Edit: after clicking “done” you get the options for media.

edit: found a theme.

The two years of redneck quotes are going to disappear for now.  I’ll need to find or write a plugin that will read the current table structure and spit it out where necessary.  I’m leaning towards “write”, but that means writing PHP, something I haven’t really done.  I’ve messed with WP code here and there to do some very minor stuff, but writing a plugin that does database calls would be new to me.

A moderator at the WP support forums suggested I step to 2.7 – first install 2.3, then 2.5, then 2.7.  I’m pretty sure that I read in one of those versions they convert the Ultimate Tag Warrior plugin to the built-in tagging engine.  That’d be useful, not because I think tags on my blog are anywhere close to necessary, but because I like them.  They’re cute.  I want to eat them, with ketchup.

I’m going to be upgrading the site in-place, so this sucker’s probably gonna be screwed for a while.

I’m gonna hafta just scratch-build the steering wheel mount, since I still can’t think of a “pretty” way to do it, and I’ve decided to re-think my idea for securing the chair. Instead of through-piping some 2×6’s, a pair of 2×4’s with some slightly-larger-than-necessary u-ish-shaped pipe mounts could work just fine. I also need to find some cheap carpeting to cover it with. I’m thinking a trip down to Kendor for marine-grade fabric would stand up to whatever I need, and they probably have odd-shaped & sized pieces for cheap.

My next building project will be an official screen for my projector in the basement. I’m starting to look at the different methods, and everything I’ve found comes down to either framed fabric (canvass, blackout cloth, etc.) or a giant rectangle of something solid (drywall, etc.). A couple project managers at work went with drywall, but it takes a ton of work to get it right – tape, mud, sand, multiple custom paint coats, and more sanding. I’m thinking that I can go with blackout cloth for much less work, except that with my screen now 6′ by 10′, the only place that I’ve found that makes it big enough sells it by the yard on a 110″ ream for $15/yard. I’d need 4 yards, so that $60 + shipping for only the screen fabric…figure another $40+ for framing wood, hardware, and some nice black velvet to cover the front area of the frame, for a total of between $100 to $150. I shouldn’t complain, though, cause the only pre-made screens big enough I’ve found are over a grand. I think it’s hard to justify because the wall I project on is already painted white, and I’ve grown accustom to ignoring the seams between the bricks.

Enough, I’m beat. I want my damned 360 so I can try out the Bioshock demo. Stupid UPS. “We cannot guarantee any specific time of delivery, but it will be sometime between 8 am and 7 pm.” Gee, thanks for the clue.

My 360 should be back soon. I got an automated call from UPS giving me a tracking number, but I deleted it before writing it down. Der.

Reserved Halo 3 Legendary edition at Best Buy. Rock.

After getting help moving my big-ass CRT upstairs, there’s more room for my projector screen, so I expanded the image as much as I could. I now have a 146″ diagonal…that’s 6 feet by 10 feet. I also picked up one of these for the Mac Mini hooked up to the projector. There’s something special about watching Sunday night football in HD on a 12 foot screen. Awesome.
So, with the site move, I have no idea what the status of this place will be over the next few days. My account with Digital Space is up August 23, so I gotta get this move done soon. If you leave a comment, there’s a good great chance it’ll get lost.

So, with me out in the middle of bumblefart, I won’t be updating the redneck quotes. I will, however, be adding a Twitter sidebar widget to this site. I might actually post stuff to twitter, too. I can do this from my phone via a text message, so there should be multiple updates per day. By “should”, I mean “don’t expect it, but it may happen after pigs fly”. Later!

Home stuff:

I bought a book called Wiring 1-2-3 from Home Depot. I then bought a small pile of tools I didn’t have…along with a tool belt. I then proceeded [thank you Firefox automagic spellcheck] to swap the position of two lights in my basement and add a switch to the position that didn’t have one. I also installed an outlet on my ceiling to plug the projector in to. The next electrical projects include installing three new circuits for the basement, adding recessed lighting over the home theater area of the basement, and separating the garage onto its own circuit. The three new circuits for the basement (all 15 amp) will be used as follows:

1. All the ceiling lights
2. Outlets for home theater equipment
3. Outlets for computers

I’m probably gonna be pulling 6-8 amps just for lights, and I wanted to separate the computers and home theater stuff anyway, so I figure I’d throw in a third just for lights. Also, I’m gonna need to put a microwave & dorm-sized fridge on one of those circuits. I’d like to make the garage circuit 20 amps, but I’ll need to buy better romex for that – all I’ve got is 14/2. For 20 amp service, you need 12 gauge conductors. Now that I’m thinking about it, I almost want to put in the garage circuit first and get it out of the mess that is the basement/first floor guest bedroom/guest bathroom/2nd floor bedroom/front entryway circuit. Yes, all of that is on one 15 amp circuit. Along with my water softener. Excellent. Time to buy parts.

I’ve been listening to Bob & Brian via 1029thehog.com for a couple weeks now. (Listening to them right now, in fact.) The commercial breaks have different content online than via the radio station. One of the online-only ads is this stupid ass one about putting up smoke detectors in “the entire forest”. WHAT?! Stupid dirty hippies. It’s forest. Its major ingredient is wood. Second most common ingredient: dried leaves. SOMEHOW these things catch fire. Amazing, isn’t it? Sure, animals may die in the fires, but survival of the fittest, right? Maybe that western guava tree frog that just fried has a terrible debilitating trait and is living in agony. It wouldn’t live to spread that illness on. This is nature at work.

Anywho, the dog of my good friend Susan got put down yesterday. Go cheer her up.

Oh yeah. Awesome.

edit: For future reference, the permanent link is in the shelf above – right-most column, named “Terminal”.

Use Google Reader. Seriously. It’s a pretty slick web 2.0 app that lets you categorize & tag your feeds to your liking. Because it’s a webapp that’s attached to your Google account (used for gmail, gcal, etc.), your read history is the same no matter where in the world you check your news. It’s got oodles of keyboard shortcuts to help you speed through your news. It’s gotten plenty of good reviews. Go ahead and try it out. I’ll even give you a kick start. Click here to subscribe to this blog in Google Reader.

Other site stuff: Melinda is now able to post stuff here. Whether she will or not is her decision (as it is my decision to keep or delete them at will ).

1. Admin Advanced Drop Down Menus
2. Oceia bar for Wordpress
3. Share This

The first makes the admin menus super snazzy – not that any of my readers my one reader will care. Similar with the Oceia bar. The last one, though, is Share This. Check the new link at the bottom of every post, to the left of “Post in …”. It pops open a little panel that lets you add this to any number of social bookmarking sites, as well as emailing it to someone else. Schweet!

As for the site upgrade, hasn’t so much happened yet – last night, I found out my wife doesn’t have the inner ear disease she thought she’d had since the mid-90s. Indecisive thing, that medicine. Needless to say, I was a bit preoccupied.

There’s a new version of Wordpress out. Maybe this will fix the slowassedness of this site I see during the day. I turned off a couple plugins and sidebar widgets that hit external sites thinking that might be the problem. If it’s better today, I’ll re-add the flickr widget (cause I can’t believe flickr is that bogged down). I’ll get to it tonight…hopefully. If this doesn’t fix it, I’m gonna hafta figure out how to hack in timing information to see if it’s the db calls that are slow (since my host runs multiple sites on one box with the dbs on the same machine…i don’t pay for the ’spensive dedicated service).

In an unrelated note, anyone have experience switching hosting providers while keeping the same domain?

Anywho, I installed a little theme switcher plugin that would allow a per-user theme specification. Each user would pick their preferred theme and it’d get stored in a cookie on their machine. Better yet, the theme can be forced with a specific query string argument. So, the plan was to default the site to the CLI and have initial text in the CLI provide a link to the graphical version. Noooo…..that won’t work, because whenever the theme switcher is active, I can’t modify the widgets of the graphical theme. Moreover, the image behind the title at the top of the page doesn’t display, and the text is white, and it’s real damn hard to read white text on a white background. So, I’m pissed.

¹: command line interface….n00b

And in other news, our offer for the condo was countered for a couple grand more, but we get to keep his pool table and accouterments. We’re cool with the price, but there were a couple more small things that needed correction, so we countered their counter. We’ll hear back today if it goes through.

And in yet more other news, MacWorld Expo 2007 kicks off today with a Steve Jobs keynote at 11 AM! w00t

edit: I’m a moron…Jobs’ keynote is Tuesday at 11 am. Not Monday. *sigh*

I’ve added a You Might Be A Redneck widget on the right. It comes from my daily official calendar. I’ve only got 5 of them in there now, so you might be seeing repeats often. Deal. Ignore it for a month, and there will be 30+ in there. No more repeats. Next item: the “Money Maker” widget at the bottom of the right column is supposed to be hosting google adsense ads, but it appears to not be working. I’m kinda strapped for time right now, so I don’t have time to deal with it.

Random interjection:
Go hit XKCD. The comics are hil-freaking-arious. * mostly for people of the engineering persuasion.House portion: (yet another new category)

Just put an offer down on a condo. Woo! It’s one of two side-by-side units in the building, and there are only 3 buildings in the community for a total of 6 units. Two car garage, 1.5 story (just a single room upstairs), full private basement, 3 bed/2 bath, and all appliances included. Hot damn! Dude has till Saturday to decide what to do with the offer…hopefully accept. Now to figure out how to break the news to my apartment manager…

yeah. too bad i’m too lazy to learn php.