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Woo-hoo! Got the Purchase and Sale (P&S) signed today. One step closer to owing a house. Now to sign my life away on a mortgage... That and figure out a million other details between now and when we move in. Life is busy but good right now.
This entry isn't about anything. In fact it is about nothing. Maybe it isn't even an entry at all.
Well the first part to fixing a problem is recognizing that you have one. At least SixApart has publicly stated that their documentation sucks.
... we're still working to bring it up to the high standard that both you and we expect. We've been incorporating many users' suggestions left in the comments on each article but there is a lot more to do.I doubt the will include my rants about how bad the documentation was though...
It looks like it might happen. Friends and I made an offer on a house today. I'm still dazed by the thought.
Posted a bunch of new photos and I think finally cleared out my backlog:
I seem to keep having red eye issues. I also can't seem to find a program that handles them well on my Mac, although I've not looked that hard. What concerns me more is that it looks like I've got a dead pixel.
Just when I have a moment of praise for Movable Type it has to go and disspoint me again. Now it seems that it only alphabetizes the top-level categories. Sub-categories are not sorted. Lame.
Given all of my recent ranting about Movable Type its import feature was well documented and mostly straight forward to use. I managed to whip up a quick Perl script to convert the raw MySQL dumps from b2evolution into a format that MT could handle. Thankfully I never really used all of the features of b2e so the conversion code was pretty easy to write. I did seem to get hit with a quote character import issue but that should be easy to solve.
This was originally written Aug 28th in my notepad while waiting for a plane at Cleveland airport.
I'm back at the Cleveland airport waiting for my plane back to Boston. I always find these moments very relaxing as it gives me a chance to reflect on my trip while knowing that at this moment in time there really is nothing else that I need to be doing. At the same time it is a moment of sadness as the people I've seen albeit briefly have all touched my life again. This strikes me even more than my 10 year high school class reunion as many of them were like my second family. I watched some of them grow up, I was like a son to others. And yet a few brief moments here and there is all that I was able to spend.
That is how it has always been with me though. I treat the moments as fleeting and try not to make as big a deal about the goodbyes. Some may say that a quick phone call or letter is all that is needed. I tried that for awhile but I guess I may not feel as deeply the need to stay in constant contact. I enjoy the surprise of seeing someone after a few years and catching up.
I've lost my train of thought. I've drifted back into the music I'm listening too. "The Best of Lamb". The entire music listening experience has changed. It's very rare that I hear of anyone just sitting down at home to listen to music. Going to a live concert is not even the same since you also have the visual elements of watching the performers and the crowd. At the same time music has become more of our lives. In the car, at work, around the house and now out in the world taking it with you everywhere. I wonder if this means we have more or less an appreciation of the music. Or have songs just become soundtracks to our lives and are just background music that you don't really pay attention to but know the scene wouldn't be the complete without it?
This was originally written Aug 26th in my notepad while waiting for a plane at Logan airport and during my flight to Cleveland.
Penn & Teller's Bullshit episode about "The Best" got me thinking about what I spend my money on and why. I fall into periods of unplanned or more likely impulse buying. The most recent episode that I've really wondered about is my domain name buying spree. I registered zetail.com and pezdb.com at the end of July. As I think back on the event I'm not really sure why I did. Zetail is a made up word for a photo project I did on my 350Z. A car I won't even be driving a year from now. PEZ DB was my idea to create an online database of PEZ information. Only to discover shortly after buying a five year domain lease other such sites already exist. I thought I'd previously searched for them but I guess I wasn't looking for the right keywords since the few sites I ran across have been around for some time.
I think I've found the bike I want to use for commuting. I was toying with the idea of a fixed gear, but I just ran across a drive shaft bike. I think the concept is great so I'm going to look into getting one. I just need to figure out the frame size I need. It would probably be neat to have a full size chart done up on myself so I can always know what size of stuff to order. Maybe not as extensive as Cirque du Soleil's sizing but something that captures many of the important and possibly more obscure body measurements. I already have a good general idea from clothes shopping but having that extra scientific touch would be neat.
It's hard to describe the thought process that goes through my head when I'm writing one of these. In some aspect my brain is a blank slate trying to figure out and formulate just what I want to say and in others it is suffering from writer's block because I don't think that there is anything worth saying. In case you haven't noticed these are recurring themes.
I think it is mostly a process of self discovery,. What makes me, me. Why do I think what I think and do what i do. Not a focus on "Why am I here?", but more "Since I am here, what am I going to do?"
I've been fortunate in my life. Part of that has been luck, part of that has been drive, and part of it has been that ongoing blend of nature versus nurture.
I need a rewind device to figure out why that thought entered my mind and try to decipher how it fits into anything else that I'm thinking about right now.
One item of note is that this posting is a transcript of scribbles that I made in a notepad. This wasn't typed up on a computer. In fact as I write this, the blog that it will be posted to doesn't even exist. I had to take down my original blog system since it was getting hammered with spam bots. I suspect that once the final Movable Type 3.2 comes out I'll go with that. Kind of on a whim, partially a suggestion from a friend (a fellow blogger), but mostly since it has more active development than b2evolution, which was my previous blogging system.
I hope that I can find a way to easily migrate data from my old system to the new one, whatever it maybe.
This was originally written Aug 24th in my notepad while waiting for a train at BackBay station.
Three things I want out of life:
This is of course what comes to mind as I'm heading home at midnight after being at work since 8:30am that morning. WHile I want to feel like I did my part, my co-worker was working mot of the magic behind the scenes. I wonder it if is a case of not asking the rights questions or not questioning the answers enough. (Gah, I always seem to slip into cliche.) Why is my inability to express myself such an issue for me. I partially blame my roommate. Damn him an his drunken rants that should awaken such a demon inside my thinking. Ignorance is bliss.
This amount of self doubt and thinking can't be healthy. What was the phrase that came to mind the other day. Yeah: liberal in my views, conservative in my actions. In other words all talk and no action. These rants always feel like they start out so strong but as soon as I start writing them down, the anger the furor seems to dissipate, my thoughts begin to ramble and the text suffers.
The discussion at work about a blog being popular because the writing was rubbish and the author just had a beef with the world made me think about this blog, without the concentrated hatred to direct it at, unless one considers what I direct at myself.
I don't know how many weeks I really to be doing these midnight work days. I've really reverified with myself that sleep is vital. As I now sit on the train I have that bad feeling in the back of my throat and a general run-down feeling. I've become so paranoid about getting sick again after my four week bout earlier this year. I almost wonder if it might be making me sick. I suspect though that what bothers me more is the lack of concentrated exercise that has taken over. It was almost a struggle to get my ass on the bike this past weekend for measly 16 mile ride. I used to do that ride at least three times a week after work and 30 plus mile rides on the weekend.
Now I've convinced myself that technology might help combat my laziness. I've started to obsess over hear rate monitoring. Honestly, if it would really matter. I know that I'm just plain out of shape. Spending money on new toys isn't going to really change that. About the only idea I have had of late that I'll probably follow up on is that of a commuter bike. Time to go, my ride is done.
A little early for this Christmas season, but still very funny. It's got a good loop going on.
I find myself sitting in front of my computer right now, on the edge of many things. Foremost is my desire to sleep, but there are also swirls of 11th hour thoughts. I call them 11th hour since they only really come to me at this time of the day. They are the kinds of thoughts that could change the world or mostly change myself. Unlike 11th hour saves, these thoughts usually end up more like fantasies that wrap my brain in a warm blanket and let me drift off to sleep at peace.
Movable Type continues to astound me with a lack of quality related to almost, well everything. While recently browsing their website, I ran across no less than a dozen HTTP 404s trying to follow top-level navigation. Their much touted StyleCatcher had almost no installation instructions and even if you did install it, was obviously broken. It seems they have released an updated version, which again has minimal installation documentation. This one seems to work, but is still throwing some JavaScript errors while accessing badly formed URLs.
The worst part is not enough people will abandon the product such that they or anybody else changes there ways or more importantly is held accountable for charging people for a broken product.
P.S. This post brought to you by Movable Type :(