New Temporary forum for Domania users

Welcome to your new biz Bert and thanks for your post.
You mentioned a phone # in your post. Is it toll free and is it 717-431-7327? and can your customers still call 24/7 ? I know a New customer from Nashville that needs to speak with you since yesterday (named Robert)

Also here is a C/P of the notice I get when I googled the addy you posted.
"No standard web pages containing all your search terms were found.

Your search -http://zboxhosting.com/board/index.php- did not match any documents.

Suggestions:

- Make sure all words are spelled correctly.
- Try different keywords.
- Try more general keywords.
- Try fewer keywords."

Please clarify and help.
Thanks again
topy (tommy)

Hi Tommy,
When I Googe the URL:
http://zboxhosting.com/board/index.php
It comes up fine in Google.

Yes there is a new number you can call me at. No it's not toll free, however if need be folks can email me their phone number and tell me the best time to call. That way there won't be any long distance charges for ya'll.

Yes you can call any time and I will answer if I'm able.

541-680-7544

~;-)

Bert

Hello Bert and THANKS for the fast reply to my post and complete answers etc.
I passed all info on to the "Robert" (new customer) I mentioned so he's on his own now.

I got thru to zbox on line and registered for that forum.
Thanks again
Have a nice daze :-)

Tommy topy

We have taken control of Domania as of the 1st of February 2008.
-- Bert

Many of us guys used to refer to marriage as "taking a wife". It doesn't work out that way; it's the wife that ends up in charge. Similarly, Bert will soon learn that Domania controls him, not the other way about.

Not that I'd give up my wife for anything; I like having this bit in my mouth. And I loved (and love) Domania, too; it's just that my doctor insisted.

Blondie told me this morning, "I still can't believe you gave up web hosting. You loved those people."

But you kept insisting that I needed to retire, I said. "And that makes a difference? How long have I been insisting that you fix the wall in the bathroom?"

Oops. Looks like I've running out of excuses for that one....

Today is Fasnacht Day. It's also Super Tuesday if you're into politics, Mardi Gras if you're in New Orleans, and Carnivale if you're in Rio. Here in Pennsylvania, we hold the primary in April, and we figure it's more fun to eat doughnuts than to wear beads.

I picked up a dozen fasnachts late last night, and when I got up to eat some for breakfast, there weren't any. I have only one wife, a blonde, and only one girlfriend, a redhead with four paws, so I think we must have mice.

Took the blonde out for a pho supper tonight; the redhead stayed in the van. On the way home, I bought another dozen real fasnachts and a half-dozen fake ones (they had cherry jelly filling; real fasnachts have no filling.) I checked at 10 PM, and there were only 5 real and 3 jelly fasnachts left. I don't think there will be any left for breakfast.

They say if you eat fasnachts on Fasnacht Day, it will bring you a year of good luck. Someone around this house is going to have a VERY lucky year. Hope it's not the mice....

I wish I were insane

Sanity is just so boring

Good to see you posting Paul. Glad you took the girls out to eat. Can't figure pho supper; only come up with faux supper. BTW, been meaning to tell you to stay out of the bathroom, fixing it that is. Could be bad for your health and we want to keep you around. Take care of you and your girls. A fasnacht about now would be delicious!

mike

Oh yea, what does Input format mean at the bottom of the post?

Pho is the national dish of Vietnam. In Laos, their version is called feu. Most restaurants give you a bowl that's about the size Mom always used for mashed potatoes - it must have a quart or more of beef broth. It's got a lot of glass noodles in it, and usually some thinly-sliced beef flank steak. That's pho nam. The pho I had tonight had brisket, tripe, and tendon in it as well.

It's served with a plate of veggies - bean sprouts, fresh cilantro, fresh basil, slices of fresh jalapeno, chunks of fresh lime. On the table, there is soy sauce, fish sauce, hoison sauce, and hot pepper sauce. People dose up their bowls to whatever degree of hotness they like. I like the cilantro and the basil, and the fish sauce is interesting. Tonight, I put in some pepper sauce, and it got a little hotter than I like.

When I was living in Beavercreek, Ohio, I found a vietnamese restaurant, and they were really surprised to see an occidental patron. They could barely speak English, but their menu was translated, and I could point. Seems like they had about 20 types of soup, and a half-dozen items that weren't soup. My late first wife made wonderful soups, and I thought I'd try try some. I picked one fairly low on the menu, because even their most expensive item was pretty inexpensive. They were "wow" that I would be so adventuresome. I'd never had Vietnamese before? Am I sure that's what I want? Hey, I could always leave it uneaten and grab a burger at a fast food joint, right? So I confirmed that's what I wanted, and it was wonderful. They kept coming out of the kitchen, pointing to the bottles of hot sauce, fish sauce, soy sauce, etc., telling me I should dose up my soup, but it was fine as-is.

When I came to Lancaster, I was really disappointed because there were no mom-and-pop mexican joints, just the chain-store crap, and I started looking for other ethnic places. There's a Thai place here, Lemongrass, that was voted best restaurant in the state by the readers of Philadelphis magazine. Not the best Thai place, but the best restaurant, period. But my wallet is thin enough already.

Lancaster has a Vietnamese place that's been here a long time, but the food isn't that great, the prices aren't that great, and the service isn't that great. I discovered a second Vietnamese place here in Lancaster about 2002 or so, and it's in an industrial part of town; the new ball park is right across the street from it. The parking is so terrible, it took me a year to convince Blondie to try it. She wasn't an instant convert; it took her half a meal to overcome the prejudices she had, because the place is a real dump. Not dirty, mind you, but it was furnished with used stuff that didn't match, etc.

A couple more Vietnamese places have opened in the last year. One has really fancy decor, and corresponding prices, but the portions are small and the quality just isn't there. The other one, Lancaster Pho Cafe, has generous portions, taste and texture of food that is very good, and it's inexpensive. The place is neatly decorated, if inexpensively, and the service is extremely good. If we could afford it, I think Blondie would eat there three times a week.

I just finished a book by Tom Parker-Bowles, who is a food critic in England. Camilla, the lady who married the prince, is his mama. This book is called the "Year of Eating Dangerously" and he travels all around the world, eating things that most of us wouldn't consider putting in our mouths. He goes to Santa Fe for a hot pepper festival, and people pass out from the peppers. He judges barbecue in Memphis, and nearly explodes from eating too much. Most of the foods, though, are things that are disgusting.

In Japan, he tries fugu, made from the neuro-toxic puffer fish. Tries it twice, in fact. The first restaurant, it was mostly tasteless - and about 400 pounds sterline. He's finally convinced to try it somewhere else before he leaves Japan, and all of a sudden he realized why people risk death. It's exceptionally good.

Anyhow, in this book, he lists 10 or 12 foods he thinks should be on everyone's list of the best, and one of the items is pho.

He goes to Korea, and tries to eat dog. He says he's argued many times that there's no rational reason not to eat dog. It's no worse than eating chickens or cows. (I might point out that farmers DON'T NAME the animals they are going to slaughter or send to market.) But he really has trouble dipping a spoon in and starting to sip the soup, when all of a sudden he gets hit by this odor. It smells like wet dog. He dashes out of the restaurant just in time to retch outdoors.

But he talked about the magnificent Laotian foods, saying it was different there. When he returned from Laos, he was like a missionary, trying to convince people how great Laos was, unlike any of the other places he went.

One of the other places he went was a shore community in Spain. They don't speak Catalan there, but a form of Celtic. There's a form of shellfish there that is exceptionally good.

And in the last chapter, he visits Sicily. He's always heard these stories about the Mafia, seen the movies, read the books, and wants to see for himself. He ends up liking the food, and disabusing himself of all the ideas he had about the Mafia.

It is so nice to have time to read. Even more, it's so nice to be able to relax and sleep. I still can't sleep 8 hours straight, but I can turn off the ringer on the phone and let the machine catch calls, and rest easy. Luxury!

You're asking about "Input format". The "Input format" lets you choose how Drupal handles your comments. Since I'm listed as a moderator, I get a choice between "Filtered HTML", "PHP code", "Full HTML" and "WikiText". You're probably listed as a registered user, and I think you only get a choice between Filtered and Full HTML. The difference is that you can use *some* HTML codes in "Filtered HTML", while I can use *ALL* HTML as "Full HTML", such as using ordered and unordered lists. I've never used the PHP or Wiki settings.

For most most people, "Filtered HTML" works best. Originally, it just added line and paragraph breaks, and a few tags like bold, italic, and strikethrough. Since so many Domania people know HTML, I ended up adding more tags to the Filtered HTML setting.

I wish I were insane

Sanity is just so boring

Paul I wrote a long post in answer to yours but something happened and it went away, but as usual it didn't really say much. Have no more posting in me right now. Enjoy your leisure!

mike

That's happened several times to me. I keep forgetting that you have to click *twice* to submit. Initially, you only get a button to preview your post. Then you get two buttons - both preview and post. You can edit all you want, if you keep pressing preview, but once you hit post, then it goes up.

But I forget, press the preview button, and forget that I haven't yet posted. Arrrgh.

Went to the doc this morning for a splinter in the foot - foot injuries are considered very worrisome for diabetics. The doctor was one I'd never met before. He goes to Iraq three times a year, he says, not as part of any group, but just as himself, to do healing in the northeast? Kurdish area. He says he never asked permission of the U.S. gummint, just the Iraqi one, and he doesn't feel like it's exceptionally hazardous where he is.

That medical practice is up near Denver/Akron, near the Mennonite Central Committee. I'm not Mennonite, but I admire the way they engage in charity. Most churches have the "sing a hymn, then we feed you," as a way of bringing skid row bums to Christ. Their feeling is that you don't feed someone to get him to accept Christ, you feed him because he's hungry. And that it's not really charity if they know who's giving the aid. They try to be as anonymous as possible in their giving.

They put together kits in 5-gallon buckets, that consist of
* 4 bars bath soap (110-140g / 4-5oz, in wrappers)
* 1 plastic bottle shampoo (380-710ml / 13-24oz; place bottle in a resealable plastic bag)
* 10 cups powdered laundry detergent (double bag in 4 liter / 1 gallon resealable plastic bags)
* 1 squeeze-tube toothpaste (minimum 130ml / 6oz; leave in box)
* 4 adult-size toothbrushes (leave in packaging)
* 4 new bath towels (medium weight, dark color)
* 1 hairbrush (remove packaging)
* 1 comb (20cm / 8")
* 1 fingernail clipper
* 1 box adhesive bandages (minimum 40, assorted)
* 1 package sanitary pads (18-24 thin maxi or ultra thin)

They've found that the 5-gallon buckets are incredibly useful to refugees. Some people donate one or more buckets of contents, and some people donate 20 nail clippers, or whatever they want to donate. They have a reputation for being first on the spot when there's a disaster, and their buckets seem to prove very useful, no matter where they go. A lot of other aid organizations, these days, funnel their support through the MCC because they are so well organized.

And like I said, I'm not a mennonite, but I support them from time to time. The Red Cross doesn't get a cent from me these days....

Anyhow, the MCC is on my list of heroes, and the doctor I met this morning is on my list, too. A lot of people made jokes about "a thousand points of light" when Bush the elder spoke of them. I never saw him become one of those points, but there are WAY more than a thousand of them. This world is FULL of heroes, if only you keep your eyes open.

And that includes a number of Domania members. I'd tell you what I know, but as they say, if it's not anonymous, it's not really charity, and I wouldn't want to embarass them by telling stories that I accidently uncovered....

Now, if I remember to click twice, I need to go down and make some beef and noodles for supper. Boil the flinders out of shank meat, then cook kluski (thick polish egg noodles) in the shank broth, and serve that atop mashed potatoes made from *real* taters, skins and all. I don't think that qualifies as the perfect comfort food, but it comes AWFULLY close....

I wish I were insane

Sanity is just so boring

You sound wonderful! Maybe more rested, relaxed, or relieved :) So good to see you posting. Glad things are looking up... except for the bathroom wall.


I just cant understand how so many people can put strange, gross sounding stuff in their mouth and actually swallow it! I cant eat seafood because most of it has a gristly texture and squeaks when you chew it no matter how good the butter dip is. Although alligator tail is very good if cooked properly. Even living in West Texas I couldnt bring myself to eat crawfish.. ha! thats just a fancy name for crawdads that are fishbait in Oklahoma. So.. ok I'm an Okie redneck. But i did live in West Texas for 20 years :)


Your Doctor sounds like a hero to me and the MCC as well. If people would keep their eyes and ears alert they might find that one their neighbors is a hero too.


Have a good day all... Lioness

Lioness

In the first chapter of that book, he goes fishing for elvers in the Severn river. When eels get big, they head out to sea, nobody knows where, and then a bunch of baby elvers returns later. They can't breed eels, and they are much in demand, so the elvers they catch are sold to farms around the world who raise the eels for eating. They can get 1000 euros - that's about $1500 - for a kilo - that's about 2.2 pounds - of the elvers, so nobody eats the elvers in the UK, and competition is fierce for places to net the elvers; people get killed.

Fifty years ago, really poor people would eat the elvers, and there was a great supply of them.

But if you look back in history, there were laws enacted in the US in the 1700s and early 1800s because wardens were being cruel to prisoners, feeding them lobster 3, 4, or even 5 nights a week. The laws made the wardens give them decent food instead.

One of the recurring themes in the book is tripe. When I was young, farmers could slaughter a cow himself, and sell a half or a quarter or more to a neighbor. They passed a law maybe 40 years ago saying that you couldn't sell beef (and other meats, I assume) unless it had been slaughtered in a government-inspected slaughterhouse. That meant that if your cow got on the road and was hit by a car, or she was struck by lightning, you can't sell the meat. Farmers stopped doing their own butchering once the abbattoirs got their hands on the cattle, but when I was little, we butchered on the kitchen table.

There are lots of things you might consider yucky that I grew up eating, and thinking were pretty tasty. Fried brain sandwiches were always a treat, and cracklin's. I never developed a taste for beef tongue, but Mom made tripe soup that was delicious. I don't remember it well enough, and neither do my siblings, other than it was good. A cow has four stomachs, and consequently, there are four types of tripe, and I don't know which kind(s) she used. Tripe is *very* chewy. Some mexican restaurants serve menudo, which is a tripe soup, but it's not the tripe soup that Mom made. Hers was more like vegetable soup, as I recall, and not spicy.

I didn't know Camilla Parker-Bowles had any kids, but Tom is a pretty good writer. He doesn't act like he's anyone special. It's like he figures he knows some things that his readers don't, and they know things that he doesn't, and he seems to really like most of the people who he meets in his travels. I've never heard much good about Camilla, and I suppose that's because everyone was in love with Diana, but you know, even if she isn't very pretty, Charles found her to be more appealing, and if she raised a kid like Tom, she must be a pretty nice person.

It's sorta like, I've talked to you a lot, Lioness, and recently I've talked a lot on the phone to your sister. Even though neither of you has ever said a word about your parents, though, I have a feeling that I'd *really* like them. The acorn doesn't fall from the tree. If you two have kids, I bet they're so proud of them, that you almost burst.

I wish I were insane

Sanity is just so boring

hope this goes thru ok....thought i try here seeing i am not yet approved to new forum....however before knowing Paul resigned I automatically paid via paypal for another 6 months...i hope it went wherever it was supposed to go....did this on 3/14/08

Thanks!
Jan

I've asked PayPal to issue a refund to you. That should give you a balance in your account, and you can use it to pay Bert.

If you pay with a credit card, you have to pay to zbox@zboxhosting.com, and PayPal takes a cut of the money. However, if you pay with money that's already in your PayPal account (such as a refund), you can send the money to Roxy's personal PayPal account and PayPal does that for free.

First time I've looked at that PayPal account in a while. It's depressing. My wife and my doctor are happy about the changes in my health - they're minor changes, but in the right direction - but I really miss everyone.

pd