Testing, Testing...

Micfo to the rescue! Their customer support may have saved the day, after their mod_security updates b0rked my blog.

The big test will be whether I can post a link in a post without it barfing on me...

Still Broken

Tried to post my Photo Thursday entry from my iPhone, and got the same problem I've been getting from my computer. (Which sucks, since it took me for freakin' EVER to type out the image tag one-fingered on that little keyboard.) I wonder if it's something to do with having HTML in the entry?

[tests preview with a URL in the entry body]

Yep, that's it. Hmm. Guess I'll go and repair my database? There has to be a funky unescaped character in there somewhere, gunking up the works, since I haven't made any changes to anything lately.

Sorry for the nerdy website talk. I'll be back to normal blogging as soon as I get this damn thing fixed.

(I might have to miss a week of Photo Thursdays. That's disappointing.)

This Isn't Good Timing.

This is peculiar. My tweets were posting to my blog just fine around 3pm today, but I can't seem to make the regular Movable Type interface let me post a blog entry. It won't work from Firefox or Safari. I'm trying this from my iPhone, to see if it's something to do with my MT installation itself.

If this makes it through, I'll try posting from Aaron's computer. If not, I'll try posting to the help forums. Gah!

It's Official: I *heart* my iPhone

I'm all curled up on the recliner, tapping away on my iPhone. Thanks to this MT plugin, I can blog from wherever I can get a signal on my cell. Granted, it requires me to type one- or two-fingered on a tiny qwerty keyboard, but I'm getting used to that, anyway.

This will come in quite handy when we're on vacation this summer. This will be especially handy if we can, in fact, make our iPhones work in Japan for an additional fee.

Is liveblogging your vacation cool or lame?

Twitter Update (#1081720320)

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Website Unb0rked

Hey! How about that? A simple suggestion (go back to static publishing instead of trying dynamic) proved to be the answer. I really should have thought of it myself, but I was so intent on making it work the one way I wanted.

So, you can now access my blog at http://www.dianaschnuth.net or http://blog.dianaschnuth.com — they both point to the exact same place. Comments work again, feeds should no longer do funky things, and all is well.

I can now go back to posting normal blog entries and waiting with bated breath for my regulars to post comments. Oh, yes, and I can also go back to finishing my website redesign.

Website Still Broken

For the sake of my RSS / LJ subscribers, I'm going to leave my website broken for now. Individual entries are broken, categories are broken, and basically the only things that work right are the main page and the RSS feed. (Well, except those extra 15 duplicate entries that came down the pike tonight.)

So, until the nice gentleman from the MT forums comes through with another idea for me, or until I come across the answer elsewhere on teh intarwebs, I'll just leave it like this. Anyone who would really want to comment on anything can either e-mail me or hit me on Twitter. Or Facebook. Or MySpace. I'm not hard to reach.

Come to think of it, maybe you should hit me up on one of those places even if you weren't going to comment. The beauty of social networking isn't so much that you make fake friends, or that you pretend to be closer to the friends and acquaintances you have, but that it's that much easier to get in contact with people. Think about that.

Success!

If you can see this entry, that means my domain has successfully propagated to point to my new server. Yay!

I'm sure there will be some broken things on the site. Files missing, homegrown databases yet to be restored, other indignities of that nature. Just shoot me an e-mail or leave a comment somewhere, and I'll address the problem as time permits.

Once things are back to how they used to be, I plan to do a major overhaul of the site. You folks who subscribe via RSS probably won't notice much, but anyone who visits the page will see the first big blog redesign in the past three years.

I just saved myself over $100 per year by moving servers. How about that shit?

Update, just before midnight: Well, almost success, anyway. I have some troubleshooting to do regarding my fancy new add-on domain and Movable Type. If I use the add-on domain or its corresponding subdomain (dianaschnuth.net or blog.dianaschnuth.com), MT gives me a 500 Internal Server Error. If I don't use one of those, and I use dianaschnuth.com/blog instead, I break all the links in my archive pages. Most notably, my stylesheets.

Argh!

Twitter Update (#926285556)

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One Down, One Zillion To Go

Apart from a few minor issues that I need to finish addressing, my freelance gig is complete. The site is done, the client knows how to update it, and I've been paid for my work. Now the trick is to get Chelsea Tipton's website to come up first in the Google rankings for a search on his name, instead of being stuck on the second page of results.

Now that I have one project in the bag (or I will very shortly), I can contemplate my next project: moving and redesigning my blog.

And after that's done, I have a laundry list of projects that will literally never end. Not until I'm dead.

Minor things like editing home videos and outputting them to DVD. Major things like finishing a novel or two. Mundane things like getting my fucking desk clean once and for all. Pragmatic things like updating my resume and portfolio. Creative things like songwriting, or photography, or scrapbooking. Oh, Lordy, the scrapbooking. I haven't even finished scrapbooking our honeymoon, and we celebrated our 5th anniversary this past May.

Whenever I hear someone say they need a hobby, I want to invite them to have one of mine. I have more than I'll ever use up.

FAIL.

Not sure if I'm relieved or totally pissed... but I just solved in half an hour what I've been trying to puzzle out for six, count 'em, six hours.

If only I would have Googled the right words when I started.

See, I want to include a list of upcoming appearances on my client's website, and I knew Google Calendar would be easily updated and — I thought — easily pulled into WordPress and styled just so. Turns out it's not quite as simple as all that.

Well, actually, it is, now that I've found the plug-in and don't have to write the damn thing from scratch. *headdesk*

Granted, I learned a lot about XML parsing in PHP during my research tonight. I also reinforced the unfortunate truth that I really can't just go out and learn the piece of a technology that I need RIGHT NOW without first learning more of the foundations. I'd put myself at a beginner-plus level of PHP. Parsing XML? That totally requires at least a novice level. At least I know enough to tweak the code in the plug-in now, I guess.

I still have a decent amount of work to do before the site is complete, and I couldn't really afford to spend so long on this one problem, but I still think it was time well-spent.

And I'm still including this evening in my billed hours. Totally.

PS - I'm getting really tired of Movable Type showing me a blank screen after just about anything I do with this blog anymore. I'm hoping a clean install will fix these annoying issues... but that's going to be easily another month, if not more.

Little Bit of Everything

I don't do these massive update posts much anymore — I prefer to keep my blog entries on one topic at a time — but I figured I'd do one catch-up post, then maybe expound on parts of it later. So, working backwards from today...

Weighed in today at 196.5 lbs on my home scale — that's one and a half pounds away from my recent all-time low of 195 from May 2007. (Yep, I gained 15 pounds in six months, and it took me longer than that to lose it again.) It was a bit of a disappointment, then, to weigh in at my Weight Watchers meeting at 200.4 lbs, even after I had an ultra-light breakfast and didn't drink much water before the weigh-in. My mini-goal had been to weigh in under 200 pounds at the meeting. Oh, well — I guess I'll wait until next weigh-in to hit my mini-goal, and to reward myself with some shorts and dress pants and blouses that fit.

My supervisor asked me this morning if I'd like to attend a User Group meeting in Lansing (two hours away) this Thursday. Then she asked me if I could drive, since her car doesn't have air conditioning. D'oh! So, I'll be getting up at the buttcrack of dawn on Thursday, driving with my supervisor for two hours, attending four hours of Business Intelligence lectures and panels, then having lunch and driving two hours back. At least we don't have to work for the last couple hours of the day; basically, my day gets shifted forward by two hours.

I landed a freelance web design gig yesterday. Actually, I pretty much "landed" it last Wednesday, when he asked me if I do web design, but yesterday's client meeting was the first official sealing of our new business relationship. He's the resident conductor of a local orchestra, so I'm basically making him a PR tool, which is perfect work for me. I underpriced myself, as per usual, but I made sure to leave myself an out: a flat fee for the first 20 hours, then an hourly fee for the next 20, topping out at 40 hours. So, I won't have totally hosed myself.

This past weekend, Aaron and I went up to the Ann Arbor Art Fairs. Great time, as always. I took a few pictures (with the Holga, too, although I'll have to wait until those are developed to post them), and I bought one expensive thing and one not-so-expensive thing.

Oh, and I still need to get this blog moved to its new home on another web host, and not just because something's borked with my MT installation/upgrade (as you will have noticed if you tried to comment on a post lately — your comments ARE going through, I promise). I have until the end of August to get my stuff moved — which, incidentally, is also the deadline for getting my freelance site done. I'm going to be looking at some mighty busy evenings here. I'll need to carefully ration out my time.

And now I should get to bed, because I need to ready myself for my epic early-morning wakey-wakey in another day or so. I haven't gotten up at 5:30am since... um... well, it's been a while. Not counting jet lag in another timezone, of course.

Infinite Loop

This upgrade to MT 4.1 has been an interesting journey.

Last night, when I enabled MT-Twitter, I didn't put in the correct "regular expression" to keep it from ignoring tweets that started with "New Blog Post." Hence, when I got to work this morning and looked at my blog, I had hourly Status Updates about my New Blog Post about my Status Update...

So, i deleted all the unnecessary duplicate posts from work, but restrained myself from using Twitter until I could get home and make sure everything would work OK, with no infinite loops.

I think I'm addicted to Twitter.

To keep myself sane, I wrote all the tweets I would have liked to have posted in an email to myself, so I could post them here:

Enjoying hearing some long-lost prog rock on my iPod. I forgot how much I like(d) Dream Theater. 10:41am
Finally have enough tasks at work that I’m using the Outlook Tasks feature. Nice. 11:17am
Should be hungry. Focusing more on other kinds of cramps at the moment. 1:00pm
Yay! I know enough about my job now to know when a piece of data was left out. 2:53pm
I need a nap. 3:58pm
Damn, you, @wilw! You got me… 4:14pm

Anyway, I think my site upgrade is at a good stopping point... for now. Next up: migrating to a new server.

*girds loins in preparation*

Movable Type Upgrade

Just upgraded my blogging software, Movable Type, and added a new plug-in to incorporate my Twitter posts into my blog proper. My tweets don't look very pretty right now, either on the site or in the RSS feed, but I hope to remedy that tomorrow evening.

Until then, sit tight and know that I'll be working my magic soon enough...

(Wow, that doesn't sound egotistical or anything.)

Sapping My Will To Blog

I think that being able to Twitter quick updates all day long is diverting my blog creativity. Well, maybe not my creativity so much as my desire. I mean, I still have plenty of topics to blog about. I have a list. But twittering quickies about how I feel or what I think about during the day is seeming to take the place of blogging. Which isn't what I'd intended at all.

So, for those who subscribe to the RSS and don't read my sidebar (wherein lies my twitter feed), here's what I twittered today (in reverse order, of course):

• 19 days until Hawaii. 26 minutes ago
• Longest Friday EVAR. Because I had nothing to do and had to look busy at my desk. And it was beautiful outside. Now I am home. about 3 hours ago
• last.fm appears to be mainly unb0rked now. we'll see when i go to scrobble today's listenings... about 6 hours ago
• iPod just shuffled from the Beasties to Bonnie Tyler (Total Eclipse of the Heart). WTF? about 6 hours ago
• o noes! @wilw sez that last.fm asploded. well, their datacenter lost power, anyway. ungood - i'm addicted to tracking my listening habits. about 8 hours ago
• New live-action Speed Racer by the Wachowski bros looks sweet: http://tinyurl.com/6absre about 9 hours ago
• Still can't concentrate on work. Doesn't help that I'm waiting on someone else before I can actually do what I need to do. about 10 hours ago
• Can't concentrate on work. Want to be outside! Argh! about 12 hours ago
• Just found out how to set Windows Movie Maker to widescreen mode. AFTER I already captured and uploaded the video wrong. Fix it after work. about 12 hours ago

See the fun crap I post all day? My tweets seem to be par for the course: mainly self-centered updates about the status of me, occasional interesting linkage, and random observations about life in general. Kind of like my blog, but shorter.

My 8th-grade English teacher, Mr. Jay Falls, signed my yearbook (or was it a comment on an essay of mine?) that, like a world-class athlete, a writer like me should practice every day. So, in honor of Mr. Falls and his wisdom, I'm going to make a concerted effort to write a blog entry every day, from now until I go to Hawaii (on May 7).

That doesn't mean I'm going to stop twittering, though...

Edited to Add: Just for kicks, I Googled Mr. Falls to see if I could find out what he's doing now. I think I found him... so I wrote him a "thanks for being a good teacher" e-mail. Am I a goober? I think I might be...

End of an Era

I finally did it.

After turning the thought over in my head for months now, I finally submitted my resignation as LSM webmaster.

It's nothing against them. It's just a reorganization of priorities for me. I can only handle so many projects at a time, and can only keep focused on so much. I'm sure that there is someone actively participating in the corps who has HTML skills and can do just as good a job as I did. Or better, probably.

I just haven't been devoting the amount of time to the website that the corps deserves, and it's been like that for quite a while now. LSM deserves more than I'm currently giving them. And I deserve to be cut free of the guilt I've been giving myself over that very issue.

The announcement feels like a weight lifted from my mind.

Mixed Feelings

Some of you may remember the drum corps website I worked on back in '05. Well, it seems that the corps is "streamlining" their communications, and they'd like to retool the site. That's fine. I can dig that. I can even use the design they'd like me to use, although I insist on trying a few different variations on it first.

The only thing that really makes me sad is that I worked SO HARD on getting the content management system to be robust enough to serve their needs, and now the site is pretty much going to be a static electronic brochure. No individual member logins, no real need for members-only news items... they'll keep the news feed around, and they'll keep the schedule up-to-date, and I think they'll keep the file upload feature for staff, but it's not the same. The site will mainly be used as a recruiting tool, rather than the multifaceted communications tool I'd wanted it to be.

Maybe I wasn't proactive enough. Maybe I didn't keep up with it as well as I should have. But I did what I was told, when I was told, and I was so proud of what I'd achieved. I learned so much by programming all that, and I was actually pretty proud of my design. (I went through lots of thumbnails and comps to get to that final.)

Maybe this is my chance to make something that really pops, though. I can take the site and streamline it all to hell. I won't be depressed about this — I'll be grateful for the chance to update this two-year-old design.

Really, I will.

Nuts-N'-Bolts

For the love of the Flying Spaghetti Monster. Why must I have these fantastic ideas like, Let's put the menu for my portfolio site in the bottom left corner! That way, I won't be able to use the standard nested unordered list to stylize my menu, and I'll have to come up with some effed up way to rig it! Yeah, that sounds like fun!

I feel like the answer is obvious, yet it eludes me. I'm sure that a.) it's just a little late at night for actual mental activity to be successful, and b.) upon a proper Googling later, the answer will present itself.

In the meantime, anyone who'd care to school me on how daft I'm being right now is welcome to take a gander at my portfolio in progress. I just want the goddamn submenus to stay visible. *sigh*

It's a very basic problem. I just need more sleep to conquer it.

Accomplishment

"Task" for potential employer: done.
Time to complete: 10.5 hours.

I've never coded someone else's website layout before. I liked it. Could be that my calling is strictly as a web developer, not a designer. That, plus I'm a grammar nazi. When I'm plugging in content, I *have* to correct comma splices and misspellings. Web copy editor, anyone?

Now, it's time to focus on following up with other companies to whom I've submitted a resume online. I am armed with legal-size paper and a full clip of determination.

I have three months to land a job in my field. Granted, if I don't, I get to take home a decent chunk of severance pay... but it's not worth it to waste job-hunting time and possibly miss the job for me, just to stick around and get my severance. You know?

Life Is Good.

Furniture was delivered Saturday afternoon. Only major downside was that the old couch didn't fit through the basement door, so the entire point of buying a new couch (so we could put the old one in the basement) was nullified. On the upside: we have a giant, nine-foot pillow-back sofa on which to lounge; a new, smaller dining room table with non-80's chairs and a bench; and after our return from Nihon, we will have a new massagey recliner.

In other news, Aaron has determined the status of his passport. Due to our change in departure date, it hasn't yet been processed, even though he applied for it back in February. It has now been expedited, and should be on its way by week's end. Which is still calling it close, and may mean that we'll need to obtain our Ghibli Museum vouchers after we arrive in Nihon instead of in advance.

Weight has stabilized at 198 pounds. I'm OK with that for now. Slow and steady weight loss means it's more likely to stay off. I won't make my goal of 190 by Japan, but so be it. I still intend to eat heartily while we're on vacation.

I am SO almost done with my freelance project. I'm hitting some snags with programming the content management system, and I'm going to just have to set some strictures on what it can and can't do. I can't make it account for every possible instance of weirdness. Hopefully, the client will be accepting of that. Honestly, though, I'm really just glad to have it done. I don't know if I'll get the remainder of my pay by the time we leave for Japan, which is unfortunate... but, again, I'm OK with that. Between Aaron and myself, we have enough money saved up to have a sufficiently good time.

Yes, indeed... life is good.

Productive

Finished the initial roll of film in the Brownie Starmite. Today was appropriately sunshiny, so I took identical photos to yesterday's overcast ones, plus some others to pad out the roll. Wrote a check to Dwayne's Photo for $14, packed up the film, and will be shipping it off tomorrow morning. I expect to have twelve 4" x 4" prints in my hot little hands by May 1st.

Put away the mess of clothes on the floor by the bed. Went into the small bedroom and arranged all of our board games on a small plastic shelving unit in the closet. (Damn, we have a lot of board games. Trivial Pursuit especially.) Moved my empty steamer trunk from the small bedroom to beside my nightstand. Sometime in the near future, I'll be going through the linen closet and moving blankets into the trunk to make room for the new sheets I intend to purchase.

Submitted the new freelance site to Google for spidering and indexing. I'm planning to use a Google search for the site search, so a good spidering by Google would be a definite plus. Still have a lot to do... I'm not going to end up getting everything done this week that I told them I would. I knew I was giving myself a mighty tall order, what with the laundry list of stuff I had yet to do. Not to worry. It'll get done well before the Japan trip. Hopefully by the end of April, if not sooner.

Paid my credit card bills. A simple task, but still one that makes me feel... satisfied? Relieved? Accomplished? Meh. It's done, anyway.

Paying bills is going to get more interesting in July, when Sky changes over to Huntington's payroll system. Bi-weekly instead of semi-monthly. This will take some getting used to, after being paid on the 15th and the last day of the month for the past 4½ years.

One Week Till Relaunch?

Stayed up a little too late last night after getting home from Easter festivities in Cleveland. Woke up this morning, way late and bleary-eyed, and decided to use one of my personal days. After all, I need to get my freelance project done this week, and there are a few important parts that aren't done yet. So, I stayed home, slept in a little, and worked for about four hours total on that.

I'm realizing that creating my own content management system (CMS) from a flat-file database is a little more challenging than I'd thought it would be. I thought it would be ridiculously simple, but it's really not. I'd really rather use SQL, but enabling SQL on my client's webhosting would cost them extra from their webhost. I'm highly tempted to just tell my client to edit the file themselves as needed, and upload it via FTP... but I know I should really afford them a way to edit their news and such in the browser itself.

I spent long enough figuring out how to check a username and password against a flat-file db, and remembering how to get PHP to remember that the user has logged in, via session variables. I finally had some ideas about how to edit and delete records after being flummoxed for quite some time... but I got sidetracked by Japan trip stuff, and never got back to coding, and now my brain's winding down enough that I'm not going to attempt it now. Maybe tomorrow after work. I'm thinking about feeding the db into an array to display it, then editing the array and spitting the whole array back out into a new file, overwriting the old. Should work, right...?

Back to work tomorrow. Meh. I'm looking forward to finishing this freelance job so I can a.) invoice the client, and b.) finish up my resume and portfolio redux in preparation for the pre-Japan job-hunting blitz.

The Not-Really-Big Reveal

For anyone who's been interested in what my freelance gig is and how it's turning out, I thought I'd share with you the HTML mock-up I've created for my client. They chose this design out of over half a dozen Photoshop composites, and I spent this week creating a stylesheet that I can plug their content into. After I do that, there will be some content-management issues to tackle and some bells and whistles to add.

So, there you have it: the midpoint of my freelance project. I think it's some of my better work, IMHO.

Freelancing Update

Looks like the HR issues I was having with my contracting job may have been ironed out. I wasn't able to connect with the contact person to do the training on how to use the online timeclock, but she had sent me the Word file that explained the process. I had thought that a phone conference with this person was a requirement... but it seems that I am able to log in and record my hours, so that issue may be resolved.

This is good, since I finished a four-hour project this past Wednesday and have already been presented with another, more involved but similar project due by next Thursday.

My main contact there said that they could potentially give me enough work for a 40-hour week, but also mentioned that the summer months are the slow season for their firm. I'm not comfortable with the idea of relying on freelance and contract work to keep me financially afloat, even with a relatively steady inflow of work from this particular firm. Like I've said before: if it were just me, I might be more inclined to take the plunge. But I'm beyond the carefree "oh shit how do I buy food this week" days of my youth, and I can't afford to jeopardize my half of the mortgage and car and insurance payments, or my student loans and credit cards and whatnot. That narrow window of financial spontaneity has officially closed, and I now crave stability.

I also have new comps due to my freelance client by Monday. They happened to choose the design I liked the least, but because its main features (rounded corners) matched some of their previous marketing materials. Once I had a copy of their existing flyer to give me ideas, and vector versions of the logo and logotype, along with their ideas on what they wanted to incorporate into the new comps from the old, I felt much more prepared to give them what they wanted.

It's shaping up to be another working weekend of sorts. As long as I'm getting paid, though, I'm OK with it.

Step One Complete

Four composites are now completed and posted on a private website for my client to peruse. One of them totally sucks, one could become something decent, and two of them are actually not bad. Truth be told, I really like one of them, but it's the most totally boring one of the lot. Says something about my style and personality, maybe, that I prefer the muted and beige and straitlaced design over the one(s) with bold colors and rounded corners and other elements I don't usually use.

I sent the link to my clients around 9pm this evening; my self-imposed deadline was tomorrow. I said I'd have a completed website in four to six weeks once we finalize the design, and I think that sounds completely reasonable. The only issue is going to be figuring out how to allow them to make additions to content without using a database. (From what I can tell, it would cost extra on their hosting plan.) Their usual modus operandi is Frontpage, as I've mentioned before, and I'm afraid it would wreak havoc on any design I would throw out there.

We'll come up with something. I have a few tricks up my sleeve.

Definitely A Learning Experience

I gave myself one week to come up with three to five composites for my website redesign client. No problem — I did similar projects with similar deadlines in college. VCT, graphic design, yeah. No problem.

I hate all of my ideas.

No, let me rephrase: I can't seem to translate the ideas in my head to something that looks good on-screen. I feel like I'm missing lots of the finer details and the subtleties that I admire in other designers. Shadows, patterns, gradients, tiny lines and shapes and ornamentations that just aren't popping into my head. The 4x3" ballpoint pen drawings look like drawings of decent web page designs; my Photoshop comps look like a VCT 102 student put them together.

Maybe trying to take design cues from my favorite designers isn't the best way to go. Maybe I'm being too hard on myself because of it. In any case, I have one evening and two weekend days to finish at least one and a half comps, if not more, and preferably improve on what I already have completed. If I have to give them crap and say they're first drafts, I will, but I'd rather give them awesome comps and just let them choose what kind of website they want.

It's just so frustrating. I finally have the opportunity to wow a client with my flair... and now... *pfft*

Brief Hiatus

There is a distinct possibility that I may be posting less over the next couple of weeks, as I really need to get the Lakeshoremen website ready for its October 1st launch date.

I thought it was all just busywork left, but I apparently still have some troubleshooting to do. I'm going to spend another evening on this particular problem of mine, then if I haven't figured out why my variables aren't talking to each other, I'll ask my geeky homies to get my back.

So, updates will be limited in the very near future, unless something really fascinating happens in the next couple weeks (and I wouldn't count that out entirely) or unless I really get a bug up my ass about something (again, don't rule that out either, as I do have a couple blog entries brewing in my head).

In that same vein: if you've e-mailed me recently and I haven't responded, don't worry. I still love you. You don't suck. I suck.

But, right now, I sleep.

It's All Me

Technorati: Tag: Atkins

Five posts from one blog match this tag. Yep, it's me. Just me.

WTF?! I'm cool with that, though. More traffic for me.

Even More Linky Love!

This one's a first: I've never been to this person's website before now, so it's not just a reciprocal link (i.e. 'thanks for linking to me'). Michelle must have found my site from *somewhere*, and thought it blogworthy enough to blogroll. That's my link, there, circled, right above the link to Dooce.

That's pretty cool.

Being in someone's blogroll is cool, I mean, not necessarily being listed next to Dooce. Although that's pretty cool, too.

Thanks, Michelle! I appreciate the shout-out. It makes me feel all warm and fuzzy inside. (Or maybe I'm just getting Aaron's cold.)

Happy St. Patrick's Day!

First, let me give credit for the photo that has been gracing the masthead this week. I *heart* Google image searches, although I do tend to swipe images without permission. (As my site isn't exactly commercial, though, and gets a grand total of 10 hits a day, I honestly don't feel too bad about it.) Anyway, thanks be to Jessa for posting this wonderful photo from her trip to Ye Olde Emerald Isle back in 2002, even though I'm a cowardly bastige and didn't ask her permission to use it. (OMFG, so jealous. Ireland is most definitely on the list of places I want to visit before I die.)

So, we all know that St. Patrick's Day is in commemoration of St. Patrick, who drove the snakes out of Ireland, right?

Yeah.

If you're interested in what it's *really* all about, here are some links for you:

+ St. Patrick's Day: Customs and History
+ Scotland Online: St. Patrick's Day
+ History of the Shamrock, Leprechaun, and Blarney Stone

read more...

A Non-LJ GIP (Gratuitous Icon Post)?

Well, it appears that Yahoo! has jumped on the avatar bandwagon. These apparently can be used with Yahoo! Messenger, as well. (Too bad I have no intention of getting online with any other messenger service—I use IM too rarely as it is.)

Hey, while I'm at it, here's another me (a la Candy Bar Doll) that I made back in, oh, December, and never bothered to post.

Interesting, isn't it, how all these cute girlie thingies have all sorts of skin and eye and hair color, but no option for build? Yeah, if I ever looked like this in real life, I'd be in the hospital for anemia or some shit.

More Linky Love!

I'm not much for Googling myself to see who has links to me, and the Technorati thing was pretty much just depressing, so I took the link off my sidebar. ('search for dianaschnuth.net: no results found.)

So, when I check out my stats, and find a website I regularly check out as a referrer, I'm always pretty stoked. Number Two on my Thanks For Giving Me A Linkback list goes to Chepooka. I'm a ways down on her page, but I'm happy to be on it at all. Anything that gets me traffic, and anyone who notices that I link to them (and, in this case, trackback to them as well), any of that deserves 'props' in my book.

So, thanks, Chepooka! I appreciate the love.

Yay, Traffic?

Can you tell when I posted my Ohayocon5 pics? Yeah.

Also interesting to note: I appear to have less traffic on the weekends. I guess y'all like to do fun things on the weekends instead of websurfing.

Looks like either a.) people are still finding my Ohayocon pics (I know people are still finding them via Google), or b.) maybe I got some more "regulars" after the Ohayocon post. Either way is fine with me.

Aargh!

OMGWTFBBQ! I just tried to type some HTML code into Movable Type too fast, and ended up hitting the keystrokes for [Back] and erasing my entire damn entry.

Too bad... it was pretty good. About how I'm too impatient to sit down and write real blog entries. I can't complain about lack of potential content, cause I've got plenty. It's just making myself sit down and blog about it.

That said, I'm done for the evening.

Linky Love!

Seriocomic has put me on their list o' "Linky Love." And I didn't even ask. How cool is that?

Thanks, Mike!

Recent Referrers

People have made it here to my little site from:

• Googling "kris heath" ohio (I wonder if they found Kris's song?)
  
• Googling GLASSMEN DCI 2005 (Too bad they came up with Topless Drumcorps instead of the Glassmen's 2005 repertoire)
  
• A Technorati search for www.kottke.org (which yielded forth my rantings on stereographs)
  
• A Yahoo search for dianaschnuth.net (huh? why?)
  
• Googling Larry King Live December 2004 Gordon Hinkley and Larry King, Gordon B. Hinkley, and one search on AOL for transcript of gordon b hinckley at larry king live december 2004
  
• Googling acidfox productions
  
• Googling churchgoes scott peterson christian
  
• Somebody's own stats page from New Zealand (probably Mike Hudson's, as his is the only .nz blog I frequent)
  
• A few comments I made on Blurbomat, [daily dose of imagery], and a Trackback I posted to adot's notblog*.

It looks like most of my hits are friends jumping on to see if I've updated, with the occasional stranger making a ten-minute stay with multiple page views. The person looking for Kris stayed on my site for over a half hour, and it looks like Sheryl probably left my page open in the background at work for nearly 45 minutes. :-)

I think I'm having too much fun with my counter.

I'm Popular...?

Well, I just banned a dozen IP addresses in the same subnet (is that what it's called? the first two numbers are the same) from commenting on my blog. I'm going to see if that puts a stop to the spamming that just started this weekend.

If it doesn't, everybody be prepared to plug in your e-mail address next time you comment on a post. Don't worry, MT encodes your e-mail so it can't be harvested by spiders or bots or what-have-you. Goodness knows I can't afford to have you guys stop commenting at all... my poor self-esteem couldn't handle the strain. I'll put a note in the comments area if I institute required fields.

So, yay for the fact that my blog has finally been targeted by a spam-bot. That means *someone* knows I'm out there, besides you diligent few. Boo for spam-bots.

Now Taking Requests

I know I should probably wrap up the detail work on this site before I start bemoaning my sparse readership (again). After all, the website archives aren't on this server yet, and my CSS and PHP still have some glitches to smooth out.

Still, though, I find myself posting my link in other blogs' comments, and signing up on all those blog tracking sites, and wanting strangers to think my site is as cool as I think theirs is. Are. Whatever.

But, in all actuality, I created this site: a.) to keep in touch with my out-of-town and sometimes out-of-touch friends; b.) to encourage myself to continue writing and journaling; and c.) to give myself a continuing web design challenge. So, I ask you, the readership, what you'd like to read:

1. More day-to-day shit (e.g. 'my job sucks' or 'my computer crashed')
2. More links to news stories (e.g. the new Willy Wonka movie, Viktor Yuschenko's face, or the death penalty)
3. More philosophical and sociopolitical thoughts and ideas and rants
4. More pictures and picture galleries (daily or weekly, even, if I have that many good ones?)
5. More links to linkworthy blogs and rants
6. Your content's just fine as it is! Why do you always worry about shit so much?

Leave some love in the comments section.

Hannukah For Dummies

What is Hanukah? (from Hanefesh.com):

The Jews observe the Festival of Lights for eight days, in honor of the historic victory of the Maccabbees and the miracle of the oil.

The Hebrew word Chanukah means "dedication." In the 2nd century BCE, the Syrian-Greek regime of Antiochus sought to pull Jews away from Judaism, with the hopes of assimilating them into Hellenism -- Greek culture. Antiochus outlawed aspects of Jewish observance -- including the study of Torah -- which began to decay the foundation of Jewish life and practice. During this period, many of the Jews began to assimilate into Greek culture, taking on Greek names and marrying non-Jews.

In response, a band of Jewish settlers took to the hills of Judea in open revolt against this threat to Jewish life. Led by Matitiyahu, and later his son Judah the Maccabee ("The Hammer"), this small band of pious Jews led guerrilla warfare against the Syrian army.

Antiochus sent thousands of well-armed troops to crush the rebellion -- but the Maccabees succeeded in driving the foreigners from their land.

Jewish fighters entered Jerusalem in December, 164 BCE. The Holy Temple was in shambles, defiled and desecrated by foreign soldiers. They cleansed the Temple and re-dedicated it on the 25th day of the Jewish month of Kislev. When it came time to re-light the Menorah, they searched the entire Temple, but only one small jar of oil bearing the pure seal of the High Priest could be found. Miraculously, the small jar of oil burned for eight days, until a new supply of oil could be brought.

From then on, Jews have observed a holiday for eight days in honor of this historic victory and the miracle of the oil.

Today, the observance of Chanukah features the lighting of a special Chanukah menorah with eight branches (plus a helper candle), adding one new candle each night. Other customs include spinning the dreidel (a top with Hebrew letters on the sides), eating "oily" foods like potato latkes (pancakes) and sufganiyot (jelly donuts), and giving Chanukah gifts & coins) to children.

read more...

Crazy Day

Just for shits and giggles, I signed up on all those blogariffic sites out there: blo.gs, weblogs.com, BlogStreet, Blogrolling, syndic8.com, and updated my Technorati profile. I also set MT to accept trackback pings and to ping a few of the sites I signed up on, to let them know I updated. So, to anyone who finds my humble site or feed through one of those sites, welcome. I'm not always terribly interesting... but neither are the other friends and strangers whose blogs I frequent myself, so I'm in good company.

I'm not particularly motivated to do anything this evening. Work really drained me today. The stress I felt today was reminiscent of my days back in Lockbox:

24 September 2002: Just Another Day...

Hey, for once I worked an 8-hour day! Yeah, we were doing so well that we actually took a one-hour lunch and everything. Just for reference, yesterday I worked a 14-hour day. Seriously. My co-worker and almost-supervisor, Loni, worked an hour and a half more than me, since she came in at 6am. Damn, that sucked. Makes the normal 8-hour day seem like a luxury instead of a burden.

Being one of three people manning the Loan Corrections Team Line (aka 'working the phones') wasn't horrible, although I had twice as many calls as usual. And doing loan changes wasn't all that bad, either, although I had several requests that I had to call people about and wait around for answers. But all those things together made for one damn hectic day. I felt like I was going in six different directions all day—I'd hang up the phone from one call, go to start a loan change, get another call, have to do research for that call, finally get back to that loan change I'd started, then get another call, then finally finish that first loan change, then have to call someone about a detail of the next loan change... Yeesh. My desk has at this moment about seven different stacks of paper of varying heights and degrees of importance.

That really sucked away any sort of energy, creative or otherwise, that I might have had in reserve for my Me Time this evening.

So... that's today.

Remind me: why did I syndicate this again?

Movable Type 3.1 Upgrade Successful

Well, everything seems to have gone smoothly with the MT upgrade. I tried putzing with the "dynamic page generation," but all it seemed to do was b0rk my one category page (although it did reduce the rebuild time). So, I'm not using the dynamic page generation yet... not until I do a little more research and find out what the big hype is all about.

I do know that there's a lot about this whole thing that I haven't been utilizing to its fullest extent, even with the old version of MT. For instance, I'd wanted to include a different sidebar (see right) with each category index page—say, photography links for my Photography category, and low-carb links for my Atkins category, and links to concert tours and reviews and such for my Reviews category. It seems that, while MT still doesn't support what I'd wanted to do, there is a plug-in that can do this for me. So, I'll probably mess with that sometime tomorrow.

There's plenty of other blog things for me to research in the future, too, like pinging for trackbacks and such. I just can't think of any mainstream blog tracker thingy that would give a shit if little ol' me had an update. :-/ Do people really just surf off of places like blo.gs or weblogs.com?

Since I switched to PHP, and deleted all my HTML-based individual archives, I've also been having some visitors get 404 Not Found messages. D'oh! So, I need to go into my HostRocket Control Panel and make a custom 404 Error page saying to try changing the .htm to a .php to view the page. Awfully ghetto of me, but... *shrug*

Anyway, fun times ahead. Prepare to see more happy categorized entries from Yours Truly. @whee!

Happy Thanksgiving!

Well, how about that? I managed to whip together a Thanksgiving theme just in time. The most time-consuming part was locating appropriate images online for the background. Props go out to About.com for the pumpkins and the gourd, and to the Google Image Search for finding me the other gourd image.

In other site-related news, I imported entries from April 2004 last night. Now you can read about such exciting ventures as... well... us buying home improvement supplies from Home Depot? My review of Kill Bill Volume 2? Some random couple "parking" on my street? Yeah. Hit the archives for more exciting archived goodness.

I'm also contemplating upgrading to Movable Type 3.1 sometime in the near future, mainly to see what kind of category support it has. (I've been assigning categories to all of my entries, but have only been actively using the photography category.) So, if the site goes all wonky sometime in the next few days, you'll know why.

Let's hear it for four-day weekends. Word.

I *heart* Stylesheets

Did I happen to mention that, with my all-CSS layout, a minor full-site redesign (color changes, slight positional tweaking) would take considerably less time?

How about one evening?

Everything looks the same right now, but you will all get a Happy Hannukah surprise in a couple few weeks. (Hannukah, Chanukkah, however you Romanize it... I'm taking my spelling straight from the Jew myself.)

I'm also planning a Christmas theme, maybe a Yule theme before that (Dec 21), and afterward... Valentine's Day, St. Patrick's, Independence Day, blah blah blah. And, in case you were wondering how I'm managing all this (which I'm sure you were), I'm writing new stylesheets for each holiday theme, then writing some PHP code to plug in the right stylesheet on the right date. There's only a few things—like those fancy horizontal rules—that I'll still have to change out manually, if I get a bug up my ass about it.

And, of course, I'll include posts giving the history and significance of the holiday and of the symbolism I've incorporated into my design. I'm also going to make a valiant attempt to actually do some real research into each holiday for which I design, and not offend anyone by my ignorance. For example, for my Hannukah theme, I wanted to use a real Hannukah quotable in the masthead—but I didn't want to use the name of God, 1.) because Jews don't write the Name of God, and 2.) because I'm agnostic-bordering-on-atheist myself, and don't want to give prospective visitors the wrong idea (that is, that I'm proselytizing). So, I did a decent amount of researching and looking around online, and ended up quoting only part of the prayer said after the candles of the menorah (hannukia, whatever) are lit.

Not that Sheryl would be offended if I put every single Name of God I could find up on my webpage. Elohim! ELOHIM! (Mormons call Him that too, by the way. We—well, they, I guess—also know the Four-Letter Name, and also don't write or pronounce it.)

You'll all get a Diana-style crash course in Hannukah and Judaism (sp?) in another few weeks, complete with quotables from the inimitable Sheryl and many lovely links.

I like my new Hannukah theme better than this yellowy-green thing I've got now. I can't wait to switch it out...!

Still Tweaking...

I've got my Backlog going on, but it's not very pretty yet. I can't figure out how to change the separator from a dash to a colon, like in the current tune. And, even so, it's still pretty long for my sidebar width. I may see if there's some way I can make it only read the title, then link to Amazon for the artist. That would be sweet.

Er, wait. I figured it out. Let's hear it for figuring out how to cut-and-paste the correct lines of code, and to change them appropriately. Now I just have to see if I can make it remember and display my backlog while I'm not listening to WinAmp.

I kind of wanted to play with this more, but I want to check out the Nightline about the Clinton Presidential Library. Sounds interesting.

Edit, 11:30pm: I just did something pretty damn cool, IMHO. No, I didn't manage to make my web page remember my backlog after I quit WinAmp—that would involve more programming than I know or care to get into at this particular point in time, as I think I'd have to export the songs to a file or database.

No, I made it so that my backlog 1.) doesn't show blank lines when I haven't played five songs yet, and b.) isn't quite as ugly and wrapped around funny. Next I'm on, mouse over one of the song titles in my backlog. It should pop up with "search for U2 on Amazon," assuming it was U2 I was listening to, and the link searches for the artist on Amazon. w00t!

Maybe I *should* try studying Computer Science sometime, maybe get a certificate like Amy... I'm really getting off on this coding thing. I'd forgotten that a.) I know enough logic to do basic programming, and b.) I enjoy it.

I Made It Go!

Holy fucking shit. I learned myself enough PHP to make the Currently Hearing plugin work.

Almost.

I'm still working on making the archives pages display it properly, as they're in a different directory. Any ideas, web gurus?

Oh, and something else that's entirely supercool: HostRocket allows PHP parsing for HTML file extensions. I just had to add a line into my mime-type list in my HostRocket control panel, and whoosh! My stupid archives.htm page is suddenly PHP-ified.

I'm going to go scour the HostRocket FAQ page now and see if I can find a solution to my little PHP nested directory issue.

I'm stoked!

Edit: Yeeeeeah! I just wrote my first Else statement in PHP! And it works! Check it: if you're on the main index or on the main archive list, then you're in the public_html directory, and the sidebar displays my Currently Hearing info. If you're in another directory—say, reading an individual entry or posting a comment—you're in a different directory that's not public_html, and you see my driving tunes.

I am such a geek. But I'm OK with that. Next step: PHP-ifying (and possibly MySQL-ifying) the rest of my site so I don't have to rebuild MT so often...

I Made A Pretty

Check it out—I made a Favorites Icon! If you're using Firefox, check the address bar. If you're using IE, check out the bookmark for my site (that I'm sure you have at the top of your list).

If you can't see it... it looks something like this:  

Heh. I'm so geeked by the smallest things. Go me.

A Successful Blog?

Call me egotistical, but according to D. Keith Robinson, I'd like to think that this new blog of mine will be A Successful Blog. Ideally, anyway.

Incidentally, Keith's website is where I inadvertently stole my anti-tagline from. Just like I (somewhat less inadvertently) appropriated some of Dooce's design elements. Imitation is the highest form of flattery... right?

After all, I believe it was Picasso who said, "Good artists copy; great artists steal." —I'm not sure what that makes me, then.

Blogworthy?

Now that my page looks kind of like a "real" blog, I find myself torn between writing more and writing better. Ideally, I'd like to do both. Realistically, I know that if I want to put out high-quality entries like The Elite Members Of The Online Blogosphere (and their groupies know who they are), I would need to sit down and spend quality time on each and every entry. I would basically be writing mini-essays for actual publication, while trying to keep my informal style intact.

It's harder than it seems. For me, anyway.

On the other hand—shit, no one new is reading this thing. My entire audience consists of Aaron, Amy, Sheryl, Eric, Beth, Dan, and sometimes Amanda, Donna, Kristen, Ellie from SomethingNormal, or a random wanderer following a link from my sig or my old Bosstones page (which, remarkably, still gets hits after at least two years of stagnation).

There's nobody here to impress. Y'all know me too well. *smirk*

So, once I get used to being all loose and laid-back while typing in a new interface, I'm hoping I'll be back to my normal blogging self—albeit with a narrower column of text, a different color scheme, and a new backend.

Huh-huh, she said, "back end." Cool.

P.S. - All of my August 2004 LJ entries are now imported into MT. w00t!

If You Can't Beat 'Em...

Well, I figured out how to adapt around all the little goobers in my CSS compatibility enough to make something that looks presentable in both browsers. Please look around and let me know what you think. Is the jumpy background too overwhelming? If it is, I can try to tweak it into something that might be smaller, both visually and byte-wise, although I'm not sure how the design would hold together without the large photo element. Might still be OK.

If the general consensus on the design is A-OK, then I'll make an attempt to figure out these Movable Type templates and plug them into this nifty design I've created. Once I figure out the proprietary tags, it doesn't sound like it'll be any harder than connecting ClarisWorks to FileMaker back in the day. And, hell, maybe it'll get me on the road to doing some real database stuff. I have MT running under MySQL, after all.

OK, guys. Let me know what you think. I'm outta here for tonight. Soon. Really.

edit: Might help if I gave you the new link.

"Real" Web Hosting: Check.

Well, I done it. I bought a domain name and pointed it toward my sparkly new web hosting service. I have also maxxed out credit card #2 with said web hosting, and made an emergency online 'oh-shit-did-I-just-go-overlimit?' payment. I am totally done charging shit until I get both cards back to about 50% paid-off. Why do I keep doing this shit? I'm really pissing myself off with this.

But I digress. Web hosting.

As much as I would love to set up MT right now, I'm getting a little tired and am having trouble following the installation instructions. How should I know where I want to install Movable Type? You're the experts—where would you put it?!
*deep breath*

I'm just really anxious to get my shit going, even though my navigation isn't quite up to par yet. I think I need to try a couple different templates for horizontal navigation, and maybe set it up so it doesn't look like crap with a space there, in case I can't get rid of it. Kind of like my issue with the fixed background—it looks in both IE and Firefox, even though it looks totally different.

I wish I had more quality brain-time in the evenings. I've still got a good hour of awakeness, but my brain is done. All I'm good for at this point is some TV, a shower, a chapter or two of Lord of the Rings, and hitting the sack. Blah.

I am so addicted.

I had thought to have a computer-free day today. After purchasing web hosting, downloading MT, and almost getting it installed yesterday, I had seriously thought I could stay away from my hopeless addiction to the intarweb. I had planned to do some yoga, put away some clothes, water my plants, et cetera, et cetera. Instead, here I am, basking in the glow of my Compaq FS740 17-incher, watching my old-skool copy of WS_FTP95 (straight from the 1999-2000 ResNet CD!) zip all the Movable Type files to their new home.

Er, no, I'll take that back. I am actually now configuring MT. So far, so good... Now I just need to set up a template, and test this puppy out.

Then comes the daunting task of importing all my old entries.

Manually.

*gulp*

Layout (Almost) Complete

Thanks to the lovely folks at the CSS Forum, I now have my basic layout set up as I had wanted. I still need to design my very first masthead, figure out my site structure and navigation (i.e. pare this sucker down), and finish my background image to my satisfaction. Then, and only then, will I be prepared to shell out some coin for "real" webhosting. And, after that, I will refamiliarize myself with installing perl scripts on a remote server (which actually shouldn't be too hard—I mean, if I could install a guestbook script back in the day, I can certainly install and configure Movable Type six years later).

Questions, though: Amy, I know you use Firefox. When you scroll my test page, does the "transparent" background kind of jump? I think it's just a video RAM issue on my box, but I can't be positive. It does the same thing in Netscape 7.2 (which I downloaded for testing purposes only). The only reason it doesn't do it in IE6 is that Explorer is fubar and doesn't display the background properly... but I kind of like the funky effect it gives, so I'm keeping it, even though it's not what I was going for. Oh, and incidentally... Firefox is now my default browser.

Overall, I believe I am pleased. Any comments on the layout: good, bad, ugly? I'll get the masthead up as soon as I get it designed. ;-)

Getting Closer...

Well, it looks like there will in fact be some degree of image trickery in the new layout. But it's looking better, anyway, especially in Firefox. Turns out IE6 doesn't actually support the full version of CSS1, and barely supports the CSS1 core. So, all the little stylesheet tricks and fun things that work fine in other browsers look like toasted crap in IE6. (I haven't tested on Netscape yet—seems that I uninstalled Netscape 6 from my computer. Imagine that.)

I wish I knew someone who used Movable Type. I know y'all are LJ junkies, or have your own other thing going on, so I can't go to any of you for bugs/issues/how-to-install. Yes, I know, they have tech support and plenty of docs, but it just feels better to have a real human being to ask when you need help. If I can't use my own layout with MT, I want to know now so I can give it up. Guess I should check the docs soon.

Once I'm completely ready to implement, I'm going to buy a new domain and get some real hosting at HostRocket. I know Schavitz has been going through them for years and has had little to no complaint. Upon comparing their services with others, like LiquidWeb, they seem to have more of what I want for a lesser price. Not by much, but anything is enough.

Oh, no... I've turned into one of those people who blogs about their blog. Shit.

CSS Is Driving Me Insane

Interesting evening. The original plan had been:
1.) do yoga while watching local news
2.) eat dinner during national news
3.) brush teeth, practice mellophone
4.) water plants, indoors and out
5.) put clean clothes away and other minor straightening-up
6.) play with new website

The actual plan became:
1.) super-hungry. ate dinner during local news.
2.) watched half of national news, then fell asleep.
3.) came downstairs at 7:15pm. turned on computer.
4.) messed with website for two hours.

Finally got it to look almost right in Explorer, but (as Amy will notice) it looks totally fubar in Firefox. ARRGH! WTF?! I enjoy a good intellectual puzzle, don't get me wrong, but I am getting seriously peeved at this.

After all this tweaking, I just hope I can make Movable Type work with it OK without resorting to using one of their templates. Good gravy.

Redesign Update

If you're interested, the results of an evening of CSS research is here. It's still not done, and I still have a few issues to overcome (mainly dealing with the height of various elements in various resolutions), but it's getting there.

I tested in IE 6 and Mozilla Firefox, but haven't downloaded any other browsers to test on. The page also looks funky on any resolution other than 1024x768 (remember those resolution issues I mentioned?). I'll continue to add to it and tweak it and keep you all posted. If you find something that doesn't work at all, throw me a comment, yo.

Working in a vacuum

I was never very good at working alone without peer feedback. So, I present for your commenting pleasure, the redesign work-in-progress. It still needs lots of detail work, but this is the general layout I'm thinking of starting with. I know I'm violating some cardinal rule of a website redesign by letting you see it way, waaaay before it's ready for prime-time, but I'd like some comments. And, hell, it's not like I have a really huge reader base, anyway. We're all friends here.

FYI, this is a jpeg of a Photoshop comp, originally 1024px wide. The main content area is arranged so that users with 800x600 resolution can still see the entirety of the content. I'm planning to go whole-hog CSS this time, so the partially-opaque backgrounds will actually be DIVs with an opacity setting, not some trickery of background images. The flower background (and likely the color scheme and masthead) will change as the mood strikes me, although whatever image is there will remain fixed as the page scrolls. I'm defenestrating the iFrames. (Look it up.)

I'm not positive I'll be keeping the TagBoard, as I'm hoping to upgrade web hosting and move to some sort of publishing software that allows comments. However, if I do keep it, you'll all be glad to know that I'm working on upgrading to TagBoard Advanced. I doubt it'll be around for the new design, though.

Comments from the peanut gallery are welcome and appreciated.

Ready for a Redesign

Yep, I think I'm ready to embark on my website redesign. Maybe if I had a real website with real content, I could get recognized in the "blogging community"... or some shit like that. I mean, shit, look at Dooce. She writes about her new baby, and breastfeeding, and getting fired from her job because of her website, and wrapping pasta around her dog's snout because it's funny. We're both intelligent ex-Mormon women with a good sense of humor and a decent amount of web design skill, IMO. If I spent some quality time on my new site, got it to look all spiffy, maybe spent another few minutes actually composing blog articles rather than just being satisfied with my stream-of-consciousness posts?maybe then I could get some new readership. Or at least feel better about myself.

Next weekend: Mom's visit and our trip to Dayton. Visit Grandpa and Grandma Cook and Amy.
Weekend after: Michigan Ren Fest (maybe)
Labor Day weekend: Taste of Cleveland (maybe)
Following weekend: Saginaires / Northern Aurora alumni picnic & Black Swamp w/ Amy
Weekend after that: Gravity Games in Cleveland Saturday & parade on Sunday

Gotta staff the phones tomorrow. Blech. I don't mind it so much, except that I have some stuff from last week to wrap up, and new stuff to learn for this week, and it's just about impossible while answering phone calls all day.

Redesign Step 1: Figuring Out What I Like

So, my computer is happy once more, and I have completed my tour of neat websites.

As with many things, sometimes I just like a website's design without really thinking of specifically why I like said design. So, to make myself pay attention, I made a list of likes and dislikes as I websurfed the elite list, so I can integrate some specific ideas into my redesign.

My likes (and I apologize for not writing in layman's terms):
+ a:hover / mouseOver background change on links
+ neat “ 's in blockquote backgrounds
+ little "about" blurbs in the sidebar
+ photographic mastheads with logomarks
+ cute little icons in front of post titles
+ kitsch. 50's pics. retro fonts.
+ having the latest blog entry right up front
+ the 'currently hearing' plugin
+ white (negative) space and an obvious focal point
+ partially opaque backgrounds for text
+ 5px borders on photos
+ logos with truncated letters (i.e. with the bottoms cut off)
+ simple, understated color palettes

My dislikes (or, things that seem chichéd or annoying):
+ centered layouts with patterned backgrounds on the sides
+ cute little icons in front of post titles
+ folder tabs
+ distressed-style graphics
+ overly large header graphics
+ cluttered teeny type
+ boxes with 45° cut-out corners

These are not, obviously, comprehensive lists of everything I like about every cool website, and I'm sure my likes and dislikes will change with time. They always do. After all, I once practically wet myself seeing this on an Apple Cinema Display, and now I just yawn and wonder if he'll ever update his style.

On a similar note, I had an interesting conversation with one of my co-workers today. My partner in the duty rotation had mentioned that he'd been to college, so I asked what his degree was in. This opened up a floodgate of information—for which I was thankful, because it made me feel a little less... well, like a professional failure, to be blunt. Anyway, this guy graduated business college with an MIS degree, had a couple potentially super-cool second interviews, instead got a shitty job in his field away from home, quit and came back to NW Ohio. He ended up getting a temp gig at Sky to pay the bills (sounding familiar?), and accepted a permanent job when it was offered him, despite the fact that he would still be working outside of his field. Now he's biding his time at Sky until he gets married in a month, and until his almost-wife gets her Master's. Then he says he's planning to go back to school (if it'll help) and hopefully start a business with one particular friend/colleague of his.

He also shared with me that, after almost two years of not using his degree, he's experiencing some... how did he put it? "Confidence issues." I can completely relate to that. That's actually one of the reasons I want to go in with Aaron sometime soon and get a video capture card for his computer—so I can edit video again. I've pretty much given up on catching up to the Flash wave. Director was fun to know, but no one uses it anymore. I can still design, though, and I hope I can still edit. I want to practice, and find out.

I shared with my co-worker that the main reason I'm not out job-hunting right now is that I'm waiting to become vested with my ESOP and Profit-Sharing conributions. My two-year anniversary is coming up in October, and then I'll be 20% vested, I think. I'm not fully vested until I've been with the company for five years. But, considering how much Sky dumped into my 401(k) last quarter that isn't really mine yet, I've got a pretty good incentive to stay on for another three years and some-odd months.

I just hope I can stay professionally competitive until then...

Homework Assignment

OK, I'm completely serious about this, so don't post something silly without posting something serious, too.

I've been going through this list of well-designed websites, deciding what I admire and what I feel to be cliché. (I must have some amount of good taste, since I already frequent over half a dozen of the sites.) Anyway, one of the things I'd like to incorporate into my redesign (whenever it happens) is an About Me blurb. Not necessarily the full-page kind, as I've tried that multiple times and it just don't work. More of something concise and amusing, like:

Diana Schnuth is a web designer and photographer in Toledo OH, making her actual living in the world of finance.

So, my homework assignment to you is to write one or two brief sentences about me that would explain who I am, and what I'm about, to any complete strangers who might confusedly stumble upon my site.

May the power of The Pink Pig be with you! Now go!

Design Dilemmas

I'm contemplating embarking on a major website redesign. Not just a "the.details" redesign—a revamping of all the Diana Network of websites. I'm contemplating actually paying for my web hosting, and getting a decent amount of storage space. Perhaps an ASP-enabled server (so I can at least put pre-made scripts on it, even if I can't make myself learn ASP alone). Hopefully at least PHP and SQL and Perl. Perhaps even abandoning LiveJournal altogether and trying out one of these other packages like Movable Type or WordPress or Textpattern.

Thing is, now that I give the idea some serious thought, I'm not sure how much control I would have over my design and coding if I use blogging software. My goal is to have a more dynamic page with more flexible design elements—"skinnable" is close to what I'm thinking, although I'm not sure if I could think of more than one or two site designs at once. But, anyway, having started as a hard-coder of HTML, it's hard to give away all control of my coding, CSS or HTML or javascript or what-have-you. Even in Dreamweaver, I have to go in and fix code sometimes to get it the way I want.

And then there's the Trendy Factor™. I don't want my site to look exactly like everyone else's site, spiffy and acclaimed though they may be. Unfortunately, however, my iFrames aren't very searchable or trackable or navigable, though I once thought they were the proverbial shiznit. I want a clean, easy-to-update site with highly customizable design elements. I don't necessarily want bleeding-edge web tech, nor do I want a rubber-stamp MT page with dashed lines around the blockquotes and a pretty patterned background behind my main content panel. I want a classic yet fun and moderately untraditional page that looks like I designed it.

When do I find my style? The one that I like as much as I like the styles of others? The closest I ever got was the Saginaires Alumni page, and even that's beginning to look stale to me. It's like it's almost done, but not quite out of the draft stage. It's missing something vital, some important detail elements.

Now, before I get a rash of "shut up—you design great websites!" comments (which, admittedly, I wouldn't mind reading for an ego boost), I'll concede that I do have some good ideas every now and then. I just can't seem to make them combine into a solid final cohesive product with which I can be satisfied.

Maybe I'll design a spiffy-looking new website with more dynamic and engaging content. We'll see.

Unproductive Evening

Spent all day at work chomping at the bit to get home and work on web page / drum corps stuff. Got home, ate dinner, messed with my computer a little, got bored, went upstairs and read on the couch, fell asleep for an hour, woke up with the cat asleep on me, then watched American Chopper and 20/20 (with the cat still sleeping on me).

I'm only just now getting down to researching more on RSS feeds and planning to create one for my alumni site, even though it's rarely updated. WTF. It's purely for my own benefit—I don't expect anyone to actually take advantage of the Saginaires Alumni Association syndication.

I'm tired but not sleepy. :-/  Blah.

website update

Why won't my LJ client upload my entry?! Gah. Must resort to posting from the LJ website.

Anyway, just so y'all know...
- my LJ is now integrated into the.details
- my gardening section is now up
- the photos from the U-Haul moving debacle aftermath are posted

And here's a little something for Sheryl.

Thank you, Sheryl!

Ye Olde Frankenstein PC is back up and running, thanks to a working power supply donated by Sheryl. I installed the new power supply with little to no difficulty, and was delighted to hear that lovely little "beep" when I hit the power button. Then I spent even longer hooking up the PC to my little network of crap (gotta make sure the Mac is all finished being connected before cramming the PC under the desk, which means hooking up the external CD burner and the monitor switchbox, gotta feed both PC and Mac keyboard cables through and figure out where they live when not in use, etc, etc). Then I got to pick up where I left off back in freakin' January when my computer had its little blowout, which was figuring out why Norton LiveUpdate wouldn't update my virus defs. Amongst all those things, I spent all evening with my computer and didn't even get the stuff done that I wanted to do with it (time-sensitive alumni web page updates).

So, now that I've downloaded a nice LJ client for my PC, and updating my personal page is no longer a chore, the question arises: do I keep blogging on LJ, or do I return to manually updating the.details? I intend to do some updates to it, anyway: changing the header graphic and menu system, adding a few sections (like gardening... I'm a dork), maybe even changing the color palette (oh the horror!). Can I get some feedback from my loyal readership? Blog here, or blog there?

It's way past my bedtime. Lemme know what y'all think.

P.S. - Amy's coming to visit this weekend! Schnarf!
P.P.S. - How I've missed having a speedy computer. I like my Mac, but I also like not having to wait for shit to load.

T-minus four days and counting

We have almost everything packed, the U-Haul is reserved, and Aaron's picking up the key to the house on Friday. Time to let everybody know The Moving Day Schedule.

9:00am - Aaron picks up the U-Haul
9:30am - Moving commences as fellow movers arrive
after loading - Aaron and Diana take the crew out to lunch at Easystreet (our treat)
after lunch - Return to Grove Street and line up vehicles for the Schnuth Caravan up to Toledo
upon arrival - Unload at 4651 Ventura

Unfortunately, we're not positive what time the whole operation will be over, but we're guessing sometime in the mid- to late afternoon. So far, the moving crew looks like myself and Aaron, Kris Fries (and possibly his wife Kathy), Kris Heath, Mark Sheets, and Eric Fertel. Jason Garza may be making an appearance after lunch.

I'm kind of frustrated that I don't have Dreamweaver for my Mac, and/or that I haven't gotten myself a new power supply for the other computer yet. I have grand ideas for a slight redesign of "the details" page, but it would require that great search-and-replace function in Dreamweaver, so I wouldn't have to open up every damn file in the whole site and see what styles everything was set at. For the web geeks: yes, I do have stylesheets set up, and yes, they are a linked file and not individually applied within the page. Yes, I will pretty much just be writing a new stylesheet and making new graphics. Still, though, I have become a creature of habit and I prefer my WYSIWYG program to hardcoding, despite the fact that I once prided myself on my ability to code HTML. (That was long before the days of Dreamweaver and its Adobe analog, however, back when WYSIWYG programs were awkward and clunky and required code-tweaking, anyway, to output properly.)

Anyway, as much as I enjoy my LiveJournal, I think I'm going to begin updating my actual page again, as soon as the PC is back up. I may keep the blog section on LJ, and just add updates to the page, though. I'm looking at, first, a new and cleaner design. Second, I'll be updating long-unused sections, like the Reviews, Photos and Bio. Third, I'll be adding new sections, like an Atkins Diet factsheet with reviews of low-carb foods and links to Schnuth-approved recipes.

All this... as soon as I get myself a new power supply.