I’m sorry I’m so damn cranky about the traffic stuff, you guys. It’s just been very strange. It’s weird when you want to write journal entries but you almost feel like you can’t, because you’re not sure if you can afford the surge in traffic that comes with the usual updates.

So here’s what I’m going to do for the next couple weeks: I’m going to post the usual short stuff here in the blog, and anything longer will go straight to the Notify List. If you’d like to read anything new from me during the next few weeks (until my traffic quota is refreshed), feel free to join.

Traffic situation update: the mirror site to the WW cards is helping, but a link on a USA Today weblog on Friday brought my traffic closer to the monthly limit than I’d hoped I’d be. It appears I’m going to go over my limit still, but with luck it’ll only be an extra $100 or so.

Again, donations always help (and I hope you know I don’t enjoy sounding like a damn NPR station), but you can also help by referring people directly to the mirror recipe card page rather than the version here on my site.

I have a new computer! A fancy new old computer. I just got it. It’s the newest old computer I’ve ever owned in my life. It’s a Mac: a G4 PowerPC with a nice big monitor and a scanner and a CD burner. I’m working with OS X for the first time and everything is so shiny and big that my eyes almost hurt. But, oh, I love it.

I bought it from the husband of a friend and longtime reader, and for months I’d been planning on buying it with my tax refund and the checks from the various writing jobs I’d done this winter. Then last week, on top of everything, the monitor on my very old machine started popping at me. Every night turned into a game of Monitor Roulette where I’d see how long I could be on the computer before the staticky, screen-wobbling fun started. So that speeded up the process a little bit.

The lovely people who sold me this machine would like you to know they have another, very similar one for sale. If you’re interested email me and I’ll forward it on to them. (We’re all in Illinois, btw.) I can tell you that the software is up-to-date and everything is in great condition and… and pretty… and… just fancy. Fancy is a technical term.

Okay, thanks to Rob at Phule.net I’ve got a mirror site up for the recipe cards. You can get to it here or from the regular old WW Card page here on Poundy.com.

Oh, crap. I just got a message from Dreamhost saying that at the current traffic levels, the projected cost for going over bandwidth levels will be $240. And it’s only six days into the monthly traffic cycle, so the estimate could change–for better or for worse. This is going to pretty much drain the remaining donations so far. If I could be completely certain that the traffic would drop down to manageable cycles next month, using up all the money would be fine… but of course, I don’t know that right now.

Anyway, someone want to mirror me? Host my images? It’ll make the money go farther. Let me know.

I’ve got a new entry up in the journal. It’s kind of all over the place–I had stuff to say about my experience with the Great Bandwidth Suck of ’03 as well as about the state of things in general and it’s a little hard to synthesize all that and it doesn’t help that my monitor here at home is on its last legs and keeps POPPING at me rather agressively. Pop! Pop! I hope to replace it this weekend.