A Bit of Technology

This week I got a letter (on paper!) from Roadrunner, our latest broadband company (before that it was AT&T then Comcast). They told me I needed to do blah, blah to convert my website from Comcast over to Roadrunner by March 31. So I followed their instructions, and converted away, acquiring yet another email address in the process.

Several days later, only one of my three websites had converted (mine, my daughter's, and my son's, all of which are under our account). So then I started getting worried that all that work was going to end up lost in cyberspace, never to be seen again. At that point I started trying to figure out a decent way to back up my website (probably something I should have already been doing, but hadn't). I'm still waiting for the conversion to be complete, and if and when it is, I'll mention it here. In the mean time, my my old address still seems to work. I don't know for how long.

So off I go to the web, searching for free software to help me. The web spider didn't quite do the trick, nor did the web clone program. (Or maybe I just didn't know how to use these programs.) But then I remembered my trusty FTP program. So after upgrading it to the newest version, I was able to do the opposite of what I normally do with the program,and completely download my website to back it up on my own computer. It only took 20 minutes and I was quite proud of myself for figuring out how to do that. (If any geeks are reading this, forgive me for thinking this was clever of me.)

And while I'm at it, do all of you readers (all two of you) know about RSS? I really don't know much about it, but an RSS program (there are several to choose from) tells you everytime a blog is updated without you having to go look for it. That is, you tell it all the blogs you want to be appraised of, and it will tell you each time any blog on your list has been updated. Saves time going to check them all when half of your watched blogs only update once a month.