Tag Archives: metablogging

General, Uncategorized

Rest Stop

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If this issue with getting at my blog drags out for a while, I thought I might as well have a “backup” of sorts on a temporary basis.  This is it.  If things really get out of hand, I do have means of importing my old stuff to a ‘wordpress.com’ blog.  Really don’t want it to get that far, of course.  And now we’re fixed!

Today, Dave and Andrea are getting married in Oshkosh.  Michelle and I will be heading out of SP around noon, as she has a hair appointment just before 2.  The ceremony is at 4:30.  I haven’t been to a wedding in the fall since Sarah and Dan got married 7 years ago.  I can’t believe that was 7 years ago.

Also, look for another Drama Jock’s SportsCast later on today– since I can’t post it to my regular blog, it’ll be another ‘mp3-download’ situation, but I think that those of you who are interested in it are savvy enough to figure out how to do that.

Things to do; catch you later!

General, Uncategorized

Summer Posting

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I was starting to feel a creeping “link rot” sensation on the blog here, until I scoped out some of the other folks that I subscribe to.  Here in these northern climes, I think we tend to feel any extra time that’s available this time of year should be spent enjoying the outdoors while the days are long and the mercury is high.  Guilt = subsided.

Speaking of getting outdoors, I did have a chance to do that on the first legitimately warm weekend of the season.  Friday night, Schrubbe and I were at the Brewers’ only win of the weekend.  What a horrific homestand they had!  On one hand, it’s good to know they’re not going to tromp Manny Parra out there again on his next turn, but on the other: they’re not going to get through this season with 4 starters.  I really, REALLY hope he gets himself straightened out…

On Saturday, I got involved with WILS for the first time– I was a chaperone for one of the volunteer sites.  It was a good day.  They’ve got some really good kids involved there, and everybody did a great job.  I’d definitely be willing to volunteer again next summer…

In the evening on Saturday, Michelle and I met up with a group @ Taylor’s to see Praveen off to India.  He is moving back there for what is planned to be about a three-year stay.  It was a nice send-off.  We didn’t even make it to the after-bar and didn’t go to sleep until about 4 AM.

Eventually on Sunday, we did get out to enjoy the weather.  Michelle and I took a bike ride down on the lake front (where there were TONS of people just loafing along on the path; Michelle had to continuously ring her bell to warn the peds we were behind them), and we enjoyed some custard at the new Northpoint snack bar, now being operated by Bartolotta Restaurant Group.  I don’t really have any previous experience there to compare it to, but there were plenty of folks lined up, and the turtle sundae was tasty.

So, back to work on my third week in Oshkosh, then!  Everything’s going well, but I’m thinking I’m going to need to do even better making lists of stuff that I want to do on my lunches, in the evenings, etc.  But then again, it is summer and maybe I should just not feel guilty.  😉

General, Uncategorized

Upgrade City

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The podcasting plugin that I use on the blog here finally upgraded late yesterday. That was one of the two still holding me back from upgrading my blog to the latest version of WordPress, and I’ve been waiting patiently (more or less) to get there.

So, I completed the upgrade on WP, even though I didn’t end up with the latest version of podcasting; I did find an older release that works just fine w/ this version of the blog, so I guess I’ve been waiting around for nothing. 😛

Anyway, there are a couple other things I’ve been kind of anxious to try in this newest version, so keep an eye out for a new feature here or there… nesting comments works a lot better now (or at least look nicer). If you register on the site, you can also customize a user avatar.

There was also a new version of the photo gallery plugin, and it seems to have a bunch of new features to try out.  I added an RSS feed for photos, and I’m going to try to figure out how to reinstate the “public gallery” so if you have pictures you’d like to share, you can.  So there’s a number of little things.

Hope your weekend is going OK.  I’m back to tinkering…

General, Hollywood, lists, Uncategorized

Present In Absence

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I just realized that I haven’t posted in a couple days.  It’s not for lack of work on the site, though.  I’ve been slowly and surely updating some tags and categories on posts that were imported from the old tikiwiki blog (or earlier).  My hope is that those updates will make searching the blog by tag, etc., a little more useful.  Hey, even if it doesn’t end up that way for you, I think it will for me  😛

I am also desperately hoping each day that one of the plugins I use that is holding me back from upgrading to the latest version of WordPress with drop with an update, already.  There are some features in the next iteration that I’m anxious to implement, but it just wouldn’t be senible to do so at this time.  Hence, I check, refresh, check again, and I wait…

Outside of the metablogging, though, what can I tell you about the most recent weekend?  The big BSG finale was on Friday night.  I went over to Jason H’s place to see it with him and Brian.  Jason has the 42″ flatscreen and HD cable, so… it was kind of worth it.  I took a look back at my ‘Final Five Questions‘ from January, and without completely rehashing them, check this out:

  1. Check
  2. Check
  3. Check
  4. Adequate checkitude
  5. Check

I was really satisfied with the finale and didn’t feel like any mysteries were left forgotten or issues left unanswered.  Yes, it is entirely possible that there is something I’m forgetting, but not going to change my mind about the fact that I had a good time with the end of the series.

For those of you that are even kind-of interested in sci-fi and you missed this show, I highly recommend going back to the beginning and checking out the DVDs.  I think you’ll find that it was one of those rare shows that was really solid from top to bottom and start to finish.

"Roll Your Own", Uncategorized

High-Maintenance?

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In addition to getting back to a more regular flow at work today, I had some blog-slash-site-related bid’niss I wanted to take of– namely, figure out what was going wrong that I couldn’t access my email from work (was it a problem with my server, my connection at work, my ISP, my god, WHAT???), and also runs some tests on my various WordPress plugins, with a goal of migrating to WP 2.7 (the newest version) sooner than later.

In the course of these efforts, I discovered a few things that it turns out I was excessively concerned with a couple items:

  1. The email problem was very simple– the extension I’ve been using in Firefox to check the mail is broken.  I can just check it with something else instead.
  2. The two plugins that are holding me back from the upgrade have not updated yet.  One of them probably won’t for a while.  But I should try to remember: the site will let me know when they do (!!).
  3. I briefly threw myself into a hissy when tried to subscribe to my podcast again using Songbird.  It doesn’t really work in Songbird.  However, right after I spent the time downloading and installing iTunes on my machine at work, I was reminded that I already tested iTunes as an option in a virtual machine at home, so I could, for the love of God, CALM DOWN ABOUT THE PODCAST PLUGIN ALREADY.

Anything you’re way too wound up about today?

"Roll Your Own", General, Uncategorized

Busted Stuff

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Kinda funny that it was just last week when I wrote about how satisfied I’ve been with WordPress this year, then over the last couple days, I’ve been frustrated with upgrading to version 2.7.

I should clarify: the software itself works great.  The issues that I’m having are strictly related to plugins that I’m using.  I suppose certain compatibility and seamless upgrading are the trade-offs you have to make when you start using a lot of 3rd-party extensions.  I was willing to roll with the upgrade and let one of my less oft-used plugins remain broken until it’s updated, but I’ve discovered I actually have 2 ((twitter tools and the DB backup plugin)) that aren’t working quite right, so I rolled back to WordPress 2.6.5 for now ((This new footnote plugin I installed seems to work fine, though.)).  Not that it matters much to you, Dear Reader, as everything appears exactly the same on your end.  (But the blog is sort of for my notes, too.)

At work, I was supposed to have a “day off” from seeing students today, but one of my colleagues called in, so I’m filling the gap.  Might prevent me from getting the newest podcast (which we recorded over the weekend) up this afternoon, as I’d intended.  I definitely need to do that today, though, since the rest of my evenings are booked up this week.  Dave invited me to an event at EAA on Wednesday night, and Thursday is our office holiday party.

Time to get some working done…

"Roll Your Own", General, Uncategorized

Satisfactory

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Not a bad Saturday, even if the rest of it goes to hell.

It’s a rare thing for me to set some goals of wrestling with technology and actually manage to knock them all out in less than a day.  When I got up this morning, I wanted to fix some busted plugins on the blog, maybe upgrade to WordPress 2.7, get my desktop machine with a freshly installed copy of Ubuntu 8.10 fully rokkin with all my favorite software, and also make that second display work just like anyone could expect on Windows.

Finished everything by about noon and still had plenty of time to do some prep for this evening’s podcast, AND create an “album cover” for the Last 80’s Rewind show.

Carry on, and make good on your Saturday…

"Roll Your Own", Uncategorized

Twelve Months In, All Good So Far

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It was about a year ago now that I started testing out a WordPress implementation of my blog.  For those of you who were with me in the aesthetically marginal days of tikiwiki (and the relatively abysmal incarnations that preceded that), I appreciate your willingness to “hang.”

I was reflecting on this change today, and I can say with certainty that it was the right move– I’ve been completely satisfied with this software, haven’t had any significant performance or data issues, and I was able to address all the things that were on my blog wishlist as I considered the switch, through a combination of updates to the software and the extensions that are available.

Also can’t believe that on the cusp of 2009, I am entering my 7th year of blogging.  Who the hell would’ve thought that this phemomenon would last that long?  Anyway, thanks again for your attention; here’s to another blogtastic year…

General, Uncategorized

Hedging My Bets

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I don’t know if I’ve just become hyper-aware of it, or if everybody that I know really IS on Facebook, but all of them seem to have moved there in the last 6 months.  I am still a part of the resistence, but I’m not sure how long I can hold out.  My chief lieutenant in this struggle, Michelle, has waffled a bit in recent weeks.  There are times I catch her trying to reason out why she SHOULD be on this thing.  So far, we’ve managed to stay the course.

I have justified my non-participation in this social networking phenomenon in a variety of ways:

  1. I have struggled for 10 years now to limit the contact I have with old high school classmates to a select few, and I don’t want to flush all that good work down the toilet.
  2. The people I’ve spoken to that get really caught up in Facebook once they start makes this website sound a little like heroin; they spend hours and hours online and really get nothing accomplished.  At least the countless hours I spend here result in an increase in (mostly useless) knowledge, or some entertainment for you in this webspace.  I don’t need another web-based addiction, whether it’s parking wars, or Facebook commodity trading, or whatever.
  3. I think the truth came out recently from my mom, who reminded me that “[I] don’t really like people.”  True enough.  The number of people that I dislike vastly outnumbers those that I DO like or CAN tolerate.  I prefer my Internet experience to be a one-way street.  Not that I’m discouraging your comments by any means, but let’s be honest: I am 100% in control of which ones get published and when…

Despite all this, when SO MANY PEOPLE that you know are talking about something this much, you sort of feel like you need to get out there and understand what it’s about.  For someone as net-savvy as myself, it’s rare (to the point of disturbing) that I should have absolutely no experience with such a pervasive Internet entity.  I guess that strict lack of knowledge is what’s bothering me here; definitely not feeling an intense desire to stop emailing and start “facebooking” people, or whatever the hell they might call it.

I wonder if the K-Bear ever gets this sort of feeling in relation to our cell phone bet…

General, Uncategorized

Back In the Saddle

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The busy season at work is starting to calm down a lot faster than I expected.  Here we are, just mid-way through September and things are looking up.  I think it also helps to put in your vacation requests for the rest of the year, and thereby have a good sense of when you’re looking forward to what in the upcoming weeks (I’m taking off a week and a half in October).

You probably noticed I got back to business in the blog this past weekend, too.  Feel free to catch up at your discretion, and take a look at some new pictures that I posted in the “Day to Day” gallery.

What else is new?  Feels like I’ve been off the grid for a while, so I may have lost touch.  Share if you like, via comment…