Posts tagged wordpress

New Year’s Wishy Washes

Another Wordpress update!  Let’s start keeping track.

Christmas came and went.  I think we celebrated it four times, between The Kid, my parents, The Girl’s parents and then various in-laws.  It’s all a whirlwind now in my head.  The Girl and I hosted dinner aka I sat around and drank while she cooked all day.  As far as loot, the best thing I got was a rocking chair and high chair from my parents, which isn’t necessarily for me specifically, but it means I don’t have to buy either of those things, which pleases me immensely.  Favorite loot given?  A custom CD of The Kid singing over some tracks, given to the grandparents and created  courtesy of Audacity, which just rocks, BTW.  Here’s the cover:

New Year’s resolutions?  Well I feel like I’m channeling Fat Elvis again, which makes sense as I’m eating and drinking whatever I want and not exercising in the slightest.  Seems like I do this every year; get vigilant in the summer and fat in the winter.  Perhaps I was a bear in a previous life.  I’m liking the idea of P90X, but that would require me cleaning out the garage and buying accessories, so maybe I’ll just try across the street again.  Of course, another resolution is to actually clean out the garage, so perhaps I should do that at some point!  Otherwise I can’t think of much I want to do or change.  I got a baby coming, I figure that will take up most of this year’s time.  I don’t need to add more hobbies or missions to my agenda.

Speaking of baby, The Dude has yet to arrive still.  Not that he’s late, but I think The Girl assumed she would not go to term because The Kid escaped early. But nope, it looks like he’s going to wait until the last minute, probably because he’s lazy like his old man.

Speaking of old man, lookit:


Yep!  Can’t see no more.  The doctor said I have an astigmatism, which isn’t necessarily an old age thing and probably something I should have addressed a long time ago, but maybe she was just being nice.

Up To Date

Once again, logged into Wordpress and there is another update. Just like last month.  Six plugin updates too.  Guess I should log into Wordpress more often, eh?  Damn that Facebook.  Seriously, it’s so much easier to write, “Man this month went by fast!” as a Facebook status update over writing five paragraphs about it on this journal.   But then it’s a lot easier to look up my past adventures here than on Facebook, which doesn’t have an archive feature other than “Click Here for Older Posts.”  But do I look at my past adventures? Not really.  So maybe I’ll turn this journal into something else, but until I figure out what “else” is…

Here is the 2009 Year End Catchup, brought to you by iGoogle – helping me remember what I’ve done lately since 2006:

We celebrated Halloween much like we did last year, only with a few more kids and adults.  I still find it funny that the adults outnumber the kids on this holiday.  I don’t remember it being like that when I was a kid.  Maybe my family needs to produce more children.  (Working on it!)  Anyway, here are the kids:

And here are the bored adults:

Good times.  Next up, we had a faux-Thanksgiving at my parents house because my long-lost aunts were in town.  That was the original plan anyway, but instead we just got some deli trays because visiting is more interesting than cooking.  Here’s a picture of the original Kaiser clan where almost everyone is looking in the same direction:

Then my mother-in-law celebrated her 20th anniversary of her 21st birthday.  I have pictures but I will not post them because she doesn’t like when I do that without her signing off on the picture first, and she’s not here right now.

Then at some point last month The Girl got The Dude’s side of the room complete.  Isn’t she talented?

Wait, didn’t I already post that?  Maybe it was on Facebook.  Oh well, next!  Still in November.  My brother and his long time gal decided to get married.  Shocker, I know.  I thought they were going to do the whole “engaged forever” thing too.  Most of us didn’t see the ceremony because they don’t like public displays of affection, I guess?  But the dinner afterward was nice and everyone had a good time.  Here’s a picture where they both look about as happy as they get.

Congrats little brother!  Now we’re in December and The Girl gets the tree up ASAP because that’s how she rolls.

That’s right fellas, I did that too her!  (High Five!)  The Kid helped with the tree too, and I took pictures per usual.  Then my Best Good Friend and I went to Star Trek: The Exhibit.  It was fun, if not a bit small, and renewed my love of Trek for about three days.  And of course, I bought a bunch of overly priced photos.  Here’s one of them:

Season 3 Captain Kirk gut totally on purpose. (cough)  Then The Kid had part one of her December spoilifercation process by celebrating turning six with a blow out at Chuck’s:

And that about covers October through December, not counting Christmas of course, which hasn’t happened yet.  We’re having Christmas at our house this year, assuming The Girl doesn’t go into labor first.  Should be fun.  It feels like the last arc of this year has really flown by, and I guess I can see why now that I’ve lay it all out for myself.  I’m a lot busier than I used to be, but it’s fun.  The Girl and I have been ready for Christmas, gift-wise and decoration-wise, since November 30th.  Not sure I’m feeling it yet though. Maybe because I’m more interested in this:

He’s not due until next year, and let’s hope that’s how it plays out but…stand by!

Galactic Surprise

She says she has "pregnant face" in this picture.The Girl turned 30 this week. Or, as she puts it, she celebrated her first anniversary of being 29. We celebrated on her actual birthday with a little party at our house, so that The Kid could participate. My mom and in-laws were all in attendance. Then the plan was to go to Outback on Saturday, but (insert nefarious mustache twirling here) the REAL plan was for her mother and sister to take her out shopping so we could set up a surprise party at her sister’s house. Totally worked, and she got suckered. I was sure she was on to us, but I guess not, though now her hindsight is 20/20. Good thing I’m an excellent liar! (“Hi honey!”) And even though she has told me she doesn’t like surprises, none of us were maimed or killed, so I guess it worked out. This was my first planning of a surprise party, and while it was not my idea, and I did have help, gotta say it’s not all that fun! Found it to be a big source of stress, actually. Ultimately worth it of course, but I think on her 2nd anniversary of being 29 I’ll plan something out loud. The Girl handled turning 30 much better than I did. I had a real crisis of DC proportions, but she seems to have cruised through it. I guess it helps when you’re pregnant and have bigger things to worry about.

Me and ChewieNext day, went to Star Wars: In Concert with my Best Good Friend at the San Jose Pavilion (home of the Sharks).  The crowd was pretty good, though not sold out, which worked for us because we moved up a couple rows to give ourselves some elbow room.  The music was, of course, amazing and it was great to hear it live.  Sometimes the videos set to the music were equally amazing and moving, but sometimes it seemed like whoever made all those up was just mailing it in. But it’s hard to beat a stadium full of persecuted people all loving the same thing, cheering for all the same things that make you cheer.  It’s very energizing!  And unlike conventions, no discernible B.O. that I noticed!  Aside from the concert itself, there were a bunch of Star Wars props in the lobby, but the crowd and lighting were too intense to score any decent pictures.  What was really cool was, even though it was a 7-10 show on a Sunday night, many delinquent parents brought their kids anyway.  It’s awesome to see that something I loved as a kid is still going strong for the next generation and it warms the heart to see a bunch of little dudes holding lightsabers and  head banging to the Imperial March!

I created a site for myself called Desktop Geekery, so that I have somewhere to put the wallpapers I make for myself, instead of discarded them after I get bored.  It’s also my first Wordpress theme.  Even though it looks like the Default them (and essentially is from a style perspective), I learned all kinds of fun stuff about built in Wordpress functions to get it to automatically display the Wallpaper thumbnail and download links the same way for every post.  Ginchy!  Well I think so anyway…

Internet Explorer and Wordpress

They both annoyed me today.

Internet Explorer

I don’t normally use it, but every so often Firefox is a big fat failure when it comes to printing (especially the transactions in my checking account) so I opened it today and decided to stick with it to see how IE 8 runs. Meh, about the same as what I remember. Every page I went to view caused some sort of installation request or gave me to Yellow Exclamation Point From Hell in the bottom left hand corner. The latter doesn’t seem to actually affect the page I’m looking at, but it’s still annoying to see the error, especially on my own site, which I decided to test while I had IE open, and yep, big fat failure. It also didn’t like the flashy social links I had in my sidebar. And you can’t right-click an image to view it! I must be wrong about this, it seems like such an obvious function, but heck if I could find that option anywhere.

Wordpress

I just wanted to swap out the images from my previous post. That’s all.  Is there any easy way to do that? I couldn’t find one.  I manually uploaded over top of the existing images, which works, except it doesn’t’ fix all the thumbnails Wordpress generates for each image too.  So then I installed a plugin that is supposed to update all thumbnails, but it only updated some thumbnails, for whatever reason, so that didn’t work either.   I ended up manually going through and reinserting all the images to that post (which I wouldn’t have bothered doing except I had broke all the thumbnails trying to swap out the images) and that of course wreaked havoc on Wordpress’s HTML Guessing Game program, so I pretty much redid the entire post, at least the table portion.  Oh well.  I decided to switch my theme to Default too, after encountering my site with IE, as mentioned above.  No more Yellow Exclamation Point From Hell in the bottom left hand corner anymore, so that’s good.  It manages to do ordered and unordered lists too.  Kinda on the simple and generic side, but then so am I.  It doesn’t appear to be W3C compliant, which makes me scratch my head (in confusion, not because I have lice), but I don’t think any of the other themes I was using complied either.  Maybe I’ll keep shopping…

UPDATE: Actually now I’m trying the F2 theme.  Whattya think?

Get To Work!

Things I Worked On

The account for our wedding site through eWedding.com was going to expire, and rather than renew a site we do nothing with, The Girl asked if I could convert it to a family blog.  I have done so, and she has not used it.  Bug her.  (Have I already plugged this?  I feel déjà vu.)

Things I Am Working On

Running, running, running.  Not sure what the next event will be, but something next month probably, and it will be a 10K.  I can run that now, but I’m pretty slow.  I’m currently at three days a week, hitting a treadmill across the street and following a program I found at Runners World.   I was going more than three days a week, but my right heel kept hurting, and slowing me down even more, so the new schedule seems to be giving me the right amount of healing time for my aged carcass.

Worked on cleaning the garage last weekend.  Got the garbage and donation stuff out, minus funiture.  Have to borrow a truck for that.  Now I just need to sell or organize the remainder.  Almost there.  I can see the ground, at any rate, so that’s a good sign.  Hopefully The Girl will be able to park in there by the time the weather starts frosting up windows in the morning again.

Been updating the genealogy site more frequently.  Love that new Family Tree Maker!

Things I Want To Work On

Drawing, drawing, drawing.  God I’m lazy.

I want to make a Wordpress theme.  I feel ready.

My Wittle Blogs All Growed Up!

Eh, not really, as I’m still the writer, but I did change the theme to something less geek-tastic. I guess I’d rather brand myself these days, rather than Paramount properties, especially when I’m not feeling said properties lately, anyway. Why plug something that hasn’t excited me for some time, eh? Besides, this way I don’t have to pay LiveJournal for the pleasure of customizing my theme and allowing me mucho userpics. Wastes of money in these trying economic times must go. Just ask the news, they’ll tell you!

Well it’s February already, and I almost didn’t post. Whoops! The in-laws were staying at our place for a while. They worked on our place while we were at work. Part of me feels guilty that they didn’t just relax, part of me is happy that there was less laundry and the crown molding got painted. Hey, I didn’t ask them to work, so I guess I’m guilt free!

My birthday came and went. I don’t feel different, except maybe more lethargic, but that’s lack of exercise more than lack of youth. My parents and uncle came over and The Girl cooked everyone a great dinner, then we showed off wedding pictures for the umpteen time. (We should have had a wedding pictures viewing party or something.) On Valentine’s Day, both sets of parents, myself, The Girl and my sister’s family went to a fancy grill across the street from my house. Good food, good booze, a nice time was had by all. Maybe next year The Girl and I will do the more romantic route with just the two of us, but the goal this year was to be thrifty and sociable.

Got money back on taxes this year, so w00t! But daddy needs a new car, so boo. Seems like this is going to be the year of money issues, but then we’re not alone on that front. Just ask the news, they’ll tell you! My goal this year is to be smarter and tighter with the wallet, but then I say that every year, so what do I know?

The Girl is thinking about going to wedding planning school, or whatever it’s called. Apparently planning one wedding created a junky and now she wants to do it all the time, only with other people’s money, so that’s good. I’m thinking about going back to school too, but per usual, am torn as to what I would like to accomplish.

I think I might be abusing the comma.

The Wrath of Wordpress

Okay let’s try this again.  I’m pretty sure it’s the way to go.