I love working without a net, if only because falling on my ass is good for my humility. Mark’s too nice to tell you, but there was a little SNAFU with my automated system for seamlessly transitioning from http://rmfo-blogs.com/rumorsage/ to http://foolishsage.com/. Karyn had approached me a little over a week ago about her plans, and we’d set up most everything. Mark didn’t know it at all, but he’s actually been working out of the new FS.c database for a week. I had a nice little shell script set up: it made the necessary database changes inside WordPress to work correctly, and then it triggered some .htaccess redirect action that would seamlessly move people from the old URL to the new one. [Go 'head ... try it out. ]

There was only one issue: in an effort to hide FS.c from Google’s prying eyes, I’d moved wp-config.php to wp-config-moved.php. No big deal, but … I’d forgotten to include that move in the shell script-fu. [Actually, I would have needed a second shell script, but anyway.] So, come 6:30 p.m. Saturday night, I pull out my Treo to check FS.c and make sure that all went well. I saw WordPress’s “I can’t see your database” error, and I began to panic.

After trying a couple different things with cPanel—forgetting that cPanel’s File Manager is written to use frames; my Treo never stood a chance—I sought Google’s help. “There’s got to be an SSH client for the Treo!” And there is: TuSSH will work on a Treo to give you that in-a-pinch SSH access. I then held my breath and downloaded it, not knowing if Treos were smart enough to install packages downloaded through its on-board browser. [Hey, I'd never had to do it before!] A minute or so later, and I was happy-dancing; another minute later, and all was fixed.

The lesson, as always, is that I’m never as clever as I think I am.