A house gets painted

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I know you’re probably wondering why I haven’t written for so long.  Funny thing is that I think about writing everyday and sometimes even feel guilty because I cannot. I’ve got lots of ideas to write about too. I can easily say I’m never at a loss for words.

The thing is that Brian and I are in the middle of our busiest season right now.  His BIG project is painting the exterior of our house. This project is long overdue and Brian continues to spend his time prepping – scraping, grinding, replacing wood, re-glazing windows, replacing windows, patching stucco, priming.

I, on the other hand, get to do all the other stuff we do in the spring, all by myself, like the back breaking hand tilling of the vegetable garden, planting vegetables, planting annuals, spring cleaning the house, pruning bushes, and any assignment Brian doles out that will help him keep our hugest project moving forward.

I spent this past weekend, scraping paint off the front porch floor.  This is less exciting than watching paint dry, and my hands are sore. AND, since I’m not done, I get to do this again next weekend.

My job is to scrape off the green paint and then the grey paint so that we have a good clean surface to repaint again.

The ultimate look we are going for is an English Country Cottage. Hopefully, in the next several weeks we will finish. And, then we can move on to some of the other 50 gazillion projects on our to-do list.

Living simply is a lot of hard work!

What have you been up to?

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A blast from the past

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I was looking through old photos recently and came across one that I thought I could write a thousand words about. It’s been awhile since the last time I wrote about a picture, so, I thought I’d do it again with the one below:

 

Yes, that is me at 8 years old in 1965 or, maybe 1966. It was Christmas morning. My pile of Christmas gifts is on the floor at the bottom right of this picture. The biggest (size-wise) gift I got was the Green Ghost Game – the exciting game of mystery that glows in the dark.  The advertisers did an excellent job convincing me that I wanted it, so I asked for it and got it. Turns out it was more hype than actual fun.  The board was 3D with standing snap on features to look like a spooky town at night. The premise was to move your player, a cat, or bat or something else sinister looking to get keys that would open trap doors which held the glow in the dark ghost kids. One of the ghosts was special and at the end of the game whoever had it won. The game was big, clunky with cheap parts that broke.  And, since the game was so very stupid, my sisters never wanted to play it with me.

Also in my pile is a doll. I do not know her name. I think this doll would pee her pants after you gave her a bottle filled with milk water. My mother always loved dolls and I’m sure I got this one to satisfy her need for me to have one.

I also see a red book bag. Book bags were very popular that year. Most of my school friends had one at the beginning of the year, so I told my mom I just had to have one.

And, then, there were the ski skates – short skis that you could use anywhere there was snow.  My ski skates were not the kind kids get today with the expensive ski boots that clamp on to the ski, mine had plastic straps with buckles that never kept my foot securely on the ski. I spent the first time out in the snow, trudging around through snow drifts, ski skates dragging alongside my boots. The ski poles were pretty cool, though.

On the far right of my pile, I see a red and white suitcase. Suitcases were a must for all little girls, most importantly to use when invited to slumber parties. But, they were also used during their down time to store all kinds of other special treasures, like diaries, lipstick and nail polish stolen taken when the sisters weren’t looking. I’m also sure I used this one to run away from home once or twice, too.

I got a new baton that year, too. See it leaning against the radiator? This was a quality baton, weighted properly for a professional. I thought it very cool that my new sister-in-law was a majorette in high school and could teach me how to twirl.  She moved in with my family when her husband, my brother, served in the Navy during the Vietnam War. Several years later, when I was in sixth grade, I was a finalist in our school’s talent show with my baton routine to The Beatles, ‘Maxwell’s Silver Hammer.’

My favorite gift that year was my outfit, the one I’m wearing in the photo. I thought I was so hot in that dress. Do you see how the shiny red belt rides low to accentuate my hips? And, my matching stockings made me feel so grown up. They were my first pair ever. Not a true pair of fishnets, but close! I was also wearing my new penny loafers.

I’m dancing in the photo which means there was a record being played on the stereo. Maybe it was a Beatles album.  I cannot say for sure what dance I might have been doing. There were so many new dances going in and out of style in the 60s with names like the Monkey, the Dog, the Frog, the Pony, Mashed Potatoes, Boogaloo, Lindy Hop, Hippy Shake, the Hully Gully, the Frug, etc. I was probably doing the Jerk, which was my favorite dance and therefore, the one I did the best!

I was one of the coolest kids in my grade school because I knew all the latest music, dances, hair styles and fashion fads way before the other kids did, thanks to my older sisters!

Our Christmas tree was on the other side of the room. It was probably the aluminum one, which were very popular during this time. It had a floor based rotating color wheel that projected either a red, green, blue or yellow tint onto the tree. My dad would have had his Lionel trains set up around the base of the tree, too.   

The TV behind me was our first color set. It was an RCA and had a rotary antenna, too. I can see the antenna box on top of the metal stand (our record album cabinet) to the left of the television. I remember four channels – ABC, CBS, NBC and Public Television. Depending on what channel we wanted to watch, we would simply turn the dial on the rotary antenna box which in turn would turn the antenna outside to get the best possible picture.  This was super modern technology for the time. In the mid-60s we were watching shows like Gilligan’s Island, McHale’s Navy, Petticoat Junction, Green Acres, The Flying Nun, The Beverly Hillbillies, The Wonderful World of Disney, Mutual of Omaha’s Wild Kingdom, Bewitched, American Bandstand and The Carol Burnett Show. News was the Huntley Brinkley Report. Late night TV was The Tonight Show with Johnny Carson (1962 – 1992). We still had quite a few black and white television shows, too, like Gunsmoke, The Lone Ranger, Cisco Kid and Poncho, although those programs lost much of their allure after we were introduced to color.

It’s a good thing I’ve reached the thousand word mark as I can’t think of another thing I can possibly say about that sassy girl in this photo!

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Blog-a lama ding dong

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Or…

 It’s all Greek, to me.

I worked on my blog all day Sunday – doing mostly maintenance stuff, which is a lot of behind the scenes updating and upgrading that you, dear readers, don’t see.

Sunday’s project began, though, because of something you CAN see. That random picture I display in my sidebar (the one under the heading, “these are like a box of chocolates…”) wasn’t showing up. Instead, you saw that little white block with the red x inside it indicating you should right click on your mouse if you want to see the picture. (You’ve seen that before, right?) Except that when I tried that, the right click didn’t display the picture, either.  So, one of two things was responsible for this little glitch on my website – either my Picasa on-line photo album (where I store all the pictures I share on my blog) was corrupted or something in the program that puts those photos on my blog got corrupted.

Let me digress from my story to provide some background here.  I use a program called WordPress for my website. WordPress is a very cool, open content management system created by some geek, Matt Mullenweg back in 2003. It uses a template system so that non-geeks like me, can create websites without getting into PHP and HTML code. Sweet, huh? Of course, geeky techno-types can and do manipulate PHP and HTML code in WordPress to fine tune their sites in any way they want, which makes the program beautiful for them, too! Oh, and have I mentioned, WordPress is free?

According to Wikipedia, more than 12 million people worldwide use WordPress for their websites. And, of course, all 12 million want their sites to look and/or function somewhat differently than the next guy. So, to say the least, there is a lot of tweaking going on in the world. The coolest part about an open management content system in its most simple terms is that smart geeky people can create a bit of code to do a specific thing on their websites, add it to their WordPress code and, voila, presto change-o! 

In the meantime, people like me see the cool geeky things on their websites and want some of it, too! Problem is, we don’t write code. Fortunately, many geeks share their codes with the rest of us – for free (some ask for donations, but they are not required) in a super huge on-line book called the WordPress Codex.  

The WordPress Codex is like a bible to users.   And, that is where I ultimately needed to go on Sunday, since my website sidebar problem was not a Picasa issue, after all.  I searched through hundreds of photo plug-ins, that’s what they’re called) in the Codex database, and finally found a new plug-in that displays pictures from a Picasa photo album on my website’s sidebar. Exactly what I need! Which, of course, was very cool, until I uploaded it, activated it, and totally crashed my whole sidebar!  Now, understand that thousands of people have already used this plug-in with no problem. Dammit! So, what combination of layout parameters and other installed plug-ins on my site caused this fail?

Is there anyone else in the whole world that uses my exact combination of web builder, theme, plug-ins, webhost? Extremely doubtful. And, if one were to exist, is it possible to even find him? I guess my chances might be one in 12 million! (The best analogy I can think to demonstrate how different each site can be made is to ask you to picture a huge bowl of cooked spaghetti noodles – no two bowls of noodles are ever exactly alike even though all the noodles came from the same pot.)

So, I scratch my head a bit, put my thinking cap on and finally, get it removed from my site. Hooray! All is good again, except I still need a photo plug-in for my sidebar and I will have to re-set some other plug-ins that got lost during this minor fiasco.

I peruse a handful more plug-ins in the Codex, find another I’m willing to try, and sure enough it works for me. Hooray! Now, to stylize it. Do I want one picture, two pictures, three or four pictures to display at one time? One column, two columns, three columns? Do I want space between those pictures, a border around the pictures, a certain thickness of a border around those pictures, a certain color on the border?  Sheesh! The ultimate color I chose by the way, (look over to my sidebar, to your right) is color, 91989F, the code for a medium gray. Choosing the other options is hit and miss. You try something one way, don’t like the look, try another way, the photos are too crowded, try another way, the border is too thick, try another way, etc. You set and re-set options until you are satisfied. And, after a while of working at it, I was satisfied.

Once the sidebar photo problem was resolved I decided to work on a few other changes that I have wanted to implement. One plug-in I wanted to find and install affects “Recent Comments” on my sidebar. Believe it or not, there are many plug-ins available that change just that one item – Recent Comments. (Do you see it over there, on your right? Hint: Scroll up!) I wasn’t having any luck finding one that featured the change I wanted to make, but knew it had to exist because a friend of mine was using it on her blog. I sent her a message on Facebook and as I waited for her response, I found one in the Codex.

I uploaded and activated it only to be disappointed in how it looked on MY sidebar. You see, my sidebar is a little narrow and to widen it, I would have to get into the code of my theme, and honestly it is just not prudent for me to go messing around with the code in there.

Well, dammit, this Recent Comment plug-in had it all, but my problem was, I just didn’t have room on my sidebar for it all! In addition to displaying the commenter’s name and the name of the blog post he or she commented on, it also displayed several words of the person’s comment and their freaking picture beside all of that! I’m sure it looks fabulous just as it is on someone else’s website!

So, why would I use that plug-in, you ask? Well, because it was the only one that I had found that had the ONE feature I wanted.

I wondered if I could remove all the extraneous stuff I didn’t want from the code, and keep what I did want. Boy, I hated the thought of changing code; first, because dummies like me should let the code alone and second, every time there is a future update, I would have to go into the new version,change it and hope it works the same as it did before. Maybe my Facebook friend responded with the plug-in she used and would save me from what I was about to do. But, alas, no such luck.

What I know about code would fill a thimble. Oh, yeah, I’ve looked at code now and again and have made a FEW LIMITED SUPERVISED changes. But, most of it looks like gobbledy-gook to me. But, hey, I do know that most PHP starts with a less than symbol and ends with a greater than symbol and for some reason has a question mark in there, too. How hard can this be? I scroll through I don’t know how many lines of mumbo jumbo code and I am surprised to find the section that will keep the commenter’s picture from displaying on my sidebar. Yes, I would like to get rid of that!  And, I see the beginning <?php and ending >?php characters.  Oh, yeah, I think I can do this. And, with shaky hand (not really, but I’d be lying if I said I wasn’t nervous) I highlight the section between those characters and hit delete. But, the nano second before I can stop my trigger finger, I see one of those squiggly brackets ( } ) left in the code that should be deleted with everything else but it is not highlighted to be deleted with everything else. OH NO! I’m screwed, I think. And yes, instantaneously, WordPress is gone, my website is gone, both lost in cyberspace somewhere and I have no clue how to get them back.  

Now, I’ve really done it, I think. Maybe I can log into my web host (I use HostMonster), get into my Unlimited FTP file (that’s File Transfer Protocol, I think), find the plug-in that I just royally screwed up which caused me to lose all of my other data and send it to blog hell!

And, indeed, I do find the culprit plug-in folders. I am so smart, I think! Delete them and I’m back in business, I think! What might the repercussions to doing that be, I wonder? Maybe I should get help, I think. Yes, I am smart, I think, so, I wise up and call my webhost support team, tell Patrick the gory details of the stupid thing I had done and ask him to fix it, which he does. And, my blog is saved!

By then, my Facebook friend responds to my earlier request and provides the link to the plug-in she uses on her blog. I upload it, nothing dramatic happens and so happy am I, I work on my blog for a few more hours, adding and removing plug-ins as I see fit!

Geez, I know I’ve rambled quite a bit with this post and I do apologize, but it was truly a rambling sort of day! But, I must also say (except for those few minutes of panic when I thought I had lost everything) I had a blast!

The funny thing is that after all this, I do not know yet if the new plug-in to my Recent Comments sidebar works. I will know after I get new comments from you all out there if that ONE little feature that I worked so hard to install actually does what I want it do. Keeping my fingers crossed!

Let me know how you like the changes I’ve made, will you?

And, finally, I want to shout out a thank you to WordPress, Tarski, HostMonster and the whole slew of geeky plug-in authors that help me have a blog MY WAY! You all rock!

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