"...it's like Will Rogers, Jean Shepherd and some grumpy Jewish man all rolled into one."

Wednesday, February 12, 2014

Master Of My Domain Name

Hello regular readers of my blog (all seven of you). Before I forget, please update your bookmark to:
  • www.factsoptional.com
You can, if you wish, skip the "dub-dub-dub" but it's so much more fun to say that.

Getting this URL (which is pronounced "You-Are-Ell going to misspell the address") to function properly with my blog site was a bit of a struggle. I had to see if the domain name was available; it was, so then I needed to purchase it. There are a multitude of online companies that facilitate this transaction, all with varying come-ons and pricing schemes. I could have paid as little as $6.99 or as much as $25 to "own" the domain for a year, all conditional on whether I added web hosting, email, online calendars, tinted windows or surround sound.

I decided for a two-year, bare-bones option through GoDaddy.com. They've made a name for themselves over the last few years through their Super Bowl commercials which feature Danica Patrick and were, until this year, always deemed too suggestive to be shown in their entirety during the broadcast. This year they went "cute" -- it was still Danica but instead of featuring her figure, they positioned her as the Donald Trump of the Speedway and somehow it was all tied in to helping a woman quit her day job to fulfill her lifelong dream of starting her own company to make puppets. I was going to say GoDaddy now has a hand in the puppet business but you likely got there before I did.

Anyway, I ran into some difficulty dropping the "www." and still getting the URL to forward to the blog site, so I ended up contacting GoDaddy's online product support. I was told to delete a "parked IP address" via my "zone file editor" and all would be well. Now, I work with software engineers and web designers and am fairly entrenched in their processes and I had NO fuckin' idea what I was being asked to do. But I dutifully followed the instructions and within minutes everything was working perfectly. My online chat support agent was named Heather, and I commended her on her insights and typing skills and then asked if she'd like to move to a private chat room to see where else we might like to park my IP address. Chat session terminated.

Another confusing element in this activity was the discovery that there's another blog with the address "factsoptional.blogspot.com". I think that one is written by someone who isn't me but am not sure since I read through some of her posts and we share uncannily parallel interests in obscenities along with disdain for the working environment (if that's not redundant). However, my blog soul-mate seems to have been laying low since last summer. Maybe she's distracted by trying to launch a puppet business.

Here's a puppet riddle I just came up with:

     Why did the puppet decline an invitation to Thanksgiving dinner?
     He was afraid someone would knock the stuffing out of him.

Once you stop laughing at that one -- oh, you're all set; OK -- here's another riddle:

     Why didn't they release The King's Speech in Brazil?
     Because they couldn't find someone to dub-dub-dub the dialogue into Portuguese.

Guess I won't quit my day job either. Much to my employer's regret.

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