I use Google Talk and like it as a reasonable chat client, but the primary use I have for it is the mail notification for Gmail.

To get to your Gmail inbox from Google Talk, you right-click the icon in the Windows task bar and a little menu pops up and lets you choose “Inbox.” The problem I’m having is that it doesn’t always quite work. You not only get the Google Talk menu, but also the standard task bar menu:

If you left-click the task bar first, then right-click the Google Talk icon, everything works. If you dive in and right-click the Google Talk icon directly, this weird focus thing happens. What gives?

Man, the last week or so my site’s been acting up because the server I’m hosted on has had disk trouble, service trouble, and any other trouble you can conceive. First the disk went bad, then they fixed that but not all the services (PHP) were running… then they got PHP running but MySQL wasn’t running…

The last two days the MySQL service has been down but PHP has been up, which is why the blog was accessible through RSS (it’s static XML right now) and the main page was sort of wonky and empty looking.

The interesting thing is that the hosting company had said they were going to move everyone off that server to a new server… but rather than just doing that, they futzed around for a while trying to revive this old server. I ended up having to specifically say, “Hey, what happened to the migration? Maybe an expedited move to the new server for MySQL users is in order?”

I hate to be the squeaky wheel, but dammit anyway.

I did learn something, though. I realized that uptime metrics described in percentages are sort of meaningless. Maybe other people realized this long ago, but if you think about it, you could be down for a whole day and still have a 99.7% uptime. You’d have to be down for four days to break the 99% barrier. That’s four whole days - 96 hours.

I’m no longer interested in percentage uptime. I’m interested in hours of downtime. You want to impress me? Skip that “99.9% uptime” baloney and shoot for less than one hour of downtime per year. (And, yeah, I know the people giving out “five nines of uptime” garbage really mean an hour of downtime or whatever, but part of useful metrics is describing the metric in easily intelligible units. Don’t make me have to calculate that crap. “Oh, we’re only down for 0.042 days per year.” Give me a freaking break.”)

On the plus side, I get a good, personable response from the support people at the hosting company and they’re totally understanding and nice and easy to work with. From that standpoint, I can’t complain, and honestly, the service does make all the difference. Let’s just hope we don’t have another burp like this.

Found a couple of cool artists over at Boing Boing.

Jeffrey Scott of “Factory 1019” does real photography and digitally enhances it to give it somewhere between a Blade Runner and MC Escher feel. I like a lot of these (though some are NSFW) and could easily fill my house with them, Jenn notwithstanding.

Symon Chow looks like he works in a little less digitally-modified photography, but is still very cool. It reminds me a little of Carnivale.

This weekend I proved conclusively that I am a true Gamerpoint Whore by completing the Old Spice Experience Challenge, increasing my Gamerscore by 1500 in about a week. Oh, hell yes. I plowed through King Kong most of last week and finished Gun this weekend. Good times.

Jenn was at my cousin’s wedding shower all day Saturday and ended up staying over at my aunt’s house (the shower was three hours away and my mom didn’t feel like making the trip up and back the same day, so they stayed over), returning Sunday afternoon. That left me home alone. Hmmmm.

Saturday my dad and I had planned on getting our Xbox on over the network but his router wasn’t configured to forward the right ports or something so while we were able to connect to other people, we weren’t able to connect to each other. I guess that’s the behavior you see when the router’s giving you grief. Instead, we ended up watching some movies and hanging out, which was fun. It’s always good to hang with Dad.

Sunday I cleaned up around the house a bit and when Jenn got home we went out for some Indian food. Can’t get enough of that butter chicken.

Monday Jenn and I trekked around town, getting the usual chores done and gathering supplies to make a cat scratching post because the new cat could legitimately be considered a Weapon of Mass Destruction. We figure by making the thing we’ll get exactly what we’re looking for and save between $10 and $20 at least. Cat furniture is expensive.

We also took a look at some of the projects we’ll be doing this spring that we’ll be putting off. I’m generally in charge of indoor repairs and projects while Jenn is on external projects.

I know we’ve got some crown molding to put up and the caulking around some of the windows needs to be replaced, so I’ll be in charge of those efforts. We might also need to paint the master bathroom since the walls in there are looking a little drab from moisture and so on. I’ll probably look at doing some of the caulking over the course of the next few weeks and the rest closer to spring.

Jenn’s agreed to deal with getting a new layer of barkdust put in (including organizing any prep work that needs to be done) and dealing with, once and for all, this crappy spot in our backyard that gets really soggy (plans and execution). It’s nice to have someone you can count on to get everything done without procrastinating and without forgetting the details. Jenn rocks that way. That stuff will commence in the April/May timeframe.

Our new cat, Jack, is less “cat” and more “spider monkey with claws.” The longer we have him, the wilder he gets. He has no issue flying out of nowhere to attach to your back, leg, head, chest, or anything else he can sink his little needle claws into.

I’m also wondering if maybe we should have named him Osama, because he’s a damn terrorist. You never really know when he’s going to strike. You find yourself very tense even just sitting and watching TV because at any time you might get fairly significantly injured. I was trying to play some Xbox 360 just this morning and just as I was getting into the game - attack! I have a fairly decent cut on my hand where he got me good.

I’m hoping he’ll chill out, if just a little. I don’t think my nerves can take it much longer. He’s gonna break me.