Excite.Com Changing -- Bummer!

I like to have a place online where I can store bookmarks to frequently visited sites. Having these online means I can get to them from any device I can get on that is internet connected.

Once upon a time, I started doing this with IWON.COM and continued until it killed the "portal" end of its site. IWON was orignally an online game site, but it had a neat, configurable, homepage that could display news, weather, and most importantly for me a list of bookmarks to sites. They were bought by somebody, Mindspark I think, who decided to kill the homepage idea and then killed IWON completely.

Well, another site owned by the same folks...Excite...picked up the mantle that IWON dropped. I was able to set up a configurable homepage there that gave me most of what I'd lost from IWON. However, that's going away now, too! The owners (Mindspark again...grrrr) decided to "update the Excite experience" and nerf its usefulness almost completely.

The advantage iwon and excite had is that you could add, delete, change, and configure links, etc, online and not have do it offline. That is an advantage that I can get from a Blogger blog...this one. It's a little harder to configure and doesn't give all the same features, but it's close. It's better than alternatives I've run across anyway.

Okay, so I have to move all my bookmarks over and get them configured as I like them. This is going to be time consuming, but not hard.

Here's my hope. I hope Google doesn't decide to kill blogger...ever! Or, at least, until I'm dead or too old to care.

Hurricane Michael Arriving!

I absolutely hate hurricanes! Yes, we need the rain down here and yes, there are ecological advantages of "clearing dead wood away" now and then. OTOH, for us humans hurricanes are a PITA, and sometimes much worse than that!

Michael is expected to be a "major" Category 3 or 4 when it comes ashore. Now if you don't know Category 3 will take many roofs off and uproot many, many trees.  Category 4 is 10 times worse and will destroy many houses and commercial buildings, take out almost all the power supply, and leave us all in the dark with no power, many with no water or shelter...and that's for those of us that aren't actually on the coast. 

At this moment,  it looks like Michael will come ashore to the east of my home. Now, "the east is least and the west is a mess and dead on is just that!" 

How far to the east Michael will come ashore is still up for debate, 2 days out. If it's 10 or 30 miles east we'll still get much, much, damage. If it's 30 to 50 miles east, damage will be less and more scattered. If it's more that it'll be bad for a few, but not too bad for most. OTOH, if it comes in west it's bad, very bad, 50 plus miles out! 

I'm hoping it'll be far east, but I fear it will be right through my front yard. I'm praying for all the people to my east, even while praying we'll be spared. God knows this is hard.

I've got most of my prep done. My hurricane box is filled with non-perishable food and I've filled a bunch of clean gallon milk containers with clean water. I've got a new bottle of propane for my camp stove. I've charged my batteries, tablets and laptop. I'd consider making a visit to New Orleans or Jackson MS, but with Mom and Synde's cat, I don't think I can go. 

I wish I'd bitten the bullet and had a whole home generator installed, or at least bought a portable generator...although, I've always doubted how much they help. Natural Gas has always stayed on here, through Dennis, Ivan, Katerina, Opal, all of them, so gas would be good for a generator to keep HVAC and electricity up. 

I'm hoping the roof stays on and doesn't spring any leaks. It's 14 years old with a 20 year warranty, but the roofer is long gone and the warranty won't be any good if it fails. 

Well, at least, the weather reports say we'll have a cold front coming through post Michael to drop temperatures by 10+ degrees. If power goes out, and stays out, maybe we won't die from the heat/humidity. Yes, heat/humidity kills, especially the very old and very young. 

Anybody who reads this say a prayer for us all and wish us luck.

Excite Doc Com Going Away? (Edit...It's back up, for now.)

I usually use my.excite.com as my portal page. It has my shortcuts to links and many news feeds, but it's been Down for Maintenance for 3 days now. No idea how long this is going to last, or it will ever come back.  This is really how it started when my.iwon.com started "going away." Bummer!

This site is my backup portal and it isn't complete, as of yet. I've been slowly building it up over time and need to do some more work here, it appears.  I guess it always pays to have backup plans, right!

Well, goody! My Excite is back up. At least, for now.

Continuing To Add

I've added a Games/PBEM/Forum section to the left sidebar. I only have it partially populated, though. I'll add more later.

Updating Links

Although, I've gotten My Excite to host links and display news/weather it doesn't always come up and there are problems. So, I'm making sure all my links are available here on Eris' Portal as well.

I am also planning to put the links onto Onedrive, Dropbox, or Google Drive.  Better safe than sorry!