Nothing Much

….to consider finding a new blogger software, when I see this, and the first thing that occurs to me is “oh god, how do I turn it off!!!!”

Seriously, stop “improving” the software, and actually improve it.  Fancier is not necessarily better, in fact its often so annoying it sucks.

For anyone else using Blogger (I have no idea if the other blog softwares do the same thing).

I mostly use SiteMeter to track visitors and the like to the blog, but I also keep an eye on the Stats page provided by Blogger.  I know most of the figures aren’t the most accurate, but it also shows me highest read posts and the like so I’ll glance at it every so often.

But I’ve noticed something odd in the Traffic Sources section of the Stats.  The large majority of the traffic sources are other blogs, either blogs where I’m on the blogroll, or where I’ve posted.  Not a huge surprise.  There are often a few from search engines as well, mostly with the search terms “kitty holster”, again, not a big surprise.

Whats odd is in the last month or so have been several websites listed that really shouldn’t be.  They appear to be business sites (though they strike me more as spam/scammer sites), and the referring URL is nothing more than the site’s main page.  If it was someone referring to my blog in a comment, or article the referring URL SHOULD be that article page, not the main page.  I’m not going to post the websites because I highly suspect they’re spammer/scammer sites, but even if they’re nothing more than advertisers, thats an awfully odd way to get links…..oh yah, and none of these odd referring URLs are showing up on SiteMeter!

Am I the only one with this phenomenon?

Life has been a bit interesting the last month or so.

First husband ends up on strike.  Then they call off the strike, but they don’t have a new contract, which means that they could go BACK on strike at any time.

Then my parents arrive, and well, I already posted about that visit.  Lets just say I’m very glad they’re home again.

Then a week ago today, Husband is leaving to go to work, and walks back into the house informing me that he’s seeing double.  Now seeing double COULD just mean he needs new glasses, the ones he’s currently got are going on two years old, but it ALSO could mean alot of bad things as well, so off we go to the urgent care clinic.  Urgent care promptly freaks out cause double vision combined with the insane headache he’d had the night before COULD mean stroke, so instead of sitting in the waiting room for a couple hours like usual he had a room to himself in about 5 minutes.  Doctor pokes and prods and asks questions and decides that its PROBABLY not a stroke, but we’re going to run an EKG, and a CAT scan just to make sure we’re not missing anything.  CAT scan came back normal, EKG informed us that his heart rate was a bit off the low end of normal.  Doctor says he wants Husband to follow up with a Neurologist and a Cardiologist just in case and sends us home.  So Monday he calls his regular doctor to set up the appropriate referrals, doc says come in so I can look at you first (not a huge surprise).  They do another EKG, and this one comes back normal.  Doc says that he thinks its probably nothing more than a sinus infection from hell, but we’ll check with the cardiologist and the neurologist just to be sure, and since you already have an appointment with an ear/nose/throat specialist Tuesday make sure you mention all this to him.

So Tuesday he goes to see the E/N/T specialist, an appointment he’s been waiting for a couple months now, cause for the last couple years he’s been getting sinus infections every 3 or 4 months, so by now the usual drugs don’t work very well on him, and the newer/less commonly used drugs give him vertigo, which means he basically ends up suffering through several days (and occasionally a couple weeks) of headaches, feeling nasty, and green snot far to regularly.  Cat scan of is sinuses showed some interesting artifacts in the sinus pathways so off to a specialist  you go.  The specialist listens to the whole story, sets him up to see an allergist (so he knows exactly what he’s dealing with), a balance trainer (cause chances are the vertigo isn’t going to be curable), and an appointment to take a closer look at the insides of his sinuses (I don’t want to know).  Specialist also agrees that its possible a sinus infection could cause the double vision, and stop taking the Allegra cause that could be making your sinus infections worse.  Instead take Ommaris and methylprednisone and we’ll see what happens.

So the fun’s not over yet, though by this time we’re  not really expecting the cardiologist or the neurologist to tell us anything bad, I really hope the E/N/T specialist can do something about the sinus infections though.  We were hoping that once we moved they’d go away, but that didn’t happen.

Edited to add: So yes, things could be aLOT worse, but that doesn’t keep it from being frustrating trying to keep up with it all…..

As of now (almost 6pm) no major damage here or the general Syracuse area that I can find in the news.  Lots of higher than normal winds and rain, but (so far *knock on wood*) we haven’t even lost power, though some of the surrounding areas have.  I can’t find record of even major flooding locally.  I AM glad my husband and a couple of his co-workers took down the half dead pine tree out front before this, though winds are such that it wouldn’t have likely hit the house, but it likely would have taken out wires if it went down. 

My folks, out north of Boston, have reported off and on power outages but otherwise no damage to their house or property, though admittedly they’re on top of a nice hill so flooding isn’t an issue for them personally.  Even Apollo’s breeder down in eastern VA came through intact.  She had no power when I got in touch with her this morning, and she had some tree branches down causing some damage around the place, but nothing major and her and the dogs are all ok.

It was felt locally to me, including by several of my coworkers, though somehow I missed it despite being in the same room.  A quick check with the folks I personally know who live in VA confirmed everyone ok (including Apollo’s breeder, which is just as well as I pity any emergency personel who would have to enter her property, especially if something brought down any of the internal fences).

Lots of reports of general lack of damage in the Capitol and NYC, I did finally find a report stating what damage happened in VA around the epicenter, all of which sounds reletively minor as such things go considering that 5.9 isn’t a small earthquake.  Cross fingers that the aftershocks don’t cause any more.

Edited to add: THIS is what I was looking.  I still say minor damage all things considered, but I hope for the sake of the folks who live there at they get some help rebuilding since it sounds like the insurance companies don’t intend to pay up!

….can’t they sell just a plain old Ace (type, I don’t care what brand really) bandage?  They’ve got specalty braces and supports and everything else for every joint, but no ace bandages.  I have bought 3 at variious times over the last few years and they all disappear into a black hole, and now I can’t find them in the store either.

edited to add: I didn’t exactly search high and low, two stores was my limit and I ended up with this “Figure 8 Ankle Support” instead, which looks like its going to do the job, I just hate buying a unitasker when the multitasker did the job just fine.

Details are all over the news, go read them there, but it means we have a paycheck again!