Ben Gruagach's Random Musings

06:46 pm - getting things wrapped up for an international move...

We're back in MN for our last two weeks of living here. On Saturday July 19th we start our drive with the kids and our cat, leaving our old home in Eden Prairie MN. We will likely pull into the driveway of our new home in Oakville ON Canada on Sunday July 20th.

The past couple of weeks involved flying to Toronto in order to do the closing on the new home in Oakville, and to get the keys and take possession of the house. There were a few hiccups in the process but in the end it all worked out. We stayed in a hotel for the first week and then stayed at the new house for the second week. We did a lot of cleaning, stained the backyard deck, and spent time visiting family and friends in the area. And we slept on air mattresses in the new house with all the new sounds and layout to get used to. It made me really appreciate my regular bed when we got back to MN this past Saturday evening.

This coming weekend we're going to be having our youngest son's birthday party (his 12th!) On July 16th the moving company arrives to get us packed and loaded, and then it's all over on the 19th as we drive away.

We've had a great time living in the USA and are sad to be leaving behind really great friends. But we are moving to where we have lots of family and other friends, so we're not going to be starting off completely new there.

(null)

Current Mood: hopeful

01:21 pm - a long overdue update, and a picture

I know it's been a while since I posted to my blog... we've been very busy. Our American adventure is coming to an end now that my sweetie's work visa expires this fall. That means we are moving back to Canada. This past weekend my sweetie and one of our sons flew up to Toronto to do some house hunting. We'd done a lot of searching on the web, and had checked a lot of neighborhoods out when we were up at Yule. So this trip was really just to pick which one we wanted from a short list whittled down from the longer lists we had to work with. We also had my sister-in-law help before the trip by pre-screening a few homes for us with our real estate agent. The trip went well (although I couldn't go, and one of the boys stayed behind with me -- we had a speaking engagement about adoption also booked that weekend so someone had to stay!) My sweetie kept me informed over the phone and with photos and video he sent me over the 'net. We put an offer in on our #1 choice and after a few days of waiting while the details were worked out our offer was accepted. We will be moving to Oakville Ontario this summer! Now we're in the frenzy of getting our house in Minnesota on the market. While taking a breather from cleaning I looked out the window at the lake and noticed there were a couple of different birds swimming around. I grabbed the binoculars and saw two loons on the lake! They are really cool birds and it's not often that I get to see them.

loon on Eden Lake Originally uploaded by bgruagach.

06:32 pm - "Golden Compass" daemons

The website for the new "Golden Compass" movie (based on Philip Pullman's "His Dark Materials" trilogy) has a quiz for identifying your daemon.

Here's what it picked for me:



If you click on the box it will let you suggest whether you think this daemon is a good match for me.

10:46 am - be prepared for Hallowe'en!

Check out this valuable public service announcement to help prepare us all for Hallowe'en. (Thanks to cudubh for sharing it!)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bVnfyradCPY

03:52 pm - more quiz results...

Here are my results for a few more quizzes. I saw both of these on s1ren's LJ today.

( Here's my ancient alphabet quiz results )

and

( Here is my result for a Harry Potter quiz. )

Qntal's Lingua Mandax, on V - Silver Swan

Current Mood: amused

08:49 am - the obligatory tarot card quiz

I spotted another tarot quiz on s1ren's LJ this morning, so of course I surfed over and did the quiz myself.

( Here is what the quiz picked for me. Big surprise! )

Professor Trance & The Energisers's Breath Connect Us All, on Shaman's Breath

Current Mood: amused

01:26 pm - the metaphysician quiz

I spotted the Metaphysician Quiz on s1ren's LJ today, and of course I had to give it a try.

( Check out my results )

I'm not really that surprised by the results.

The Tea Party's Correspondences, on Edges Of Twilight

Current Mood: amused

02:00 pm - take the career quiz to find out what you should do with your life

Here's an interesting career options quiz that I saw mentioned on s1ren's LJ today.

-Go to http://www.careercruising.com/
-Put in Username: nycareers, Password: landmark.
-Take their "Career Matchmaker" questions.
-Post the top 10 results

I did the quiz and got the following top ten results:
1.High School Teacher
2.Child and Youth Worker
3.Special Education Teacher
4.Elementary School Teacher
5.Director of Photography
6.Teacher Assistant
7.Ecologist
8.Early Childhood Educator
9.Set Designer
10.Costume Designer


I'm not surprised that so many of my results involve teaching. I graduated from university with a B.A./B.Ed. and have worked teaching kids (k to grade 6) and adults (computer skills for corporate clients.)

( See the rest of my quiz results. )

Afro Celt Sound System's My Secret Bliss, on Anatomic

Current Mood: amused

05:24 pm - what a weekend

What a weekend.

We decided to go on a long weekend family vacation to the Wisconsin Dells area -- it's about four hours by car from where we live in Minnesota. We'd stayed there once (overnight) with the kids while en route to Chicago last year and decided we wanted to go back for a bit longer. It was a great weekend and overall the boys were pretty good.

I didn't take my laptop with me so borrowed my sweetie's laptop a couple of times to check email while we were there. Nothing too dramatic until I checked on Sunday night.

Apparently a hacker had found a way to conduct phishing expeditions using my website (which ran on a system called PHP-Nuke) and as a result my webhost suspended my account.

I sent the webhost's support people an email asking why my website was suspended and only got the response that I had violated the terms of service. No detail. No explanation of what I needed to do to fix things. And of course I was locked out of my account so I couldn't change things even if I wanted to.

Well, we finally got home from our long weekend today (Monday) and I spent an hour on the phone with the webhost's support people -- most of that time sitting on hold of course. The support guy checked things out and talked to their security person (who apparently was being run ragged today with issues) and told me about the phishing problem. I told him it had to be a hacker as my site is just a personal website with no interest in things like hacking. The support guy explained about the security problems with PHP-Nuke (and basically anything that uses PHP) and suggested I upgrade my PHP-Nuke to the latest version, or else migrate the system to something more secure.

I tried doing just that in the past because I was concerned about the security problems I've heard about PHP-Nuke, and had no end of headaches with the attempts. Basically there doesn't seem to be an easy way to migrate my current content to a new system. Even updates to newer versions of PHP-Nuke don't work well as it seemed to consistently corrupt my content. So it looks like I have to figure out how to manually move my content into some other presentation system for my website.

In the meantime, I've taken a full backup of everything from my site and have taken the site offline. In its place I have a bare-bones HTML page with no PHP or other fancy code whatsoever so that visitors to my website at least see something and know that I'm making changes to the site.

What a headache!

If anyone has suggestions for migrating a PHP-Nuke site to something more secure I'd love to hear it. I've tried doing a migration to Drupal with very limited success. As it stands now I will likely have to create my website from the ground up using something else, and will just have to recreate the content one piece at a time rather than attempting some sort of migration from the old PHP-Nuke.

Bjork's Aurora, on Vespertine

05:12 pm - what animal is your Patronus?

I spotted this quiz in s1ren's LJ recently. Of course I had to find out what it would give me for a Harry Potter style Patronus.

( Here's what it picked for me. )

The Changelings's Seraphim, on The Changelings

Current Mood: amused

03:26 pm - "The Wiccan Mystic" news

Today my book, "The Wiccan Mystic," was activated on all the Amazon websites for their Search Inside the Book program. That means people who do searches on Amazon can have my book turn up in the search results listing based on pretty much any text anywhere in my book. When they're on the book's info page they can also see samples of the content including the table of contents, index, as well as sample chapters.

I've also got my book being processed for Google's similar program, which they call Google Books (it's at http://books.google.com/ if you want to search through the books they have currently in the system.) With Google Books they also include public-domain books with the full content visible. Books that are still in copyright usually only have a sample of the content visible, like you get on the Amazon Search Inside program. Google also gives links for each book to where you can buy hardcopies so having it listed there should help draw paying customers.

Vas's The Inward Coil, on In The Garden Of Souls

09:31 am - another quiz meme

I saw this quiz on cudubh's LJ.

( See my results behind the cut )

Basement Jaxx's Good Luck (Featuring Lisa Kekaula), on Kish Kash

09:17 am - cool animated avatars

I saw these cool animated avatars on avalon76's and s1ren's LJ recently. Here's mine:


I couldn't figure out how to choose the hair colour so I just went with the default it gave me for the hairstyle. My own hair is a bit more reddish.

Current Mood: amused

08:52 pm - I've reached a milestone: my book is published!

I’ve been writing for years now for publication. Most of my stuff so far has appeared in magazines, both online and print. My labour of love though has been a nonfiction intermediate-to-advanced book on Wicca. It’s called “The Wiccan Mystic: Exploring a Magickal Spiritual Path” and it is now out! There are lots of books on Wicca meant for beginners but only a few written for those who are working beyond that level. There’s also a lot of talk within the Wiccan and Pagan community about the need for more advanced books. “The Wiccan Mystic” is the type of book I wish I had available to me when I was ready to move beyond the introductory stuff years ago. In “The Wiccan Mystic” readers will find an examination of what Mystery religions are and how Wicca fits the pattern. It also focusses on mysticism, how it can be an important part of a magickal spiritual path, and how practitioners can use an understanding of mysticism and magickal practices to enhance their own spiritual lives. My book is available now at http://www.amazon.com/Wiccan-Mystic-Ben-Gruagach/dp/0615143113?tag=witchgrotto-20 and should be in bookstores if you request it.

The Wiccan Mystic front cover Originally uploaded by bgruagach.

08:07 am - today I hit the big Four-Zero

Today is my fortieth birthday. It’s pretty weird -- forty seems like such a grown-up number yet it doesn’t really feel like it fits me. I feel more like it should be just turning thirty. That’s ten years behind me now though!

This morning my sweetheart and two sons gave me birthday cards they had each picked out, and some chocolates as presents. They obviously shopped together on the cards as they were all the kind that play little songs when you open them. Very cute and very thoughtful! The kids were particularly proud of their cards because they spent their own allowance to get them for me.

I’ve been thinking about what goals I have for this year. This past year was a big one for our family -- we adopted our two sons. I spent a lot of time last year shopping my book manuscript around to various publishers to try and find someone who would take the project on. This year will be the year my book finally gets published one way or another. It’s been in unpublished form for long enough now.

My parents called this morning to wish me a happy birthday. My mom told me that when I was born forty years ago it was one of those really bitter cold snaps -- sort of like we’re having now. Maybe it’s because I was born in February in a cold snap, or perhaps because I grew up on a farm in Canada and spent lots of time outside during the winter, but I’ve always had a special place in my heart for winter and snow. I don’t think it’s my favourite season (I like Hallowe’en best with the spooky weather, warm days and chilly nights, etc.) but I do enjoy the winter. Just so long as it doesn’t stretch on past March!

Current Mood: happy

10:03 am - one day to forever family!

Tomorrow is THE REALLY BIG DAY for us. It's the day our adoption of two wonderful boys will be legally finalized!

A (ten years old) and his brother B (twelve years old) were matched with us back in the spring. There was a bit of a delay until June when things moved ahead and we were able to meet the boys and start the process of integrating them into our family. They moved in with us on August first and things have gone really well for us all. The social workers were so happy with our progress that they pushed to have our finalization to happen on November 18th, which is National Adoption Day.

Because it's National Adoption Day the court where we're going is set up to do a marathon session of adoption finalizations. Ours is near the start of the day (ours is scheduled for 9:15 AM). I understand our actual time in the courtroom will be really short -- just a couple of questions and then sign some papers. The state adoption people have a presentation and activities set up at the court building for all the families who are going to be participating so that should be interesting too.

The boys have a half-sister who is being adopted by an aunt (who we keep in touch with) and they are finalizing the same day at the same court. Their session is about an hour after ours. We'll probably see them there which should be nice.

We've also got a bunch of family who are flying in this weekend to go to the event with us. Yesterday my parents and D's parents arrived (as well as a thirteen year old cousin who came with D's parents.) D's sister and two of my three brothers are arriving today. They're all staying at a hotel near our house as we don't have the room for all these extra people. And with all the stress of the weekend and all the people the boys could use some "normal at home time" without guests here when it's bed time.

The boys are looking forward to the finalization. They've been "trying out" their new names (we're just adding new family names on the end of their current names.)

So tomorrow at this time (10:00 AM) our boys will LEGALLY and FINALLY be our sons!

Sky Fits Heaven from the album Ray of Light, by Madonna

Current Mood: thankful

09:09 am - my LJ trick-or-treat loot

It's that time of year again! Yay!

I borrowed this LJ quiz/thingy from amber_laine

This Is Halloween by Nightmare Before Christmas

11:16 pm - which sci-fi crew would I fit best with?

I borrowed this quiz from wendywoowho

I like the results! (I really enjoyed watching most of the Farscape series. A few episodes were so-so, but most were great.)

You scored as Moya (Farscape). You are surrounded by muppets. But that is okay because they are your friends and have shown many times that they can be trusted. Now if only you could stop being bothered about wormholes. </td> Deep Space Nine (Star Trek) 94% Babylon 5 (Babylon 5) 94% Moya (Farscape) 94% Serenity (Firefly) 88% Nebuchadnezzar (The Matrix) 81% FBI's X-Files Division (The X-Files) 69% Bebop (Cowboy Bebop) 63% Andromeda Ascendant (Andromeda) 63% Millennium Falcon (Star Wars) 63% SG-1 (Stargate) 63% Enterprise D (Star Trek) 56% Galactica (Battlestar: Galactica) 50% Your Ultimate Sci-Fi Profile II: which sci-fi crew would you best fit in? (pics) created with QuizFarm.com

Current Mood: amused

06:45 pm - my results of an "are you psychic" quiz

It's not hard to predict what the answers should be if you want it to say you're psychic.

You Are 100% Psychic

You are so very psychic. But you already predicted that, didn't you? You have "the gift" - and you use it daily to connect with others. You're very tapped into the world around you... Just make sure to use your powers for good!

It's Not Up To You from the album Vespertine, by Bjork

Current Mood: amused

10:59 am - how popular is your family name in the USA?

My real family name (not my pseudonym) was ranked at 1989th in popularity in the USA.

The most popular surname is apparently Smith. #2 is Johnson.

http://www.pbs.org/cgi-registry/pov/sweetestsound/poirot?name=Smith will take you to the webpage where you can check it out yourself.

Thanks to Deb Lipp for the cool link!

Current Mood: amused