Well ... that blows

So, I come online to post about my attempt to install smoke detectors.  (Which was stymied by the fact that I don't have a ladder, and can't reach the ceiling standing on my tallest stable piece of furniture.  But, in moving said piece of furniture, I discovered a big ol' nasty dead cockroach.  About the only good thing I could say about it was that it was dead.  But it was way larger in size than anything I'd be willing to pick up with a wad of Kleenex -- no matter how many tissues.  I ended up picking it up with an old washcloth, and tossing both dead roach and washcloth into the trash compactor.  Saying "Ew! Ew! Ew!" all the while.)

ANYWAY, I come online to post about this and discover (courtesy a banner ad) that AOL Journals is closing down, and that we'll have until Halloween to migrate someplace -- and, of course, AOL-J hasn't yet figured out how to migrate journals (a fact which should surprise no one as they'd never figured out how to back them up all these years).

I guess I'll have to figure out what to do, exactly, with this thing.  I'd hate to let it disappear into the ether altogether -- if anything, it's a pretty good diary (particularly a travel diary) of the last five years, and I'd rather not lose that.  But I admit that I've had long periods of dead time journal-wise (when work gets ahead of me, or when I'm helping with the LA Drama Critics Circle awards show, which I'll be doing again this year), and while I know I've got some family, friends, casual readers, and even a few lurkers out there, it also seems apparent that this journal isn't exactly, y'know, filling a void that would otherwise exist on the web.

And it also may be time to (finally) leave AOL altogether.  I'm currently posting from a desktop computer I bought last fall, and this here computer is my first computer since the internet that does not have the AOL software on it.  I just use AOL for web-based email and for keeping this journal.  I've got plenty other email accounts (well, four, at current count, but with yahoo and gmail there's plenty other options, and that's not counting the 8 accounts I can get from my ISP).  So perhaps it's time to put a "change of address memo" on my signature line, and complete my migration from AOL.

Much to think about over the next few weeks.