more on the difficulty of ease

My best girl (friend) reminded me of this one, today . . .

Recently, we've had major rounds of thunder, lightning, and windstorms, here in the moody autumnal Northeastern U.S.

For me, on the literal edge of a State Forest, that means power outages. Frequent power outages (wtf with "blackouts" and "brownouts," gente? mm hmm).

One of those knocked my router off its normal course of behavior, so I did what any normal person would do: I reset the thing.

At which point, I was again online, but my network had disappeared.

So I reset it again. And again. And again.

Then I said to PJ, "Remind me I fucked up the router. I'll fix it tomorrow."

PJ reminded me thusly, "Hey! I can't get online!"

Oh. Um. Right.

I continued on my quest to reset the pinche router. I was way deep into the advanced settings, wondering what the fuck I did wrong . . .

We rebooted the router manually.

I was in the midst of rebooting my computer system, also, when I said aloud, "Maybe I should also turn off my firewall? That could be causing a significant issue . . ."

Duh.

Mi gente: you cannot, cannot, expect to tweak certain outgoing or incoming 'net services, from behind a firewall.

After momentarily disabling my cloak, I reset the router once, and all was well.

Then I put the firewall back in place.

Things to know, before one wastes time, tilting at windmills.


From an expert on wasted time,

~Emmanuela

in the spirit of change . . .

The Claiming Masculinity Project is now closed to new participants.

Verdad, mi gente.

I'll continue to follow the current participants' lives in photos, when the opportunities arise for such things.

Other than that, life is hectic, tú sabes . . .

And, of course, if I find the occasional person I simply must add, that will happen.

So don't fret.

It's not a dead thing; it's just a changed form.

Shouts to everyone for the support, all these years.

xo

~Emmanuela

the difficulty of ease

I am a master of making simple tasks consumingly difficult.

That which is pointedly obtuse, for me, is forever conquered with diffident ease. Just give me something glaringly obvious to solve or resolve, and I'm your person to create a conundrum . . .

Today, por ejemplo, I went to my Viewshock site, for a comparative analysis of which photos I had online, and which I wanted to add.

My site was gone.

People consider me a "techie." I should be, by now. I have the training and the logical capacity. What I did not have, at the moment I discovered the page I had not created, was coffee.

Things not to do upon awakening include: bother people in other states, because you've not yet accessed your Basic Logic.

Um, yeah. I did that.

First, I called my Web Daddy—the great ISP provider and host with whom I've been working ever since ever since . . .

I got voicemail, so I sent him an email, asking what I'd done to deserve this, and pointed him to a screen shot of the travesty.

Next, I phoned my best girl, and asked her whether she could see my site (as if I were viewing the thing locally, rather than remotely. I know. Duh.).

She asked which one.

I said, "Oooh, good question: you look at Viewshock; I'll check . . . huh, that one's up . . ."

My girl said, in a flat tone, "Your site's toast."

I still hadn't made coffee, but Basic Logic was starting to rise in my consciousness. I told her I'd already emailed my host; I'd checked my server, to ensure I hadn't somehow changed the index page; so, really, the only logical entity left to investigate was the registrar.

And, yeah: my domain name expired yesterday.

While I was hurrying along through the payment pages for that, my Web Daddy phoned.

I answered, by saying, "I love your ring tone? And, um, I figured out the problem? I'm dealing with it? I'm sorry? I love you?"

He laughed, in that rich, hearty tone he has. The man is possessed of the finest voice I've ever heard. Jazz musician turned techie. Mm hmm.

"Pay your bills," he told me.

"I didn't get a bill," I insisted.

"Get your bills," he laughed.

Well. Yeah. There is that.

My gratitude to all the good people who've called and emailed in support of our family crisis.

Everybody's handling the best we can.

To an approximate understanding of ease,

~Emmanuela

production cessation for mourning period.

pj whitt, beloved business partner for my photography works, and sterling project director for claiming masculinity, has tonight lost one of her three brothers in a fatal accident.

the matriarch of the whitt family, grand marie, celebrated another birthday into her seventies, in july. marie has always been exceedingly proud to boast of her ten children ("and two gay daughters," she loves to add); her many grandchildren; her great-grandchildren.

tonight marks the first loss of any of that very close-knit clan.

for nearly all her nearly six years, my youngest child has been co-parented by pj.

they were together, when they received word. tonight, la nena has elected to remain with pj and the grieving family.

i will not be processing the photos from recent sessions, or participating in further sessions, until further notice.

thank you for your understanding.

~emmanuela

*edited, after my head cleared, a bit . . .