Bermuda Triangle

My site is in a strange Twilight Zone/Bermuda Triangle kind of place right now. Some of my mail is still going to the old server; some goes to the new server. The domain hasn't completely propagated yet -- I can see the new site from the office, and can ftp to the new server and get mail from the new mail server, but can't get the mail that's still going to the old server.

From home, I can't see the new site or get the mail from the new mail server, but I can retrieve the mail from the old server. I can write a journal entry (well, I could write one any place, of course), but I can't upload it. Or rather, I could upload it, but I'd be uploading it to the old server, which is going to be turned off on Friday. I can't upload it to the new server. I could upload it to the new server from the office, but then I couldn't see it from home . . .

Insane.

I spent quite a bit of time today trying to figure out why I was getting mail at the new server, but couldn't send to it. John eventually made that work by rebooting the mail server, but I have to say that it makes me wonder whether anyone else in the world needs to reboot their mail server, why it would just be ours. If I start wondering what email I'm not getting, I will go insane.

I also tried, and failed, to fix the perl script that runs Tea Leaves (it had to be changed because the cgi set-up is different there), and eventually the tech support guy at my new hosting company made that work for me.

And I actually did some work, too, of course; it was a fragmented day, and a day with a lot of continued frustration.

But!

There were flowers!

Oh, but first! There was adventure!

I was driving to work, enjoying the unseasonably cool weather, happy as a clam, listening to American Gods, when traffic came to a complete stop. Oh, man, I thought, what now? I assumed it was either a wreck or the ubiquitous highway construction, so I rolled the window down all the way and prepared for a few miles of slow driving.

Then I realized that, while I couldn't see far enough ahead to see what was going on, everyone seemed to be merging to the right, and, yes -- everyone was actually getting off the highway. Crap. There was no choice, everyone was being funneled off the highway. The exit said, "18th Street Expressway." Well, I drive by there every day, but had absolutely no idea where it would take me.

Thank God for the cell phone. I called Dave at the office and told him where I was, what had happened, and asked him what I should do. After a bit of confusion when he couldn't figure out where I was from my description, he told me to get on 70 and said that would take me downtown. So I confidently got on 70 highway and proceeded until I saw a sign for "5th Street." Well, my office is on the corner of 5th Street, so I got off. I drove a little way, and after nothing at all began to look familiar, realized that I shouldn't have gotten off there, that I was apparently now in Kansas City, Kansas, and it was beginning to look very scary.

So I turned around in a parking lot (I had rolled up the windows by this point), and made another call, this time to Bob. He didn't answer. He must have been in the shower or something. So I drove on, figuring, well, I'd see a landmark that I recognized, or a street that I recognized, or I'd call Dave again . . . The phone rang. It was Bob calling me back. I told him what was going on, and after he stopped laughing (okay, not really, it was actually me who was laughing, now that I was out of the scary part of town), he asked me to start naming off streets, told me how to get back on the highway, and then stayed on the phone with me until I absolutely, positively knew where I was.

I was only a half hour late to work, which isn't too bad, considering that I had an adventure.

And then I got to work, and I was standing in the door of Dave's office telling him all about it, when the Federal Express delivery person showed up, and she had a box full of flowers for us!

We have a website client in Hawaii, and they had sent us a box of leis! How tropical! So we all (even Simon) put them on (Eugene wasn't in the office this morning, sadly, but I held his flowers) and had one of the guys who shares our office take a picture, which Dave turned into a thank you card.

And now I don't know what to do with this entry, because I can't upload it . . . I guess I'll just wait 'til morning and see if anything has changed by then.

Just insane.

Amended later to add that I forgot to say why the highway was closed -- when I got in to work, Dave said he heard that there had been a watermelon truck overturned. What a midwestern cliché, eh?