Author: Dana Seilhan

Yes, things are still up. Here is what I know from the past twenty-four hours’ experience with one site migration:

1. It takes twenty-four hours just to redirect a domain to new nameservers. I don’t remember it taking this long in the past, but it takes this long now. So when, NOT if, this site goes down, it’s going down hard. There is a workaround to make it take less time, but that looked like a lot of complicated bullshit (Old Host really does not want me to leave, apparently… tough shit, I’m done with their highway robbery) and so I’m letting it take the twenty-four hours. Which, it does sort itself out at the twenty-four hour mark. I checked. It’s fine. Just annoying for that twenty-four hours.

I could go ahead and set everything up on the other end in anticipation of stuff working properly 24 hours after I re-point the domain but until the domain name is pointing to the proper WordPress instance, I will not be able to see what the fuck I am doing without more complicated bullshit involved. I’m not interested in complicated bullshit. I have enough to deal with without deliberately adding more. See next item.

2. What I thought was just a media file I could export from Old Host and import into New Host is actually a file WordPress refuses to incorporate — odd, since WordPress is the software that generates that fucking file — and when I looked at the code it didn’t look like it contained actual images anyway. I have no idea what that was about but it’s not going to work, so thank god I am so lazy about keeping up with blogs because this particular site doesn’t have much on it yet. And I will still have that additional work to do adding in the image files it’s missing.

Now imagine what I’ll go through with this one. OMG

So even when it’s back up it’ll be broken for a bit. I’ll set it to rights as soon as I’ve got the spoons and time for it. This blog will import just fine but it’ll be missing images until I get around to that.

3. Along with the images not exporting and importing, I have to install this theme on the other end and then reconfigure it. I will TRY to see if there’s a configuration file I can just export and then import, but I don’t think so. It’s funny, because the structure of WordPress was based on a very old blogging platform called Greymatter, and you could export and import your custom layout settings in Greymatter. I should know. I used Greymatter. I miss it like hell — it was awesome. But this is what I’ve got now and it’ll be all I can do to avoid getting tangled up in AI. Long story short, I’ll probably have to fix the blog theme settings again and if I do have to do that, stuff’s gonna look funny for a bit.

I mean, this is a chance for me to rethink the header though, I suppose, if it comes down to that.

We’ll see how it goes.

—

Timeline? Okay, I have until the second of July to absolutely get all this shit done before I’m expected to pay for another month at Old Host. They like to bill me on the 27th, but if I don’t put money on that card for them, they’ll go begging until the second. So I have lots of time, but I just want to get this done. Sooooo probably the next forty-eight hours?

Also, I need to warn you. At some point I will move the bigmanchronicles domain name itself because I want to move all my domains so as to have all on one fucking hosting account finally. I may do it soon, or I may wait another number of months until New Host has another domain sale, which also applies to domain transfers (you have to pay for another year in order to transfer a domain). I’m sure they have them periodically. When I do that, the site will be down for anything from a day to a week. If the latter, it’s gonna suck. You’ll hate it. I get regular daily visitors here in the double digits; I know you’ll hate it. I will too. BUT I WILL GIVE YOU PLENTY OF WARNING. I can’t rely on some site followers to warn all the other site followers, because you aren’t even all aware of one another. But hopefully my warning will reach enough of you that people don’t think I’ve quit.

I mean, quit on the big man? Come on now. This is me we’re talking about. 💙🤍💚

Also. While this shit’s going on, and the domain transfer too when it does, you can check here for updates. I’ll have ’em. No, this is not a ploy to get more eyeballs on my site. It’s just the logical place to go since that’s my home page and I’m the site admin here. Cool? Cool.

Don’t, like, send me text messages asking me when shit’s gonna be up, though. You’ll know it’s up when I do; first I’ll know is when it’s actually back up. They don’t send me notices or anything.

Okay, I think that’s it. If I think of anything else you probably need to know about this, I’ll post again. If this site disappears in the next couple days, the DNS settings change is taking place, so just hang on tight til it’s done. Twenty-four hours. That’s it. Promise.

Okay y’all, word of warning. I have set up New Hosting Service. That bit’s fine, but I’m going through a bit of a learning curve with the site migration. I am not sure what’s going on, but I’m picking at it to find out. I started this with a throwaway site I’m barely maintaining just to make sure everything works before I start on this one here.

I did learn that when you export a WordPress file, it’s only the text stuff and the blog settings. There is a separate setting for exporting media so MAYBE, when I import that, that means I’ll be importing the images properly. I hope so because I’ve got a shitload of images here, just in this blog itself, and I don’t want to have to go through and upload them all over again. I mean, I will if I have to, but I don’t want to. But I’ll find out presently if I can even get the damn domain name to parse correctly. Apparently there’s a bit of a delay. ARGH.

Point is this site hasn’t been moved yet but if shit gets weird, it’s because I am moving it. And I’m on Pacific Daylight Time now, too, so just be aware.

Stuff will be right as rain eventually though. I’m stubborn that way.

Ah, yes, the summer solstice. Anyone remember the solstice five years ago?

Look here for a hint.

Anyway. I’ve got news. You may or may not like it.

Okay. I love my website host. I see some people grumble about them, but they’ve always been solid for me. Five years. Probably the longest I’ve ever been with a hosting service.

Problem is they’re also massively expensive as shared hosting services go. They were $19.99 a month, I think, when I first started with them five years ago and I may have even gone for an annual plan that first year, which would have ended up being a lot less per month. But month-to-month was twenty bucks. And that was a little ouchy but I said whatever, I pay at least this much for Netflix and I don’t get any more out of that except the odd Rory thing and Supernatural and The Walking Dead, anyway, and so I went on with my life. Then after I moved out of my daughter’s father’s house, I had two price hikes in three years. So now instead of twenty bucks a month it’s more like thirty-five.

I lost my main source of income when I moved to California — long story, no one cares — and I’m working on that situation but it’ll take time. I had starting-out money, at least. But that’s not going to last long at all if I don’t get my expenses down a little more. I got my phone bill down by happy accident, but I still have this albatross to deal with.

NO I’M NOT KILLING THIS SITE.

I’m making it cheaper. I will be moving to a new hosting service shortly.

The reason I say you may not like it is that there will be downtime again. I am going to see about using their site migration service, which allegedly is free, and which should also minimize the downtime. I make no promises but that’s my goal.

I intend to work on this tomorrow (Friday) if nothing weird happens. So if you see things glitch or disappear, that’s why. If shit is weird with the site after it’s all done, I’ll go back and fix it — I’ve been working on this thing in fits and starts anyway. It’ll just be one more sub-project. I don’t care. Happy to do it.

Anyway, so that’s what’s going on. Nothing bad, just trying to keep things running smoothly.

The GREAT news is that I’ll be purchasing an annual plan and they are on sale dirt fucking cheap right now. So we won’t have this song and dance again until at least April. And probably not even then because I should be able to migrate the domain over to the new host and I may even be able to do it while the host has their dot-com domain sale going on. Won’t THAT be a hoot.

So look forward to that, I guess. I’ll let you know when it’s moved. Mwah.

This is Rory when boating season starts

Facebook friend posted this. I don’t think I’d ever heard it before. Enjoy the earworm.

Oh, wow! Does this mean we might get to see The Damned in the United States???

I mean… C’MON, BIG MAN. You need to be in stuff we can see outside of Europe!

In other news, I was just peeking to see if anything major had come up on the front page of Google — of course, it almost never does — and turns out Rory’s Instagram is now on the front page of his search results. That’s pretty much like if he had an official fan site and it turned up there. Excellent news! See? Google says it’s the big man too. NOW ARE Y’ALL HAPPY?

(I’m still there too… near the bottom… but it’s my own fault, I don’t update here enough. At least it’s not the “love life” page anymore.)

—

Bit of a personal update for those of you who haven’t figured out where I am on the web yet. Am in California, settling in, trying to figure out where I go next. Caught a cold, it was nasty, seems to be getting better now but anymore when I get sick I also get kind of stupid, so that was fun. I’m also having to manage things without having a car — sold the car to make this trip, didn’t really have anywhere else to go and needed starting-out money — but oddly, for California and not being in L.A. or San Fran, I can probably get around all right. It’s just going to take me a lot longer. Walmart is walking distance from here and the bus line stops there too.

I actually did not love moving even farther away from Scotland, so to speak, and I miss Ohio. But I don’t get to go to the fun places or live where I want to live until I can fucking pay for it. Just the way it is. And this bit of NorCal is positively lovely. I think even Rory would dig it. I have redwoods in my (my roomie’s) yard, y’all. Redwoods. And bears for neighbors. And huge doggos for housemates. Great Pyrenees. They’re adorable. I have never thought of myself as a dog person, but most of them have liked me, and these are no exception.

I’m not going to make any guesses about which way things will go. I am just gonna fucking vibe and do the best I can with what I can control.

And if that sounds like “hey, more improvements here,” yes. That too.

There we go. [looks at title] I think my brain’s back on right-side up.

Got this relatively lovely piece from ScreenRant in my Google Alert today; surprisingly, it was the only link I got today. It’s still lazy in places (peep the Lurch entry and you’ll see what I mean), but much less so than usual.

I just had to laugh because I looked at the header image and immediately knew where the The Book Group photo of Rory as Kenny came from: this is right after Fist borrowed Kenny’s wheelchair to race in, and he’s at Barney’s place smoking a joint and pondering why Fist would want to use a wheelchair “when she’s got legs like that.”

I am not sure what it says about me that I know that. Hahahahaha

Real talk: the past 2.5 years have done a number on me. I still have quite a bit of my Rory stuff, but not as many of the DVDs. I am proud to say I have not let go of my two seasons (series in the UK) of The Book Group, though. I have to look at the bright side. I love Rory in Game of Thrones, but I’ve got me a soft spot for Kenny McLeod. Can’t help it, the man’s adorable.

Weren’t we all when we were younger, though.

Okay, I wasn’t. But most of us, I bet.

A few updates.

1. At the “urthboundmisfit” handle on Instagram, there is a reel. Turn the sound way up on your phone or whatever, then click that reel. It is instructions on how to report all these little assholes going around Instagram pretending to be Rory so that Instagram will shut them down. Long story short? “BIGMANRORYMCCANN” IS RORY. NO ONE ELSE IS. Okay? Can we settle that finally? Thanks.

I am sorry about the sound quality, and right now I am too duh-brain to try to figure out something better. If someone with a home studio and five fucking phones to use as models would like to take a stab at this, be my guest. Because I keep seeing follower counts on these imposters, which tells me fans are falling for it. Even if it’s only, like, twenty-four of them or something. Still too many. Anyway, at some point I may set up an instruction page here for anyone who wants to nuke the imposters from space just to be sure. Do not count on that until I’ve gotten settled on the West Coast.

[EDIT: I was so duh-brain I forgot my usual format for post titles here. Oops. Fixed. Also URL so I hope none of you linked to this.]

2. Oh hey! I get to live on a West Coast too! Not Scotland’s, unfortunately.

But! I will dig being near a beach for the first time in more than THIRTY years.

3. Speaking of. I leave Louisiana on Sunday night. There was nothing for it; if I don’t leave on the nine-something-PM departure, I will have to wait a really long time to catch the last leg of my trip. I’ll have to wait several hours as it is. Let’s not make that suck any more than it already will. Anyway, that’ll put me at my destination on TuesdayWednesday afternoon if everything goes well. [knocks on head]

[EDIT: Wednesday. Not Tuesday. Corrected.]

(Did I tell you all the story of how I have been knocking on my head when I say “knock on wood” — USA version of the UK’s “touch wood” — for well over a decade, only to see Rory doing it in the YouTube vids of his panel at the Glasgow Film Festival a few years back? I about shit. That was AWESOME. I’ve never seen anyone else doing that.)

I might post here again before I go and I might not but the chances are considerably better than they were the last time I posted, because so much was still in the air and I didn’t know when anything would be happening. It’ll probably take either something really cool happening with Rory or me being really bored, because my hostess is going to be out of town from tomorrow sometime until sometime Saturday…? I think? So I am going to take that time to do extra prep for the trip. It’s not necessary to the trip, but it’ll increase the chances of a good outcome on the other side. To say I have been anxious and overplanning about my preparations is an understatement. But it’s better than being off-the-cuff and random, I suppose, in terms of usual outcomes.

Okay. ‘Later.

This is the dumbest shit I have read in a long time.

I think I have lost about fifty IQ points reading it.

I may actually not be able to walk upright anymore. How am I typing?

I… I just… Go read it. I hope someone is monitoring the trackbacks. They should be ashamed of themselves. I am not this lazy on my worst days.

At least it was about one of Rory’s roles and not about Rory himself, I suppose. I’ve seen the media be that lazy about him before, though.

—

The bad news is, I’m writing about myself again.

The other bad news is, I’m moving. Again. If you want to know more about that, look around. I’m not going to get into it here. I already put too much effort into writing about it elsewhere in a place it mostly won’t be read. I suppose it’s just as well. But to sum up: I didn’t break any laws or kill anyone. I just had shitty luck. Again.

But!

The good news is, if everything goes well [knocks on head], I’m about to be in a situation where I will finally have breathing room to do more work on this without having to drive ten or twenty or thirty miles and use a library table to get it done. I’ll have home internet! And a desk! And stuff!

Exciting times.

I have stuff to do, so this is all you get for now. I might write again before I go on my trip, but I doubt it. Y’all take care. I’ll catch up with you not long from now.

Okay. End of an era. There is no longer a page index for articles about Rory. If you look in the menu (instructions for finding it are on the front page), you will find the Articles item is gone. [plays “Taps”]

All is not lost. The articles are still here, but I have pulled them into the so-called “blog,” which may be renamed at some point. I’m not sure. And if you look under the blog categories in the sidebar (or the bottom bar, if you’re on a vertical screen), you will see an Articles category. THERE they are. Yay!

I may not have remembered to add the Articles category to all the articles. If that’s so, I will catch my error eventually. No fret.

I want to do this with the photos next. I make no promises about when that will happen. The process is going to be a bit more involved because I want that to be more useful than it is. I like being able to see an old photo and being able to say “Oh yeah, that was Rory at the SAG Awards in 2015” because who doesn’t like feeling smarter? And it really just puts his whole career all in one place, including illustrations. Love it.

The archives section in the sidebar may get a bit unwieldly unless I figure out a better system. For now, it’s just going to be REALLY LONG. Sorry about that.

And, as I’ve already mentioned but in case you’re new here, the search function is very, very good. If you want to look up a specific thing that you know the word for, just type it into the search bar and go. If you’re on a horizontal screen, it’ll be in the sidebar to your right. If you’re on your phone, you’ll have to scroll down but whatever the fuck the orientation does to the sidebar, the search bar will be located at the top of it. Easy-peasy, Rory-squeezy. RORY CUDDLES OMG.

Just kidding, Mrs. McCann.

No I’m not. The clothes would stay on.

ANYWAY. I want to get some libraryage before they close. The way this weather is going, you may hear from me again tomorrow. Grumble.

Big man’s being QUITE active, for him, on Instagram lately. Have a look, if you haven’t already. He’s posted a reel from his boat! 💙🤍💚

You will note two mugs in the cabin (I guess that’s what it’s called). I hate stereotypes, but one of them looks like the sort of mug a married woman would have. Apologies to Rory if that’s actually his mug and he’s hanging out with the Troon yacht harbor guy or just forgot to wash a mug. But I doubt either is what this is.

There seem to be a lot of fans still in denial about that. Oh well. Maybe one of these days he’ll actually admit it. I am still a little weirded out that he spent so many years going I AM SINGLE HERE I AM, LADIES and now he won’t even say he found someone. But he’s also gotten a lot more privacy-oriented over the last ten years or so. I’ll go out on a limb and guess that what he thought was a crazy amount of attention after The Book Group got ramped up to 11 after Game of Thrones and his brain sort of went into meltdown. If this amount of distance saves his sanity, I say go for it. Happy big man, good life. That doesn’t rhyme, but it’s true.

He seems to have struck up a bit of a friendship with Cary Elwes, who seems to also be in the Knuckles series, and I’m just fangirling all over the damn place. This time it was a comment about pirates on Rory’s boat post. 😍😍😍

Google Alerts are chock-full of Knuckles stuff. I heard the first episode is available free on YouTube now. Sometimes I am in places where I can stream but I’m not generally in the mood to watch anything extensive when I am. I’ll get around to it or I won’t. But actually, let me go find that for all of you in case you haven’t seen it. You’re welcome.

So if you haven’t ripped off my pics already, there’s another source for ya. (I don’t actually care about the ripping off of the pics. I’m just needlin’ ya.)

[EDIT] Wait, what? They took the video private. Well, I’ll leave it up for a while in case they make it public again. Sorry about that.

Oh, and going back to the private life for a minute. When Rory posted the reel he made some remark about how “the season” has begun. I feel this is one more piece of evidence that he is not living on the boat. There is every possibility he could be living there, and that he and the missus make it work, but given what I’ve heard about his net worth it would be weird if they didn’t have a house on land somewhere. And it may even be quite isolated. That would track with his general pattern.

I have to say that though I’m a little frustrated that he won’t even give us an update about his general situation, I also REALLY APPRECIATE that he protects her. Because be honest with yourselves, those of you who covet him: If he’d picked you, would you want his crazy fangirls coming after you? I would not want that for me. Fuck that. It also says something about him, and wholly in his favor, that he doesn’t seem to view his wife as a trophy as so many celebrity men seem to do. We missed a real gem, ladies. Darn it.

Okay. Am off. I might do some work on this today, actually. I’ve got a little time. I don’t know if you will be able to tell, but I’ll let you know.