Stormhorn.com Is Switching Web Hosts

Hello, friends and readers of Stormhorn.com! I want to make you aware of a change that’s underway with this site. Hopefully it won’t create any temporary hiccups in service, but I want to alert you just in case any down time arises. Not being technically astute, I figure it’s best to let you know what’s up, if for no other reason than to reassure myself, in the face of my own ignorance, that I’ve covered as many bases as I can!

My old Web host, Tablox Web Solutions, operated by my friends Mitch and Karina Myers, is terminating their service as of tomorrow, January 19. So I’ve made the move to Dryline Hosting, operated by David Drummond. Karina has greatly eased the process by graciously transferring my files for me. Thanks so much, Karina! I really appreciate your assistance!

As the name of his company suggests, Drummond is a well-known storm chaser based in Lubbock, Texas, in the heart of dryline country. The process of shifting to David’s service has allowed me to get acquainted with him over the phone, and our chat just naturally drifted into storm chasing, including speculation about what it would be like to capture video of one of those monster West Texas tornadoes chewing its way through a windmill farm. It’s bound to happen, and I can only imagine what it would be like to watch a blizzard of those 100-foot blades go sailing through the sky. That’s not a spectacle I’d care to view at close range, and it’s bound to happen. With a swarm of enormous wind farms already extant in Tornado Alley and more mushrooming up all the time, I have to wonder how safe it is to live near those things.

But I digress. Back to the move: So far, so good, but I won’t know for sure until Tablox pulls the plug tomorrow. Cross your fingers and hope for the best, which would be uninterrupted service and no broken internal links to my old b2evo blog.

Significant Tornadoes, by Tom Grazulis

Man, what a busy day it has been! It’s amazing how occupied I can be without hardly budging from my La-Z-Boy couch. But then, my couch is as much my office as it is a piece of living room furniture. More, for that matter. With my computer keyboard in my lap and my screen parked on a stool to my left, here is where I earn most of my living as a freelance writer.

I’ve spent most of my day hammering out copy for a couple clients. I just finished a project a short while ago. I still have a chewy assignment that I haven’t even begun yet, but that can wait till tomorrow. This weekend will be a busy one, but in this tough economy, it’s great to have the work, and I can say in all honesty and with much gratitude that I have some truly wonderful clients. I am richly blessed, not just with consistent work doing what I love to do, but also with good relationships with people who, besides clients, are friends and brothers in Christ.

But the working day for me is over, and I am now turning my focus to other things. In my spare time, I’m acquainting myself with cPanel and–now that I can actually access the code–revamping the metatags for my Stormhorn.com website. The switchover from GoDaddy to Tablox as a web host, and from b2evolution to WordPress for blog software, has freed me up to take a more hands-on approach to my website and blog, and the next phase of the learning curve for this non-techie has begun.

And that’s just what’s happening on the sidelines. Today I went to the Hastings Public Library and picked up the copy I had requested of Significant Tornadoes, 1680-1981, by Tom Grazulis. It’s a formidable volume–the authoritative, exhaustive record of virtually every significant tornado in United States history that can be traced. Grazulis’s work is nothing short of remarkable, a real labor of love, and the result is a book whose poundage alone is enough to impress. This is one you want to load on a pack mule if you plan on taking it anywhere, but the information it contains is priceless.

And I need that information because I’ve been working on a book on the 1965 Palm Sunday tornadoes. I’ll tell you more about that some other time, but if you’ve followed this blog for a while, then you know that the Palm Sunday tornado outbreak has been a recurrent theme. There is a reason for that, and the time has finally arrived for me to do something about it. I wrote the prologue a couple months ago, and now, after a bit of a delay, I’ve written about two-thirds of the first chapter. I expect to have it completed within the week, and then it’s on to the next phase, which will consist of a fair amount of research.

And that’s enough on that topic. I’ve done enough writing for the day, and my bowl of cottage cheese and mug of abbey ale are demanding my attention.

Introducing the New and Improved Stormhorn Blog

Notice anything different? My Stormhorn blog has gotten a facelift! While you’ll notice that its appearance deviates a bit from what you’re used to, the real difference is more than cosmetic. Thanks to the effort of my Web designers and friends, Mitch and Karina Myers at Tablox Web Solutions, I’ve made the switch from b2evolution to WordPress blog software. I’ve also changed my Web host from the cluttered, user-unfriendly GoDaddy to Mitch and Karina’s service-oriented, cPanel-based hosting service.

WordPress should be easier for a non-tech like me to get around in, and I expect to refine the appearance and usability of the blog over time. For now, I’m off to a good start, and I’ll begin making improvements when I have a little time to spare. Right now I have a few pressing deadlines, and my copywriting clients come first.

So I’ll keep this short and sweet:

Welcome to the New and Improved Stormhorn Blog, dedicated to my dual passions of jazz saxophone and storm chasing, with a little bit of everything else thrown in for good measure. I hope you’ll find what you like and like what you find.