I had talked to a Godaddy representative before purchasing my hosting services. I specifically described the amount of traffic I tend to get per day and per month and wanted their confirmation that their hosting service would be able to accommodate it. They assured me the Economy $3.99/month package would be more than enough, so I bought 3 years of service because it was the better deal.

Nope. I just called them and they said my hosting only allows 200 people on the site at any one time, and when it hits that the site will crash and be down for the day. TWO HUNDRED PEOPLE. That’s fucking nothing. I have thousands of blog readers. And I’m a BLOG. All of my traffic comes in spikes – every time I make a post people come to the site all at once, and then I have lower traffic at other times. But they want me to pay $250/month for a dedicated server, which is more than 10% of my salary. If it was $250 a year I’d just spend it, and if it was $1000 a year I may beg all of you for some money, but Jesus fucking Christ.

So now because they lied to me I’m out the money I originally spent on hosting, I wasted a week of my time coding a site that is unusable, I botched the big exciting announcement about my new blog, and I have no idea what to do.

Fuck it all.

Edit: Well, overnight I was flooded with cheap hosting alternatives, which brightened my day. Even though it would be a pain in the ass to switch, for a moment there I thought hosting my own blog would be an impossibility. I tweeted as much.

Five minutes later I have an email from GoDaddy saying they gave me a free year of Business Level WordPress hosting, which is about $250 a year (…curiously the same price that I wrote here that I’d be willing to pay, hrm). Then five minutes later I get a phone call from a GoDaddy rep who explains that they’re giving me that year on a server that can easily handle my site for free, and they’d also reimburse me what I originally paid. So I decided to go for it…for now.

I don’t exactly have the highest confidence in them right now, but maybe they’ll prove me wrong over the next year. The fact that I gave details about my blog traffic and even explicitly asked if I should get the WordPress package, I was still led to the totally wrong thing. Then the next guy tries to upsell me to some absurdly expensive private server? He also told me I could get a full refund up until 45 days, but the latest guy said even that was wrong and it was only 5 days. What is going on over there?

Anyway, I’m just glad this is resolved. Back to the fun part of blogging…getting the comment code to work!

EDIT: Well, the moment I announced the site it crashed from the traffic, oi. I’m also aware that the comment form over there isn’t working right, and I’m trying to fix the problems.

Yes, you read that correctly – I’m leaving Freethought Blogs and “Blag Hag” is officially no more. But don’t despair! I will be writing, doodling, and ranting away like usual at my new solo blog, The Jenome.

To explain my reasoning about the move and name change, I have reproduced my welcome post at The Jenome below (though if you want to comment, why not try commenting at my new blog?). I’ll post a couple more reminders here about the move over the next week or so. Don’t forget to change your RSS feeds to the new feed!

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Hello, former Blag Hag readers. Welcome to my new home.

The Jenome was created as a sort of rebirth, even though it still falls victim to my curse of only being able to come up with pun titles. I’d like to compare it to a phoenix rising from the ashes, but that’s a little too grandiose. The Jenome is more like Selginella lepidophylla, the “Resurrection Plant”, blooming back to life after withering away into dormancy due to years of drought and hardship.

And you thought there couldn’t be a geekier metaphor for resurrection than a phoenix. Pfft, why turn to mythology when you have biology?

My blogging waned in 2012 due to a combination of graduate school stress and time commitments, a vicious harassment campaign against me by internet misogynists, and a stupid brain that’s predisposed to depression and anxiety. Unfortunately, the following year was even worse. In March 2013 my mother was diagnosed with stage four ovarian cancer, and in April of 2014 she passed away. I simply didn’t have time for blogging or speaking when I was constantly worrying about and visiting my mom, while simultaneously try to work on my PhD.

As horrible as these last couple of years have been, they’ve also given me a new perspective on life. As an atheist, I’ve always believed that this is the one shot we get at life and we should live it to the fullest. But this last year made me realize exactly how true that is. You never know if you’re going to get cancer or get hit by a bus, and all the planning in the world can still get derailed by the unexpected.

This wake up call also showed me exactly what my priorities are. I want to explore how the universe works, share that wonder and excitement with others, and create art to make the world a slightly more interesting place. I don’t want to think writing something is pointless because someone else beat me to a topic. I don’t want to spend weeks debating a sexist comment posted by some random asshole living in a basement. I don’t want to be an unintentional amplifier for hate and vitriol. I don’t want to feel pressured to write about specific topics. I don’t want to worry about creating professional posts for getting a job. And frankly, I can’t totally relate to the “Blag Hag” persona anymore – Blag Hag was effectively my less thoughtful, more reactive college self, and I have definitely changed since then.

I originally fell in love with blogging because it was an open, interactive journal for me to be creative. And this is my attempt to get that back with a fresh start. If I want to write about serious topics like the latest scientific advancements, or religious privilege, or feminism, then I will. But I’ll also feel free to post about my strategy in Civ 5, or what I thought about the latest episode of Game of Thrones, or a random doodle I made of butts wearing glasses.

I enjoyed my time at Freethought Blogs and still consider the bloggers there my colleagues and friends. I don’t want to imply that they restricted my blogging topics in any way, because they gave me absolute freedom. So why did I leave? Honestly, I’m a perfectionist control freak who hates working in groups. I’m simply happier and in a better mental space when I have total control, even if it’s control over minor things like how to arrange widgets in a sidebar or what font color to use. I gave joining a network a chance for the increased exposure and the extra spending money, but I realized that’s not what’s important to me. My anxious brain got too caught up in writing “Freethought” topics, or worrying about the frequency of my posts and how it reflects on the network as a whole, and it sucked the fun out of blogging. What I really wanted was simply a space that’s 100% mine.

So, welcome to The Jenome, where the theme is yet again Shit Jen Thinks About. I really can’t express how thankful and touched I am to have readers who have stuck by me through these hard years. I’ve constantly received messages from people who miss my writing or are just hoping I’m doing okay. I still have to pinch myself that anyone wants to read what spills out of my head, but I’m happy to be able to share it with all of you again.

Hundreds of people showed up to my mother’s funeral. We were lucky the room adjacent to ours wasn’t also booked for a funeral, because we filled the seats in that room in addition to ours. In addition to that, about 40 people had to stand, and that doesn’t count the 50 or so people who came to visitation but didn’t stay for the memorial. My mother was much loved, and we lost her too soon.

I wanted to share the eulogy I gave for my mother yesterday. It was the hardest thing I’ve ever had to write and definitely not the most eloquent, and it was extra intimidating giving it in front of all my former English teachers (her colleagues), but it still means a lot to me.

“My mother was the kindest, most self-sacrificing person I knew. When she was going through chemo the first time, she came back to work early because she didn’t want to miss the joy of teaching her Honors Art students. Some of the students and teachers didn’t even realize she had cancer until months later, because she was always putting on a happy face because she didn’t want to make others worry. She even scheduled her chemotherapy around my senior year golf matches because it meant the world to her to see me play. Even when we were playing at Wicker Park, which wouldn’t allow any spectators to ride carts to follow matches, she would still walk around the perimeter of the park to watch every shot despite the chemo and her bad back. She loved every minute of golf she got to play with me, and we made quite the team when she would invite me for Guest Day. She always joked she brought me to be a ringer, but she really just wanted any excuse to be on the course with me.

My mother was also one of the most creative people I knew. She taught me how to paint before I could even write, and her art room always felt like my second home. I was lucky enough to have her as my art teacher for three years, even though at the time I always complained that she graded me extra hard compared to the other students. Some of my fondest memories are helping her in the art room before and after school, and helping her set up her art shows at the Performing Arts Center, and of course our traditional trips to Dairy Queen afterward. She took me to the Art Institute so many times that now I could give tours, and once she even scheduled a field trip on Take Your Daughter to Work Day just so I could come with a class I wasn’t even in. I loved playing Pictionary with her, even though no one ever let us be us on the same team because they wanted to split up the artists.

Related to her creativity, I always loved her willingness to be a little silly and dance to the beat of her own drummer. Sometimes it was literal dancing, like when every Christmas we would dance around the house with our very confused cat to Nutcracker music, or when I was little and she would chase me around the house humming the Illini fight song faster and faster as I screamed and laughed. She also had a unique vocabulary that I could never tell was Greek or made up gibberish – saklamathes, stadabamba, ohmanoshevitz – which I’m pretty sure is a Jewish wine – hazi, hazos, hazenglitha, hachimanga, yaxamou. Regardless if any of these words are “real,” they’ll always be real to me.

But most of all, my mom knew how to appreciate the little things, even if she had already experienced them a thousand times before. She was always captivated by every firework and plane taking off that she saw. She never got sick of going to a Huey Lewis concert despite effectively seeing him once a year. He was actually the first concert I had ever been to, which isn’t exactly typical for a 13 year old girl. But we listened to him in the car every day when she drove me to and from school, and I’ll always associate him with those happy memories.

It’s difficult to summarize all of the wonderful memories I have of my mom in a small amount of time. But I know her kindness, her creativity, her silliness and her joy will live on in me and everyone else whose lives she touched. And I know I’ll think of her every time I see a firework, hear a Huey Lewis song, hit a golf ball, create art, play pinball, eat Greek food, or drink a margarita. And that’s why she’ll never truly be gone.”