Postal Service shit hits the fan

Updates

1. Originally published, September 17, 2020 at 11:10 pm.
2. September 18, 7:44 am:
   • I have received a generous offer for new hosting. It will still be WordPress but without the WordPress.com cruft that might well be at the root of my problems. If you see this update without a further update indicating completion, you are still seeing the WordPress.com version of The Irregular Bullshit. This transition will take a bit of time including the site move itself and time for DNS propagation. I will not be making further updates until this is complete.
3. September 19, 7:48 am:
   • Pretty sure we got some steps in the wrong order. Fortunately, this guy seems to know his way around a database. Which is sure as hell something I never learned.
4. September 19, 8:57 am:
   • It all seems to be right now. I have stories to archive, so look for a new issue soon.

Housekeeping

As previously announced, the Not Housebroken and Irregular Bullshit sites may be going down permanently. My patience with changes WordPress.com has made is blown. The deadlines to either find new hosting or shut down the sites or for WordPress.com to take corrective action will be based on the expiration of the plan I am running them under. For each site, these are:

1. Not Housebroken – July 3, 2021
2. Irregular Bullshit – November 19, 2020

As a practical matter, I will need to act prior to these dates. Should I fail to find an adequate solution, my plan is to convert Not Housebroken to book in PDF format which I can make public from my Google Drive. Because I’ve been using The Irregular Bullshit to archive stories, I can convert it to a book in PDF format and store it on Google Drive, but I probably cannot make it public without infringing copyrights and that’s a battle I just don’t need.

Unless WordPress.com makes changes to restore functionality to something tolerable before I find a suitable alternative or I feel I can wait no longer, I will be removing my content from their site. I do not intend to let them derive advertising revenue from it. I will be considering further what changes I may want to make in the meantime: It’s possible I will move some pages from The Irregular Bullshit to Not Housebroken as there is some stuff there that can and should be kept public.

U.S. Postal Service

Jacob Bogage, “DeJoy’s Postal Service policies delayed 7 percent of nation’s first-class mail, Senate Democrat’s report says,” Washington Post, September 16, 2020, https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/2020/09/16/dejoy-usps-delays-senate-report/

Elise Viebeck and Jacob Bogage, “Federal judge temporarily blocks USPS operational changes amid concerns about mail slowdowns, election,” Washington Post, September 17, 2020, https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/federal-judge-issues-temporary-injunction-against-usps-operational-changes-amid-concerns-about-mail-slowdowns/2020/09/17/34fb85a0-f91e-11ea-a275-1a2c2d36e1f1_story.html