Alphabet Soup 28/365, originally uploaded by Talia Twilight Photography.
SQL is short for squirrel, yes?
And DNS is text-talk for donuts.
And CNAME is….well, I really don’t friggin’ know.
I’m not used to be totally and utterly out of my depth. Jack of all trades, master of none, right? That’s me, of a sort. I read a lot, I have a very good memory for what I see and hear, I’m really good at context clues.
All of these things have stood me in good stead for most of my life. I can build a jumbo media cabinet with doors and hinges. I installed a hardwood floor. I can sew enough to mend most of my own clothes or throw together a costume. I know what the infield fly rule is in baseball.
But last week, while trying to activate my web hosting package so that an actual website can live there, I just about drowned in acronyms.
It started easily enough. “Enter credit card.” I can so do that. Amazon.com, ridiculous-crap-I-dont-need.com and chocolate-stuff-that-makes-you-happy.com have all prepared me well for this part of the transaction.
But then somehow I didn’t have my domain name (which I have already registered with this service) and the hosting package that I wanted (at the same service) communicating. In that desperate, romantic sense. They were aloof. Ignoring each other. In denial about the others needs. This was going to be a problem for me as I REALLY wanted the website I just spend a rather large sum of money on to actually live at the domain name I purchased specifically as the name of the business. I just had to get these crazy kids together.
I did, eventually. It took some random clicking, and I may or may not have also registered a site to sell unmatched socks in the Czech Republic. I’ll deal with that another time.
Then later, I wanted to register my site with Google. That seems like a good idea, right? That Google know about my website? I think that sits up there with sound business thinking like, “get a phone,” and “remember to send bills for services rendered.”
But Google, in their uptight way, wanted to make sure that I OWNED the domain name in question. Because people are running amok trying to register other people’s domain names? Apparently there are games out there I just don’t get.
To prove that I own the domain name I want to register, I had to create a CNAME and point it to a specific DNS of Google’s making. Or, maybe I had to create a DNS and point it at a CNAME. Or it’s possible that I was supposed to create a DSM and NNAE it to a pointer. Or maybe I was supposed to buy a pointer and hunt duncy names with it.
I couldn’t figure this out.
I read the wiki on the hosting site.
I read pages at Google.
I read more words that I didn’t understand than I have since the last time I tried to read Madame Bovary in the original French. (Spoiler alert – it sucks in the original French too.)
And eventually my eyeballs fell out and rolled across the carpet.
I sent a plaintive email to my web developer apologizing for not being able to fulfill the quest that Google wanted to send me on. She sent back a kind reply that said basically, “There-there, poser geek-girl. I will deal with Big, Bad Google on your behalf.” (Only a lot nicer than that.)
The only comfort I could find was in knowing that this what a normal person feels like in a hospital.
I may not speak Web, but I sure as hell speak health care.
And I’ll translate for you whenever you want.
