DragonBlog

Forward to the new site

The blog has moved to a new program. Currently, this page is supposed to redirect to http://www.rayndragon.com/wordpress. If you are not redirected after five seconds, please use the link in this post. Update your bookmark to read http://www.rayndragon.com and it should be fine, as the new program will eventually be sitting there instead, and that is where the redirect is working from.

Please excuse the dust as we are in transition. Thanks!

PS - if none of that made any sense to you, then just click here to get to the real stuff already.

Coming Soon!

I'm finally working on getting this blog back in order. I've got a test site in progress, which will move to this spot once I figure all the new software out...

Feel free to check it out:

http://www.rayndragon.com/b2eblog/

Enjoy!

Been Busy...

Sorry no posts lately. I've been super busy getting finished up on a web project. I've determined, in the process, that I won't necessarily be upgrading to the newest version of Movable Type anytime soon. Too many things it's not doing that there aren't the plugins for yet. And some things it's doing that I don't want it to. Like, they seem to think it's okay for their notification system to send one e-mail to me for every twenty it sends out for me. I get enough spam. Okay, well I don't actually use email notifications for this blog, but it came into play for the one I've been setting up. As it is, I've created a dump account for it to send from. But I'm using an older version of MT so that I can make use of the notifier plugin instead of the piss-poor notification setup MT has integrated. Bah.

Almost makes a girl want to go to WordPress instead. Almost. I may just have to check in on them and see if they fixed the main flaw that had prevented me from switching before - there was no way to export entries!!! There was not a simple way to back up just the blog. I had to back up the database such instead. Recovery would have involved a lot more learning of stuff I didn't really need to know. Pffft. MT, however, lets me just dump to a file for the entries that I can reload into a new installation. In the end, that's why I stayed back when I evaluated Wordpress. But that was back when MT stopped being completely free... Who knows.

Ironic that I think of looking into WP again just after I install someone with MT eh? Yeah. But one tends to work with what one knows, you know?

Yeah, I know. I'm babbling now. My brain is a bit fried from making MT, HTML, CSS, etc, all play nicely together. It's those damned end quotation marks and semicolons that get you. Or the occasional unclosed <div> that will screw everything to hell in a virtual handbasket.

But it's done. All those little divs and dots have been whipped into shape! Yay me!

More on other stuff later. Or tomorrow. Or at least soon anyway.

Current Mood: accomplished

Down to a reasonable level!

Well folks, I finally broke down and did the dirty deed - turned on Spam Assassin on my server to cut down on the 100-some-odd spam e-mails I was getting per day. So... If I don't respond to an e-mail - it's possible you got filtered out! I don't know how strongly it filters, to be honest, but so far I think I've gotten an average of about 5 or 6 spam messages per day now, mostly coming in from other e-mail addresses I haven't turned it on for yet. That just gave me back something like 10 minutes of my life each day. Yay me!

I've also decided I do NOT like GoDaddy.com for web hosting. Unless you are willing to pay the excruciating $88 per month for dedicated hosting - you cannot install Movable Type on their servers. Bugger that! The client I'm working on a blog for right now signed up for GoDaddy. I didn't realize that a hosting/domain company as popular as they are would be so restrictive. I think they just want people to put up simple sites, preferably using their little program instead. Bah! No fun at all. Or, maybe I've just been spoiled rotten by the good folks at Cleverdot.com. They may have the occasional glitches in the system, but they do a great job and give me lots of tools to work with.

I swear though, they should seriously give me kickbacks for all the times I've plugged them on this blog or with other people... LOL. Then again, if they keep bumping up my server space and upgrading stuff every so often - I'm happy.

In other news, I picked up a Kodak EASYSHARE Photo Printer 300 on eBay, which arrived yesterday. This little jobber rocks. I've already picked up more paper and such for it so I can print more, although it looks like I'll get a better deal buying online in the future. I am VERY pleased with the output on this little printer, and have already whipped up wallets and desk photos of the kids for Brian and I.

I'm using this photo of Kayla, from the end of July:

Yeah, I know. She's cute. I added this photo to the gallery too, so you can gaze at her cuteness in large-sized bliss, and let her cuteness own you. 'Cause you know she's totally got us wrapped around those little fingers of hers already. I'm just working on increasing her fan base. *grin*

Meanwhile, more stuff to do, so that's all for now.

Enjoy!

Current Mood: enthralled

Technical Problems

Strange things are happening on the blog here. The image in the last entry was somehow showing super-sized in Internet Explorer, despite the fact that it looked fine in Opera and Mozilla? Instead of a percentage, I gave it a set width and now the entries that came before it seem to have dropped off the page? I have to go to class now, but I'll try and figure it all out later. You can still use the links to "recent entries" on the left sidebar to get to the other entries that would normally be showing on the page if you're catching up...

Later!

Current Mood: confused

Tedious Tasks...

I put up a post yesterday, over on Quick Shtick Writing, that I was in the process of shutting down commenting and trackbacks for all but the most recent entries into the current story. I'm still working on it. Despite his "guru" status around here when it comes to telling me how to handle the databases for the blogs, thus making the deletion of spam easier (usually), Brian could not help me find a way to mass change the database all at once. I wanted to just change some number settings that tell the program what it needs to know, but it turns out we can really only figure out how to do it one entry at a time. Although I can view them in batches of 30, so it's not nearly as difficult as what I'd have to do if I used the Movable Type program to do it instead of manipulating the database directly.

Still, I spent about two or three hours total today changing numbers and I still haven't finished. I think I've passed the halfway point, but I've still got some of the entries to change. I also still need to rebuild all the files to update the new information. While I won't finish the database work tonight (or I'll bloody well go MAD!!!), I will do the rebuild so that new comments can't pop up on the entries I've already changed. *sigh* What a whole lot of work because some asshole keeps dropping individual spam comments for sex sites and such with about eight or so different IP addresses onto our writing site. It's people like that that take some of the joy out of blogging for me. It's bad enough keeping up with the occasional spam influx on this blog, but QSW is set up to be four different blogs that all run off the same database. If I change one file, I have to rebuild all four blogs to reflect the change. That sucks, and I'm sick of doing it. From now on I'll only have 7 or so entries that could possibly have spam on them and only one blog that would require rebuilding because I won't need to change the files anymore. So I'm doing all this work now to save me work later on at least. I keep reminding myself of that.

In other news, the first of my jewelry classes ends on the 14th of December. I have to have all my work for the class finished and ready to present by then, so I'm going to need to work my butt off to get it done. The teacher has already given me some ideas on what to do to fix up the band ring I was having trouble with, and I've almost got one of my casting projects done. I have an entire other casting project (make it in wax, trap it in plaster, burn the wax out in a kiln, and shoot molten metal into it = casting project for those who aren't in the know) that I've only barely started. I need to get it finished and cast so I have time to clean it up! Eeek! I see myself as needing to stay after class at least one of the two days next week. I'm also hoping to use some time at home to do what I can outside of class. Wish me luck! I'm on a deadline now.

Yesterday I realized halfway to my doctor's appointment that I was driving on a flat tire. Since the appointment was time sensitive (I'd taken the prep drink for a glucose test to see if I've got the gestational diabetes this pregnancy like I did last time) I went the rest of the way there and called roadside assistance afterwards. We've been paying for that on our insurance for some time now, and it's the first time I've ever used it. Normally I don't wuss out and can change a damned tire on my own, but I was cold, pregnant and had my cranky (no nap!) two-year-old in tow so I was NOT about to try and deal with that situation on my own. With Brian being at a conference out of state for the day, I wasn't going to be able to get him to come bail my butt out, so I finally used the roadside assistance. They were nice, but it did take a bit of time both on hold on the phone and then waiting for the guy to come help me. I was just glad my spare was still in decent shape and the guy got me out of there quick. The receptionist at the hospital where my OB-GYN's office is at was really nice too, and let me use the information phone to place the call and have them call me back. She also let me know when she saw the tow truck pull up out front. Thanks!!!

I managed to get home just in time, as Jareth and I were having my sister-in-law, Lindsay over for dinner. Originally, she'd been scheduled to babysit for me because I was supposed to have had class, but since I'd switched schedules to the day class I didn't need babysitting anymore. However, with Brian still away for the day and evening (he didn't get in until late last night), I thought it would be fun if she still joined us for dinner and hung out for a while. I had a great time and we got a chance to chat a little, catching up on this and that. It was cool - something I don't get to do as often with her. She also helped us continue to make a dent in the turkey leftovers. Tomorrow - a week after Thanksgiving - we will FINALLY be done with them. We've already decided that if there happens to be anything left after dinner - it goes in the garbage as it probably shouldn't be eaten anymore beyond that. I think we've had quite enough turkey to last us for a while in this household. Next time I'm getting the little bird instead, or doing something entirely different. Sheesh!

Tomorrow is another jam-packed day, and I'm somehow still running after only getting about 3 hours of sleep last night. So I think I'll stop off here and try to head to bed early.

G'night!

Current Mood: busy

Cobweb time...

Well, since my health seems to be keeping me mostly home (not that my budget can afford for me to go out anyway at the moment) and I have absolutely no inclination to do much in the way of housework while I feel crappy, I've started working on cleaning out the blogroll on my sidebar. At some point I need to take some of those links and drop them into the site itself under different categories, as they aren't blogs at all. I'm only on "D" so far, and I've found four blogs that have either gone missing or the last post was months ago stating that they weren't going to blog anymore.

It's really tough to delete stuff, but I keep adding blogs and I don't want it to scroll down for forever with blogs I don't have time to read. One rule of thumb lately - if it doesn't have RSS, it's unlikely I stay current on it. And even that doesn't always work. I have some in RSS feed that I'm more than 100 posts behind on! I just don't have time to read all the good blogs out there, so I need to limit myself to just a few. Mostly funny ones. Or honest, down-to-earth ones. There's a few that are wonderful writers but they just seem too wordy in the end. Not that I can really say much about that. Pot? Meet kettle.

On that note, I'll just stop rambling for now.

G'night!

Current Mood: gloomy

Fresh Air...

It really is spring. Despite the fact that my little weatherbug thingy says it might snow tomorrow. Today I finally got to open the windows for a while and let some air into the house. Ahhhhhh.

*happy sigh*

Defiant as ever, my son and I have been running around the house barefoot today in celebration. We've taken turns wiggling and tickling toes and enjoying the buzz that comes from having the fresh spring air wafting through the house.

I've been having trouble getting up in the morning this week. Maybe this new infusion of spring will help. I did plan to blow off a bunch of stuff yesterday and relax and only did so for maybe an hour or so. Today, I made the same plan and haven't really done so at all yet. Instead, I'm working on a new web site relating to a group I'm involved in. Instead of kicking back and spending the day playing mindless computer games in between playing with my son, I spent that time typing away, making text and html work their magic together. Yeah... I kinda get into this stuff. I know - I'm a geek. At least I admit it.

If you want to watch as I fumble my way through tweaking and fixing things on the web site, you can go to www.paganparents.com to see it. Yesterday I got the domain name and put up a basic site to start with. Today I put up some beginning content and tweaked some stuff. I also figured out how to set up the bulletin board the server (cleverdot.com is who I use for all my pages) has available. I still haven't set up the stylesheet yet though, so the board doesn't remotely match the rest of the site in colors. I'll get there. At least it's up and functioning.

And, before I forget...

Would you rather:
1. be at the epicenter of a major earthquake OR in an area under severe tornado warning?
Tornado warning. Definitely. Cool storm to watch! Yeah!
2. have to replay your worst birthday over and over (like the movie groundhog day) OR your most embarrassing day in high school?
Most embarrassing day in high school. I can't remember anything in high school being so horrifically embarrassing that I couldn't survive it, but I have had some pretty miserable birthdays.
3. have hair that feels like coat hanger wires OR skin that feels like a cat's tongue?
Cat's tongue. That sounds a whole lot less painful. Eep!
4. have skin that always looks dirty, no matter how clean you are OR feet that smell like cooked cabbage?
You can mask the odor of smelly feet so I'll take that one over the dirty-looking skin. I'd just have to find a strong but nice-smelling perfume. Or soak them in tomato juice every morning. Something is bound to work.

That's all for today folks.

G'night!

All Done!

The web re-design on Quick Shtick Writing is done!

*runs around waving and cheering and making "whoop-whoop" noises*

I've reconfigured the archives, the rules, and the previous stories so that they all match with the main page. I even fixed up a smaller logo for the comments and trackback pop-up windows. And, much to my surprise, it all resizes properly so that it fits into the window. That is something I agonized over and couldn't get working properly with my personal blog here, so I'm rather proud that I manged to get it to work right on QSW. In fact, the whole thing, overall, looks exactly as I had wanted it. It was meant to be simple, not flashy, but hopefully somewhat striking. I like the way it looks, personally. The only thing I hadn't originally planned out was how the banner at the top would look, and that was something I played around with for a while and then tweaked once Brian had given me his input on it. That, especially, was something I wanted to be very simple-looking. For a page where we write out rough drafts, basically, I didn't exactly want some complicated banner at the top. The main focus for the site is what we're writing there - I didn't want to detract from that.

Feel free to comment on it. I'd be interested to know what other people think of it. I did a lot more in CSS this time around, and I learned a whole lot more about it in the process. I feel as if every time I make a new web design I learn tons more about it all. I'm almost ready to redesign this site again maybe. But not for a while yet. My poor brain needs a little vacation from CSS and HTML codes now.

I also did the first post of the new story for QSW today! Wheee! A whole new adventure to write! I'm definitely excited.

But, for the rest of this evening I think I want to veg out in the living room - far, far away from the computer. Movie night! Brian's off picking up the flicks, and I just ordered the pizza. We cancelled out on the in-laws tonight so we could get some stuff done. We did too - although with Brian having done a number on his back yesterday while shoveling, he didn't get everything he'd hoped to done. But some other stuff did get taken care of. Our kitchen table needs some repair, however, and that one got put on hold for now. But I still think we did enough to allow ourselves to kick back some this evening. Ahhhh.

G'night!

Success!

Yay! I finally got the stuff on Quick Shtick Writing looking right! I still need to set up the "rules" page again and link it on the other ones, and I also need to set up the comments so they match the rest of the site, but it's all lining up and looking the way I wanted it to! And now, with shnazzy new logo too! Whee!

Also today was our first "Kid Rock" class. They have a web site, I'll have to link it when I have more time. I think Jareth had a great time! He was a little overwhelmed by all the kids and commotion, but was smiling and wandering around amongst them by the time the class was over. I expect I'll see marked improvement in his socializing as he starts recognizing the other kids.

It seemed as if most of the moms already knew each other, so I didn't talk to many much myself yet, but then I was busy watching Jareth to make sure he was adjusting. I had to hold myself back from hovering over him, as I wanted him to get the chance to just "be one of the kids" for a while. There were a couple of points where he looked worried, but he didn't cry or get upset at all. I think he'll be really excited to see us go back again next week. He was definitely interested in the various toys and instruments that were passed around during the class, and I think he was having a hard time deciding whether he wanted to play with stuff or watch all the other people!

It did mess up his routine a bunch though, and he's really cranky tonight. We'll have to figure out how to work it out. He's not good at going down for a nap, so I think he didn't get enough of one today with all that excitement still bubbling inside him from this morning. He didn't talk at all while we were at the class, but he was jabbering away once we got home!

Now for the weekend, and trying to get some stuff done. Assuming we don't spend all our time plowing and shoveling snow off the drive, that is!

That's all for tonight though.

G'night!

Power Poofs...

So here I was, merrily working on the Quick Shtick Writing web site stuff, mainly diddling about with a banner for the top, when suddenly...

PFFFTwwwwwrmm.

And then...

mmwwwrrrrPT PTTT Ptttttwwwrmmm.

followed very shortly by...

"aaa - aaaa- waaaaah!"

followed by me sighing and getting up to hug my child who was all freaked out by the power going down then up then down again. Poof. No more power. For 45 minutes.

And, of course, I hadn't saved the stuff for Quick Shtick yet. I've sorta-kinda recreated it since then, but I didn't get into the html stuff yet. By the time the power came back I had my mind on other things, like the sinus headache that crept up on me when I tried to trick my body by skipping my sinus stuff this morning. I used to be able to get by on just one per day, but for some reason now I seem to need two. I think it's just this lousy weather, but I still don't want to be taking two - this is the one they wanted me to try and be off of for the pregnancy the last time. I still don't know what side effects it could have on a pregnancy, so I want to minimize how much of it I take.

Ugh. If I should happen to be pregnant already I don't want to muck up child #2's health after doing so well being extra healthy for child #1. However, I'm not going to stress over it too seriously, as that would probably be just as bad.

It's all good. breathe in. breathe out. aaaah.

Overall, today was frustrating. Tomorrow will be better. Friday might be best though. We've got this "Kid Rock" thing we get to start going to on Friday mornings. I signed up and ended up on the waiting list, but they called yesterday and we're in! Social time for Jareth and I, and music-related to boot! Couldn't be cooler. Next week there's a mom group thing on Wednesday night where I'll get to meet up with some local mommies. Maybe I'll make some actual "mommy friends" who have kids that mine can play with sometimes and that I can socialize with some too. That would be nice. I need some "mommy friends".

Time for Jareth to go to bed now though, so that's all from me tonight.

G'night!

A "review" of sorts...

Damn. I was going to just let it slide on by, and not bring it up on the blog. But Brian made mention that it pissed me off, so now I feel some measure of obligation to talk about it here.

The "it" being an e-mail I received regarding Quick Shtick Writing, before the most recent story had even come to completion. Instead of ranting about it, I'll just drop it down here and you can judge for yourself...

To say that your work is less than literary genius would be generous... Your work is highly unbelieveble and it seems as though you have no base for reality for your characters. Not to mention that the names that are used for characters are very unusual and add to the lack of credibility in the story. The paragraphs are poorly constructed and contain too many run-on sentences. The Context of the story is clearly not based on anything from this planet. Reading the story and glancing at your personal website causes me to believe that you are a lazy, overdramatic stay at home mother that spends too much time in front of the computer. Perhaps in order to broaden your storyline you should spend more time in the real world instead of a fantasyland you seem to have created. My husband works for a publishing company and he reviewed your work. His response is that you might as well do a good 25-30 rewrites, otherwise you might as well use it for toilet paper.

I guess that reader wasn't into the "fantasy" genre of stories, for one. For another, names like Mary and Lynna are not actually unusual at all, and can be found in most baby name books. A lot of the names I put into stories are either from baby name books, a large "who's who" book that was my granfather's (because he happened to be in it), or a derivative of one of the above. At this point I couldn't tell you which ones I named and which ones Brian did. But I suppose that doesn't matter, since the person who wrote the e-mail obviously assumes I'm the sole writer. Which means they missed the entire point of the exercise in the first place. Oh well.

As for being overdramatic - well, maybe sometimes. But lazy? I'm far too overwhelmed with stuff to do to consider myself lazy. And the majority of my computer time is actually at night, after everyone else is in bed. That's "me time" and I can do what I damn well please with it, thanks. As for the time spent on Quick Shtick - that's us trying to be better writers, so that maybe one day we can do that for a living. I see it as time well spent. I'm not about to throw in the towel because someone with nothing better to do than name-calling writes me an e-mail saying they don't like what we're writing. Oh, and just because a person has a husband who "works for a publishing company" doesn't make them (or their husband necessarily either) an expert. For all I know the husband answers phones for an editor! That doesn't give them qualifications. Not to mention the lack of any specific references to parts of the story that were examples of poor writing or bad characterization, leads me to think that this "reviewer" may not have really even read the story at all...

Okay, yeah. So there was still a little "irk" remaining in me from that e-mail. Good to get it out.

Although it would be nice to get some feedback from someone who didn't hate it, if nothing else just to mend my frayed ego a little bit. I can't understand why someone would write such a childish e-mail and send it out, so I'm not really taking it to heart. But, at the same time, I do take other people's opinions far more seriously than I should, and only have faith in myself on few and far between matters. So even a "hey, I kinda liked it" response would help. We know there are holes in it, and that there is a lot that we want to fix. But we weren't writing final copy. It was a rough draft, at best, written on the fly a little bit each day. Most of Brian's posts were made early in the morning before he'd even really had much coffee yet. Most of my own posts were made over the lovely sounds of loud musical toys that my son loves to bang on in the mornings. Considering all of that, I think we did a pretty bang-up job on this last one.

So there. I've said my piece. Just because someone felt the need to lash out and apparently picked my e-mail out of the hat doesn't make me feel any less proud of the piece Brian and I have written. And I still think it has the potential to get even better.

What the next story on Quick Shtick will be, however, still remains a mystery. We'll see if our readers give us any ideas to jump off from, or else I'll figure it out when it's time to start it - it's my turn to do the first paragraph.

That's all for tonight though.

G'night!

Tidying up and another QSW story ends

Today saw the last post on the current story we've been working on at Quick Shtick Writing. We've asked for comments from the readers, to give us an idea on where our writing could use improvement and where we've done things that have worked. We're going to take a week off, basically, and I'll be putzing around with a site redesign so it has some sort of "look" to it. Right now it's still in the basic MT template, which is boring as hell, in my humble opinion.

Not much else to say today, really. I've noticed I'm in a "tidying" phase at the moment. Brian says it's maternal. I think he thinks I'm "nesting" because we're trying for the next child. I'm not sure exactly what it is, but I'm seeing a lot of clutter and keep dropping everything to stop and tidy up. Yesterday I cleaned out the trunk of my car while getting gas, as well as a couple other spots around the house. I actually hope this phase lasts a few weeks, as I could use to tidy around my desk a bunch!

That's all for now though.

G'night!

Yipee!!

After spending some of today and another three hours after Brian went to bed, I finally have my blogs where they are supposed to be!

• DragonBlog is now properly at www.rayndragon.com
• To Our Children's Children has moved to www.tocc.rayndragon.com
• DragonBytes has moved to www.dragonbytes.rayndragon.com
• and Quick Shtick Writing is exactly where it's always been at www.quickshtick.com, although now the first story we wrote on there is now at a separate page where it can be read in more of a book format. (meaning with the posts in order instead of having the newest up top)

All my little bloggies are neatly in their rows, and I think I've cleaned out the cobweb files out of the old directories too. Most, if not all, of my pictures should be working on DragonBlog too. I had the foresight to do a search and replace on the export file before importing it back in on the new site.

Let me know if you see something broken. It may be that I know about it and haven't gotten to it yet, or it may be that I haven't seen it yet. I'll be doing more work on the sites soon. My priority was to get them posting properly, but now I want to do some formatting on them as well.

As for the old interest in Wordpress? Pffft. Until they set it up where I can use it in Opera web browser I really am too frustrated with it to bother. I also couldn't find a way to export my entries, which would have made the move over to another web domain a royal pain indeed. Making the move with MT wasn't entirely painless, but it was a little easier than I had anticipated - I managed to do it all in one day.

Okay. Time for sleep now! For real this time!

G'night!

Moving Day at DragonBlog...

Well, this blog is finally where it's supposed to be. If you still have your bookmark or link over at the old address, then... well you won't be seeing this post yet. I still have to set up a re-direct thingy to send people over here, although I'd like to figure out how to delay it briefly with a message page to tell people that this is where it is now. I'll see if I can figure that out.

I haven't moved the other blogs yet, but the fresh install of MT seems to be working here. The site looks a little off, however, as I don't think it's recognizing the stylesheet yet. Something got screwed up anyway. Once I've got all the blogs in place properly I'll tweak the little things back into submission. Until then, pardon the dust.

That's all for now though.

G'night!

Abort, Retry, Fail...

Well, it looks like the To Our Children's Children site is down for the moment. No matter how many times I rebuild it, Movable Type can't seem to understand how to put it back up. It looks like tomorrow I'll be working on the web site. It is taking me as many as 9 or 10 times to get Quick Shtick Writing posts up too, not to mention this blog. I tried copying over some of the files with fresh copies, but I think that maybe something got screwed up while I was trying to install the MT-Blacklist. I really don't know. I've got a headache tonight, so I'll sort it all out tomorrow instead.

In the meantime, bask in the glowing innocence of my child instead:

Heehee! He can be such a ham sometimes.

G'night!

Winding down another story...

It's clear to me that the current story on Quick Shtick Writing is coming to an end. I think I'm having a harder time writing the posts recently than I have over the entire length of the story so far. I've always had trouble writing the endings to my own stuff, so it's interesting to see how it works out when you have made a commitment to write something each day and things have to be wrapped up. The only difference is that Brian and I both know that this is just one piece of a larger story, really. I'm already dropping clues about the next story with these characters. What we're having the most trouble deciding, I think, is whether or not we will do the next story about these characters, or move on to a different story altogether. There's also a decision to be made on what the rules for the next story will be - regardless of which we do.

I think that we took a week or so off the last time we finished one, although that first story was neither as good or as long as this one has become. I like this one much better, and I think we'll be taking a serious look at polishing it up for possible publication. Or, at least, sending to publishers anyway. We'll have to see what happens.

I'm considering having my own extension of QSW at some point. I had started one previously and then deleted it thinking I might not want something I was working on alone to be so... public yet. Not that there's a slew of people reading what we write here, but nonetheless... Sometimes my fiction can feel almost more personal than my real life that I document here. I know that sounds odd, but some days my imagination can seem much more vivid than the life that happens around me. There are moments in life that are vivid to me - like many points in year we spent traveling, and a few specific moments in our wedding, and holding my son in my arms each day - but so much can seem muted sometimes compared to the worlds in my mind. Perhaps I just spent so many days in my youth allowing the strange characters in there to comfort me whenever the shit hit the proverbial fan that I'm afraid to share them with others. Perhaps some of them are so dark, as in the "vamp" posts on DragonBytes, that I worry people will judge me by their fictional actions. After all, these things come from somewhere in the depths of my mind. For someone who frequently proclaimed herself to be a pacifist, I daresay my mind can come up with some pretty nasty stuff from time to time...

Anyway, it would mean making a commitment to writing on a daily basis on something fictional of my own, not just the one that Brian and I do together. I've toyed with the idea before. I've just never decided to do it yet. Perhaps, as I start working on getting the web pages all ship-shape again, I'll throw in one for myself to work on writing with.

If I do, I'll let ya know. We'll see.

That's all for now. The sinus headaches I've been having persist, and I even broke down and went back to the old stuff I was on before. Either it hasn't fully kicked into gear yet, or I really am fighting off sickness. Either way, I think I'm hitting the sack early tonight.

G'night!

Chapped Knees and more problems with MT...

Chapped knees. Or, rather, chapped knee. Singular. Since the hole in my blue jeans was only on one side. Technically it's actually the area of the leg just above the knee, not the knee itself. And it's already not pink anymore, so it's probably not really chapped. Mostly just rubbed a little cold and raw by the wind. It was still weird in the shower when the hot water running down my leg still felt cold in that spot. Very strange indeed.

But, despite the fact that I've felt crappy for more than three days running now, I saw that we were already up to 3 or 4 inches of snow on the drive and wasn't going to wait and let it get worse for when Brian got home. So I plunked the little guy down for his nap, put on my "junk jeans" and my old jean-jacket winter coat and a really crappy pair of boots (I think proper "snow boots" are now on my list of things I need to look into purchasing soon) and hauled myself out to the garage.

I spent two hours outside - probably a half-hour of which was detangling cord and setting up the snowblower, since we own one of the cheaper, electric ones. I kind of wish we'd sprung for the gas one at this point, as maneuvering around the cord is yet another hassle to deal with. I think we must have bought the cheapest model on the market, to be honest. The thrower part refuses to stay in position half the time, and will suddenly swivel around to throw the snow you are plowing over onto the side you've already plowed... *grumble*

Nonetheless, after two hours of plowing, shoveling, sweeping (note to self - we need a new push broom handle - the metal one on ours is about to snap in half), and brushing off the car, I had the snow dealt with on the drive, the stoops, the sidewalk, and the little walk up to our house. I even did the bit of the patio that leads to the side garage door. (Note to self - the main door on the garage has frozen shut entirely...not sure what to do to fix that, actually)

And yet, it still snows.

I may have to repeat the process tomorrow. Or I may just delay groceries until Friday, and make Brian do it tomorrow when he gets home. I suppose it depends on just how much snow we end up getting. But I figured that neither of us really wanted to end up dealing with shoveling/plowing/brushing/sweeping all of it at once, so I did make a dent. Yay me.

In other news, I can't seem to find any record of a solution to the problem rebuilding my web site. It is now causing problems on all three sites - this one, Quick Shtick Writing, and To Our Children's Children, although the latter is only having trouble occasionally. Brian's site, on the other hand, seems to be doing fine even though it is also in Movable Type. I did some searching on the MT forums and through google, but have yet to see anything that has a similar enough problem for me to try the solution. I don't know whether people just purge their problems or assume that people who don't know php shouldn't be messing around with their weblogs, but I'm getting real sick and tired of finding complicated answers to complicated problems I don't have, and rarely finding easy-to-understand instructions for how to fix the problems I do have. That goes for WordPress too.

And I'm already sick of "Wiki's". So far the wikis I've come across for stuff I wanted to know more about - didn't have squat for information. It's all a really neat and novel idea to make it so that other people can add to the knowledge base, but I honestly never know if I can really trust what I'm reading in a wiki anyway. There's far too many people out there who are willing to mess with the "newbies", and I frequently qualify as one when I'm looking something up. Even on the forums people are talking about how they did stuff and I have no freaking clue what language they are speaking in sometimes.

I think there needs to be a rule - every new "for the masses" style of web program (like weblog publishing programs... *cough*) ought to have a "for dummies" area with answers to basic questions. Perhaps even setting up zones for different levels of users would be nice - beginner, intermediate, advanced... you know!

Now there's a neat and novel idea that might actually work if someone bothered to implement it...

No. Damnit. I just don't have that kind of time anymore. I used to do stuff like that for people though. Somewhere I even have a copy of a "for dummies" style bit that I did while I was working at one company that had just gotten a new program. The other secretaries were thrilled. I am generally pretty good at picking up a new office program or other such program and figuring it out reasonably quick. I am also pretty good at putting it down on paper in such a way that others could figure it out easy too...

And if anyone wants to offer me actual money to do that sort of thing - great!

But, until that day comes along, I'll just stick to scribbling my own notes at home for now, and wishing that someone else would write it for me. I've got other things to do right now. Like organizing the list of things I have to do onto the PDA that my sister-in-law's boyfriend just gave me. It was his old one (I will assume that his new one is far, far cooler and upscale) and he was kind enough to give me his hand-me-down, loaded with stuff already installed and with all the original disks, cables, and documentation...

And bejeweled.

It's a stupid, silly, tetris-like game. It hurts my eyes to look at the darn screen while I'm playing it.

And yet, I can't seem to stop.

Grrrr...

I think I'm blowing an hour each night just diddling about with the stylus on this damnable little handheld computer thingy, scooting "jewels" around the screen to make neat little rows that beep and go away...

It didn't help any at all when I installed my version of Mahjong and Player Racer that I had from a Hoyle Board Games cd that I had gotten a while back. Nope. That didn't seem to help my battery time any either.

But, if I get any sicker than I already feel, and end up laid up in bed... I'll at least have something I can play with now!

Or is that not how I'm supposed to look at it?

Hrm.

Anyway...

G'night.

Annoyed...

For those who may have tried read Quick Shtick Writing this morning only to find a blank white page staring at you - sorry! It's the first time it has happened to one of Brian's posts, although it has been happening frequently to mine both there and even longer and worse here on my own blog. Either one of the Moveable Type files is corrupted or something in the database isn't working right, (I guess it's time to make another backup of it!) but I keep having to rebuild the index files and reload until it looks right. Brian now knows to check and fix it too, so if it comes up blank for you - wait about 5 minutes and try again - it doesn't take long to fix, usually, it's just really damned annoying.

In good news, however, we've got the in-laws babysitting Jareth on New Year's!

I sense a night of "grown-up" time coming...mmmm.

But, in the meantime, tomorrow is likely "returns day". At least that means stores with computer goodies in them too... I just hope it doesn't mean horrible crowds as well.

Wish me luck!

G'night!

(Time to post this and "rebuild index files" 2-5 times until it shows up on my web site properly *grumble*)

Temporary Measures...

Well, for the moment, Wordpress seems to be beyond my abilities within the current time constraints. Which means I just don't have enough time to muck around trying to make it all work with an interface that doesn't work with Opera, so I'm putting it all on the back burner until at least January, when I've got some time. I did a re-direct on my domain name, so that www.rayndragon.com is actually directing here instead of a message with a link here. I also have started battling the evil spam monsters in MT for the moment, although I'm having trouble getting mt-blacklist installed. I keep getting error messages even though I think I've dotted all my 't's and crossed all my... errr... you know what I mean.

I think my redirect has mucked up the ability to get to the new dragonbytes site for the moment too, so if I have any updates there I'll just save them until I get it all sorted out probably.

In the meantime, tomorrow we decorate for Christmas. I have a strange feeling it might involve a run to the store, as I think we decided last year that we were going to replace the lights on the tree this year. Last year we replaced the whole darn tree! And the garland and angel at the top. We now do a star, which is really more appropriate than the old tattered angel my mother always put atop the tree. I'm still saving that angel though - my sister might want it one day, or I might want to show it to Jareth one day so he can see what was atop my Christmas tree when I was a child.

There's a lot of other stuff, however, that requires chucking out into the trash. We shall see what becomes of the decorations this year.

That's all for now. It's a Friday night, and Brian and I are just about to put Jareth to bed. And then I've got far better things to do than blog...

*wink*

G'night!

Yes, reading the directions DOES help, actually!

Okay, so since I've been rummaging through some of my "stuff" and finding some items that I no longer need or want and are still in good shape or better, I've been putting these items up on e-bay. I'm not the first to do such a thing, and I am pretty positive I won't be the last. No big deal.

But what I did do, is go out and spend a little cash on a little shipping scale so I can have some clue on what these items weigh. We recently lost a few dollars when I didn't charge enough for shipping and it cost more to ship it than I got from the guy total on the transaction (including shipping). It was only a few bucks, no huge deal, but I didn't want it to happen again.

I powered the little sucker up and it looked ready to go, with markings for pounds and ounces in the display.

I should have read the instructions.

*smacks self in the head*

So, today, when the bidding ended on all five items I had up and some discussion came up on shipping four of the items together, I discovered that in my haste I had marked the ounces where the pounds should have gone.

Damnit!

So I've been backpedalling, fixing the invoices to read the correct weight (which is considerably smaller than the weights I had listed) and sending out e-mails back and forth to hopefully make sure nobody thinks I was trying to rip them off or otherwise screw them on shipping.

Between being a relative perfectionist and usually honest to a fault, it has been entirely frustrating.

I did, finally, read the directions - it gives me a comma after the pounds. The digit after the period is tenths of an ounce not ounces.

Got it.

*sigh*

At least all the items sold, although I'm not exactly selling anything in a high price range right now. I might find a few items in my boxes that are worth the big bucks, but those are also items I'm going to have to make harder decisions on if I want to get rid of them. I will have a lot of items eventually though, so my paypal account may add up to something someday. My mom always gave me the impression her record collection might be worth something, so I'll have to give that box some extra attention when I find it. I do have a couple of boxes in the garage to look through as it is. I have two piles to make - the one with stuff in decent enough shape to sell on e-bay, and the one for the garage sale with everything else and the stuff that's just too damned heavy to ship.

Too much clutter. And you'd be amazed at how hard it is for me to part with some of this stuff. I'm a third generation pack rat for sure...

*sigh*

Well, that's all for now. I might put another post on DragonBytestonight, or I might not. That blog has never been quite as "daily" as the others are.

G'night!

Not even up yet...

I could just cry.

I haven't even linked the blog at the new site yet. I haven't even finished getting it up in WordPress...

And somehow I have one spammer who's managed to use a robot on me and dump comments over 500+ times. I deleted more than 160 earlier today and I just finished deleteing 350+ comments off it a moment ago.

I don't even know how they know to find it, much less access the file they are getting to to do this... I have a lot more reading to do just to figure out how to make it stop.

At this rate, the f---ing spam commenters are going to make me give up blogging altogether. Or at least give up having comments on my blog. Which is sad, as I do actually want the opinions of other people out there. I wouldn't bother putting all this out there so publicly if I didn't have an interest in hearing other people's opinions on the things I have to say.

I feel like I'm being raped on a capitalist and technological level. It is pissing me off more than I really have words for.

I have a life people... I don't want to spend it deleting this crap twice a day!

G'night.

Moving...

I'm in the process of moving this blog over to WordPress and the other server, so I'm not going to really say much tonight. My eyes are blurry from peering at code I only barely understand and the page looks entirely screwy if I open it in Mozilla. At least it looks like all the posts moved okay, although I'll have to drop this one in manually after I'm done posting it here.

That's all. Watch for this to be re-directing to the newer version soon.

I hope.

G'night.

Tuesday is Chooseday... no, really...

Tomorrow is election day for all Americans. If you are registered and can physically get to a polling booth, please do. It may feel like your vote doesn't count (it certainly does to me most of the time), but if you don't at least try and make your opinion heard then nothing will ever change. This is the one time the government puts the decision in our laps. I may not agree with how it's done, and I may not like the candidates, but I do want my opinion counted with the rest of them, even if all I accomplish is to let them know I want there to be more choices in candidates in the future.

Alright, that's my shpeal.

*steps off soapbox*

That said, I can't find my damn registration card. I'm going to have to call the county clerk tomorrow to make sure my name is actually on the right list before I drag my kid down the street to the polling place. Although, if it's nice enough weather, I can literally grab the stroller and walk there as it's just down the block. But if it's cold and rainy like today was, I don't want to drag Jareth around in the ick. Hopefully I won't have to wait on hold for all eternity. I know I always say yes when they ask if I want to be registered when I do my driver's license, but I am so behind on filing that I haven't a clue where to find my registration card at this point. I seem to recall not having it before though, and that they had a list and only needed my driver's license as identification. I hope that's still the case. I wish they'd just mail a new one right before the elections. Brian got one in the mail a little over a month ago, so his was still handy. He's got it ready and just has to decide if he's voting before he heads to work or after.

*grumbles about files and organization*

In other frustrations, I've disabled all commenting on all sites I run. Effective already. I had to delete over 60 comments today - each with unique IP addresses. The move to WordPress will happen this week, come hell or high waters. I'll have easier control over comments, deleting them, and banning the spammers in the first place in the WordPress system. Brian is planning to make the move as well, and has disabled his comments too. He got more than 200 spam comments in just a couple of days! He's been in the process of deleting them a little while ago, but since he has to work in the morning he can't stay up for another hour to make them go away. It irks me to no end that these assholes (pardon my french) just waltz around taking advantage of people wherever they can. But I'm not going to delete Brian's comments too. I do the design and setup for his blog, and I'll be doing his move into WordPress, but when it comes to tweaking and managing - it's up to him to keep it going. I've got four blogs going - three of which I post to daily - and I've got my hands full deleting spam comments and making sure they run properly.

ARRRRRGH! ROAR!

I'm not bothering to ban the IP addresses, starting today, as it won't matter once I'm in WordPress. All the comment banning will happen internally so I won't have to block out IP addresses that could later belong to legit viewers anymore. That will be a relief. I'm going to peruse the plug-ins for WP tomorrow too, to see what add-ons I can throw in to make things easier too.

But, for now, I need to kick back and blow off some steam. Once upon a time I got excited when I saw the comments number go up. Nowadays I just groan if it's anything more than two new ones. Today I nearly cried when I saw the numbers on Quick Shtick Writing. This morning it was up 20 comments, which was a pain, but tonight I wanted to weep when I saw it had jumped by 46. Plus there were at least four I had to delete off of this blog as well.

So, all comments are temporarily missing. Sorry. Blame the spammers and their f---ing bots, which I'm sure is how they are doing this.

*sigh*

G'night.

Moving up in technical bliss...

Well, finally I have gotten Wordpress up and running on the new server where www.rayndragon.com is now residing comfortably. I have transferred DragonBytes over, and it can be found here in its whole 8 entry entirety. That one is small and simple, with no links or images or other complicated things, so I use it as the test. It's going to be more complicated to get this blog moved over, but I do plan to drop it into wordpress. I am already liking the options I see available, and I really like that I don't have to rebuild when I make changes. It also already has stuff to start banning people trying to spam my comments. All I really seem to be missing is the ability to have it e-mail me when someone does leave a comment - something that it says it does, but I can't seem to get it to work. It lets me know when something doesn't pass the filter, but it doesn't let me know if something does.

I feel like I fried my brain out a little today though, figuring it all out. But at least I've gotten the first blog moved, although technically it is still up where it always was too - I'll need to delete it off of this server at some point before it goes away. I also need to do some formatting, although I never really messed with that blog to make it look different, so anything I do on that one will be new, or based off the look of this blog.

I don't know at what point I'll move this one over, but expect a bunch of links to be broken for a bit after I do. It looks like it will keep the posts just fine, and hopefully the comments will move intact as well. I'm liking the integrated blogroll thing - I'll have to mess with that - where I can divide my links up into categories too. I've been meaning to do that for some time now.

Anyway. Brain fried for tonight. I think I'll go play some computer game or other before I cash it in for tonight.

G'night!

Pardon our dust...

Technical difficulties today, as my domain name moves from one server to another so that my server space and domain name reside together. I have had the server space for about a week now, and have been working on getting some stuff going, but the domain name seems to be lagging on me. I had a secondary service that redirected it for a couple days but I took it off so I could see when it started working, only to find that my domain name is currently leading absolutely nowhere without it.

Rawr!

Still can't get Wordpress working either. I'm hoping that once the domain transfer is working I will at least know that I'm directing it to the right stuff. This half-here / half-there thing is driving me nuts.

Rayndragon is currently lost in cyberspace folks. And I, the Dragon of Rayn herself, am growing exceedingly frustrated...

In other news - never separate every cd from both its case and manual. I've spent part of today re-matching them all together again, and it is a pain. We had separated the CDs out while we were traveling in the motorhome a while back, and I've only just gotten around to matching everything back together. Some bits are missing - I'd bet good money that Brian is hoarding most of them over at his desk though. I've asked for him to hand over what he's got for the moment while I sort through it all. If he doesn't, I may have to go on a desk raid one of these days.

Also today, the book for his car arrived! Which means that maybe I'll actually have my own car back to myself sometime over the weekend. Maybe. I hope.

Cross your fingers he can figure it all out, eh? Thanks. Computers I can handle, but get me anywhere near a car engine and I start feeling my motherboard fry.

Then again, I think I could get into it if I started small... a motorcycle perhaps? hmmm. But more on that another time.

Ooooh... kitten....

What was I saying?

Oh, nevermind. There's a kitten visiting me now.

G'night!

They're baaaack... damnit!

Every time I start to think that maybe people have gotten the message and stopped bothering to spam my comments with crappy little ads boasting "Free Online Poker" or "Penis Enlargement", I find a couple more have tried once again.

I've rebuilt Quick Shtick Writing twice today in order to get some off my site. Seems the weekend is hopping for people who have nothing better to do than spam people's blogs to try and make money deceiving people with crappy products that don't really work, or promises of big payoffs at web sites that you're probably not allowed to play for cash at anyway. I'd found a web site that did solitaire games, which I happen to enjoy, for money, but I'm not allowed to play for money because the state of Illinois doesn't allow me to play on their site. I guess some other sites have work-arounds, but since it was just an amusing pasttime that I thought I'd try, I didn't bother looking into it further. I don't need to get arrested or have the IRS come knocking because I won a buck playing freecell. Pfft.

I keep meaning to install this MT-Blacklist thing that will kill most of them from spamming my comments, but I'm also still considering moving to WordPress. I still haven't had time to sit down and figure out how it installs, and move one of the blogs into it to see if it works nicely or not. At least it's not supposed to need to be rebuilt all the time, the way Movable Type does.

Then again, it's on a long list of stuff I need to take care of, and I just haven't gotten there yet. I've still got computer boxes sitting open from the last big disaster, and repairs to make. I'm still working on the "filing project" and have boxes of files all over the place in the room. I've still got to finish my son's bedroom, my upstairs bathroom, and paint the headboard for our bed so we can re-arrange our bedroom...

I get tired just thinking about the list, much less getting stuff off of it.

And then, in case having the "list" wasn't bad enough, there's still the situation where my husband hasn't had luck in finding a job yet, so I may have to hop into another temp job, thus putting all the tasks off until I have time again, or having Brian do some of them instead, as he did with installing the new ceiling fans in our family room and the work he started on our yard.

I swear, some days life just seems too full of "to-do lists".

And we didn't really get squat done today. I got the dishes under control again, and Brian ran to the grocery store, but otherwise we blew off all the stuff we had hoped to get accomplished. Brian's having some sort of sinus thing - sounds like an allergy to me - and so most of the day was spent playing with our son, parked in front of the television, napping in bed, or playing on the computer.

One of these days, I might just have to kick this house into gear. Including myself.

Bah. *grumble*

G'night!

101 ways reasons to smack Bill Gates...

I feel a blog coming on...

101 reasons I'd like to smack Bill Gates.

Ya.

The program I'm working with at my job is Microsoft conceived, and then "modified" for this company's use.

The poor souls in programming have already started to hack it to make it useable by us poor folk who have the job of transferring a whole lot of old web site content into the new system.

Every image file, for example, has to be uploaded one at a time. The same with all the .pdf files too...

This company uses a lot of images and .pdf files in their site.

You'd think it would be easy to just ftp a bunch into a folder or something, but this isn't Front Page. I saw Front Page. That's what they're moving out of. I like it much better than this new system, but there's reasons it will make it easier for the people in individual departments who don't need access to page design and stuff I guess.

In the meantime, it seems like it's a relative nightmare for everyone transferring the site over.

It's not actually a nightmare for me though. Oddly enough, I'm finding it kind of fun. It's still more engaging than "here, type this memo and fax it to our corporate headquarters". And far more engaging than copy. swap. copy. swap. copy. swap. coallate. repeat.

But I'm still tired. Pooped. Short on time.

Tonight was drawing class too. I drew a goblet (read wine glass with water and a spoon in it). The base still doesn't feel right, but the rest doesn't look half bad. If I ever have time again, maybe I'll scan it. More likely I'll do something better before I actually find that kind of time...heh.

Anyway. More tomorrow maybe.

G'night!

The man behind the magicks...

Over on Quick Shtick Writing, Brian and I have this wizard named Agmar as one of the main characters in the current story. I got the impression that when he made the initial first paragraph of the story he was thinking of someone else (whom I have this visual image of, and I think it's the same person he thought of, but is not the right casting as far as I'm concerned). After some discussion, however, I told him I thought it was this guy instead:

Brian agreed immediately, and this has been the "face" of Agmar ever since.

His name is Peter Woodward, and we have seen him in a couple of things now where we've noted him specifically.

I got the impression I couldn't swipe the head shot pic off his site, so I stole this pic from over at this one instead.

For more info on the actor in particular, his web page is at www.peterwoodward.com, where you'll promptly see the image I wanted to drop onto this post, but was too lazy to go through contacting some webmaster to get permission. Besides, I've given credit to everyone anyway.

Nyah, nyah. Don't make me whine.

Anyway...

So, when you think of Agmar, stick that image in your head. That's the guy. And yeah, I imagine he'd talk with that to-swoon-for British accent too. Although, anyone who's read the story thus far might note a little annoying tidbit we tossed in a while back - Agmar never uses contractions. It's an editing nightmare sometimes, and I have to re-read every post I write where he speaks just to remove all the ones that slip in. You'd be amazed at how many times you use contractions without thinking...

Just a little tidbit for the day that's been running about in my head for a bit, waiting to be dropped off here.

More tomorrow...

G'night!

Phew...

Okay. Looks like I may have fixed the problem, but if people could pop by my husband's site, and see if it works properly in their browser and doesn't look all weird with things moved halfway down to the bottom of a lot of white space and such, I'd really appreciate it.

Also, if there's anything odd about this site, let me know on that too.

I feel like that little engine...

I think I can
I think I can
I thinnnn...zzz...zzzzzzzz...zzzzzzzzzzzz...zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz

*thud*

Okay, so maybe that's not how the real story goes, but it's what's about to happen here. (except the "thudding" will be upon my pillow, so it ought to make more of a *whump* instead)

G'night!

Arrrrrgh!

Okay, so short post tonight, as it looks like I'll be doing some work on my husband's site. I usually link him, but I don't want anybody to follow it tonight. Go tomorrow. Assuming I fix the problem. Problems. Arrrgh.

Although it has looked fine in both the browsers I've been checking it in, apparently it's been doing nasty stuff, dropping the blog itself down into the depths of the page, and displacing the sidebar as well! And suddenly, it showed up that way here on both my browsers as well. I don't get what happened, but I am noticing that there are some odd lines that have appeared in the code that I can't explain where they came from. Similarly, when I did mine, I kept finding three lines of code appearing that I had to delete repeatedly. It's as if something else is slipping stuff in there, while it was still in the program I was creating it in.

*looks confused*

So I'm going to need to clean up the code a bunch, and see what I need to do to fix it.

Later!

Ta-Da!!!

Well, as you can see, I've finally done something with my web site design, turning it into something more "me". I'll probably still tweak it some here and there, but at least I've finally gotten something up! Although don't expect any big changes on the archive pages and such, although the stuff I did on the style template will affect that some, I'm not planning to entirely re-design those pages. I'll check them out soon and sort out anything that looks really icky, but otherwise they can stay plainer.

Feel free to leave comments about how it looks, especially if there's anything funky in your browser. I've checked it in Opera and MS Explorer so far, but don't know if it will look odd in any of the others.

All the goofy artsy stuff at the top I did myself. Feel free to criticize my site if you like, although try not to be too rough on me okay?

Yay me!

Okay, so now I'll go to bed. Seeing as how it's 5:00 in the morning now!

G'night!

Drumroll please...

I got distracted today. I had plenty of stuff I intended on doing, but I was kinda looking for a good enough reason to blow most of it off anyway, so...

I set my husband up with a new site layout.

It mostly came about because of a picture that Brian's dad took while they were on vacation up in Canada: (click to enlarge)

I absolutely love this picture (so does Brian), but he wanted to use it for his web site, so I couldn't put it up here until I had his site up. So I spent most of today picking and pecking away at CSS and HTML until I had something resembling a web site together for him. Although I seem to have a couple of things which are determined not to align the way I wanted them when it's seen through Internet Explorer, I don't recommend using that browser anyway. So nyah. Get Opera already! *grin* Although I do need to download Mozilla one of these days, so I can test sites in it as well, as I'm seeing a lot of people using that now. Netscape, on the other hand, seems to be dwindling away, so I'm not going to bother installing that again.

Anyway, it was my first time trying to make an image bend around like that (which actually means cutting the image into two pieces and lining them up in a table, which wasn't too hard, but not entirely a cinch either), and I think it turned out reasonably well. I haven't tested the site on a lower screen resolution than I'm using (1024 x 768), so if you are on another resolution let me know how it looks. Also, if anyone sees anything majorly nasty happening with it in their browser, let me know. Although if it's a font color that looks icky - don't blame me. He's tweaking the font styles and colors. I just did the text in the image at the top, once he was home to nod approvingly when we found a font style and colors he liked.

Of course now I'm agonizing over how my own site looks, which means that maybe I'll finally get back on track with getting it looking cool, instead of this plain Jane MT layout that came with the program. Pffft.

I just wish I could draw a proper dragon! If I weren't broke, I think I'd commission JB over at Catharsis to draw me a "Rremly's wet blue cousin" or something. I somehow doubt that dragons will be covered in the art class I'm gonna take. Fooey.

So...

My sister gets all the artistic "I can draw and paint" stuff from my mom's side, and wants to color and cut hair instead...

I've had several friends over the years who've been super-talented in the ways of art, music, theatre, and writing. All of whom have gone on to do things other than art, music, theatre, or writing.

I - on the other hand - would love to make a career doing art, music, theatre, and/or writing.

But I need art classes to be able to do the stuff I envision.
I can't play an instrument, nor carry a tune.
Let's not even discuss my very limited (as in teeny) acting resume, despite the fact that that's what my Associates degree was in.

Thus, I write.

Which reminds me - I need to get back to it. Chapter 12 is growing moldy in its MS Word file. I've left one character standing there with a burn on his hand! Poor guy. That'll teach him to stick his hand in a fire while cooking. Yep. The sad part is, I'm liking our story at Quick Shtick Writing better than the one I'm writing alone! Mine is quickly becoming a romance, and I fear it's somewhat melodramatic. *grumble* I'll have to have my husband help me weed out the overly "chick flick" bits after I've got a full first draft.

But not tonight. Tonight, my brain needs rest. And carnage. Errr. Just computer game carnage, I swear! After whipping that web page into reasonable shape, I feel like beating some mindless evil into the ground next. It ought to get me in the right mood for bed, don't you think?

Okay, Diablo... ready or not, here I come...

G'night!

No Comment...

I've been meaning to talk about commenting done on other people's sites. I know there are those people out there who are "link whores" so to speak (I've even heard of some who admit to it in exactly those terms, which is why I used it myself) who put comments on any blog they find remotely interesting, and/or are highly popular. In fact there are a few links that I need to drop off of my blogroll, as I've not been to them in some time because I don't want to be perceived as that type of person if I should choose to leave a comment. I've also got no need to get involved in "conversations" that are actually nothing more than senseless bickering over who's opinion is right. 90% of the time, if I choose to leave a comment, it's because I have something to say. The other 10% of the time, it's an impulsive comment and I just can't help myself. And 90% of those impulsive comments seem to be done over at Davezilla.com. The other 10% are those moments when I should likely keep my mouth shut. Oh well.

This returned to my thoughts today, when I was visiting BrainCrayons.com, where I found a link to this post, at Only Connect. After reading the post, I had the desire to say something, but lacked the words to express myself properly. I chose to put down one word - beautiful - to try to sum up my response. Of course the posting of my comment lagged badly and now I've inadvertantly posted it twice, thus making myself look like an idiot anyway. Go figure. (P.S. - Father Jake and Demi - go read the post, I think you'll both enjoy it!)

Anyway, in thinking about how I choose (or often don't choose) to leave comments on other people's sites, I know it's partly because I don't want to be perceived badly if I don't manage to get my point across in the limited amount of space of a "comment". Regarless of whether or not there is an actual limit to how many words are allowed in the comment, I don't like to leave short novels on other people's blogs. That's what this blog is here for, after all.

I also have a tendency to see other people's comments already reflecting what I wanted to say (sometimes even better than I could have said it, given the time to do so), so the point of me saying it becomes lost. Why just re-iterate what two or six people have said already?

Of course I do have to wonder why few people choose to comment here. Not that I'm going to change my manner of posting because of it. I'm not blogging for the "masses", I'm blogging for myself. But audience participation is always both encouraged and welcomed. Some days it's just nice to know that there are others out there listening. Ironically enough, I tend to watch the statistics charts on Quick Shtick Writing far more than those on this blog, and that one hasn't gotten any comments at all except ones we dropped in there ourselves.

I wonder what the criteria are that people use for their own comments? Does it need to be insightful to be posted? Witty? Or is commenting just another way to drive more people to your own site? If I had more readers, I'd start up a poll, but since I have a small readership, I'm going to be lazy and, well, not. Instead, I'll ask you to, um... comment?

So I'll leave off with that for now.

G'night!

Wrapping Up Loose Shticks...

Well, the first story is finished on Quick Shtick Writing. The only thing left is to name it, so I asked for submissions from our readers. We'll see what comes up. Now we're putting that on "low simmer" until Brian comes back from vacation on the 27th, and starting up a new story on the 28th. He's apparently already got some ideas on the first bit for the next one, so I've no clue what he'll drop in there this time. I know we only narrowly avoided several instances of writing ourselves into a corner during this last one, I wonder how long it will take before we see it happening again in the next one. Heh.

In other news, I got to see my sister's new place today. She's got this cute little one-bedroom apartment. The only real problem I see in visiting her there is that it took us almost an hour and a half to get there today. Admitedly, we avoided the tollway and we had to make a brief stop that took us a little bit in out of the way, but my son hadn't had a nap and got really miserable on the trip. It did take us less time to get back though, as we did take the tollway for that. the $1.15 we spent in tolls is likely less than we'd pay for the extra gas of going the other way anyway, so we'll probably do that from now on instead. Gas prices are absurd these days.

But I liked her apartment, and it seems like it's in a decent area - which is especially reassuring after what happened to my sister-in-law recently, although my sister is living in one of the suburbs - not the city of Chicago. She made us spaghetti for dinner and had some leftover cake from her birthday to share, made by a friend of ours. I'm going to have to compare frosting notes I think.

It occurred to me that tonight was the first time my sister had ever cooked for me. There have been plenty of times in the past, especially when we were both still living with our mother, where I cooked for her, but she'd never cooked for me before! But I have high hopes, as she didn't burn or break anything while cooking - it was not only edible, but good too. Yay!

As for her birthday gift, which I agonized over, I went to my very favorite store for household items, and searched high and low for something cool and "her" for her new apartment. I came up with a ton of ideas - all of which I had to reject on the basis that she might have already bought something like it herself. *sigh* I didn't want to just get her something that she'd have to turn around and return anyway. I did find a fun nightlight that I thought she'd enjoy, although it burned out (charring inside!) the moment she plugged it in, so she'll end up having to exchange that as it is. I just can win for losing on this "picking a gift" thing this week. I did, however, finally give in to the inevitable and get her a gift certificate so that she can go and find something cool that she will actually like and need for her new apartment. No duplications that way. I rarely do gift certificates, but I was really feeling at a loss. I saw at least a dozen or more things I would love to have for myself though... I wonder if they have a wish list?

*scurries off to find out*

Nope. Damn.

Ah, well. Maybe they'll do one eventually.

G'night!

The Quick End of The Shtick...

Well, we're heading up to the end of the story in Quick Shtick Writing. I think Brian is hoping we get it finished before he goes off to Canada on vacation, and then we'll start something new when he gets back. We'll see how it goes. Since I started the story with the first paragraph, he's responsible for the last one, so that we each had the same amount of writing sessions. They didn't all stay as "paragraphs", per se, but we did take turns and try to keep it at a reasonably set length. At least compared to eachother.

So far, for the next project, all we know is that he'll be doing the first paragraph of it (since I started the last one). We're tossing around the idea of sitting down and making a story outline and seeing if we can stick to it, but that might not happen until the third story we do. I'm thinking the next one will be done similar to the first, with no preconceptions. After all, I'm still waiting to see how this one ends!

Of course, that's the real challenge at the moment. We spent all this time building up to this big ending... now we've got to actually make a big ending. I just hope it doesn't turn out anti-clamactic in the end.

If we ever try and get this story published, we've already agreed that it needs some serious "fleshing out". I think there were one-too-many postings where we were trying to mess with the other one - "Oooh, I wonder what he/she will do with this next!" Thus, we skipped over occasional details and character development that should have been mentioned. For example, Susan Rice doesn't drive. We're not sure exactly what happened, but she prefers not to be in the driver's seat of the car. Thus, her partner Thomas is always driving when they are going from place to place in the story.

There are also a lot of little details that we didn't check out in great detail. A quick Google search will yield some interesting sites that sell "spy equipment" and lockpicking tools, for example, but if we were to turn this into a proper story, some research would be in order. Especially in the matter of accuracy on police matters. It's not like we took excursions into the city and chatted with the officers. We did find their web site, as well as check out some stuff on the goverment agencies and all, but we made a lot of stuff up as we went, so there's no guarantees how close to reality we came. It's even possible that we under-estimated some stuff in trying to be cautious.

Anyway, I've no clue how many "paragraphs" it will take to cover the rest of the story. We'll just have to wait and see.

In other news, I started on some of the blue paint in Jareth's room today! It looks like its not as "one coat" as it says on the can though, so I may have to do some 2nd coats on the brushwork. I haven't started using the roller on the bulk of it yet, so I'm hoping that will coat thoroughly enough. I still might have to get another can of paint as it is, to match furniture to. We'll see.

Lastly, I finally dumped several discs of images onto my computer tonight, which included the promised image of the mouse I rescued from my cat last month. So here is the promised picture:

Yes, that's a normal paperclip, not the jumbo one. I tossed it in there for size comparison.

Maybe tomorrow I'll throw up a couple pics of my son, Jareth. I've got some really cute ones!

*grin*

G'night!

You can't handle the Internet!!!

Okay, so I'm trying to set up my DSL so it's a) less expensive, and b) coming from my local phone provider. That way, if there's a problem, it's all inter-connected and I shouldn't have any more worries if something goes ka-flooey on me.

In order to get the price I'm seeing on the Internet, I have to order on the Internet. So I did. Put in the order and marked the section for them to call me if there is a problem. I get an e-mail saying my order is received and they'll test the line and get back to me...

So I wait...

This morning, waiting for me in my inbox, which I access through my current DSL provider, is the following:

Dear [company] Customer:

Thank you for your recent [company] DSL service order request.
Unfortunately, at this time the lines to your home do not meet the
minimum data speed necessary to deliver this service. [company] Customer
Service is moving quickly to bring this service to your area. Once it is
available in your area, we will contact you to see if you are interested
in placing an order.

We appreciate your order and thank you for choosing [company] service. We
value your business and look forward to serving you again soon. If you
have additional questions, please call [company] Customer Service at
[toll-free number].

Sincerely,

[company] Customer Service

So, how am I getting on the internet right now? This was the very question I posed upon calling their toll-free number. I was transferred to a sales department, who's computer was down and couldn't get any further today.

hmmmm.

In the meantime, the place we got server space at finally got through with the login and password for Brian, so I got his blog up there for him just a little while ago. I'm finding that the original titles to our previous posts have taken leave and if we want them back we'll have to pull them off our archive posts copied off the server from the original Blogger files. That sounds tedious, so It might be a while before I get to it.

I did get the categories to show below the posts on mine though! And I changed the font, and such. I'll get things tidied up sooner or later. Instead of just dropping a new look on the site, I might just ease it in gradually instead.

That's all for now.

G'night!

More moving stuff...

*whew!*

Okay, so I just finished the grand task of copying all 62 comments from my prior blog site over into here. Hopefully, I put them all where they belong. I even updated my husband's web address and e-mail on the comments he left to go to the web site he will be moving to. (assuming they ever send him a login so I can move him over there)

I will not, however be updating my husband's links within my blog unless there's an easy search and replace - which there might be, but I haven't tried it yet. If it doesn't work, I'm not browsing through to fix every single one.

I will, however, be browsing through to categorize my previous entries, make a way to get to those categories, and fixing image links so they work again.

sheesh... it's almost as hard as moving in the real world!!!