The last two times I’ve started a blog and I’ve thrown up the “been [timeframe] since I started this” article, it’s the last article I publish. Check the calendar. I haven’t posted since the 6th. Dammit.
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:
- All the ceiling lights
- Outlets for home theater equipment
- 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.
ross site stuff
And I’m still updating this. They don’t come very regularly, but it is about once a week. Then again, if you count the redneck jokes, it’s once every weekday.
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.
ross site stuff
Try this on for size.
Oh yeah. Awesome.
edit: For future reference, the permanent link is in the shelf above – right-most column, named “Terminal”.
ross site stuff
Ok, so I’m a few years late. Most of my two readers (two more than I had last week!) probably already have a preferred rss reader. Probably NetNewsWire for mac or GreatNews for winblows. However, those are local clients. What if you’re not at your main machine and want to check your feeds? You’ll need another install of said client, but the read history won’t be the same. What’s an rss user to do?
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 
).
ross site stuff
I just added three plugins…instead of upgrading to 2.1. Really, I’ll do that this weekend. I promise. [uncrosses fingers]
- Admin Advanced Drop Down Menus
- Oceia bar for Wordpress
- 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!
ross site stuff
Talked with my host (Digital Space) about the slowness. They said that a couple users were using more than normal resources, so they’re splitting the box. Might be some outages throughout today, but it’ll hopefully be better tomorrow.
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.
ross site stuff
Development Blog ??∫ WordPress 2.1 Ella
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).
ross site stuff
I had this fairly good rant on MENSA and how they’re all a bunch of goobers, but when I clicked “publish”, my site timed out and I lost it. I am proud of the post, but it wasn’t meant to be. Instead, you get this pathetic excuse for a post. Haha.
In an unrelated note, anyone have experience switching hosting providers while keeping the same domain?
ross site stuff
I’ve got this sweet CLI1 theme that I can go in and switch to any time. Unfortunately, everyone is forced to use it. …by “everyone”, I mean everyone who reads this site. …by “everyone who reads this site”, I mean me. Since no one else reads this. If some non-me reader is out there, LEAVE A DAMNED COMMENT.
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
ross site stuff
Turns out the redneck calendar only gives you one page for the weekend. Dinger.
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*
ross house, site stuff
