site-related 4 Comments

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!

site-related 4 Comments

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.

mormonism 6 Comments

Mormons and their Holidays

Sheryl said:

do mormons have special holidays? or do they just have the weird underweartraditions?

Good question, Sheryl. And, before I go upstairs to wash the massive amounts of dishes that pie-making has dirtied, I will answer this good question.

I think Mormons may actually celebrate fewer holidays than “normal” Protestant religions—at least, I know we didn’t do funky things for Palm Sunday or Lent or any of that. We had celebrations like Pioneer Days and attended the Hill Cumorah Pageant in upstate New York, but those weren’t really religious holidays as much as festivals.

As far as holidays are concerned, Mormons are pretty much like the rest of the Protestants. Easter and Christmas are the biggies, as with any other Christian religion, although Mormons believe that Jesus wasn’t actually born in December—I think they said it was actually in the Spring. I think that’s actually a Bible scholar thing more than a Mormon thing, now that I think about it. Has something to do with the fact that Mary and Joseph were trucking along home to be taxed, and when that happened during the year, and all that.

But, anyway, that’s not to say that Mormons don’t have their share of weirdness. It just doesn’t happen to be in their observance of holidays.

Weirdness of Mormons in a nutshell:
(in case I haven’t harped on it enough in the past)
– sacred undergarments protect Mormons
– hot drinks (coffee/tea) are not for the body or the belly
– native americans came from jerusalem on a boat
– magic glasses helped to translate the book of mormon
– the dead sea scrolls are actually lost writings of moses
– the second coming of christ will happen in america
– god lives on the planet kolob

Please feel free to comment on your confusion and amazement on any of these topics. I will gladly rant for your reading pleasure.

food 1 Comment

Butternut Squash Pie

I just finished baking a pie. It’s my first attempt at pie-baking from scratch (OK, the crust was store-bought), so I’m not exactly sure how it’s going to turn out… but it sure smells good. Since I have such faith in my wifely kitchen abilities (note sarcasm), this pie is NOT going to Westlake for Thanksgiving.

However, the three pies Aaron plans on baking later this week will be.

We got volunteered to bring dessert for about 15 people or so. *rolls eyes* Aaron had been hoping we’d get asked to do rolls or green bean casserole or something. No such luck. 😉 And, get this: Uncle Pete (who’s hosting Thanksgiving this year) is apparently going to call ME about the pies later.

Riiiiight. Let’s wait until we see whether the butternut test pie comes out OK, then we’ll talk.

…If this pie ends up being pretty good, would you like me to post the recipe?

Edit, 10:30pm: The pie is quite yummy. More along the lines of sweet potato than pumpkin, and distinctly squashy, but still quite yummy. I’m content.