aitwk.blog

I know you all were clamoring to read you some 8WK news at about 1 a.m.

Too bad if you were. I couldn’t even reach my sites, not one of them. Darned frustrating, too, as I had just spent the previous hour setting up an Amazon tap to the new network, then setting up a TP-Link smart plug as well. Then I got online and found that I could not even reach my regular home page, nor my Wiki, nor this very useful website.

Dreamhost is pretty good at letting you know when something’s up. The status from around that time: “Our Operations teams are currently investigating connectivity issues which indicate an issue related to our name servers. We will provide updated information as it becomes available.”

Here I was fixing to blame the local ISP. It turns out my Web host had a DNS connectivity issue.

Well, it’s fixed now. Thanks, Dreamhost.

A while ago, I noticed that my homespun websites, such as this one here, started coming up as “insecure.” I wondered why.

As it often happens, it’s because Google is being an asshole.

As of July 23, it turns out, Chrome had called out every website without an active SSL certificate as “Not Secure.” This means every website. Every last one. Even if you’re just a dinky blog or a simple index page with a few links and images.

Fortunately, my beautiful Dreamhost makes it easy to place a free Let’s Encrypt SSL certificate onto the site. Otherwise, it would have been at least $15 a year for the verified SSL, which I would need if I ran e-commerce.

What does this mean? It means some browsers won’t flag my beloved AITWK site as unsafe, and that Google Chrome will no longer deny me my little padlock and say NOT SECURE in big bold print in your browser.

I also had to make an .htaccess file to force yinz to the https protocol if you get here via http. That wasn’t too bad either.

So, hooray, padlock!

Brought to you by WHYNOPADLOCK DOT COM

This is gonna make my Mom real happy.

So for awhile I was trying something new. I was trying to move my blog here to a zippier domain name, 8wk.me.

Here’s the whole entire story.

First of all. The name. “Adventures Into the Well-Known.” When I would stay with my Dad as a youngster, we would take trips. I once referred to one of our ventures as an “adventure into the well-known,” and my Dad laughed. It became a running joke because it always made my Dad laugh. So when I was living in Washington, D.C. and was trying to name my blog, I ended up going back to my basic material. Adventures Into the Well-Known it would be.

It was funny to me on another level, too, in that usually when you’re trying to create a web presence, your URL is supposed to be snappy. “adventuresintothewellknown.com” is no such thing. It’s a friggin’ mouthful of buffalo balls in Internet language. This appealed to the mosh-pit mentality in me. It left me tickled because it’s so long and stupid. It was perfect.

Years later, however, I felt stymied by the long, mush-mouthed domain I had chosen. I wished I could find a more succinct domain. How could I do that and yet keep the spirit of the original identity? This combined with my on-again off-again interest in being an Internet broadcaster via platforms such as Live365 radio. Adventures Into The Well Known Radio is kind of a mouthful.

So one night when I was sitting at work and should have been working (sorry), I was pondering a new identity for what has become something I consider to be my personal brand. How can I abbreviate this?

Sometimes, ideas hit you like thunder.

A for Adventures
I for Into
T for The

AIT = 8

W for Well

K for Known

8WK

I know to you that to me this was a bolt of lightning is weird. But it was. I can have a less mealy-mouthed domain that still reflects the original idea. It was brilliant. 8WK. It’s still Adventures Into the Well Known. But different. You know. Like KFC.

Plus the new domain options.

I’ve never been a dot-com. I’m not trying to sell things. Frankly, the larger reason I keep a blog is to learn things. I keep it so I can learn about WordPress and SQL and other fun things. When I got the domain, you had the choices of dot-com, dot-org, or dot-net. Those were your choices. No soup for you.

But I like that we can now choose dot-me domains. Or even dot-blog domains. That you can specify the purpose of your site via your domain is a great advancement for the Web.

So I bought 8wk.me.

And I wanted to try it out. I did in various ways. Mostly I had it re-direct here. Then for a while I decided to have it be the main domain in Spain with the rain.

Anyway so I wanted to try to make 8wk.me my main domain. I don’t think it worked.

My Mom calls it 8-week something something. For example. She doesn’t understand what I’m doing. If my own Mama doesn’t get it, then how is the average surfer going to?

Plus I have all the years of traffic. All two of you.

Screw it. I don’t know what will become of 8wk.me. But I’m staying here.

I must have at some point had problems with spam because my comments were off. I turn them on now. Spam away.