After over a year, I have managed to recover and restore my blog.

In November of 2005, I moved all of my web projects to a new webhosting service, and, at the same time, upgraded the software that runs this blog. In the process, I managed to make it impossible to log into the blog, even though I was confident that I knew the passwords. Over the last year I've spent the occasional saturday afternoon trying to figure out what was wrong, but after a couple of hours of trying I had to move on to other things.

Well, this afternoon I found the problem: an unusual and unexpected side effect of a random setting on my webhost's control panel. It took me most of the day to track it down, and ten seconds to fix it once I figured out what the problem was.

The upshot is that my blog is back, at last. About a thousand times over the last year, politics and science stories have popped up that seemed worth writing about, but I didn't have my preferred venue available. Now it's back.

See you around the net.

So I'm going to try, for a while, blogging about my personal life in a separate location from blogging about politics, science, and the state of our world. At least for now, if you're interested in my life and my personal emotional state, visit my livejournal at http://www.livejournal.com/idahoev/.

So, now I have another blog. Yes, I know it's silly to think about having two blogs when I barely have time to update this one. Mostly, I got it so I could have an account for commenting on my friends' livejournals.

However, it poses an interesting possibility. IdahoEv's rants currently has a personality disorder: it's trying to be a personal blog about me and a public blog about science and politics. Perhaps I should use my livejournal for the personal stuff, and post about science and politics here. Thoughts?

The blog was down for the better part of two days. Apparently my ISP performed a server upgrade, and sites hosted in subdirectories (this is physically in the /idahoev directory of my business site, www.LRDesign.com) were stuck by a software glitch temporarily.

But all is well now, it seems, and we can return to our regularly-scheduled ranting.

Added a new topic today, "Research", so I have a specific place to talk about the science work that I do, as distinct from science elsewhere, and from the rest of my personal life.

I spent the week with Charles Ofria and his group at MSU, and the experience yet again drove home how much I love my research.

So, today I got around to doing what I've meant to do for a while: removing the reference to sleep apnea from my blog's title.

It's not that I am trying to hide the fact that I am afflicted with this particular condition. Rather, it's because my relationship with it has fundamentally changed in such a way that it doesn't really deserve a prominent mention anymore. After all, I've posted fewer posts on that subject than any other, except for two that were only recently created. Seven posts in the 18 months I've been blogging.

When I first created the blog, I'd recently been diagnosed with Obstructive Sleep Apnea. This was the proverbial Big Deal (TM), and I was committing a lot of my energy to Figuring It Out (TM) and Getting It Cured (TM). I had, after all, just spent two full years feeling like crap and barely getting any work done - now I had an explanation and a route towards rebuilding my life.

But eighteen months later, it simply isn't an issue. There's no reliable and obvious cure for OSA, but there are good treatments and a ton of ongoing research. I watch the research with interest, and I see my doctor occasionally to keep track of my progress and try little changes here and there to improve my condition.

Apnea now has much the same place in my life as myopia. I suffer from an affliction of nearsightedness, this means it's hard to see without help. So every morning I put these things in my eyes, called contact lenses, in order to get work done that day. Occasionally, I have to take them into account when making plans, like taking extra lenses if I'm planning to scuba dive on a vacation.

Apnea has become much the same thing. For whatever reason, I don't tend to breathe evenly when I sleep. So, I wear a mask hooked up to a small, quiet air compressor, called a CPAP, to bed in order to prevent my relaxed soft palate from blocking my airway. This device does a pretty good job of fixing my OSA. I have to take it into account when I travel, because it requires power. I continue, as a low-level process, to investigate improved options for treatment. But as a Big Deal(TM) in my life, apnea has simply dropped off the radar screen.

And so, it has dropped off the title of my blog as well. I have a fully normal life again and the ability to pursue my usual interests. So, I'm back to writing about that instead. No complaints.

Upgraded GeekLog, the engine for this site, tonight. Among other things, this seems to have fixed a configuration error that was making it impossible for me to upload images the normal way.

Tacitus posted an interesting story explaining where he gets his info and inspirations.

If you're curious what I read, here it is; my daily news sources:

News sites: Google News, CNN, NYTimes, LATimes, BBC,Salon

Lefty sites: The Gamer's Nook, CalPundit, Codshit, Kos, Kicking Ass

Righty sites: Asymmetrical Info, OxBlog, Drezner, Postrel, RealClearPolitics, Tacitus, Volokh

Nerd & Sciency Sites: MacSurfer, CNET, Slashdot, kuro5hin, Scienceblog, Scienceagogo, Spacedaily

Personal blogs: (occasional reads) Baron Mind, Zellandyne, One Girl's Life, Justin Hall

I get most of the news at google (hoping to get a more international perspective than just the US papers), skim the other papers for unique stories for 5-10 minutes and move onto the blogs. The whole process takes about an hour, unless I get sucked into a debate on Kos, Tacitus, or KA.

I don't know whether this qualifies me as "well informed", but "awash in information" is certainly true. I think there's little doubt I suffer from information addiction.

I'm leaving in five hours for an eleven-day family reunion. Posts will be sporadic.

In the meantime, two users have pointed out that comments do not work. This must have happened when I ugraded to the latest version of GeekLog yesterday. Unfortunately, a cursory glance shows no obvious way of fixing the problem, so it will have to stay that way for the moment.

I scored 38.2643% - Major Geek on the Geek Test.