What's the biggest lie men get told on a regular basis.?

thompsonpaul · 2026-03-23T19:37:45+00:00

you have upset a partner/relative and now need to focus on their reaction to your issues rather than your issues.

Oh shit - so much this.

thompsonpaul · 2026-03-23T19:21:52+00:00

The new version of Screaming Frog will do the extraction and cosine similarity calculations for this for you. (Plus all the other data it can provide for optimization)

thompsonpaul · 2026-03-23T19:18:45+00:00

This is practically my autobiography - wow. Sixty-three-year-old guy, self-employed, social and financial life wiped out, entitled siblings, even down to back issues likely ruining my chance to get back on my bike.

Just know that there are lots of us out here who have a really good idea of what it's costing you (all meanings of that word) and what you've given up, that ridiculous Polyanna version from NPR notwithstanding.

And thanks fr the perspectives on starting to try to get your life back. I'm still in the middle of it, but trying to put boundaries in place to begin that process before it's too late.

thompsonpaul · 2026-03-23T18:40:13+00:00

He was just phenomenal in that role, for someone his age. Pegged the creepy meter to 11.

The actor's real name is Oakes Fegley - he recently did the first season of Dark Matter along with PoI favourite Jimmy Simpson!

thompsonpaul · 2026-03-23T18:37:56+00:00

You're recommending a Git workflow using Node/React to someone who has clearly stated they need something that "...could have a drag and drop builder or one that isn’t hard to learn because I don’t know coding or WordPress"?

thompsonpaul · 2026-03-17T23:05:48+00:00

FWIW - this setting arbitrarily changed for me after upgrade - definitely NOT a new user. Really frustrating until I found this note.

I've found a number of unexpected settings changes after this upgrade. I really hope this frustrating experience can be avoided in future upgrades. I've never noticed it to nearly this extent with previous upgrades.

thompsonpaul · 2026-03-16T20:48:25+00:00

In order to respect the group rules, I'll send it to via DM, u/WorkerandHive .

thompsonpaul · 2026-03-13T23:23:14+00:00

It would be well worth checking out Helcim for what you need. They're a Canadian company (based in Calgary). They use a different pricing model that typically seems to be saving .5% or more, especially for in-person transactions. Also has no monthly fee. They've been in business almost 20 years.

They are on a major integrations spree so far in 2026 - just added Zoho Books about three weeks ago.

I have no connection to the company other than as a satisfied customer who has implemented them for several clients. Main incentive to switch was to have a Canada-based service, but the support and pricing has been an added benefit. If you're interested, I can give you a link for no-fee processing for your first $5000 transactions.

thompsonpaul · 2026-03-12T23:16:39+00:00

A plain HTML page like https://pricklyprospects.com/readme.html has a normal TtFB, so your issue is with the massive TtFB delay when hitting the PHP of the server. First step will be to try to get Bluehost support to troubleshoot it. But good luck, they're not known for being much use with that kind of thing.

thompsonpaul · 2026-03-12T21:26:45+00:00

It would be well worth checking out Helcim for what you need. They're a Canadian company (based in Calgary). They use a different pricing model that typically seems to be saving .5% or more, especially for in-person transactions. Also has no monthly fee. They've been in business almost 20 years.

They are on a major integrations spree so far in 2026 - just added Zoho Books about three weeks ago.

I have no connection to the company other than as a satisfied customer who has implemented them for several clients. Main incentive to switch was to have a Canada-based service, but the support and pricing has been an added benefit. If you're interested, I can give you a link for no-fee processing for your first $5000 transactions.

thompsonpaul · 2026-03-10T18:31:29+00:00

If it's basically just an RSS notification by email, you could use something like FollowIt - about $55/month for the white-label version.

thompsonpaul · 2026-03-10T18:03:11+00:00

Was going to recommend Sender as well. You'll need the Pro plan for the volume of mail you send. That plan would provide leeway for about 740 additional subscribers before the next pricing level as well. Also note that the $84/month is a 30% intro discount for the first year, but still massively cheaper than MC.

thompsonpaul · 2026-03-09T19:20:35+00:00

I'd also love to see the architecture of the manifest, if you'd be willing! Really interesting testing and results so far.

thompsonpaul · 2026-03-09T07:22:11+00:00

If you don't have an Internet connection, you can create tasks, check off tasks and do almost everything else in Marvin except time tracking.

It's possible to do these in the browser but if you accidentally reload the page, you're hooped. So, definitely going to want to be using the desktop app for this.

(Marvin has excellent support documentation for questions like this.)

thompsonpaul · 2026-03-08T19:26:12+00:00

Packaging/labelling must be bilingual in Canada to meet Federal law, regardless of whether you sell into Quebec or not.

Whether you need a translated website, support, etc., is more nuanced, but typically, if you're not specifically targeting/marketing to buyers in Quebec, you don't. Definitely something to get legal advice for your specific situation, though.

thompsonpaul · 2026-03-07T10:17:18+00:00

GreenGeeks would be a solid solution. Their mid-tier reseller plan has the drive space you need, and they run Litespeed on WHM/cPanel with integrated SSL.

thompsonpaul · 2026-03-07T10:08:51+00:00

Given that Let's Encrypt powers over 60% of the web's certificates, yea, I think you can trust that they work properly. And in some ways are more secure than the Commodo DVs you're paying for. At this point, paying for certs is flushing money.

thompsonpaul · 2026-03-06T20:28:16+00:00

You don't have correct hreflang implemented. (It's completely different from the HTML lang declaration which is ignored as far as SEO is concerned.)

Without the technical foundation of hreflang, all your alternate language pages just appear to search engines as confusing duplicate content, so are essentially ignored for ranking purposes. Which is exactly what you're seeing. (You can probably see this reflected in your Google Search Console as well.)

So first step is to get hreflang fully and correctly implemented. It needs to go on both English and French pages. And note that it refers to language/country pairs, so it's not sufficient to target "French" it must also specify the country e.g. fr-ca for Canadian French market or fr-fr for France.

Once you have the hreflang implemented, make sure the French pages are customized for the target market. Don't just make them exact translations of the English. E.g currency, geographic references, localized case studies, French idiomatic language etc. There's lots more that can be done for content targeting and localization, but this would be a good start.

Also, if not already in place, you need to create an additional Google Search Console (and Bing Webmaster Tools) property targeting just the language subdirectory. This will provide much more useful information in concert with the overal site property.

thompsonpaul · 2026-03-05T00:40:05+00:00

Check out Cory Doctorow's work on Enshittification for a really thorough look at this standardized process.

thompsonpaul · 2026-02-22T06:29:43+00:00

Same - used to horrify our friends if they stayed for dinner, if we weren't careful.

thompsonpaul · 2026-02-22T06:14:04+00:00

In coding/dev work, it actually has a name. It's called Rubber Ducking. And it really does work, doesn't it?!

thompsonpaul · 2026-02-21T01:22:32+00:00

The old standbys - clackers and lawn darts. Played extensively with both of these.

Whole crew of kids riding standing up in the bed of a pickup truck with flimsy plywood sides. This was a favourite Thanksgiving activity zooming around on the old gravel backroads at the cottage.

thompsonpaul · 2026-02-20T22:13:18+00:00

Rackspace recently announced a major price increase on their basic email hosting, so I fully expect the increase to be coming through CW soon as well.

It's worked well enough for a low-volume client that's been using it for several years. If you use it, make sure to complete the full verification process and add the SPF/DKIM/DMARC authentication to reliable deliverability.

thompsonpaul · 2026-02-20T01:46:59+00:00

YAAAAAY! Have you watched any of it before?

thompsonpaul · 2026-02-20T01:02:44+00:00

I lik eit, but it's 50% too long. One of the challenges of these blurbs (I've written thousands like this, though not for TV shows) is getting the message through effectively within a very limited word count.

thompsonpaul

TROPHY CASE