A Return of Smoky Skies

It was with near exasperation that I perceived my younger brother arriving home last evening at 8:28 or 8:29 p.m. ─ just barely ahead of the unspoken 8:30 p.m. deadline that I have in place for him.

For what seemed the second consecutive evening, I was going to have to sit up late with him (although that first night was by sheer choice, for I had tried unsuccessfully for an hour to fall asleep after going to bed at 9 p.m.).

Well, I tried to be cooperative and start watching some T.V. with him via our Android TV Box that only I am sufficiently capable of operating. I tuned in an episode of Z Nation, and soon his besotted antics began ─ he would sit with his eyes closed for extended periods.

Numerous times when his head would then droop, I would start lowering the T.V. volume as the first step in backing out of the episode so that I could switch off the Android TV Box and turn the T.V. over to its basic cable programming, and then betake myself upstairs to eventually have an early evening.

But something would rouse him ─ a sudden noise in the episode, usually. And he would raise his head and open his eyes for a while more.

This continued a number of times; and even when his head would not droop, he would have it raised with eyes closed and facing more toward the ceiling than toward the TV. ─ no doubt a desperate effort to keep his head from sinking as his consciousness ebbed.

Finally, with less than 10 minutes remaining in the episode ─ perhaps closer to five minutes ─ his head remained drooped for an extended period of time and I at last cancelled out of the episode and got the T.V. switched over to basic cable.

He again roused, but I was done. I calmly rose and came here upstairs to my computer. He knew that he had been found out, likely falsely believing that he had fooled me to at least that far into the evening.

Had he said aught by way of objection, I was inclined to challenge him to name what show had been playing, for I rather doubted that he knew anymore.  

What is colossally annoying about all of this is that I am now going to have to re-watch the entirety of what I had already seen of that episode just so that my brother ─ when he is soberer ─ will retain continuity of the series. 

And we are nearly finished with the series.

Thus, I have no desire whatsoever to resume watching it for quite some while now, because the episode is far too fresh for me. I need time for my familiarity with it to wear down.

I remained up for maybe 45 minutes here at my computer before finally getting to bed ─ it was perhaps 10:15 p.m. by then. Even so, sleep was not particularly easy to sink into.

After I did get to sleep, I was again awake perhaps in the neighbourhood of 1:45 a.m., and I decided to rise then to deal with a few things here at my computer.

As detailed extensively in my previous two posts, I have relinquished five of my six hosted websites ─ the five that I had on a 'baby' HostGator account. I still have one online with JustHost, but it will not remain so any longer than October 3, for that is approximately when my monthly hosting subscription will expire and I will not be renewing it. 

As a result, I am no longer in thrall to them, sitting up overnight for four hours at a time as I add content into whatever is the latest post that I might be working on.

But I still do have a few different affiliate advertising accounts that I do not wish to lose, and this blog is inadequate to sustain the viability of those accounts. I need to get something else set up and going. Something ─ another Blogger / Blogspot website ─ that is not a mere blog.

I have a murky idea of what I may undertake, and so it was that last night I sat up for maybe four hours anyway, researching this new project. I did so even though my eyes were already tired from inadequate sleep.

I have paid a toll today, for after getting to bed before daybreak, I was once more awake and up by 8:30 a.m. so that I could have a bath; and at 10 a.m., I joined my brother downstairs to watch a few of our shows together until 1 p.m. when he sought some bed rest ere leaving afoot to catch a bus and hook up with two drinking buddies ─ at the Green Timbers Pub, I believe.

One or both of those drinking buddies will also be busing, the one having had his driver's licence suspended within the past three or so years and not wanting to enjoy that experience again.

The selected pub's location is always one that is not favouring any one of the drinkers insofar as convenience to anyone's residence, for it would be unfair to be within easy distance of someone's home when the other drinker(s) would have to be grossly disadvantaged where transit is concerned. 

I was not present when my brother left ─ I was seated in a lawn- or deckchair in the backyard facing into the Sun for the third consecutive afternoon on a cloud-free day. As I managed the previous two days, I did so for just over an hour ─ this time, just over 65 minutes.

My time today commenced at 1:59 p.m., and all I wore were a pair of cutoffs.

I had thought this morning that the day was overcast, but my brother confirmed that what was being experienced was a recurrence of the smoke of two or three weeks back ─ various U.S. forest fires are polluting this region of Canada with high smoke that fades our blue sky to the faintest milky, diluted blue, and lends a rosy hue to the sunlight. 

My brother will definitely be unable to arrive back home again by that 8:30 p.m. deadline ─ I don't really expect him any sooner than 9:30 p.m. at earliest; so I will certainly be having an early evening today. I had a brief nap in the latter afternoon, but still my eyes are burning from recent cumulative inadequate sleep. I think this evening, I ought to have little trouble sinking into slumber that I hope will endure for several hours.  

And my wife let me know with a phone call just ahead of that short afternoon nap that she would not be home until tomorrow (and not today as she had identified she would when she left here last afternoon to go to work), so she shan't be present to contribute any kind of deterrence to my sleep. 

It is after 7 p.m., and I have some exercise I must clear away before I have a light supper. Since I do not wish to prolong this post unnecessarily, I am going to conclude it here and now. 

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An Overnight HostGator Follow-up Concerning the Termination of My Account With Them

Although I did get to bed last evening right around 9 p.m. as a result of my younger brother arriving at that time from wherever he had been drinking, sleep had no intention of visiting me. I really cannot consider my wife to have any blame, for even though she was home, she knew I had gone to bed and did not thereafter intrude into the bedroom.

Whatever the cause, at 10 p.m. I was as fully awake as when first I went to bed. I had been reflecting upon the primary reason for my early bedtimes, and I had concluded that it had been due to my six hosted websites. I had been deeming that rising overnight to spend four or so hours working upon whatever was the latest post I had in the works, was crucial to completing any such post. Otherwise, my day was unlikely to present the opportunity.

However, as yesterday's post amply explained, I had been pushed into forsaking my websites. Five of the websites were hosted on one account at HostGator, and they had put them offline, claiming overuse of their resources.  

If they had thought that doing this would goad me into purchasing a subscription for an expensive dedicated server instead of my 'baby' account on a shared server, they were to discover that I was done with any further threats from my webhosts.  

After brief rumination, I embraced this as an opportunity to finally be free of the enslavement I have been under to my six hosted websites. I went into my HostGator account and deleted my credit card details, and then I responded to their E-mail by declaring that I was myself shutting down ─ I was done with hosted websites.

I had wisely been paying for my hosting on a monthly basis, so doing this cost me nothing ─ I was not sacrificing some prepaid subscription for which I would not receive any refund.

Again, you will have to refer to yesterday's post to see the two communications that I had received from them ─ but this arrived overnight at 3:17 a.m.:

Hello,

My name is Jesus and I am the Web Advisor II who received your escalation. I am following up with you regarding your last reply.

I would like to personally apologize for any inconvenience during the process and can assure you that we do not actively suspend or disable accounts. Only if found necessary to maintain server stability action will be taken to mitigate any accounts found over using CPU resources. In this case your account was found over using CPU and needed to be addressed to prevent the negative effects it was having on other users sharing the environment.

To provide some further context on the situation, HostGator allows a maximum of 25% CPU usage limit. You may exceed this limit for no longer than 90 seconds. This limit is for the entire account and is shared by all sites installed on the same cPanel. In your case this account was found over using CPU, at about 70% of the server's resources for a passing hour.

Unfortunately, there is no way of predicting an account's resource usage in advance. A sudden increase in traffic, a bot crawl, or a change in site activity can cause a site to dramatically increase its resource usage in an instant. When this happens, the server's ability to function properly is jeopardized, and we must, by necessity, restrict the source of the problem to keep the server functioning. The ultimate solution is to maintain the content hosted and keep it updated/optimized. More on optimizations can be read at https://www.hostgator.com/blog/7-ways-to-speed-up-your-website/

If you feel there is anything we can do to further address the matter for you we urge you to contact our live support staff and request a feedback escalation to have your situation reviewed by our management.

As always, Feel free to contact our Live Support at your convenience, we are available 24 hours a day, 7 days a week if you have any further questions.

Here are our numbers:
Toll Free: 1-866-964-2867
International: 001-713-574-5287

Support & Live Chat:
- https://chat.hostgator.com/
- http://support.hostgator.com/  

To this, I replied as follows at 5:47 a.m.:

I appreciate this extended explanation, Jesús.

I admit that it was a blow to receive the initial E-mail announcing the shutdown of my five websites on the account, especially since I had worked for over a month on just one post at AmatsuOkiya.com that I finally published several days ago that had a word-count supposedly exceeding 53,000 ─ it was by far the longest post I ever made, and probably consumed at least 120 hours of my life.

But the two options presented to keep the baby account alive and the five websites online are beyond my means and ability.

I definitely cannot afford a dedicated server, and I do not for an instant believe that I can control outside attempts to visit my websites that would limit such visits to legitimate humans alone. I already have Wordfence supposedly doing their best to provide those kinds of blocks.

The realization that my websites were offline was still very raw when I made the nearly snap decision to just give it all up after better than a decade. As I said in my first response, I have only been a failure all those years anyway, and with my 71st birthday looming a mere dozen days away, I'm tired of struggling.

Heck, too often I just feel tired of being alive. There's too much in my life already that I can't seem to deal with.

Anyway, once I made that snap decision to give up on the websites, I felt peculiarly at peace for it. There was no angst ─ just calm resignation. In fact, I have a sixth website that is hosted with JustHost which I also lease on a month-by-month basis, and I decided that even though it has also been online for at least a decade, I'm letting it go too. October 3 will be its last day.

A clean sweep.

I'm done ─ wiped out, Jesús. It's time to 'put up the gloves'. I don't belong in the website game anymore.

So I guess that's it!

Again, thanks for the attempt to reach out. 

There has been no further communication from them. And yes, it is true what I expressed concerning my sixth and final website still online with JustHost ─ JustHost can thank HostGator for the loss of that account.

The website was a money pit anyway. Google had banned it from qualifying for AdSense, and it never managed to have any success whatsoever with any of the other affiliate income possibilities I was into over its decade-long lifetime.

So why keep on with it? I might as well be done with it all.

Anyway, after concluding last evening that my primary reason all along for getting to bed early was so that I could work on my websites overnight, I saw no need to just lay there awaiting my brother's eventual retirement for the night around midnight or later.

And so I rose.

I had some interaction with my wife, who was here in the small room next to our bedroom where I keep my computer. When she understood that I was going to remain up, she actually seemed encouraging about me going downstairs to be with my brother where he sat in the darkened living room by himself, drinking alone and watching T.V.

I suppose that she felt a little sorry for him.

When I did join him, I have to admit that he actually seemed 'pumped' to have my company. And he was to prove very good company himself, despite his drinking.

We were to watch T.V. until well into the midnight hour, and I was not back to bed until a little after 12:30 a.m. My brother had actually retired a little before I did.

My wife, though, remained up for some while longer.

After I eventually did fall into some sleep, by 4:30 a.m. I found myself too awake again to easily sink back into any more, so I rose and came here to my computer. Even though I was no longer bound to be toiling at one of my six hosted websites, I still had other things I could do ─ such as create a post at my private blog. Doing so would free up my day, for my blog posts can take quite some time on their own.

(Incidentally, feel free to request access. The blog is just over a dozen years old, and since early last year primarily focusses upon my old journal entries ─ I commenced that old journal sometime in 1973, I believe, when I was 23 years old; and at this stage in my private blog, I am transcribing and discussing the entries that I wrote exactly 40 years ago when I was 30 years old.)

In fact, between my two free Blogger / Blogspot blogs and my websites, I was easily spending a minimum of eight hours a day working on them, and sometimes as many as a dozen hours. So getting that private blog post out of the way for today was a boon.

I was not to make my return to bed until at least 6:45 a.m. Nevertheless, I can see how I will have some nights where I will be able to retire early in the evening and actually sleep (unlike last evening), thereby allowing me to rise during or soon after the midnight hour. On those occasions, I should be able to find the time to get out for at least a small walk of maybe a couple or so miles. As it is now, I only walk on the weekends, and lately I have only been doing so on early Sundays. 

An exclusive Sunday walk is of minimal benefit ─ I need to do more. But I cannot get out during the daytime ─ especially during the workweek ─ because my environs present naught but stress: busy streets and buildings for miles around, and of course people everywhere. There is no peace or serenity out there for me.

Yes, I am reclusive by nature, but I am not a misanthrope. I do love my fellow man...but I seem best able to do so from afar. As it is, I am surrounded by overdevelopment; and since I do not drive, and I am too deep in debt to be able to flee here, I remain holed up in my heavily mortgaged home under self-imposed house arrest.

I have been in self-isolation for most of my adult life, and especially so since my retirement in earliest April 2011. 

Anyway, upon returning to bed just ahead of dawn this morning, I managed a little further sleep, and then rose around 9:30 a.m. And at 10 a.m., I joined my brother downstairs for some T.V. ─ I operate our Android TV Box.

I had a documentary in mind ─ we had watched Plandemic last week, so I wanted us to now watch Plandemic: Indoctornation this time. Happily, my brother did not demur, and he seemed quite interested in the feature as it played out.

The only sure online source for these two productions seems to be at BitChute.com, so please go there to find them if you care to see them for yourself. We were able to watch them on T.V. because I have a couple of browser 'apps' downloaded into our Android TV Box. They are slow as the dickens, but at least they afford access to websites like this and make it possible to play features on T.V. instead of a computer screen. 

What I very much enjoyed in the documentary this morning was how it addressed all of the negative noise that the first documentary inspired.

My brother and I were also to watch the finish of the second season of Channel Zero. Each season is an entirely different storyline. This time, the story was "No-End House". 

I would give it better marks than the first season, but it left much unanswered.

And I have just now discovered that one of the main characters was played by actress Amy Forsyth. I did not know until now that I knew her from the T.V. series The Path where she had a bit of a recurring role as teen character Hawk's first girlfriend, and who was outside of the Meyer cult.

I also realize now where I recognized the actor playing a young character in American Horror Story's season storyline "Apocalypse" from. My brother and I both recognized the actor, but could not place where we knew him from. Actor Kyle Allen had played main character Hawk in The Path.

I will have to try and remember to inform my brother on both counts tomorrow morning when he is sober. If he arrives home by 8:30 p.m. this evening and I sit up with him to watch some of our shows via our Android TV Box, I won't bother trying to tell him anything of this nature then ─ it won't matter to him, and he won't remember it.

It is already after 7:30 p.m., so I must bring this post to a close. However, first I want to compliment the weather ─ it was another flawlessly sunny day. And just as I did yesterday afternoon, I sat out in the backyard and sunned my front for just over an hour as I lounged in a lawn- or deckchair and faced into the Sun.

This time, I only wore cutoffs throughout, for it was so very warm. I started the session at 1:42 p.m. well after my brother had gone to his bedroom to rest up before taking off for the afternoon to ultimately resume his drinking somewhere. He was gone when I came back into the house after my sunning.

My wife apparently got into my strong beer (8% alcohol) last night and drank two cans, as well as a regular-strength beer. She confessed to having paid a toll for it ─ my two cans of beer would be akin to drinking three cans of regular beer. Thus, she in effect drank four cans of beer with at least a 5% alcohol content.

She had to work this latter afternoon at her friend's Thai restaurant, so I saw her off. She said she wouldn't be back until tomorrow (such is our sorry marriage), so I definitely will not have her presence as a possible deterrent to me finding easy sleep if I do get to bed early this evening. It will all depend upon whether my brother is home by 8:30 p.m. at very latest.  

By the way, I never did speak with her about my VISA credit card ─ but you will have to refer to yesterday's post to learn what that portended.

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💀☠💀☠💀☠ I Have Chosen to Close My Account at HostGator ─ Five Decade-Old Websites Lost Forever

It was another early evening for me yesterday ─ my younger brother did not arrive home until around 9 p.m. from wherever he had been drinking, so I took that as my cue to get to bed. 

Early in the evening, I had been slipping into iniquity until I shocked myself by discovering that it was already past 7:30 p.m., and I had lost maybe 1½ hours when I could have been watching a little T.V. and having my supper.

Perhaps it was due to caffeine, but I did have some trouble falling asleep after retiring last evening. However, once I did, I was again awake enough to be curious on the time before the midnight hour was half done, so I rose then.

My brother had blessedly retired, and I was free to soon be at work adding content into the post I am constructing at one of my six hosted websites. Only one of my two stepsons was still up ─ probably the eldest, the 26-year-old.

I remained up until around 4:30 a.m. before returning to bed for some additional sleep. And not four hours later, I was already checking the time after once more finding myself awake and curious on the hour. Nevertheless, I checked myself and managed to submerge my awareness for a little longer, and rose at 9 a.m.

My brother was by then downstairs watching T.V.

I joined him at 10 a.m. to put our Android TV Box into action, and was very delightfully surprised when he directed that I should only "put on something short". It developed that he was going to have to leave soon to pick up his girlfriend Bev and take her in to the Royal Columbian Hospital for some tests.

She is a frail woman who smokes heavily and has a wicked smoker's cough as well as very high blood pressure, and sometimes she feels so alarmingly dizzy that she has needed to be taken to the emergency ward of the reasonably near Surrey Memorial Hospital.

This last occurred a couple or more weeks ago.

I believe that she is just into her earliest 50s, so none of this bodes at all well where her longevity is concerned, and I have my regrets about that ─ she is very likeable. She still works for a living in a small bar or pub.

Anyway, with my brother away shortly after 10:30 a.m., I was free to discharge the day's scheduled exercise session ─ this time, out in the backyard toolshed.

The day is flawlessly sunny ─ not a trace of cloud anywhere that I could see. I hope to be spending some time sitting out in the backyard barefooted to benefit from this rare opportunity to bask my face in the sunshine. I may even find it comfortable enough to be wearing just cutoffs.

As I type these words, it is 11:26 a.m., so I will be taking a break from this post. For now, though, I just want to report on some research I have done concerning my wife's involvement as an agent for a Thai health supplements organization.

She has to order the products from Thailand, and has been using my VISA credit card. Her last order ─ her third ─ came to $2,326.37 on September 23, and she promised at the time to pay me $2,000 towards that figure very soon, but I am still waiting.

I will also have to cover the duty charge that DHL will want before they make the delivery.

The issue here is that I am a 70-year-old pensioner with only my pension as my income. A year ago, I had to allow my wife the use of my VISA card because she had incurred a very large gambling debt; and by the time she returned the card to me ─ which until then had a balance that I could pay off on a monthly basis ─ its balance was something like $4,500.

She was full of promises to be making hefty repayments to me each month, but she never made even one.

Only twice since that debt was levied upon me have I managed to pay enough of a monthly payment to actually diminish the balance ─ all of the other months, I failed to pay enough to overcome the latest accruals.

I checked the card's current balance overnight ─ it is far over $8,000. And of that, $4,285.35 relates directly to what is outstanding to me on her Thai product purchases.

So even if she does manage to somehow pay me $2,000, then she will still owe me $2,285.35 because of this enterprise of hers ─ yet on Saturday she had texted me information that leads me to understand that she is even thinking of placing yet another order to the Thai company.

Well, I am going to have to refuse her access to my card. I will let her know this when I see her today. As things stood before her involvement with this Thai company, it was going to take me years to pay off the $4,000 + that was the balance on my credit card due to her gambling last year.

I am already her prisoner here at home serving house arrest because I cannot afford to do anything with my life ─ I just grow older and more decayed within and without. I don't drive, so I cannot even get away somewhere to have a peaceful walk in Nature ─ all I have are seemingly endless miles of busy streets, buildings of all description, and of course people. 

So I just hide away here, impotent to do aught else.

And I think that my wife intends to make a trip this coming year back to Thailand to see her mother ─ and of course, other family members and old friends of hers.

I cannot begrudge her wanting to see her mother again ─ my wife last visited her in 2018. But any such trip is not going to be done on my credit. It is not my fault that my wife gambled away behind my back and exhausted what remained of our home's mortgage-related line of credit last year.

She is something over 23 years my junior, so she still works, and her friends in her life are enormously important to her. But our marriage is a flop ─ she spends her weekends and most of her free time somewhere in Vancouver. If not for her two sons living here, I wonder how often I really would be seeing her? She does spend two or three nights a week here at home, but probably only because we live so much nearer to the Thai restaurant that employs her than would be the case if she had to get back and forth to work from wherever she stays in Vancouver.

I have said enough ─ it is time for that break.

oooooooooooooo

I got in some sunning, I am pleased to say. At 12:23 p.m. I commenced what I expected would be just over 40 minutes seated in a lawn- or deckchair in the backyard, facing directly into the Sun. Although I had on cutoffs, I also wore a sleeveless top.

Then at 1:04 p.m. when I had planned to quit and come back into the house, I decided to put in another 20 minutes, but this time topless.

And so I did ─ it was perfectly warm by then.

I was no sooner into the house and fixing up my day's first hot caffeinated beverage when my wife surprised me by walking into the kitchen ─ home at last.

She since left with her youngest son, the 22-year-old, and I am just finishing up that delicious beverage at 1:53 p.m. Next up I want to perform some of my version of Hindu squats ─ 176 if I can; and then I will have my day's first eating.

And so I am taking another break. However, I doubt that I will have much more to be adding before I close my post for the day and get it published. Depending on how long my wife is going to be out, I might even seek an afternoon nap after that meal.

oooooooooooooo

My wife returned, but she only dropped off her son, and then left again.

At the approach of mid-afternoon, I once more resumed iniquity instead of seeking that needed nap. Then by at least 5 p.m. I had burned out my eyes and needed to rest them, but first I checked my E-mail account.

I found the following from HostGator, where five of my six websites are hosted on a single 'baby' account:

Hello,

Your account t****** on gator4012.hostgator.com has been overusing CPU resources for an extended period of time and has been disabled in order to ensure continued performance and stability of the server. While we do limit each account to no more than 25% of a system's CPU in our terms of service, we do not actively disable accounts until they greatly exceed that number, which is what happened in this case.

Unfortunately, there is no way of predicting an account's resource usage in advance. A sudden increase in traffic, a bot crawl, or a change in site activity can cause a site to dramatically increase its resource usage in an instant. When this happens, the server's ability to function properly is jeopardized, and we must, by necessity, restrict the source of the problem to keep the server functioning.

Please take a moment to review this email in full as it contains important information and resources to assist you in resolving this issue. Please note that this permanent restriction requires you take further actions to gain access to and resolve the issues on your account.

-How can you resolve the issue?
We have two solutions available. Moving the account to a dedicated server, which will allow far greater hardware resources or you may try following some of our tutorials for optimizing popular scripts. http://support.hostgator.com/articles/specialized-help/technical/optimize-cpu-resource-usage. If you feel your scripts have already been optimized, it may simply be time to consider the hardware upgrade.

-Important note
While an upgrade to a dedicated server would increase resource availability, an upgrade to a VPS would not, in most cases. A VPS offers a root environment in which custom installs and configurations can be made, but only the very highest level VPS packages offer the same level of server resources available on your current plan. Moving to a VPS in this circumstance would likely make the problem worse, rather than better. Additionally, our cloud platform is also a shared environment, and does not offer an increase in available resources.

-What do I do next?
If you reply back to this email with your IP address (http://www.hostgator.com/ip.shtml) we will be more than happy to go ahead and enable HTTP access for you, allowing you to safely work on the script while minimizing the negative effects on the server and its other users. If your IP address changes frequently, you can reply back requesting password-based restrictions.

-How does a CPU issue occur?
Many times popular scripts may perform inefficient tasks repeatedly leading to CPU overuse. Below please find helpful articles outlining resource restrictions set on HostGator accounts:
https://support.hostgator.com/articles/pre-sales-policies/rules-terms-of-service/cpu-resource-restriction
https://support.hostgator.com/articles/pre-sales-policies/rules-terms-of-service/cpu-resource-usage

-How can I rate-limit search engine crawlers?
All major crawlers respect robots.txt to restrict them from crawling certain pages. Additional steps may be needed to limit the rate at which Googlebot and Bingbot craw your site:
http://support.hostgator.com/articles/hosting-guide/lets-get-started/how-to-use-robots-txt
http://support.hostgator.com/articles/telling-google-how-often-to-crawl-your-website
http://support.hostgator.com/articles/telling-the-bing-network-how-often-to-crawl-your-website

And then there was a lengthy compilation of data that was essentially meaningless to me. 

I cannot afford a dedicated server ─ I could not really justify paying the hosting fees that I already was paying, which I fortunately have been doing month-by-month as opposed to doing so every one, two, or three years all at once.    

And there is no sense in me trying to figure out the nonsense behind their second very technical option.

So I did something I have been pondering for several years, but never had the courage to 'bite the bullet' and do ─ I replied back that I was calling it quits.

Before I did, however, I went into my HostGator account and deleted my credit card information ─ just in case they proved shady about me terminating my account of more than a decade's standing.

I would have saved my entire database on the chance that maybe one day in an unimaginable future when I was no longer in financial duress, I might want to resurrect my five websites. However, saving the entire database on one's own is only permissible when the database does not exceed 10 gigabytes.

My database was apparently 11.4 gigabytes with 88,106 inodes, whatever that signifies. 

To save a backup of my entire database would require me to seek HostGator's direct assistance ─ they would have to do it.

I don't want anything to do with them, frankly. So I am relinquishing absolutely everything. I will even allow the domain names to lapse when each comes up for renewal. None of them are with HostGator.

I still have a website with JustHost, but at month's end I will terminate that account as well. I have never earned a single cent from it in the decade that it has been online.

This is the flaw with all of those articles you might see flogging the wisdom of having a paid hosting account for a personal blog, over having a free one as I do here with Blogger / Blogspot. 

Sure, Blogger / Blogspot might one day delete mine without warning, but this particular blog is actually a spin-off from a private blog that I have which I started 12 years ago, and which is still going strong.

Conceivably, these free blogs could remain online for many years after I have died ─ maybe for as long as Blogger itself exists. But a hosted blog / website will only remain online for as long as the so-called 'owner' keeps paying the relatively steep hosting fees.

The website is not really owned. It's like a business in a leased building. The business doesn't own the building, and thus the lease could be terminated by the building owner anytime it comes up for renewal. 

All the business 'owner' would have then is the ownership of the business name. But where a website is concerned, even the website name (or domain) can only be retained for as long as a person is willing to keep paying to essentially lease it.

Nothing is owned. Neither the website, nor the website name. The 'owner' only has 'possession' of both for as long as he or she keeps paying to retain them. They are only being leased ─ nothing more. 

And once a website goes offline ─ even one a decade or more old ─ it's gone forever. There is no permanence. 

Anyway, as of this afternoon and that website activity and drastic decision, I have suddenly freed up an enormous amount of time to take advantage of each day. I have been spending four or five hours every day working on one or another of my six websites; now I no longer have to.

Maybe I can at last start putting in some very long nighttime walks in the wee a.m. instead of sitting here throughout much of the night labouring fruitlessly on a new post.

By the way, since closing my HostGator account, I have received this acknowledgement:

Hello,

I am sorry to know that you wish to cancel the hosting package.

Please note there is a short survey that appears at the bottom of this response. Please complete this and let my manager know how I am doing. We really appreciate the responses.

Your request to cancel the package ‘SH-396031 : myretirementdream.com (192.185.4.23)’ has been completed. You will no longer be billed, though you will have access to your hosting package until October 23, 2020. If you would like to immediately cancel service, reply to this email and let us know. Refunds are only available for packages that are being canceled within the first 45 days of being created.

Please note: Once a hosting package is canceled, all content will be permanently removed from the server and cannot be recovered. If you require a backup of your content, you will need to download one prior to the date above. You can find instructions on how to create a backup in the following link or contact our Live Support for assistance:

http://support.hostgator.com/articles/cpanel/how-to-generatedownload-a-full-backup

If you have any queries, please let us know.

We would like to know of your experience of this interaction. Please click on the link below to take a quick 3-question survey.

That URL to the backup article wasn't even valid ─ this is it:

https://www.hostgator.com/help/article/how-to-generatedownload-a-full-backup

I haven't looked at the three-question survey, but I might do so ─ definitely not today, though. Everything is still too 'raw'. Yet, I feel oddly at peace over my decision. I was a slave to those six websites ─ a decade-long slave.

(I say "six websites" because of course I am including the one I will be parting company with at JustHost after the month ends.)

It is already after 8 p.m., so I am going to stop blogging now and get this published.

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A Successful Morning; Afternoon Dejection

My younger brother evidently spent last night at the home of his girlfriend Bev, so he did not show up last evening. But of course, I would not have any certainty about this at the time, and I was probably to bed around 9 p.m. ─ definitely long before 10 p.m.

I slept reasonably well, for I was not awake enough to be curious on the time until it was just a couple or so minutes after 1 a.m. Although I had early-morning grocery shopping plans, after mulling over if I ought to risk rising as early as this, I decided that returning to sleep would take considerable time; and so I rose.

I could always get back to bed for a while later; for the present, I needed to put more content into a post I am working on at one of my six hosted websites.

There came a point where I decided to check my chequing account online, for I had done so on Friday and had less than $75 in the balance ─ my monthly pension had not as yet shown up. If it was still absent, then should I even risk shopping?  

I was to find the balance unchanged.

This deflated me. Any shopping seemed untenable, for I would be unable to buy much by way of any 'high ticket' needs. In fact, this brought me so low that I had no motivation to even bother going on a walk. Instead, I decided to keep working on the website post.

Note that the store ─ the Save-On-Foods outlet (Google map) approximately 1¼ miles distant in Whalley ─ opens at 7 a.m., so I always do my best to arrive soon afterwards (I walk, for I do not drive).

It was at some point well after 4 a.m. that I began rehearsing some of my less expensive grocery essentials in the produce line ─ I needed carrots and fruit, for there was but one carrot left in the fridge, and maybe three apples. I could not go a week without these ─ I had to shop.

And if I managed my purchasing, I could ensure that my total came below what my chequing account balance would cover. 

With that realization, enthusiasm for the venture began to rekindle. As well, I hated the prospect of not even having that much of a walk this weekend, for it was all I managed to engage last weekend. To postpone an outing of even such a minimal distance until next week was unconscionable ─ I am almost 71 years old, and I need to walk! It is a vital activity.

However, a new wrinkle presented itself just after 5 a.m. ─ I was burning out. I could not face the outing without some further bed rest.

Thus, by about 5:15 a.m., I was back in my bed, my alarm set for 5:45 a.m.

When it wounded, I had just managed to slip into some needed sleep. I did not want to rise. But I had to ... and I did. I would have time for a black instant coffee ─ such would not be breaking my intermittent fast.

It was 6:45 a.m. by the time I set off, and I was impressed by how dark the mornings are at this time now ─ it was not exactly night, but darned close. Even the crows would not yet have migrated to these parts from wherever it is that they disappear to in order to overnight ─ they can be annoying early in the morning, virtually everywhere, squawking at me throughout as I make my transit to wherever it is that I may be going.

I was to find that the numerous early-morning walkers I generally see on my early weekend shopping expeditions had been drastically reduced in numbers ─ it was so very welcome. I suppose that the rains we have been having since last weekend have dampened the enthusiasm of nearly all of them to be out into the dank wet gloom.   

That so beautifully suits me, recluse that I am!

Anyway, I got my shopping done with probably something just under $20 in my account to spare, as it turned out. But I had concentrated my attention so fully on produce that both hands were bearing considerable weight on the homeward trek ─ all good, for it enhanced the exercise value of my walk, and would justify any skipping of later home exercise that I might engage in. I am not as rigorous about my home exercise when I have been challenged as I was this morning ─ I really did have quite a load to bear home.

There never was any rain, but everything out there was wet.

After arriving home, I remained up until after 9 a.m., and by then I had declined sufficiently anew that I again returned to bed. And I remained there until after 11 a.m., for I was definitely hungry but not yet able to take in nourishment due to my intermittent fast. The earliest that I would be able to break my fast would be after the arrival of 12:30 p.m., but I would prefer waiting until after 1:30 p.m. 

Another black instant coffee was in order.

By the way, my brother had gotten home and was apparently having some bed rest when I emerged from my latter morning nap. However, he soon enough rose; and no later than 12:15 p.m. was bidding me farewell ─ he was already heading away for the afternoon to eventually resume his daily drinking somewhere. 

I cannot conceive that he will be in any shape for me to find tolerable company this evening if he gets home before the unspoken 8:30 p.m. deadline that I have in place for him. Whenever he exceeds that point in time, I will not sit up and watch T.V. with him (I operate our Android TV Box to locate episodes of the T.V. series that we follow in common). 

His failures to arrive home by 8:30 p.m. afford me the opportunities to get to bed early ─ something I far prefer to sitting up late.

Nevertheless, he may surprise me ─ he might not only be home ahead of 8:30 p.m., but be in tolerable condition. I can but wait and see.

My wife will most likely be showing up later this afternoon or early evening (it is 1:19 p.m. as I type these words) ─ she tends to spend her weekends somewhere in Vancouver. We do not have a robust marriage.

The day seems quite bright out there, although I cannot yet claim to have seen actual sunshine ─ that may be imminent, however. Anyway, I can now have my day's first meal, so I am going to go and prepare it. And as usual, I will need a postprandial nap. 

So here I will break from this post.

oooooooooooooo

It is now 4:50 p.m., and the afternoon did indeed grow very sunny at times, with great masses of cloud drifting about. I suppose that I could have sat outside to benefit from the sunshine, but I chose not to spend the time.

It would be far different if I lived somewhere remote from the populations surrounding me that make venturing anywhere during the day a trial as opposed to a pleasure. There is not a shred of solitude or peace out there on the busy streets and their sidewalks ─ stress is the rule.

Did I live somewhere remote from this reality of mine, I would walk daily for hours, striving to reflect and commune as deeply as possible in the hope of a rapprochement with the God who may have once loved my younger self, but who cares nothing for the ageing, miserable wretch that I have mutated into over the years. 

However, that blessed peace and solitude would require a deliverance from the overwhelming debt that I have allowed my wife to steep me in ─ a debt that continues to mount and not diminish. I am evidently destined to die in this debt, riddled with the consuming foulness that is blotting my nature like the disease that it of course is.

I do not care for the trend this post is presently taking. So perhaps I will see about sitting outside, although I fear any sunshine may prove to have advanced beyond our backyard and now be bathing the front of our home ─ and I cannot sit out there. People...people...people.

Make no mistake ─ I have love for my fellows and humankind. But it is a love that is best appreciated from afar. Up close and with no true refuge from those so heavily populating my environs, I fester with the negativity that is born of feeling robbed at every turn of the serenity and calm that I have longed for since the advent of my troubled early teen years.

And now I am impotent in such a disheartening degree to do aught about my predicament that I cannot quell my resentment of self and everyone and everything keeping me in thralldom to this lifetime sentencing of house arrest here in my crushing debt. A country boy at heart, imprisoned in the City of Surrey where he has spent the majority of his life.

Yes, it is best that I cease blogging for today. Besides, naught has taken place here at home since my earlier entry ─ only my two stepsons and myself have been present in this time, and I have not had communication with anyone else.

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Dying Piecemeal

Although I ended my post here yesterday by declaring my intention to have a bath before getting to bed, I was foiled ─ just as I was closing out of the various programmes on my computer, my youngest stepson appropriated the facilities.

Then 8:30 p.m. ─ my younger brother's unspoken deadline ─ arrived and left, and time began marching on. I did not want to be caught up by my brother ─ if he is not home by 8:30 p.m. from wherever he has been drinking, then I have no desire to be sitting up late trying to watch T.V. with him (I operate our Android TV Box).

My stepson then began showering ─ there was no point in sitting up any longer. My bath was going to have to await this morning.

I may have been into my bed just ahead of 8:45 p.m. ─ certainly before 9 p.m. And I was to easily enough find some sleep ─ proof I needed to be there.

It was into the latter half of the midnight hour when I found myself awake enough to care about checking the time ─ it was my second check, for I had first done so right around 11 p.m. But now it was late enough for me to rise to put some work into the post I have begun developing at one of my six hosted websites, for my brother was likely to have retired for the night.

And so he had.

I was to remain up for nearly five hours before finally getting back to bed shortly after 5:30 a.m. One of my stepsons had risen shortly before and left the house to go somewhere.

I gained some further sleep, and remained abed for approximately four hours before rising and having that bath.

It is now 11:42 a.m., and I am about to make a return to bed ─ I am useless for aught else, frankly. I am very hungry and feeling weak. But I cannot have any sustenance, for I have been involved with intermittent fasting for several weeks now. I could have a black instant coffee, I suppose, but I would prefer to have one of my fabulous hot caffeinated beverages that are as sustaining as a liquid meal.

However, I cannot have anything like that until at least after 12:30 p.m., and preferably even no sooner than 1:30 p.m. But since I feel too wretchedly depleted to engage any physical activity, I think that it is best that I just return to my bed for even more sleep. Thereafter, it will undoubtedly be late enough into my day that I can have that wondrous drink.

I can hear some rain falling, so our wet weather continues. Is this not day four of it? I do believe so.

oooooooooooooo

The rain did not endure, and I think we even had a few sunny breaks ─ I'm not positive about that, however.

I had hoped to get out today to do some shopping, but I have been too tied down. Obligations to my two blogs and further desired work on that website post, plus other involvements relating to E-mail and other research.

I read today that the late British singer Cilla Black ─ who died from a fall in 2015 when she was 72 years old ─ had reportedly claimed the year before that she did not want to live beyond the age of 75 because she feared she would just be watching herself die in increasing increments, and she was already suffering enough from that gradual physical decay.

I feel similarly. It is becoming too much for me to keep struggling to have the appearance of unusual physical fitness as I near the age of 71; and like Cilla, over the past decade and more, I have witnessed more and more of me ─ my body ─ commence to steadily fail.

It is inexorable, for none of these failings can be corrected and former abilities regained or reclaimed. They are permanent, and will only fail further with time.

It is becoming too much to live with.

As it is, I am striving ─ and intermittent fasting is part of that ─ to have a physique worthy of visually recording for perhaps the last time on my 71st birthday next month. It may be my final record.

It is already well past 7 p.m., so I am going to bring this post to a close.

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To Stroan

My younger brother arrived home last evening barely ahead of 8 p.m. and just as I was about to play an episode of FBI, a series that I watch on my own ─ i.e., it is not one of those that my brother and I follow in common. But I set it to play regardless (I use our Android TV Box to locate episodes of the T.V. series we watch).

He watched it, with occasional drunken commentary ─ it was clear that he was soused, and I was half-expecting that he would pass out before the show's conclusion, but he did not.

When it did finish very shortly after 8:30 p.m., he rose and went into the kitchen where my youngest stepson had been cooking his supper, and I could overhear my brother engage the lad about his employment.

After just a few questions from my brother, the 22-year-old then said, "You've asked me this, like, five times already. Do you not remember?" 

Drunks do not easily retain information, so my brother did what he always does when this question is thrust at him ─ he justified himself by citing 'old age' for the fragility of his memory.

Well, this is not an excuse he can ever use on me (he is 2¾ years younger than I am), so we usually end up in a heated exchange that has often resulted in one of us leaving the room. I have had him come home and venture to bring up the same conversation three times in a single week! It is bloody annoying, especially when he does so while interrupting a show that is in progress.

But I stayed out of it last evening, sitting in silence as I awaited his return so that I could begin playing an episode of Z Nation, one of the T.V. series he and I watch in common. 

The kitchen conversation eventually played itself out, and it became apparent that my brother had begun rustling up a supper of his own.

And time wore on. At one point he even went upstairs to his bedroom, probably to use the bathroom and change clothes, putting on his home lounge wear.

By the time it hit 9 p.m., I was well realizing that I was no better off than if he had just arrived home ─ it is why I have an unspoken 8:30 p.m. deadline for him. If he arrives home (from wherever he has been drinking) even one minute past 8:30 p.m., I make myself scarce and get to bed early. I do not desire to be sitting up late operating our Android TV Box ─ especially when my brother may well be passing out during an episode of something.

He has done that far too often. I then shut down the Android TV Box in disgust and leave him to watch basic cable television on his own while drinking as much more as he may desire before he eventually retires for the night.

So here it was already 9 p.m. and as yet I had not even begun one of the series we watch in common ─ typically, we have time to watch three shows, and possibly even a sitcom, and that will keep me up as late as I care to be.

But to begin watching shows after 9 p.m. is no engagement I will willingly involve myself with ─ besides, I had already been awaiting my brother for nearly a half hour. I would do so no longer.

And so I came upstairs and put myself to bed ─ he was deservedly on his own.

My sober brother is reasonable, and I of course love him. But the drunken incarnation he so willing devolves into through excessive drinking is nobody I wish to spend time with. I wish that persona was not such a regular part of my life.

I had been expecting that my wife would be home following her workday at her friend's Thai restaurant, but that had not yet occurred.

After about an hour in bed ─ during which time I believe that I may have slipped into some slumber ─ I found myself in the need to stroan. (This Scottish term is explained at the bottom of this post.)

As so infernally often happens, I opened my bedroom door to find that the bathroom was occupied ─ my two stepsons seem telepathically able to foretell when best to usurp the bathroom to cause me as much consternation as possible.

I returned to bed to wait out whomever it was, but anon I had to conclude that I was going to have to seek relief by slipping across the way into my brother's bedroom to use the toilet in his en suite shower room, hoping desperately that he did not need to use it himself ─ I had seen him downstairs lounged in his comfy chair and watching T.V. 

As I was using that facility, standing there in my undershorts, I heard whomever had been occupying the bathroom suddenly leave it ─ as again so often happens. I swear, those two lads seem to perceive the most opportune times in which to inconvenience and aggravate me.

I finished up, and hastened across to my own bedroom, not noticing that the door was now pulled closed (I had not fully shut it). I hastily opened it and in doing so thrust it upon my wife who was just inside the darkened room staring intently at the screen of her smartphone.

She had been just about to retire to bed herself, and was wearing her housecoat. But she exclaimed almost aloud in her near panic, not immediately comprehending what was happening ─ she had assumed that I was lying there in bed.  

And as we both retired in the dark, she maintained her diatribe expounding upon the shock that I had caused her; and although I was truly sorry for having done so ─ it gives me no pleasure to frighten women, and especially my hardworking wife ─ I could not help but snicker a few times.

I was still awake when my brother obligingly retired to his room around 10:50 p.m. ─ unusually early. I was free at last to rise and soon begin adding content into a new post I have just recently begun at one of my six hosted websites.

And as I recall, it was no later than 4 a.m. when I returned to bed for a little further sleep.

It had been raining considerably overnight ─ often quite hard; and this continued over most of the morning. The afternoon had a surprising amount of sunshine.

I doubt that I was in bed any later than 8:30 a.m., and my brother was not to emerge from his bedroom until after that.

My wife was to have to work again today, so I don't think that she was any later in rising than 9:30 a.m. As she usually does before she readies and leaves us, she performed some cooking to leave for everyone. I took the opportunity around 9:45 a.m. to go downstairs and present her with an apology for frightening her last night, explaining that I had no idea that she was home. 

She normally spends her weekends somewhere in Vancouver, but it is possible that she may show up for awhile early this evening.

As for my brother, he left here no later than 2 p.m. this afternoon, so it is very likely that he will be home again ahead of his 8:30 p.m. deadline, forcing me to open myself to having to sit up late with him watching our shows together.

However, it is also quite possible that he will just prove too unpalatable as company. I can but wait and see.

Okay, that Scottish word "stroan" ─ the following two entries are from An Etymological Dictionary of the Scottish Language by John Jamieson, apparently first published in 1808:

To STRONE, STROAN, v. n.
 1. To spout forth as a water-pipe, S.
Gl. Sibb. 
 2. To urine, to stale, S. synon. strule.
Burns.

Isl. streing-r, cataracta; stroningum, sparsim.

To STRULE, v. n.
 1. To urine, S.
 2. To pour water from one vessel to another, to emit any liquid in a stream, S. streel. Fife.

Fris. struyl-en, strull-en, streyl-en, reddere urinam, mejere.

The time that an interested party could expend exploring just the background in those two definitions almost boggles me. Heck, even "v. n." requires more education than I presently have ─ all I can offer is that the initials stand for 'verb neuter', but you'll have to work out for yourself just what the term conceptualizes. 

I am unsure what the capital letter "S." is denoting, unless it is merely referring to the specific word being defined. 

As well, in the first definition, I worked out that the initials "Gl. Sibb." apparently refers to James Sibbald's Glossary of the collection he edited that was titled Chronicle of Scottish Poetry and first published in 1802. Provided that the link remains valid, you can find that book in its entirety ─ albeit in sections, for it is extremely long ─ at Catalog.HathiTrust.org here. 

I don't have the time to track down the reference to "Burns" nor "Fife", but I expect that the latter is likely Robert Sibbald's ─ and this is how Wikipedia has it ─ "1803: A History Ancient and Modern of the Sheriffdoms of Fife and Kinross. Cupar". You can also likely find this one in sections at Catalog.HathiTrust.org ─ try here. 

The Scottish dictionary itself is available in sections at ScotsDictionary.com and elsewhere. 

I must stop for today ─ it is already very much past 8 p.m., and I want to have a bath and perhaps get to bed ahead of my brother's home arrival.

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Still Awaiting the Arrival of This Month's Pension

What heavy bouts of rain we have been experiencing since my last post yesterday! We have had nothing like it since at least last Spring ─ two days of heavy gloom and thoroughly dank weather.

It's actually the sort of weather that I appreciate because it cuts down on the number of people likely to be out there wandering about as pedestrians ─ should I find myself inclined to walk anywhere.

I went to bed ahead of 9 p.m. last evening even though my younger brother had not yet shown up from the pub he had gone to drink in. I felt unusually tired. Perhaps the gloom and chill contributed, for the allure of a warm bed in a dark bedroom was strong attractive.

But I was up again not 20 minutes into the midnight hour. My brother was by then newly shut up in his bedroom, for its light was still on (as betrayed by the illumination at the base of his bedroom door).

I finally finished doing the preparatory work for a new post that I began two days ago at one of my six hosted websites, and now I can begin adding content ─ probably overnight tonight, if I get to bed early this evening once more. 

I sure do wish that I could generate a second income online, but I have spent at least a decade trying and it has been entirely in vain. All I have is my monthly pension income.

But I don't want to start bitching about this. All I will say is that I have just under $75 in my chequing account (I have no savings account) following the monthly debit of the mortgage two days ago, and it is evidently too early yet in the month for my pension ─ I just checked online, and the direct deposit has yet to occur.

Anyway, right now it is 9:39 a.m., so I am going to take a break from this early start on today's post ─ I have to allow the day to develop so I can have aught to write about!

oooooooooooooo

I neglected to mention earlier that while I was up overnight, I decided to perform a plank. I've not planked even a half dozen times thus far in 2020, I venture to say.

How did I do? Well, I held out until I topped five minutes. It was of course a strain, but I could have probably suffered through another minute ─ I just didn't feel like doing so. Why would I?

I already have a personal record that I achieved late last October and / or early November ─ actually, I achieved it on four different days back then. I managed to top 12 minutes on each of those four days.

My goal had been to try and work up to a 15-minute plank, but then I watched a YouTube video that I have regretted seeing ever since. The brawny young prick made a compelling case that the benefits being attributed to planks are pretty much all false.

He even went on to claim that doing a reverse plank probably garners more benefit than can the regular plank.

I became so damned discouraged by that video that I no longer had the drive to sustain the suffering to try and best my 12 minutes.

I considered just now linking to the video, but I have decided not to. Nobody should meet with the discouragement that halted me in my tracks.

But at least I must be in fair shape to be able to perform the plank I did overnight from scratch (i.e., no practice) at my present age of 70 (I turn 71 next month).

The afternoon hereabouts involved many sunny breaks, but there have been times when a cloud attempted to bring us further rain ─ any has been short-lived, failing to thoroughly wet anything. 

My younger brother, of course, set off ere mid-afternoon to do whatever it is that he does before he resumes his daily drinking somewhere. Is he going to be back home by the unspoken 8:30 p.m. deadline that I have for him? Even a minute later means that I will shun him and get myself to bed as soon as I perceive him arriving.

I fully expect my wife to be showing up today ─ as I type these words, it is 5:28 p.m. She has likely been working at her friend's Thai restaurant, but her presence is not going to deflect me from getting to bed if my brother is not home as just described. 

Interestingly to me, I do believe that it was the past Friday that he did last arrive home before that deadline, so I don't think that I have sat up with him to operate our Android TV Box and locate episodes of some of the T.V. series we follow since that day.  

And it has been even longer than that ─ last Thursday, as I recall ─ since I last had a can of one of the strong (8% alcohol) beers that I do my best to keep in stock. If I end up watching T.V. with my brother this evening, and if my wife is home, then I will delve into that supply of beer for a can or two.

But I am perfectly content to be getting to bed early ─ and so we shall see what befalls.

I am going to bring this post to a close because I think that I am up to putting some work into that website post I finally got set up overnight. First, though, I want to post the following image that I came across on Facebook.

When I first saw it, I kept scrolling past it because I didn't realize that it was a joke. I do not happen to be a believer in recreational pot-smoking, and I just assumed without study that the photo was depicting someone into that lifestyle.

But after I had scrolled below the photo, it suddenly dawned upon me what I had seen ─ but you see for yourself:

I honestly did not initially notice that "Julia" was seated upon the back of and clinging to a cow, and not a horse! Had I not had that image flash back into my consciousness after I had scrolled on down the Facebook screen, this excellent sarcastic parody of a pot- and horse-lover would have been lost to me.

Okay, I'm done for today.

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A Most Typical Fall Day

I was to have another early evening of things yesterday, for my younger brother never showed up from wherever he had been drinking until something like 8:42 or 8:43 p.m. ─ definitely past the unspoken 8:30 p.m. deadline that I have in place for him.

And so I was to bed before he had laid eyes upon me, free of having to sit up late in operation of our Android TV Box.

But finding sleep can become the struggle as I bide time until he ultimately retires for the night (upon the arrival of the midnight hour), and I can then rise to come here to my computer and attend to various affairs.

To illustrate how gruelling this can actually become, there came a point after I did manage some sleep and had roused from it, that I wondered if it was possible that perhaps the midnight hour had arrived?

Imagine my upset to discover that it was only something like 10:12 p.m. At best, I had been in bed 1½ hours, yet I still had another two hours to endure there in bed, for it is rare that my brother retires immediately at midnight ─ he generally sits up a while more as he finishes his final beer of the night. 

There are even those times when he will sit up into the latter half of the midnight hour.

All I could do was seek to relax as deeply as I could on the chance that I might betimes slip back into some slumber.

When finally I was at last able to rise and come here to my computer (which I keep in a small room next to my bedroom), after dealing with E-mails I got to work laying the foundation of a new post at one of my six hosted websites. This is a lengthy process and can consume more than a day's allotted work time.

That was to prove the case in this instance. I finally returned to bed well past 5 a.m. without the foundation and research completed.

I should mention that it began raining overnight, and at times it seems to have rained quite intensely. As I type these words at 2:05 p.m., the rain has probably never broken. The Summer is indeed done, and Fall strongly upon us.

It is unfortunate that I was unable to avail myself of some time in the backyard last afternoon to bask in the sunshine then prevalent. It was very warm out there, and may well have been my last opportunity this year to sun my torso.

I am practically assured of another early evening today, for my brother left afoot not five minutes agone to catch a bus. He will be meeting up with one or two of his drinking buddies at a pub that is located such that its situation does not overwhelmingly favour any one of them insofar as each's home is concerned.

The point is that none of them wants to risk driving, but it is unfair to rendezvous near to anyone's home when anyone else must put himself out with a lengthy bus transit there and then back home again later that evening.

My brother will undoubtedly not arrive back home until after mid-evening. 

I am going to take a break here now to have my day's first small meal, and then a needed nap.

oooooooooooooo

'Tis now 5:44 p.m., and if the rain has stopped, it still seems dank and somewhat breezy out there. I have been hearing what seems like more sirens than is the daily usual over the course of this day.

I have a few photos to post, beginning with this collage that Google Photos created today to commemorate this day back in 2013:

The photos depict an orb-weaver spider and the web it had somehow constructed that was not only very high off the ground, but it was anchored to our house as well as to our immediate neighbour's.

The spider was quite large ─ there is no way that it could have drifted in a wind to make one of those attachments. And it would be preposterous to believe that the spider had actually walked from one house to the other while bearing a strand of web and then climbed the wall to make the attachment to the opposite house.

So how was this accomplished? I have no idea!

Anyway, here are the three original photos taken using some zoom:

There were a few further photos, by the way. 

The spider's web was not there for more than a few more days. I expect that a crow or some other bird then flew through some part of the web and thereby destroyed it. 

Since I have naught else to bother reporting thus far today, I am going to conclude this post. I have some exercise I must take care of, and my evening has already begun.

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My Struggle With Upgrading My Websites' PHP Version

My wife showed up late Sunday afternoon or very early that evening, and has been home ever since (as I type these words at 9:29 a.m. while she is still in bed; however, I have a strong hunch that she will have to go to work late this morning).

With her home all day yesterday, I had no opportunity to blog nor even to exercise, apart from a set of 176 of my version of Hindu squats. 

Nevertheless, I have been productive online.

I rose in the weest a.m. yesterday ─ perhaps even in the midnight hour, for I had gone to bed around 9 p.m. Now, I barely achieved any sleep after retiring so early, but I rose regardless. I have learned that I do not necessarily have to await the nightly retirement of my drunken younger brother ─ I only need to have my wife come to bed.

She typically spends long periods of time here at my computer when she is home, and in the evenings will pull the door almost closed. As a result, I now realize that my brother ─ when I rise once she has come to bed, and I surreptitiously come into this room and similarly pull the door nearly closed ─ undoubtedly thinks that it is she who is in the room, for I doubt he is keeping himself privy to her activities as he sits by himself in the darkened living room watching T.V. and swilling beer.

I cannot pull the same trick when my wife is not home, of course. But it does free up time I have not previously been making available to myself when she is here. The trick is to occupy the room soon after she has retired for the night.

Anyway, after rising, instead of finalizing the post I have worked for well over a month upon and getting it published, I decided to try and upgrade the PHP version of the five websites that I have on one account at HostGator. I believe the account is termed a "baby" account. I have an original website that was created on the account a decade ago, plus four add-ons that I have added since thereafter.

I had checked the PHP version months ago, and HostGator wasn't offering the very latest version of PHP, but at least I was able to increase what I had to version 7.1.

Note that I previously had to research and figure out how to change my websites from the "HTTP" protocol to "HTTPS", and that involved joining Cloudflare and getting a free SSL certificate. I think that the entire process was the most complex undertaking I have ever been involved with.

I had actually intensively researched that conversion months before that, but ultimately dared not to take the first step because the complexity was more than I had the fortitude to take on.

When finally I did tackle it, the project was one I had to contend with on my own. At the time, HostGator was not offering free SSL certification, so they were useless.

And now I set about upgrading their five websites from version 7.1 to the maximum they now had on offer, which was 7.4. (I say "their" websites because of course I do not really own them; I am only in "ownership" for as long as I maintain payment of all associated fees.)

What was to make this project more involved than it should have been was that after supposedly succeeding with the upgrade through my HostGator cPanel, my main website ─ or the WordPress dashboard, for it that which I was logged into ─ on the baby account went offline, and this was part of the explanation left for me: "Your PHP installation appears to be missing the MySQL extension which is required by WordPress".

Seeking a solution, I failed to find any websites with proper tutorials that met the exact predicament I found myself in, but I at least did find this HostGator YouTube video posted this past June 26 (2020): How To Fix "MySQL Extension" Error from MultiPHP Update - HostGator cPanel.

There was a huge problem with the video, however. You see, key to a resolution of that MySQL extension message that I had to decipher, was using cPanel to find a file identified as ".htaccess". It was going to require some modification.

I of course found the .htaccess file where the video directed it would be, but it was supposed to contain this bit of script:

# Use PHP71 as default
#AddHandler application/x-httpd-php71 .php
<IfModule mod_suphp.c>
    suPHP_ConfigPath /opt/php71/lib
</IfModule>

Mine did not. Why didn't the guy in the video deal with any such eventuality? Surely my situation could not be absolutely unique?

So I started checking out the comments below the video to see if anyone else complained about the same problem and I found one that had been left about a month ago by a YouTube user named David (David Santy, as it turns out):

"If you are still receiving the error after following the steps of this video, you may need to check for a .htaccess in the folder/directory above the one where your website is stored. If there is a PHP handler there, disable it and it should fix the issue." YES! Here's how I fixed my sites:

Click on "Settings" in the upper right hand corner of your File Manager and select "Show Hidden Files (dotfiles)".
Check for .htaccess files in your home directory. (One UP from public_html)
On my site the .htaccess file in the public_html folder inherited the php version from the home directory.
Went one folder up and there was a call for the old php version in the .htaccess file there.
If you're using a CMS like Wordpress you may have installed it to its own subfolder in public_html. Check the .htaccess file in the subfolder to see where php has been updated.
Copy the new php section from the .htaccess file in your website folder.
Open the .htaccess file in your home directory.
Comment out the old section by adding # to each line.
Paste the new php version at the end and save.

Check to see every .htaccess file up the line either inherits the php version from the parent folder, or explicitly states the correct php version you want that folder to be running.

I did not initially see this as my answer ─ it was not until I read some of the comments that his own comment had garnered that I realized a solution to my dilemma just might be within his comment. 

So I studied what he said. 

Sure enough ─ I went "⤴Up One Level" in the File Manager hierarchy, and there indeed was another .htaccess file. And this time, the missing text data was present.

There were five other .htaccess files there as well, each with a 10-digit number. 

So I followed the video instruction with all six of them, making .bak copies of each. Then I went ahead and edited the originals by simply adding the additional "#" to the front of each of the bottom three lines:

# Use PHP71 as default
#AddHandler application/x-httpd-php71 .php
#<IfModule mod_suphp.c>
#    suPHP_ConfigPath /opt/php71/lib
#</IfModule>

And it was pretty much as simple as that. I refreshed the webpage where my website's WordPress dashboard was supposed to be, and there it was once more. As well, a check of "Tools" ➡ "Site Health" revealed that the notification complaining about my older PHP version was now gone.

I am a little nebuous about it now, but I may have had to also change the .htaccess files at each of the four add-on websites. But once I understood how simple that was to do, I had no difficulties.

Nevertheless, I may have spent as much as three hours from the start of this PHP upgrade to finally resolving the MySQL Extension error. I had burned out, and not performed any work on the post I had wanted to finish and publish at my website Amatsu Okiya.

I had to return to bed.

I did finally get the post published very early in the afternoon, fortunately: Geisha Designs at Quello Ⅱ. 

Never has it taken me so long to work on a post; as well, it ended up containing something over 53,000 words, if you can believe that. It is by far the lengthiest post I have ever pieced together.

And I thought it was a big deal when I started regularly surpassing the 30,000-word ceiling!

Something else of lesser note occurred early last evening in that I finally finished watching the T.V. series Good Behavior.

It was quite apparent from the mostly ambiguous finish that the producers had expected to be continuing the storyline into a new season, but that was not to be. 

When first I got into the series, I had no idea that I was already familiar with lead actress Michelle Dockery, I had actually grown to very much like her 'Wild West' character as a widowed mother of a half-Indian boy, and who operated her own ranch in the T.V. series Godless.

And it was not until I saw her on a talk show ─ probably The Graham Norton Show ─ that I discovered that she was very much British. She can act without even the remotest trace of her natural accent.

Having an Amazon TV Box these past two or maybe even three years has truly opened up my world to an incredible wealth of commercial-free T.V. shows and movies.

Thanks to another post-8:30 p.m. arrival home last evening by my brother, I was able to be in bed just after 9:00 p.m. When my wife came to bed eventually, my blurry vision could not quite make out the time, but I deemed it late enough that it was probably safe to rise ─ my brother likely had gone to bed by then.

However, he had not; and it was not yet quite midnight.

Putting into practice what I discussed a little earlier, I carefully slipped into this small room where I keep my computer (the room is immediately next to my bedroom). I then pulled the door almost closed, and from that point I correctly figured that my brother would know no better and just assume that it was my wife in here.

Normally I would have begun the groundwork for a new post, but I wanted instead to make two posts into my private blog ─ one for yesterday and the other for today, clearing up my day to work exclusively on this post.

I was not to be able to return to bed until well after 4 a.m. ─ maybe even more like 5 a.m.

Yet after some sleep, I was up once more before it was quite 9 a.m. My brother was still in his bedroom, and not to emerge until nigh 9:30 a.m.

On my agenda was the PHP upgrade of one other website that I have ─ this one is on its own at an account with JustHost. Unfortunately, I was to discover that although I would be able to upgrade the PHP fairly easily, I could not upgrade it any higher than version 7.3 ─ my WordPress "Site Health" check still bellyaches because 7.3 is not the 7.4 that ought to be in place at websites by now.

I left JustHost a bit of a bitch in that regard, for I also had to do all the work to get the website set up with a SSL certificate a year ago or more so I could convert it from "HTTP" to "HTTPS".

Webhosts seem to take their damned sweet time making these features freely available to their customers! But there is nothing else I can do about the PHP. If version 7.4 is not yet supported by JustHost, no conversion to it is possible for me. 

It's a shame that we website "owners" have to bother with hosting companies. The Internet should somehow be free of this necessary evil (i.e., hosting companies). 

It turned out today that my wife did not have to report for work until the latter half of the afternoon, so I got a very late start on the day's exercising as well as a needed nap. In fact, I still have some further exercising to deal with before I can consider myself to have achieved my minimal output for the day, and it is already 6:21 p.m. as I type these words.

I could have done some sunning this afternoon, and I did set about at least going into the backyard quite early in the afternoon to spend some time sitting out there ─ perhaps topless. However, I discovered my wife to be using that area of the lawn for her exercising, and I did not wish to discourage her by intruding.

But I did take these five candid photos (1:14 / 1:15 p.m.) of her, filmed through a rather dirty window:

About a month ago at most, the dear woman became an agent for a Thai company (The iCon Group) that sells certain health products ─ hers seem to fall under the brand names BOOM and ROOM. 

This is proving expensive for my credit debt, because she has to use my VISA credit card to buy her wares. Just today, she made a third (and thus far, the largest) such purchase that added well over $2,300 onto my card's balance.

Each time she makes a purchase, she has only paid part of the total, and today has promised to very soon pay back $2,000 ─ which I damned well hope she does.

I am a pensioner with just a monthly pension for income ─ I do not have the lifespan remaining to ever be able to clear away the debt on that card that she is responsible for. By now, the balance must be in the neighbourhood of $8,000.

I had best stop posting here. I have been feeling unnaturally at peace with myself since late Saturday afternoon, so I do not wish to start dwelling on such negativity. It only feeds my presently constrained malus genius.

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