I went to the help desk at my blog host, HostGator, to find out why I couldn’t log on to LTG, nor could my readers. Here’s the highlights from that encounter:
Agent: Hello John Welcome to HostGator! This is Aries, your Business Consultant. How can I help you today?
Me: I can’t access my webpage.
Agent: Yes, I’ll be happy to check your account and see what options we have to help. Let me pull up your account first
Agent: It shows that your website requires a premium SSL to fully encrypt and verify your website. We can add a premium Single Domain SSL to your website MCCRAREY.COM for only $39.96 for 1 year
Me: I already purchased the premium version of SiteLock.
Agent: SiteLock is for protection against malware. The SSL certificate is for the encryption and verification of the data on your website. The error that you are currently seeing right now is not because of malware. It’s the lack of encryption provided by an SSL
Me: And as my blog host, Hostgator can’t restore access to my website?
Agent: Alright. Let me transfer you over to our Support team for further assistance with this. Please stay on the chat. Thank you
Agent: Hello. I’m Krithika. Welcome to Live Chat. I’ll definitely assist you with today.
Me: (I explained the issue again.)
Agent: that is SSL error, not malware. did you configure SSL in sitelock?
Me: I’m totally ignorant when it comes to technology.
Agent: you are refering to this website mccrarey.com only right?
Me: Yes, that is my only website.
Agent: Okay. Please give me 4-5 minutes of hold
Me: Okay, thanks for your help.
Agent: Most welcome. Thank you for holding. I have uploaded SSL certificate to sitelock dashboard. please give it 15-20 minutes and check, website should be working
And it worked! Mostly. I still have this when I visit the site:
Oh, well. I’ll work on that later. Let’s get to the good stuff. Here’s the story of Day 2 in the lovely city of Da Nang:
Oh, and Kevin, I met this guy in the hotel lobby:
We met up with fellow travelers Jeff and Davina in the afternoon and took a stroll down the beach road to a place we had spotted the previous day.
We enjoyed our lunch and, as time permits, might visit again. After eating, Jeff suggested we check out the September 2 Memorial. Called a Grab car to take us to the other side of the river, and off we went.
After a 6K stroll, we grabbed a Grab ride back to the hotel.
We regrouped later and went up to the pool bar on the 22nd floor for some before-dinner beverages.
We decided to walk to a restaurant Jeff and Davina had spotted on a previous visit. I enjoy getting off the busy boulevards and onto the backstreets and seeing new places.
After dinner, Jeff and Davina went for a massage, and Swan and I headed for the beach.
We chatted a bit with our waitress and, despite the language barrier, came to understand that this is low season for tourism here, “too cold,” she said. She also confirmed that the tide is higher than it is in the summer, reducing the beach space.
Then, a short stroll back to our hotel, and day two of our trip was complete.
Still in August 2016 of the LTG archives, and in this post, I shared the photos from an evening out with my new girlfriend, Eun Oke. I cooked dinner for her, then we did an Itaewon bar crawl. You can’t have an ending without a beginning.
Let’s see some more of Da Nang in today’s YouTube video. I’ll be seeing all of this and more before the trip is through.
And now let’s get this out of the way:
So, now it’s time to get on with day three of the vacay. Going to introduce Jeff to his first banh mi sandwich for lunch. Later, we plan on taking a cruise on the Han River (no, not that one in Seoul). After that, we’ll see. Check back here tomorrow if you are curious.
Sorry to read about your blog-related travails.
Buddha ain’t got nothin’ on me!
That’s who Koreans call Podae-sunim (포대 스님 Podae-sunim, where “sunim” means “monk” or “brother”). He’s an incarnation of Maitreya Bodhisattva (Bodhisattva of the future, called Mireuk-bosal/미륵보살 in Korean). A buddy of mine calls this “happy Buddha,” who represents compassion and abundance, “Happy Charlie.”
In Mahayana Buddhism, where everything is infused with buddha-nature (even the unwise, drunken beer-drinkers and the fat assholes with heart failure), I suppose you could loosely call Podae “a Buddha,” but he’d be a Buddha in the same way that you or I or your dogs are Buddhas—we are all expressions of buddha-nature.
this large and loud group playing that game, the name of which I don’t recall…it’s sort of like soccer, I think
Looks like foosball to me.
I cooked dinner for her, then we did an Itaewon bar crawl. You can’t have an ending without a beginning. [ … ] She was nice when sober.
So you could have minimized your problems with NO BAR CRAWLS.
Yeah, that comma after wife isn’t funny.
That entire meme is rife with retarded errors. Stealing it for Substack.
I got that same error screen when I tried to leave you a message about none of the pictures were showing in your post a couple of days ago. Everything seems fine now though. Looks like we should have left that country alone back in 1955 .
“…this large and loud group playing that game, the name of which I don’t recall…it’s sort of like soccer, I think”
“Looks like foosball to me.”
I’m guessing I missed your sarcasm here.
Such an awesome place. Any solid Mex restaurants in your sights?
Trapper, I’ve seen a couple but haven’t tried them yet. My travel mates ate at a place called Adobo and said it was outstanding.
Kevin, nope, just couldn’t remember foosball—more evidence of my dying brain.
Terry, glad you stuck around. I must say, there is no communist vibe here at all. And there’s no denying that things appear to be functioning better than in many Western nations. Kudos to the Vietnamese people!
Kevin, I know about Buddhism about as much as I do punctuation. The signage above that Buddha statue I posted says this:
Yeah, foosball was the word I was looking for.
Regarding Eun Oke and drinking, there was no stopping her. That bar crawl night was before I knew how she wouldn’t stop once she started. And if I’M saying someone has a drinking problem, you know it’s gotta be bad.
Glad I could contribute to your Substack work, especially when I’m not the bad example.
Yeah, “Laughing Buddha” is a label I see often, and it’s a bunch of tourist-marketing crap. “Laughing Buddha” is also the reason so many Westerners think the Buddha himself was fat. According to legend/tradition, he started out as a hardcore ascetic before turning to a more “middle way” path of disciplined eating. One scripture has the Buddha reminiscing about the ascetic he used to be, saying that, at one point, he could touch his belly and feel his spine. Probably legend, but I’ve seen video of yogis who do some crazy shit with their bodies, all through extreme self-discipline. There’s a video of Arnold Schwarzenegger doing the yogic trick of sucking in his belly to look super-thin, what bodybuilders call the “vacuum pose” (see Arnold here.).
Kevin, as I say, my knowledge of Buddhism and its teachings is close to nil. Even in Korea, all the Buddhas at the temples I visited had the big belly with discoloration from people spinning their fingers in the navel.
Interesting. Let me help you: here are pics of regular Buddha statues, and here are pics of starving-Buddha statues. Here, meanwhile, are pics of Podae-daesa.
Kevin, that was fascinating. Buddha sure does get conveyed in all shapes and sizes, but I’ve never seen the starving version before. Thanks for the links!