant Movable Type 3.2. I was still on MT 3.15 so I must have suddenly become a huge spammer target.

So I upgraded to 3.2 tonight, not too hard, I got a couple of errors but everything seems to be working now. I hope the spam filters are as good as Blacklist, as much as I was getting tired of despamming all those pings and comments, at least I knew it was working. Thanks forever to Jay Allen for all of his hard work, apparently he had to endure a major bandwidth attack before everything was settled, poor guy. I grabbed his little "screw the spammers" banner (uploaded to my own server, of course), maybe it will discourage some of the perverts that have been attacking me.

I also deleted my old Blogsnob exchange links code because all I've been seeing for months now is "Pheedo Exchange" ads, they bought Blogsnob, but the thing is obviously not working now (I tried emailing them to ask what's up) and it's just slowing down my page loading time. I just checked and it appears I'm still registered with them, so I guess I'll try one more time to reenter the code, because it's a fun little exchange when it works.

Quick note, I think I've restored at least 99% of my weblog now... Imported the old entries correctly, got rid of most of the parallel site (the old direct URL is forworded to my .com now). Comments are back on (for now at least), though I'm sure as soon as I hit publish the spammers shall return...

Night!
Tish

Sorry, I'm STILL reimporting and tweaking things because I reinstalled my blog at my old URL, then decided to move it to a new (more direct folder) and currently have two mirror blogs fighting with each other (probably because they are using the same database, I'm new to MySQL).

I'm trying to figure out how to safely delete the parts of the other blog without wiping out this one.

But the pingers are still after my old blog, so I deleted all of the old entries on it, so ping away, HA!

Just a test post to see if I have everything configured right after the webhost move...

I think I've got the main parts of the blog up and running, even managed to convert it to MySQL after hours of trial and error, but I'm having problems importing my entries. I've managed to get to April 2003 (sigh) but it keeps sticking at that point. Going to bed now... brain hurts...

I'm going to be attempting to move all of the files on both my weblog and my main site to a new host over the next few days. The domain names will be the same (morticiasmorgue.com and wednesdays-child.com) but some of the weblog paths may change. I've never been very happy with the way I set up the paths to start with (too long and winding), and the thought of freaking out all of the ping crazy comment spammers makes me smile :-)

I've been using a Beta version of Vendio's webhosting for the last year and they've gone and made it official now, which means I can get a lot more storage and traffic for half the rate I've been paying (yippee!). And I can consolidate all of my minor domains in a more logical fashion. Here's hoping everything goes smoothly...

P.S. Randi Rhodes is back from her major surgery on Air America as of St. Patrick's Day!

Due to a bizarre amount of spam the last few weeks I've temporarily disabled comments in the hopes that the idiots that are pinging me will go away...

I've been trying to create little gaps of free time so I can do something other than work non-stop or watch TV, and went through and updated most of the links on this page. I had meant to reduce the number, it was getting a little busy, but I probably ended up adding to the total. I rearranged them a bit, there is so much going on out there that's worth reading,

I've managed to at least update some of the links and navigation on my main website, but a major style redesign for the various sections is still being worked out in my head. I keep thinking I'll also eliminate some of my fan sections instead of making them even bigger and more unwieldy, but I'll probably just try and streamline then to a "best of". I'm also attempting to do a major update on my Vampire and Horror book review page, it's not going to be as big a project as I was afraid it would be, and there are lots of great new and recent books I need to add.

And, I need to get back in the habit of blogging regularly. My health has been suffering lately and I believe writing is probably as therapeutic to me as a lot of my meds (and much cheaper!).

Just FYI, I got bored last night and made a new logo, but had to go in and redo some assorted HTML, and (at least in Opera & Safari, Netscape looks fine) some of my CSS seems to have gone a bit wacky so please let me know of any viewing problems...

So far I'm missing the links beneath my little moon phase chart, but I'm working on it...

Found a couple of bugs after the new upgrade... first the CSS on my search page was messed up, all fixed now, reuploaded the pervious search template.

Also my comments were apparently all going straight to moderation mode, so I clicked, unclicked, and rebuilt MT and Blacklist, still didn't work. I read the instructions for the new version, then finally I read the help forums and it said "remove the old version of Blacklist". I had wondered about that when I was uploading the new one, and duh, yes, it was interfering with 3.1.1.

So comments are being posted immediately again now... except for you spammer idiots out there, the log says it's been doing a great job against you guys ;-)

Yippee, everything seems to be working! Just slow browser cache problems, apparently. So far version 3.1.1 is beautiful, and the entry boxes seem bigger which is nice (I always thought the boxes in version 2.6+ were too small)

I got my key to be added to the MT "recently updated list", I've bugged tech support twice and gotten prompt responses. I installed the new version of MT Blacklist, I think I did it correctly. I'm already thinking up subcategories to add, exciting stuff for an obsessive compulsive...

Lots to learn, but time to sleep. My brain is overloaded enough for one night.

Well, I uploaded, set permissions, ran cgi thingies, and I think I've got it all installed. My sign-in says 3.11 though my weblog is still saying 2.64. Also, my login entire menu is justifying on the left, which better not be correct because it's really annoying...

Going to bed now, wish me luck.

OK, I actually broke down and paid for a license to MT 3.11 and I think I've backed up everything that can be backed up, so I'm going to give it a shot. Just FYI, in case anything acts weird this weekend...

I finally got around to adding MT-Blacklist to my weblog, I seem to have become a target for spammers lately, just killed a ton of them tonight (so all of you idiots bite me).

If any of my nice friendly readers have any problem adding comments, let me know and I'll check it out... The whole thing seemed pretty simple to install and configure, but you never know.

The new version of MovableType is supposed to come with that plugin already installed, but I haven't been able to afford to upgrade yet (and I haven't the time to mess with a major overhaul right now anyway).

Just saw my little moon cycle chart (scroll down to see) and noticed it really is a full moon. That would explain some of the weirdness that seems to be flying around the internet and eBay recently...

My main server has been going up and down all night, so if you click on a link and get a 404 error, check back in a few minutes...

OK, I actually got it up finally... if you've got some extra time, look at the index to the right to check out my 300 Things About Me list (sorry, I got carried away). I actually wrote this about a month ago in a moment of rambling inspiration, and have now gone back through it and hopefully caught all the spelling & grammatical errors. It's sort of in chronological order, though I do stray from time to time, I hope it makes some sort of sense... More About Me stuff and links & pics to go along with the list to come.

More comments :-) Thanks to CP for the link on sleep paralysis, I will check it out. I have suffered from this before, also overly lucid and waking dreams, which is always sort of alarming. I've jumped out of bed and ran across the room thinking there was something dripping from the ceiling, and it's always fun to wake up and think you see someone or something (often a large spider) right in front of you (shudder).

After over a year I've finally turned Comments on and I'm testing to see if it actually will show up at the bottom of the entry...

I'm doing this on a probationary basis at first, if all goes well, I will keep it open. No advertising or nasty stuff allowed, I am open to constructive differences in opinion but any garbage will be promptly removed and the IP's blocked.

Well, last night I sayed up till 7am working on my main website and got a new home page and two new indexes up, one for all my TV & movie pages and one leading to my weblog and my personal info area. I had made lots of little rollover GIFs and ending up not using any of them, just plain CSS script, which seems to finally be working OK on my Mac version of IE. The visited links weren't lighting up all day, but now they are. I still haven't gotten a manual for GoLive CS, I'm having to refer back to my GoLive 6 book, where everthing is slightly different. When I bought the programs the guy told me it would have manuals, but they're all online or PDF which are a pain, IMHO.

I opened it up in Netscape and all looks fine except I can see my spacer GIFs in the main menu. Looks OK in Safari also, though my version of Safari keeps changing some of the test on pages (not just mine) into something that looks like Beatnik font. No, my preferences aren't set for anything but Helvetica & Courier, so I don't know what the deal is.

I'm trying to streamline and simplify the entire site while not losing any of my Google listings. I wish I could use text links for my webrings to make everything more attractive, but webring.com has that stupid javascript (which still doesn't show up correctly on my home page, the "Welcome you are surfing etc. ring click" text isn't showing up just the word "here" which looks very odd just dangling. When I originally set it all up years ago, I didn't make folders for two of the large categories, but it's not too badly organized. I'm moving all of the TV/movie pages into one category, and putting my book & music review pages, miscellaneous pages and weblog into another. And I'm moving the Gothic Artwork page into the Gothic category. I'm also adding an "About Tish" page, but I haven't got it done yet. Also make new banners and put a linkage page up. I figured while I had the motivation I'd better just start throwing things up and I'll work on redesigning & updating the rest of the site as I go. I want to make my images all pop-ups, add lots of new images, change layouts around, add something more personal to my witchcraft pages... Lots to do!

Past my bedtime, but just an FYI, I went ahead and spent the last hour or so adding the new categories, then going through all my entries and moving or adding the relevant ones to the new categories.

After much contemplation and temptation, I've registered a domain name for my cat Phoebe. Her nickname is Gothic Kitty, so she'll be at GothicKitty.com in a day or so. I've been wanting to make a little website just for fun, and I can't help but take pictures of her almost daily so there you have it. She's actually earned quite a few nicknames, but when we call her Gothic Kitty she chirps and tears through the house, so that's our favorite of all.

Sparky says she doesn't know her own name, but she does. Being a cat, she just doesn't always choose to respond to being called. Since we've had her a number of names have occurred to me which would all be appropriate also:

Gothic Kitty - because she's such a Gothic novel, sandwich stealing, mischievious kitty
Cheshire - because a lot of times all I can see are her eyes
Banshee - because she chirps and mews and runs through the house so much
Shadow - because she follows me everywhere I go
Jazzie - because she likes my jazz music so much
Mouser - because her sweet little face looks like a mouse and she loves to chase her mice
Batcat - because of her big pink bat ears and big black eyes
Dogcat - because she retrieves like a dog and is very un-catlike
Kitka - Sparky likes this name because it was Catwoman's name in the '66 Batman movie
Tiger and Huntress - because she's so fierce and relentless
Psycho Kitty and Schitzy Kitty - because sometimes she's just plain nuts ;-)

Also I can put some of the tons of cat links I've found in the last few months up and hopefully, pictures of friend's kitties so that should be fun.

3am and Gothic Kitty's beginning her nightly bath so that's my signal to go to bed.

Yea! I registered this domain name over weekend, figured it would be easier to remember than the current one, though both will continue to work, and it's up and running :-) The domain name without the hyphen is taken by an adoption agency, which make perfect sense, so I went for the hyphen. I've got another domain or two I'd like to regsiter when I get a bit more extra money. more info when they go up.

Now I need to redirect all my archives and weblog files, etc. to the new domain, I'm too tired to even begin tonight. I've spent the last two days solid photographing, scanning and listing things for Ebay and I now have an insane 202 things up for sale! And I still have a stack of things to pack and mail, zzzzzz....

Sorry, I haven't slept well the last few days, I think it's hormones from not stopping my bc pills, I didn't feel like having a period right now, the last few have been miserable. I've redesigned my EBay store to focus more on my witchy and gothic things than my postcards, which I've been very bad about listing lately. I like the fact that you can put things into categories and search within the listings, it drives me nuts to hit an EBay seller that has like 1000 things listed in no order.

Having spent almost my entire life in retail, I was hoping people would do some online shopping this holiday weekend, but then Dubya raised the alert to orange midweek and that ended that.

Kitty's restless tonight, I think we still have some fleas remaining despite repeated sprayings inside and out. She gets all hyper when the bugs are around, even though she's been getting her Advantage twice a month instead of once. I'm listening to Cassandra Wilson's "New Moon Daughter"� right now, Phoebe seems to really like her voice, nice and soothing.

So anyway, bookmark Wednesdays-Child.com if you'd like, it's mine now :-)

Beginning of the new photojournal, just some scary things from around the house. These will open in new windows, haven't figured out how to make them chromeless yet within the confines of a weblog... too much script.... head hurts...

Update! By jove, I think I've got the chromeless thing figured out, what I actually wanted was just a pop-up window to display the images. Don't know if it will work in Netscape, or with older browsers. Check out Kali's Web Shoppe to play with this, it's a lot leaner scrigt than my GoLive generated. I'm still in awe, there must be a catch I'm not seeing, it can't be that easy.

January is finally on it's way out, good riddance. To add insult to injury, I bought two double CD's at Borders Thursday night and both of them had damaged CD holders. I got the debut CD from Conjure One (a former Delerium member, with vocals by Poe, Sinead O'Connor and Marie Claire D'Ulbaldo) and the Winter Chill 3 collection, really nice. Winter Chill still had enough prongs in place to hold the CDs in, but Conjure One was crunched. They both have cardboard sleeves also, and I think part of the problem is they really shouldn't be jammed into those little anti-theft cases, it's just sort of sad. I exchanged the crushed one, took the clerk some real pondering to realize what I meant when I said they were "broken", she kept staring at it like "what's broken??". Another reason to order music from Amazon, perhaps...

Good grief, my mind's gone completely blank... Just for fun, and practice, I'm adding a photo category to the blog, nothing brilliant to begin with , just some of the cool things we have around our house. When the weather warms up for good, and perhaps some of the green starts to come back, I'll do more city hopping and get some artsier things for you to look at.

Almost forgot, my eBay meter turned over to 5000 today! Ironically, the deciding comment was left by a bidder I'd been a little worried about, because she was new and her Airmail package hadn't reached her as fast as she thought it should. I've got a green star now, only 5000 more feedback points to go till the next level... Actually I've received almost 7000 positive feedbacks, and left over 9000, but not everyone leaves feedback, and I have so many repeat bidders (and sellers :-) that only one per person counts.
* postdated entry *

Finished work early again this evening (yea me!) and jave been doing some major blog surfing tonight. Found lots of worthy sites and relevant rings to add. I'm not a ring collector, but remember, though morticia is 5 years old, wednesday is still in her internet infancy and needs lots of care and upkeep.

I've been wanting to add more about me type stuff, though the whole thing is as about me as you can get, so I've added a new Q & A category and I've joined the Friday Five to stimulate my brain a bit. I know it might sound a bit silly but I kept seeing it on other people's blogs and I thought it would be fun. It's Monday night, Tuesday am now, so now all I have to do is remember to check it each week for new questions. I'm still working on a real about me area also, but here's a start:

1. What is one thing you don't like about your body?

I'm too short-waisted, clothing never fits me correctly :-(

2. What are two things you love about your body?

My pale white skin and my green eyes

3. What are three things you want to change about your home?

Paint the walls! It's all white but we had no time between the last people moving out and us moving in. I want a blue bedroom.

I want to replace the half-dead ugly dining room chandelier over my desk to something nicer (and brighter!)

I want to put bloody shelves in my hall closets, I have way too much stuff and it drives me nuts to pile everything on top of itself.

4. What are four books you want to read this year?

I've got shelves full of "to read" books... let me grab some of the more promising ones...

Fall On Your Knees by Ann-Marie MacDonald
Incubus by Ann Arensberg
The Power of Now by Eckhart Tolle
Too Loud, Too Bright, Too Fast, Too Tight by Sharon Heller

I've got three or four vampire romance series that I'm working on completing also in between the heavy stuff

5. What are five promises you have kept to yourself?

OK, first hard question...

To try and separate work and play, since I work at home

To stop working at a set time each night, I used to work all night till the sun came up and my poor husband forced me to finally go to bed

To go to bed earlier and get up earlier

To try and eat at least a little better and on some sort of schedule

To read some every night before I go to bed :-)

Add your support to the virtual sit-in for the 30th Anniversary of Roe v. Wade. Read the other supporters messages regarding choice and leave your own, this is too important a right to let Bush's thugs take it away while no one is looking. If you haven't noticed, he has been hacking away steadily at our rights since he got in office, I think his people have a "do as much damage as possible in four years in case we don't get re-elected" agenda. No wonder the rest of the world is afraid of us...

I went through last night and added to and reorganized my links in the right column. I added more women's issues links, more liberal political links, a bunch of anti-war links and some self-defense links aimed at women, most of them pro-gun. I know that sounds like a weird contradiction... how can she be pro-peace, anti-war and pro-gun?? To me, self-defense has always been a very basic human right, like being able to choose what god(dess) to worship, and whether or not I want to have a child. I grew up around guns, and respect them as what they are, good for target practice and essential for self-defense in our modern world. I live in one of the largest cities in America, I worked in law enforcement for many years and I've seen both the damage and the good that guns can do. I also am trained to use one and know that if someone broke into our house and threatened me or my husband, I wouldn't think twice about defending us. If you are considering getting a gun for self-defense, that's the number one question you need to ask yourself, could I use it if needed? If not, invest in a good alarm system and some baseball bats. If you answered yes, take some classes, go to the range and get familiar with the weapon so it's not a mysterious taboo thing, just another tool that you need to respect, like your car. You wouldn't buy a car without knowing how to drive? It's a deadly weapon also, a woman here in Houston used her Mercedes to kill her husband just recently. Cars don't kill people, people kill people...

I worked apartment security during the early 80's and on many of my jobs we were not allowed to carry guns, but I did have a nice big patrol car. I always used to think "if someone steps out into the parking lot and aims a gun at me my only option is to flatten him". As the late great satirist Bill Hicks said, in response to the poor truck driver beat during the LA riots, "step on the fucking gas!". Not to lend support to the woman who ran over her husband, then backed over him, then ran over him again, then... She's a psycho, she was also being filmed by the PI's she hired to follow him, and her 16 year old step-daughter was in the car with her, talk about traumatized. All said though, if your choice is between being shot in the face by a bad guy (or worse, being kidnapped, raped and tortured) or going to court for possible manslaughter charges for running down a guy with a gun, there's not really much of a choice there, IMHO.

One of the more nicely done gun info sites aimed at women is Self-Defense - A Basic Human Right, it also has some really stunning visual propaganda images promoting gun ownership. If you've never been around real crime, or been a victim, I know the thought that you might actually need something as extreme as a gun to defend yourself is probably a fairly abstract idea, but you really are responsible for your own safety, waiting around for someone else to save you is not a very good option in real life. Take precautions, always be alert, at home and away, but having something solid to fall back upon if something does happen is not a bad idea. Not trying to scare anyone, I'd just rather err on the side of being overly prepared than suffer the consequences of not being so. I'm 5'1", l have a concealed-carry permit, and I've owned my own handgun since I was 21. I have a Smith & Wesson model 66 .357 for home protection, and target practice. If you're not going to carry it, get the 4 inch barrel, it's more accurate and easier to shoot. I have a 2 inch, in case I want to carry it, and I have a S&W airweight hammerless .38 as a carry gun, it's a lot lighter, but it's harder to shoot. I'm hoping I never have to shoot it anywhere but on a range. I prefer revolvers, they're the easiest to work with, they don't misfire very often. They also don't spit shell casings out in your face, and it's much harder to injure yourself because they have fewer dangerous moving parts (I cut my hand open on an automatic slide once, long story).

Alas, I'm coming down with some sort of sinus infection. The weather has gone from freezing to the high 70's in just a few days, I wonder why I'm sick all the time? I have that achy feeling in my ears and the back of my throat, I think I'll head to bed early tonight.

So mote it be... a small change, but I think more interesting and attractive.

Why Wednesday's Child? I actually was born on a Wednesday, it certainly suits my temperment, I was adopted, and I think it works well with my Addams them from my main site. And I had the cool graphic and have been wanting to do something with it :-)

I think I'm going to change the name of this blog... too long and not as descriptive as I'd like (though it is actually true, all of my ramblings ARE done in the night ;-)

I have a bit of downtime from Ebay� because of the holidays, nothing ending till tomorrow night so I think I'll design a new weblog graphic. I've been using a pretty basic Movable Type style sheet and I'd like to perk up the look of my weblog anyway. So don't say you haven't been warned...

I do have bags of Xmas gifts to wrap, thank goodness all of the commotion doesn't get rolling till next week, I only have one more stop to make to complete my shopping. A long drive through lots of traffic across town to our favorite liquor superstore�, but they have a huge gourmet section and their employees roll around the store on skates so it's sort of a fun holiday tradition. I was going to wrap tonight, but I didn't feel like sitting on the floor for hours with my legs asleep.

Miracle of all miracles, I actually finished all of my Ebay� work before midnight and got to spend the evening surfing the web. I began in search of meaningful and unique webrings, wasted hours on Ringsurf's� slow as molasses server, but found one� that was actually what I was looking for. Then I went through my bookmarks of political and activist sites of interest and added a whole slew of those (see Left Field links below). I've been making new pretty little banners & buttons for my main website� also, playing with Photoshop and preparing for my eventual site re-design.

I've been suffering from the sinus infection that won't go away since sometime in October (or perhaps September, I've lost track). After two doctor's visits (actually my annual physical in two parts because my new insurance company won't pay for "preventative care"... huh?), the only useful things I've found are that my cholesterol has reached an all-time high and that Xanax isn't as great as it used to be...

Or perhaps I've become acclimated to Benzodiazepenes after years of taking Klonopin to sleep. I'm actually not an addict, I suffer from a neurological disorder that creates lots of side effects, including insomnia and horrendous muscle cramps. And I'll lie in bed wide awake for hours if I don't take something to knock me out. Lately, though, not much of anything seems to help. I've also developed an allergy to any form of antihistamine (yes, really), and suffer from year-round allergies, even food allergies and can't take anything really useful (my doctor gave me a steroid dosepack last time I went in, that's what I need, something to make it even harder for me to sleep).

All of my life, on top of my normal daily allergies, I always get an actual sinus infection about this time of year. Usually antibiotics will clear it up, but they're not working this time. It started with a general sense of dizziness in my inner ear, then developed into the stabbing pain in my sinuses (where the entire left side of my head was unbearably painful), and now I've settled into alternating between the earache and dizziness and a really annoying drip in my nose. I've found saline usually keeps these infections at bay, but this one latched onto me before I could stop it.

The weather in Houston has not been helping either. We've gone through periods of non-stop biblical rains and flooding, then after almost two weeks of warm and rainy, it's suddenly cold and windy. Then back again. With each weather change it feels like someone is trying to suck my brains out through my ear. So I've been spending even more time than usual in bed, though when the dizziness hits even laying in bed is uncomfortable.

I've been on the Atkin's diet� since summer, and was doing really well for about a month or two, but my cholesterol rating is evidence that I've been sneaking too many carbs. I was on Atkins several years ago and my cholesterol went to it's lowest level ever, and I even lost some weight, but I haven't looked at the scale in the last month or so (gulp). My husband lost 20 pounds without even trying just by the modified diet I've been serving him, but I think I stopped at about 8 pounds and have been holding since. Oh well, I need to start weightlifting again, or yoga, or something I can do at home that I'll enjoy. And drop the carbs again... and the holidays are almost upon us!

Oh well, almost 6am, off to bed for another day of tossing and turning and way too vivid dreams (not that there's anything wrong with that...).

I uploaded the new, revised and expanded Halloween area to my main website this evening. All new vintage Halloween postcard images, new design, new Trick or Treat bags, updated links and more. I'm working on more images to add before Halloween also.
Check it out!

I can't believe after a week of trying, I think I've actually gotten this thing to work (well, except in Netsape 4.x versions, still working on that)
This weblog is to serve as both a way to keep everyone updated on my sometimes overwhelmingly large site and also as an outlet for my hyperactive brain. As soon as I figure out what the hell I'm doing, I plan on making this page a little nicer looking also.
I am in the midst of reworking my entire site, including adding an "about me" area that so many people have asked for (yes, with some photos even), so consider this log to be beginning of this enterprise. Also, it will give me a chance to let everyone know what's going on on this massive site on a regular basis. For starters, look for an all new Halloween area, including lots of new pics of my vintage Halloween collection and a nifty new interface courtesy of my studies of Adobe GoLive 6, which I've been trying to learn this year.

The way I first encountered these weblogs and online diaries was when I realized half of the teenagers in Europe seemed to be linking directly to the images on my webpage and they were sending my traffic quota way over the monthly limit. (I thought I'd just gotten really popular, but alas, no) I've been writing all of the brilliant thoughts that keep me from sleep every night in a notepad beside my bed, saying I'll find the time to add them to my website but never seem to do it. So, I thought this might be a better idea, especially since I get these weird fits of prose at godawful hours of the night and really do need to get them out of my head before retiring.

Morticia, Mistress of the Morgue