48-Hour Days

We had so much fun today! I took the kids to the zoo for the first time this year. We just got our Discovery Wagon and it was so worth every penny. Timmy and Kellie rode in it side-by-side all day. When Timmy needed to see over a fence, he could stand up in and see. Then I was free to hold Kellie. Next year, they can both stand up in it. They both used the cup-holders. The cooler worked okay, but it would be much better with ice rather than the cold packs. It is fairly shallow, so I had to lay our bottles of water (for me) and juice on their sides. I think I’ll buy a big bag of ice and keep it in the freezer outside for zoo trips.

Lunch was amazingly expensive. For two double-cheeseburgers, a Big Mac, and a large fries it was $10. Any other McDonald’s the double-cheeseburger is on the dollar menu. There was no such thing here. So, next time I plan on taking our lunch with us.

I definitely needed the water. It was a workout tugging that wagon all over the place and especially up the big hill to see the apes and the aquarium.

You know it is a good day when the kids fall asleep within 30 seconds of being buckled in. Since they were sleeping, I stopped by the office to pick up the latest Leopard DVDs. Nothing really useful there, I don’t think, but I’m intrigued by all the flashy new stuff. I would really like to put Leopard Server on the iMac and try out the wiki. We really desperately need something like that for our internal documentation.

All of this is on hold until I get my SimpleTech SimpleShare 500GB NAS from CDW. The DHL tracking page said it was coming today, but by 7:30 p.m. it still wasn’t here. So, I called DHL and asked how late they deliver. He said he was showing a delivery date of Monday. Damn. I told him it would be much more helpful if their web site gave an accurate delivery date. He didn’t seem too interested. Well, I know who I won’t ever ship with.

Kellie has been very affectionate with Timmy lately. For no reason whatsoever, she’ll walk over to him, give him a hug, and tell him “a-ju”, which is her word for several phrases: “I love you”, “Thank you”, “Bless You”. I really love seeing them like that. Timmy always hugs her back and says “I love you, too, Lellie”. I really do have the greatest kids ever. I hope they always know how much I adore them. I tried to tell them this afternoon at the zoo. They both hugged me and kissed me and told me they loved me. I really, really, really want to have a much better relationship with my kids than my parents ever did with me. I think I’m off to a good start.

Kids, if you’re reading this years into the future, please know that I love you with all my heart and there isn’t anything I wouldn’t do for you. I’m trying my absolute best, although I know you deserve better. Unfortunately, you’re stuck with me. I totally got the better end of the deal, as I know I am truly blessed with you two. I love you more than I could ever say and I just hope that I’ve conveyed that over the years and that you’ve felt it.

I am such a geek. I spent my birthday money on software—software of all things! I could have spent it on shoes or clothes or…or anything half-ways girlie. To be honest, I did think about it. I would love to have a new outfit to wear out.

But, really, clothes only make me happy a few times a year. I like to have a really nice outfit to go to the pipefitters events, which is about the only place I go out with my husband, but there are only two of them a year.

Computer stuff, now there is something I can appreciate daily!! Not only that, but organizational computer stuff! I spent my birthday money (thanks, Mom and Dad!) on EagleFiler, which is just the best brain-dump, organizational, knowledgebase, you-name-it app that I could find. There are a lot of them out, there, too! My search and subsequent love affair is another post, though.

So, anyway, I sit here importing things and tagging them and wondering, should I have gotten a new outfit? Some new jeans or something?

Then, I came across a post at LifeHacker about DD-WRT and now I’m thinking about messing with my router! I have installed Sveasoft’s Talisman and it has been rock-solid for me. But, I haven’t seen any upgrades and when last I browsed the forum (a week or so ago), there didn’t seem to be any more development. Hmmmm . . . new software?

New applications are so exciting to me. I am constantly trying out new things that help me be more productive. That’s how I stumbled upon TextMate, which I absolutely adore. And EagleFiler.

Computer stuff in general is exciting to me. I was thrilled yesterday when I was able to get a VNC server running on my Debian computer. Now I can use GNOME!! Yipee! I got a blank stare from my husband when I mentioned it.

*sigh*

I am so used to editing (X)HTML in TextMate that it was really weird trying to write the last blog post. I’d much rather hand-code the entries because I’m a control freak. Also, I’d like the site to eventually be fully compliant XHTML.

So, anyway, I decided to give the Blogging bundle in TextMate one more go. I tried it once before, and I wasn’t ever able to get it to post to my work blog. Now that I think about it, that was before I switched from an SSH tunnel to VPN. Maybe that was the problem? Anyway, I just gave up with that. But, I thought I should have no problem using it for my personal blog and so far, so good. I was able to pull down a list of recent posts and the list of categories (note to self: add a category for TextMate). Now I’m going to attempt to post this post. Bonsai!!

One of the great things about WordPress is how easily you can customize the look of it. Right away I wanted to ditch the boring default theme. But I wanted something that would represent the absolute craziness of my life. Good luck!!!

I went through lots of themes that I really liked. I started out looking for something with a clock in it, but had no luck. I did find Watch2, but that was too serious or something. A Method of Life is nice. I like the graphic of the girl, except she’d need to have red hair. Also, I decided it was way too calm for me. Coffee Chick is cute and I dig the retro vibe. I really, really like my coffee, so that’s why I considered it. But, again, it just didn’t fit my overall theme.

I finally settled on the current theme, Working Girl. It is fun, but seems to communicate the frenzy of trying to get my work done. Really, she needs to have another arm with a feather duster, another arm with a baby, another arm stirring a pot, etc. And (how is this for meant to be?) it was just posted on my birthday! So, I’m sticking with this for now. I’d really like to work up my own soon, though.

I am completely overwhelmed by the sheer number of themes that are available. How does one ever find just the right one? I tried searching the official WordPress theme site using keywords like “mom”, “mommy”, “work”, “kids”, etc. but really didn’t come up with much that struck my fancy. I googled like crazy and still didn’t come up with anything. There has to be a better way! Or, are you just supposed to hire someone who will build what you want? Maybe that’s the idea, I don’t know. I would just say that if someone can come up with one site that has all of these themes with sane keywords assigned (other than “left sidebar”, “blue”, etc.) and make the whole bloody thing searchable, that would be awesome!

Arrrgh! So many problems getting WordPress running on Debian etch. Well, to be fair, problems getting it to run with Apache 1.3, which I was still faithfully running. I started up Apache2 and had no problem at all.

It seems that the problem was with trying to access the MySQL 5.something database from php4. I didn’t have a php5 module for Apache2, though. Apache2 by default uses php5, which seems to have no problem talking to MySQL, and thus setting up WordPress.

I’m sure I could have found a solution all the way around, but there really wasn’t any reason to. I moved all of the work sites to my new MacBook Pro, so this server now only hosts personal sites. That’s as it should be anyway.

Now, to figure out the exact paradigm for the apache2 configuration files. It is a bit different and instead of having one monolithic configuration file, it seems you now break everything out. This is kinda cool and the organization freak in me really likes it.

Now I can get rid of Drupal. I really wasn’t at all happy with it once I got it up and running. But, I never spent a ton of time on it, either. I just went with it because that is what Tom installed at work to handle some stuff and I thought running my own install would give me some experience with it. But it tries to do too many things, I think. Therefore, it can get complex and you need to install a module to do just about anything. All I really wanted was blogs. I can build from there.

So, anyway, here’s the first post.