The PolyBlog

Joining the herd

April 25 2021

As of today, we have completed 1/6 of our household steps towards vaccinated immunity. With the recent drop in age for the AZ vaccine, my GP’s office had sent out a broadcast email to patients over 40 to say “Come and get it!”, like ringing a dinner bell. But my profile isn’t completely typical, so after reading a bunch of stuff online, I reached out to my GP to check on whether the AZ vaccine was right for me and that my curation had been correct.

Efficacy concerns

Generally speaking, of course, the recommendation is to go with availability over efficacy rates.… Read the rest

The end of wound care (with warning)

April 24 2021

For those who are friends with me on FaceBook, you’ll know that since mid-January, I’ve had an ongoing issue with one of my legs. An open wound that wasn’t healing. It’s a long, torturous saga, and I’ve been torn (literally, hah!) about how to talk about it in a way that makes sense to other people, because it wasn’t a “small thing”. In many ways, it likely seems like it. And it started that way. But I didn’t want to share ugly photos on FB that people would see and immediately say, “Ewwww, why would share THAT? That’s gross!”. Because it IS gross in some places.… Read the rest

Rebuilding: Dumpster fire or opportunity? (part 4 / 4)

April 21 2021

I have already mentioned the accidental nuking of the site by tech support, the rebuild decision tied to mental health issues, and my decision to separate everything into two sites plus add Flickr for my photos. But one big question remained…if I was going to build back better, what else would I change in the process?

If I was honest with myself, I had to face the reality that perhaps, shockingly, I didn’t design the site incrementally over time the way I would have liked to design it from day one.

The problem-ridden version I had was a dumpster fire, that was clear.… Read the rest

Building back better for my website (part 3 / 4)

April 21 2021

I already discussed the fall of my website and the hit I took on the mental health side before I could commit to rebuilding my website. It’s just too important to me to simply let it go, and honestly, as much as I pretended it was a real choice, it never likely was an actual option. But if I’m going to rebuild, might I revisit some earlier decisions that I had made in the previous version?

Bifurcation is a lovely word

I have had a dual online personality for quite some time. PolyWogg vs. ThePolyBlog. It is a regular conundrum…I had my initial website as PolyWogg.ca… Read the rest

My existential angst as a dead blogger (part 2 / 4)

April 19 2021

In my previous post (The Fall of PolyWogg (part 1 / 4)), I covered the technical fall of my site. After the nuke went off, I spent a full week attempting to work through all the technical options to get my site back up and running. And repeatedly failing. I knew I had all the data, so there was that consolation, but the rest of the site? It was looking increasingly like I was going to have to erase everything, nuke the entire account, and start over. I had managed to partly fix two other sites that I host on my account, one for a friend and one for my brother, but beyond that, I was not positive either one were any more reliable than my main PolyWogg.ca… Read the rest