Brettia

I’m back again. And I’m not dead, nor have I been pounded into the floor by a drug-influenced, testosterone-packed teenager. Actually, things are looking up for me.

I should begin at the beginning. First, I successfully dropped AP World History but was unable to get into any of Tyler’s classes. That’s okay, I guess. My teachers have proved to be fairly nice and/or good. And I don’t have PE until second quarter (Health, for now), so I don’t have that to think about, either. Other than the fact that I am the last stop on my bus route and my bus is always full, everything is fine.

Yep. And I changed the layout, as you can see. I got frooty. I’ll change it again soon, so watch out.

There’s really nothing else to report. Tyler came over to my house today for no specific reason. We talked about school and random things a bit and then he left.
My only worry or problem at this point is with my other website, Brettia. The forum has all but died and no one posts, nor does anyone care about posting or continuing the RPs that are going on right now. I’ve contemplated shutting the board down, but what would I replace it with? What else is there to do?

In a way, the downfall of Brettia is probably a good thing. I found last year that I was spending way too much time posting, and that was getting in the way of my homework and stuff. I began to procrastinate, and my grades didn’t suffer, because I got everything in on time, but I still felt guilty. Being in high school now means I don’t have that much room to procrastinate or slack off, especially at the beginning of the school year.

So I’ll give them until September 1st. Anytime after that and it’s gone. Frankly, I’m tired of waiting for posts and I’m tired of wasting my hosting, which I actually paid for. An entire month without posts usually means it’s over. Even if Tyler reads this and starts posting to keep me from shutting the board down, it won’t work, because no one will reply. I want to see things as they used to be, like they were back when the first Algebraic War was full on and people posted ten thousand words a day.

You know the full Benelucian compilation of the Algebraic war is nearly 100,000 words? Or something like that. That’s the most I’ve ever written in my life. I feel proud. That could be a book. It does need major editing and reworking, but no one ever has the time to do it.

(Before I continue, if you have no idea what I’m talking about, go to http://www.brettia.com for answers.)

It’s sad really, but all good things must die eventually, and trying to push them along with a stick in the hope of getting things started again doesn’t help.

I have six months of hosting for brettia.com left, and the domain doesn’t expire until 2005. What do I do? I have built a pretty good card trade and collection system for Magi-Nation, except it doesn’t seem to work for some reason on my host’s servers, while it works perfectly on my own development server at home. I think the problem must lie in my host’s inability to upgrade their software. They still run PHP 4.2.2, while the latest version is 4.3.2, and there are RC versions for 4.3.3 and beta versions for PHP 5. The jump from 4.2.2 to 4.3.3 is not a small upgrade, either. There are some major differences between the two, which is the likely cause of the problems. (I run 4.3.2 on my dev server.)

So to use this great application I have I must switch webhosts. I found one for $60/year which is quite nice, but I don’t know if I want that kind of commitment. Even with a refund for the rest of my service with my current host, totaling $18, I’d still need $42 more to pay for the new package, and there’s a chance I wouldn’t even use it all. (I might take down my new application before the year is up.)

The last option here is to host my own website. I know it can be done, but I don’t know how. I also don’t have access to an OC-3 or even a T1 connection line, so the bandwidth would be quite narrow and the connection slow, even over my 3 MBps cable modem. I could also try to port my application to work on my host’s servers, but that would require extra, unnecessary work that I don’t want to have to do.

I just sent a support ticket to my webhost’s helpdesk stating the problem, but I will more than likely get a response saying the error was mine and that I should be ashamed for contacting them at all. How helpful.

And now I am unceremoniously yelled off to bed. It’s only 9:00! C’mon, please! Can’t I stay up? No! Go to bed! Urf. Okay, I only had one more thing to say. Tomorrow I get two things via UPS: PartitionMagic 8.0, and a new watch. I’ll describe them when I’m not being threatened with death by salt or claymore.