Monthly Archives: March 2008

"Roll Your Own", Uncategorized

More or Less Like Butter

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You probably didn’t notice unless you’ve registered (and you haven’t), but I upgraded the WordPress again today. Version 2.5 debuted over the weekend, and after taking a little time to figure out how, and consulting Mundschau on it, I finished everything up for upgrading this evening.

  1. Per Joe’s advice, I shut down the MySQL server, then copied the entire contents of the data folder for the site to my workstation.  Did the same with my WordPress base install.
  2. I seem to have an easier time un-zipping the new versions and then pushing them over to the server than doing a download straight TO the server.  So I went that route again.  Followed the instructions on WordPress.org very carefully, and everything seemed to go off without a hitch.
  3. My theme was broken when I first finished the upgrade.  I had to re-install it, but all the custom setups I had rokkin stuck around after the re-install.
  4. I had customized the login script so that you don’t have a to wait for an email with your initial password.  But that was messed up out of the box, too, so I’ll have to do that again.
  5. Tried to use the new “one-click-plugin-upgrade” feature that’s built in to this newest version of WordPress.  But that didn’t play very nice, either, cuz the script asked for my FTP credentials to the server– but Bocko don’t roll w/ no FTP, yo (SSH only up in this mofo).
  6. Speaking of which, the picture galleries are a little screwy right this moment, too (i.e., not present), but I know all the files are still there, so I’m sure it’ll just be a matter of updating the plugin.

Overall, I’m very satisfied with the ease of this upgrading operation.  Another piece of advice that Joe gave me that I’ll be trying my best to follow– learning how to backup my database with ‘mysqldump’ before it’s time for the next upgrade.

Also– update on my ISP problems: cable guy was here today, and without going into too much useless detail, seems like my speed problems are fixed.  Wordy was able to see the photos today at a reasonable speed, and isn’t that why we’re all here, anyway?  To make sure that Wordy’s time on the web is well-spent?  But yeah, I guess I’ll just keep an eye on it and hope for the best…

Off to fix my photo galleries!

Hollywood, Uncategorized

Back to the Movies

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I like to tease Michelle about how she doesn’t like movies.  Let me clear one thing up, with the straightest face possible, dead-seriously, no kidding:  Michelle likes movies.  She has seen her fair share.  Generally, we just don’t enjoy the same sorts of movies.

I’ve showed her some that I think she would not have otherwise considered watching (Garden State immediately comes to mind) and gotten positive feedback.  Others, she would not have otherwise watched and now probably regrets the time spent on them (Goodfellas is the best example I can think of here).

One that I was recently surprised to find out she missed when we were kids is Back to the Future.  I can remember seeing it for the first time at Grandma & Grandpa’s house during the summer  (probably the same summer that we convinced Grandma to rent us Ferris Bueller’s Day Off— which she was not impressed with).  It seemed like a picture that is right up Michelle’s alley; it’s got some of her favorite things:

  • the 50’s
  • a dog
  • a happy ending
  • “hooking up”

I quickly predicted that this movie would rocket into her Top Five All-Time list.  When the movie was over, I found out Michelle has not actually compiled such a list.  But, she did enjoy it.  I don’t think she’d like the sequels as much, so they’re not going to be “required viewing.”  I noted that BTTF is probably my mom’s #1 or #2 movie all-time– it’s probably neck-and-neck with Blast from the Past.

Do we see a theme here?

Sports, Uncategorized

(We Might Have) Time for an Opener

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The Crew is in Chicago for Opening Day of the baseball season today, and with the weather that’s predicted, they *might* even get to play.

Either way, if you need a ticket, apparently there are still some available.  I checked online, but declined to buy the single seat in the “dugout box” area for $300.00.

Most publications and prognosticators are picking the Brewers to finish 2nd in the Central this year behind the Cubs.  Milwaukee definitely has a lot of if’s about it (if Sheets stays healthy, if the rest of the rotation holds up, if the Boston-version of Gagne doesn’t show up, if the rest of the bullpen plays their best ball, if none of the young everyday guys regresses, if Jason Kendall is a steadying force behind the plate, and if they can weather the 25 games without Mike Cameron in center), but they could be in for a special year.  Baseball is always a game of if’s, and the speculating, measuring, and analyzing the day-to-day is what a lot of people love about it.

A lot of other people just love the atmosphere of summertime and the ballpark.  That’s why I’ll be there 15 to 20 times this season, starting on Friday against the Giants.  That’s also the reason that, despite the question marks, they Brewers are going to sell a LOT of tickets this year.  They’ve got a very legitimate shot of going over 3 million through the turnstiles this year.

Good luck Brew Crew– catch you at home this weekend after a (hopefully) successful series down south!

"Roll Your Own", General, Uncategorized

Speed Bump

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I thought that there may be some issues within this new site that really made it slow for some people.  But, after noticing the poor transfer rate I get from connecting to my house in a variety of ways, I decided a speed test for my Internet connection was in order.  The verdict: 25 Kbps upstream.  Ouch.

So when I get home later on, I’m going to reboot the modem (I don’t think I’ve had to do that at all since they hooked up the webs for me early last fall), and if that changes nothing (I don’t think it will), it’ll be time for a phone call to my friendly neighborhood Time Warner Customer Service rep.  Gotta hold off for the weekend on that one, because I’ve never experienced a hold time in this market (MKE) of less than 20 minutes.

General, Uncategorized

It Would Be So Groovy Now

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So Howard Dean is lamenting the state of affairs in the Democratic race for the presidential nomination, while Mitt Romney is showing John McCain around Utah.

I think Dean’s concerns about the contest between Obama and Clinton are valid–no matter how much broad-based appeal a candidate may or may not have, the core of your party has to be behind you. I have to admit, I don’t classify myself a Democrat, even though I’m an Obama supporter. If Hillary wins the nomination, I don’t know if I’d vote for her. I might end up voting for a 3rd party candidate in that case, who knows?  Meanwhile, I’d say that Chris Dodd is freaking out a bit early.

Obama was right– this is a long, tough road.  I hope the best candidate emerges on the other side with a legitimate chance at victory in November.

"Roll Your Own", General, Uncategorized

That Was Unexpected

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Well, maybe I shouldn’t even admit this, but I got into work this morning, and all of a sudden, soloshootsfirst.com was pointing at my new WordPress site. Wasn’t doing that night when I went to bed. Is now. *shrug*

So, err, welcome to the new version of the site. Yep.

……

Update your feeds.

**UPDATE**   Talked to Joe and learned something new about Apache and needing to restart it– which I had to do this morning for a completely different reason.  But at least I feel better about not being a total schmoe.  Carry on!

"Roll Your Own", Uncategorized

The Clock Is Running…

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Very close to debuting the new site to the general public.  I started messing around w/ the Apache .conf file to update the locations of my virtual servers, but the behavior wasn’t exactly what I was expecting.  I’m still thinking it through, and I’m sure it’ll be figured out (with some help from Mundschau, no doubt).

I actually really messed it up when I thought I had the simple file updating done– fortunately, I wasn’t the first to so dick-up my wordpress site, and a much smarter person created a convenient solution.

General, Uncategorized

Good, Bad, or Indifferent?

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I don’t get a lot of visitors to my site.  That doesn’t really bother me at all.  I’m just trying to entertain, enlighten, or inform those precious few, and also myself.

That being said, while this WordPress site is “in development,” I have a feature turned on that keeps Google’s prying eyes away from this webspace, and the site stays “off the grid” to a certain extent.  I’m considering whether or not I should keep that feature enabled once I formally go live with it.  I don’t have much of a rationale for this consideration.  What could I possibly say or do here that would suddenly overrun my server with traffic?  At the same time, who needs to find me via a Google search?  If you’re reading this blog, odds are over 99.9% that we have met and maintain contact face-to-face.

Any thoughts on this topic?

General, Uncategorized

Self-Taught Lessons

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I’ve discovered something this evening while I work on building some photo galleries for the new site: my pictures are organized like shit.

On the old site, I had a LOT of pictures in a number of galleries, and something I’m changing here is the volume of pictures that are out here. I figure no one on the webs needs to see that many. Who looks at all those pictures, anyway?

You’d think that would make it easier to do, but really it’s not at all. I’m only going to upload some of my digital pictures, and I have approximately 7000 images to page through and consider including. I can see the vacation collections being toughest to slog through. What I’ll probably do is take my external hard drive (where I have backups of everything) to work, and I can work on this a bit at lunch time. One of the other benefits there is USB 2.0. That’s right– desktop machine at home is still on 1.1. Yeesh.

In somewhat-related news, when are you available for a Brewers tailgate outing this summer? June 14 or 21?