Monthly Archives: November 2008

Please Excuse the Interruption in Service

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We’re apologize for the interruption in service you might have experienced over the last 24 hour period. We try our best not to have these things happen but machines (and people) being what they are and all that.

In this case, somebody dropped a can of used DB motor oil (with all sorts of those horrid little metal non-optimized shavings) into the database canister while the cover was open during regular maintenance thereby gumming up the works something fierce.

The entire database had to be removed, taken outside, sprayed liberally with DB DeGrease™ and hosed down thoroughly. Once the database was completely dry and placed back into the canister, the valve train had to be carefully lubricated with WDB-40™ before bringing back up to speed (we watched the  RPMs very carefully during each phase of restart and and subsequent spin up).

The database is currently operating at nominal parameters and we foresee no further difficulties (we sacked the guy that dropped the damn motor oil).

Thank you for your patience in this matter and we look forward to your further patronage.

Sincerely,

The management.

JT Evening News 8th Edition

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Welcome the to the 8th edition of the JT Evening News (published whenever I feel like it). Yeah, it’s been awhile. In fact, it’s been longer than awhile but things have been in total disarray lately. Actually, I’m the one who has been in a total disarray lately but that’s besides the point. Now to the so-called “news”.

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(Note new coffee flavored asterisks?)

I Bollixed the Thing III

As you might have noticed by my last two posts, I really bollixed things up on the blog when I switched from a three column theme back to a two column without backing up my text widgets first. Since WordPress changed to the new Widgets setup in the admin without that convenient repository where I can place previously used widgets for safe keeping (a piss poor change if you ask me), I’m always forgetting to copy out the contents of my text widgets to a handy local text document. As a result, that piss poor widgets interface completely lost the entire contents of my left sidebar when I switched themes.

So with only a couple of minor exceptions, I’ve replaced most of my lost widgets with new ones, modified my “obligatory AdSense” to (sort of) fit in with the coffee flavored looks of things, took a hint from and blatantly replicated his FeedBurner widget and offered up my usual two flavors of search.

Good enough for now however…

There was More Work to be Done

The theme was an old one, last updated when WordPress 2.3 was new. No Gravatars for comments (understandable, Automattic didn’t own Gravatar when this theme came out) and no page navigation!

For the life of me I can’t understand why the heck these theme authors who write up a simple two column, “blogging only” type theme don’t include simple page navigation. You know, those links at the top of the single post pages that point to the next<title> and previous<title>? posts This little reader convenience has been included in the “Default” theme just about forever so I’d think they’d take the hint. Oh well, can’t complain about free stuff I guess.

Either way it meant that I had to somehow include these missing items myself so…

I’m so Proud of Me

With all my amazing lack of PHP and CSS skills I actually managed to enter the appropriate PHP calls into the appropriate files in the appropriate places. This, of course, totally screwed up the looks due to having no styling for these new items so with more panting and sweating I finally managed to screw in the needed pieces/parts into the style sheet thereby fixing all the screwed up looks.

The fact that it took me 2 hours of searching Google, reading various WordPress “tips and tricks” type posts, looking through WordPress.org documents and implementing all sorts of various mistakes until I finally got it right is besides the point. The fact that certain blogging compatriots of mine could have done the same thing in 15 minutes or less is also besides the point. The actual point of the matter is that I did it myself and I’m proud of it, so there.

Threaded Comments?

Of course WordPress 2.7 now offers threaded comments…

Ah, forget that noise, I don’t get enough comments here to warrant any sort of threaded comments. As much as I would love to see more arguments discussions on this blog of mine I wouldn’t even dare to attempt the modifications for that kind of thing and I certainly don’t have the money to bribe ask the author or anyone else to do the modifications for me. Of course, if I posted more  often I’d probably get more comments huh?

Well, if I can ever get to the point where I do and it does then I guess I’ll have to reinstall XAMPP, throw in a copy of the theme, get out my sewing kit and go to work on threading those comments. In the meantime we’ll just have to put up with the old way of doing it.

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And that’s it for another edition of the JT Evening News– All the guff that’s fit to wait. I also had to post this in a hurry because dinner’s ready. I’ll fix the typos, misspellings and whatnot after we’re done.

So you like the theme or what?

Edit: Okay, done eating and jayzus what a bunch of mistakes, misspellings and bad grammar. I think I fixed them all. If not, let me know.

I Bollixed the Thing II

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My host saved my blog yesterday from the never ending peril of me screwing with it by beginning a major upgrade on my server. They must have seen me coming.

They’re upgrading the hardware, upgrading and tweaking the Linux kernel, replacing the old hard drives with new SSD’s, etc, etc and they began this endeavor by upgrading the MySQL database to the latest version. So bye-bye blog for most of the afternoon thus keeping it from my ever present pestering. Hey, I like that; Ever present pestering. Has a nice smooth sound to it doesn’t it?

To get back to the point, my big plan was to get to work on those little lost widgets and the restoring thereof especially the one that had to do with this blog being the “Dog’s Bollocks“. One must have one’s priorities in order after all.

Maybe if I sneak up quietly I can log in to my Admin before my host notices and decides to work on something else?

I Bollixed the Thing!

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I bollixed my blog up. Totally banjaxed it I did or at least a good portion of it. I’m so proud of myself I could just spit.

And how did I manage to do this, you ask? By messing about with themes again that’s how. Lost all my widgets in the process too. I got stupid, wasn’t watching what I was doing, didn’t pay attention and all my little text widgets went bye-bye.

Don’t even ask me if I backed up all the bits of html that went into those text widgets either.

Me and this blog of mine have a big problem and that’s the way it looks. I never liked the way it looked. No matter how many times I thought I had the right look, 3 weeks later it was somebody else’s look. Content? Content is the most important thing you say? Well hell, I know that. I just have this thing about the look…I don’t know what it should be.

I was talking to my lady about it tonight as a matter of fact. I laid all my frustrations and rantings out on the table and she promptly swept the whole mess into the trash bin and told me that I’d find out the right way to go about it if I just kept at it. I responded by saying that would only happen if I eliminated all the wrong ways of doing it first…and then the thing would probably just disappear.

Bah!

This obsession with this look thing obviously reflects a problem within myself and I’m sure any brain thumper worth his/her ludicrously high fee would the first to agree with me. I’m sure be more than willing to take all my money to find the root cause of this problem. But since I don’t have any money to speak of I suppose they won’t be beating down my door with their finely manicured hands and offering all sorts of lifetime therapeutic contracts of happy mental health.

In the meantime, I settled on a bunch of coffee beans. At least it might keep me awake long enough to restore all my missing widgets. Cups, sugar and non-dairy creamer are on the table in the back…enjoy.

Turning on the World-Not Worth It Sometimes

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I tried to get up this morning and all I managed was to raise my noggin about 6 inches before I completely ran out of steam and my head plopped back into the pillow. Unfortunately, our newest feline menace managed to crawl onto the pillow just before my head came crashing back down effectively squashing the young thing into it’s depths. Her reaction to this rudeness brought me successfully out of the bed…no problem.

It took about ten minutes to get bleeding stopped.

Now I was up and what a peaceful, quiet morning it was too. No barking dog next door, no little cars with those frickin’ BLAT mufflers screaming up and down the streets, no crashing of various breakables hitting the floor due to our 3 boys and 1 girl doing their best to destroy each other and the house along with it (our four fur bearing excuses for a feline demolition derby). Then I went for the hearing aids.

It just wasn’t worth it.

The second I turned those suckers on the world came crashing into my overly muzzled brain and it just couldn’t take it.  It fell out of my head, crawled under the dresser and began to whimper. I decided at that point that it was best just to leave it for now and go make breakfast. After I read the news and check the weather I’ll go back and see if I can coax it out with a cup of coffee and a piece of bacon. It’s turned down the coffee before but it’s never been able to resist the bacon. Normally I wouldn’t even bother since I don’t tend to use my brain during the day anyway and usually during the night it slides itself back into my head without waking me up and no harm done. But today I’m watching Laurie’s Quilt Shop while she’s off doing a rather popular local craft show and I figure I should take my brain along just in case I have to make change or perhaps give directions some lost individual.

Now, if y’all excuse me one of those frickin’ small cars with open headers is blatting up and down the street again and I need to go shoot the thing. Be back after I skin  and dress it.

Too Sweet for Surgery

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For those of you who are wondering what ever happened to me and the surgery that I was supposed to have had (yes, I said supposed to have had), it was cancelled at the last minute due to my blood sugar being too high. So what has high blood sugar have to with anything? According to my surgeon; risk of infection.

It seems that having surgery and high blood sugar at the same time significantly increases the risk of post-operative infection so she was uncomfortable with proceeding until my blood sugar was more under control shall we say. Utter horse manure, I say!

I have diabetes, there’s no doubt about that. I’m also completely atypical as far as your typical diabetes candidate is concerned in that I’m 5’11”, 150 lbs, I eat well balanced meals (thanks, honey!) and if I ever had sweet tooth it must have fallen out along with my baby teeth years ago. To top that off my doctors at large don’t have a clue as to why I have diabetes…not one. They tell me I’m an extremely frustrating patient which is exactly what the blood pressure specialists stated two years ago–they don’t know why I have hypertension either.

Be that as it may, my surgeon sent me home saying that we’ll try again in a couple of months or so. I disagree…we’ll get it done in a couple of months, three months max! No excuses, no more postponements.

The problem here is that because no one knows why I have diabetes in the first place there’s no foundation to start from in order to find a successful solution. The end result is that I have to follow a strict daily regime in order to keep my blood sugar under any sort of reasonable control and still it will randomly shoot into the nether regions for no apparent reason. One thing for sure though, any sort of break in my routine can set my blood sugar through the roof and guess what the 2 day trip to Boston does for me as far as that is concerned.

In the meantime, and not to sound too whiney about it, the pain I’m experiencing from my damaged lower esophagus and the affects GERD has upon it, continues to increase slowly but surely as each week goes by. So you might understand that I’m not looking forward to the next 2 to 3 months.

As to taking care of this high blood sugar problem of mine, I’ve already been to see my physician at my “local” VA in regards to beating my diabetes into submission by increasing my medication (Glipizide) and perhaps keeping some fast acting insulin in the fridge in case I threaten to go into some kind of sugar shock or explode or something equally as annoying. Then, at the beginning of December, a day of appointments at my VA is at hand starting with a diabetes specialist, another appointment with my physician and a third with the eye clinic for more bifocals (blood sugar goes south, so does my eyesight…so much fun…).

Now here is where I would usually end this type of post on an upbeat note or a joke or whatever—not this time I’m afraid. I’m hurt, hurtin’, severally frustrated and maybe even a bit scared at this point. That, plus the fact that this is my personal type blog and I’m supposed to be able to say things like that, right? Right!

I’ll Take my President Black

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President elect 2008

Would that I would see the day when my country should elect a black president. If someone were to ask me 10 years ago if I thought this would happen I would have given them a sad smile and replied that I rather doubt it. So I lived to see the beginning of the 21st century and nearly a decade into it things remained “business as usual” and worse. The wars continue, my country being ridiculed and even hated, big politicians with their dirty hands in big oil holding back any sort of progress involving alternative energy and environmental clean up—same shit, different day, different decade, different century. It was utterly depressing.

Then came November 4th, 2008 and on that day, against all odds (and those odds were damn high) Americans woke themselves up from their complacency long enough to elect a black president. Would you believe it? If, at the beginning of this presidential election you were asked if you thought that in 2008 we would elect a black president, what would you have replied I wonder?

Earlier this year I wrote a post where I bluntly stated that I did not want another old guy as my president. That I was sick and tired of the “same old, same old”, that it was time for a change. I was simply fed up with having the person running my country being 3 steps away from a stroke, heart attack or an assisted living environment. Someone who has decades to look back on and perhaps less than a decade to look forward to. There’s always the exception but what do you want to bet these type of elderly, forward looking folks actually end up as president?

Don’t get me wrong, I have enormous respect for my elders (as long as they deserve it, that is…) and it’s my opinion that our elders should be advising our president, not sitting in the center seat. You want to be a 75 year old senator, fine…no problem, but you ain’t headed for no oval office.

So it looks like I got my wish, as far fetched as it seemed. Originally, I had hoped for Hillary to be the one heading up the Democratic party but this may even be better (she just made my “not over 60 years of age” limit). And just so there’s no confusion here, I don’t give a rat’s behind what color and/or gender and/or sexual preference my president is just as long as they can do the job at hand.  It also renews my faith in my country that America is still able to rise above their own hates, prejudices and discontent to make a good common sense decision.

Now, does this mean that Obama will get the job done? Does it mean that he won’t end up just as corrupt as the rest of them? No, it doesn’t, not in the least. Only time will tell whether we made the right decision or not but the simple fact that “We, the People” were actually able to overcome ourselves long enough to elect a black president tells me that “We, the People” are (hopefully) finally beginning to grow up.