July 7, 2009

How To Talk Techie

Here in the 21st Century, it is important for a writer to be technologically up to date. At a moment's notice, we have to be ready to Google, Yahoo, Digg, Backflip, Gather, Bebo, Plaxo, Facebook, Newsvine, Myspace, Fark, Blog, Kaboodle or Tweet. I have heard rumors that one or two of us know what all that stuff means.

Way up toward the top of the modern writer's "You're Pretty Much Screwed If You Don't Have One" list is the web site. This is an amazing modern communications tool that allows us to present our work to readers in the form of:

"404 ERROR – The Page You Have Requested Is Not Found! It is a safe bet that the doofus who owns this web site has messed something up, probably forever. Please try again later. Or better yet, give up and go read something else. Like a book."

So I have a web site. In fact, there is a pretty good chance that if you didn't get a 404 ERROR, you're reading this very column on it.

My web site is sort of like having a pet. It is generally pretty nice to have around, but it can be a lot of work, and it's really hard to deal with when it gets sick. Sure, a web site won't curl up and sleep on your lap, but at least it doesn't leave hair all over the furniture.

Speaking of pets, one night last week my wife said, "I think I messed up my computer. When I tried to go to your web site I just got a picture of a monkey with a gun."

You should understand that wife has a sort of love-hate relationship with her computer. She is never happier than when she is on Facebook, taking a quiz to determine which Ewok she is. (Ewoks are those little furry guys from Star Wars: Return of the Jedi. Turns out, she is Paploo.)

On the other hand, she can make smoke come out of the CD-ROM slot by holding her mouth wrong when she sends an e-mail. When that happens, she finds it upsetting.

Even so, I did not see how she could have done anything that would make a monkey with a gun pop up on her screen, so I decided to check out the site. Sure enough, my home page had been replaced by a picture of a chimpanzee pointing a large handgun and wearing a kind of "Che Guevara meets Dirty Harry" expression on his face. Below the picture was a block of text in Portuguese, which in my expert opinion was either something about death to all capitalist warmongers, or a recipe for corn bread.

I immediately called my web guru, Todd, to help me clean up the mess. We reinitialized the MX record, cleaned up the config files, reinstalled the CMS, dovetailed all the databases, flipped the bleemis (twice) and feather-dusted the root.

Actually, I have no idea what we did. I think I may have heard Todd say something about "dovetailing databases," but he might have said, "impaling." Or "baling." "Whaling?"

Basically I followed a whole lot of instructions from Todd in what might as well have been Urdu. Luckily, he seemed to have a pretty good handle on what he was talking about, since we were able to repair everything and get the site back online in a mere 36 hours, not counting potty stops and breaks for Cool Ranch Doritos.

Next week – No, You Probably Didn't Really Win a Brand New iPhone.

If you need your own web guru, e-mail me and I'll give you Todd's contact information – he really is the best.

Copyright ©2009 Michael Ball. Distributed exclusively by North Star Writers Group.

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