Eternal Procrastination - Archive 2006

POD review...

I first heard about Tenacious D was from a co-worker...
You know the type, one of those twisted sort of people who know all the cool off beat indy bands, those that didn't get a lot of airplay. Not that I initially liked The D; I did admire their style but couldn't figure out why anyone was buying their music. It just seemed to be more of the usual juvenile crap at the time.

Fast forward a few years and I had all but forgotten about Jack Black & JD. It was in a netcast (vidcast/vblog) of one of their close friends, and movie producer, Liam Lynch, that learned the D was still around, and had an upcoming movie. Never mind the fact that I completely missed Jack's movie career completely.

I've now seen the movie and I'm not impressed. While there was a lot of fan service, and more then a few homage to past rock-n-roll gods, the movie was an outright stinker. It tries to be a budget Rock Opera, SNL skit cross; and fails as both; too much talking for Rock Opera and the comedy is lacking. I'm certain most 16 year olds would like it. The three patrons chattering behind me did, even though it was rated 14A and there was no parent present.

Running Late on Entries...

Still running a bit late on these... Maybe if I set aside a dead-a-cated time each day. The only excuse this time is work, or rather a lack of co-workers. Cooking alone sucks, but it still pays the bills.

The Flying Bison...

I picked up a new (used) laptop to play with earlier this week... An acer Aspire 3624WXCi with 1.6Ghz Celeron M, 1GB ram (upgraded), 40GB harddrive, and integrated Intel graphics (128mb system shared).

I'm not sure why I was drawn to this particular computer at the local pawn shop. As if by luck it was on display for less the two hours before I had them put in away for me. Sure, they had other "Internet ready" boxes just waiting to be repurposed by my hands, but that laptop had my full attention.

I like to name my computers, which simplifies networking, and given this little beast's qualities I've decided to call him Appa, after the flying bison in "Avatar - The Last Airbender". He's currently sitting to my left, with a fresh factory reset and a few freeware apps installed, just waiting for something to do.

There are a few issues still to work out. Like an odd fat32 issue with the default personal folders, broken wifi drivers I can't seem to fix, and a bios I can't get into because I don't have the password. And I'll probably install Ubuntu or Suse on him sometime in the near future, but for now he's another XP box. But I like my new toy.

I have added a computers page to my web site, which will be polished with pictures as I find some time.

Down with the Sickness...

I hate being sick... I spent much of today sleeping and the rest letting my mind wander. Much of my thoughts were about where this this thing I call a website and the domain I've owned for the last 5+ years was going. Or, more sporadically, what code I need to tweak next.

This needs a list... (removed)

I finished fixing my feedback form a few days ago thanks to The Man in Blue and his wonderful examples. I am not worried that things don't display properly in a non-css browser since my second move is to add some limited hidden code within all my pages so things break very gracefully. I've also fixed most of the issues I have with navigation links. I managed to get the links to line up correctly in Firefox by tweeking my CSS, and I've narrow it into something far less intrusive.

update: Feedback form removed for now due to spammers...

The "Gift" of Snow...

Well, here I am, up to my kabushkas in snow...
It's not that I don't like the stuff. Fluffy... cold... wet... How it covers up everything.

Today was the first true snow day here, with lots of overnight fluff, and an additional 15cm today. I origonaly moved up here to get more in touch with my frosty side, seeing as my last habitat was a little lacking in the white stuff, but today it brings no joy. Here I am sitting in frount of the beast and all I can think about is hibernation.

I have done next to nothing with my web page(s) in the last few days and can bearly consentrate on completeing this entry. Instead of working on this I've burried myself in the various media thats been gathing in my rss folders. I've already updated my CSS code to a #layout - .element - .styling model, making it easier use play with.

Use Less Feelings...

Late last year,
just before my birthday,
I got interrupted at work by some really bad news...

My Grandmother had died.

Within a few hours I was on my way to Ontario, for a funeral that was two days away. It was a 46.5 hour, coffee and fast food sustained, strait drive (with three drivers), and we all changed at a fast food place just before arriving at the funeral parlor. In retrospect we should have flown, but our minds were distracted at the time.

As it is I don't want to remember what happened but I don't have that luxury (a post for another time). I cried at the funeral, became a pallbearer at the internment, meet way too many family members I haven't seen since I was very young pup, and then cried some more. By the end of the day I found myself wandering the streets of the town I grew up in, looking a bar to ring in my "one year older" (such as it was), but never finding one I liked. And even after trying the fouth bar I still couldn't shake my sorrows... or find the right drink.

To say the least, today i was reminded of it all over again. You see, my grandfather didn't last last too long after my grandmother's passing, and today a registered letter arrived containing my mother's potion of my grandparent's estate. I won't bore you with what a common man's life is worth after all the debts are settled. It is never about money, it's about the finalization of it all. With this last letter linked my grandparents my state of mind is set; I will now and forever view the weeks leading up to my birthday as a sad time indeed.

Website Errata...

I have spend too much of this morning trying to get IE6 to display things like Firefox does; an error that was introduced sometime late yesterday. After much head-ack it turned out the <H1> tags I was using in my title was causing this quarks mode error. I was able to fix things by using <DIV> tags instead, and gained some additional control too.

The second problem was in the way IE was handling the padding around Cleo. That ironically turned out to be an errant HSPACE entry in the image tag, which serves me right for just copy and pasting from the older HTML 3.2 doc.

The last issue I still have is with Formmail redirected pages. I would like the entire <DIV> block selectable as a link, but unfortunately IE6 won't have it. So for now there are two different hover effects for it's sent and rejected pages. Firefox users get a color change while IE6 users get underline text.

I've also gone through and revamped my secondary pages to reflect the some CSS changes. So now, any styles that are only needed for a given page are local to just that page, like my new lost and forbidden pages.

Learning to Code...

I'm still leaning about all this CSS stuff, so all this page is considered my play time. So far have been hand rolling all my own code using notepad and examples I've found online. Its not the fastest way to create anything, but it does make it easy to learn, and results aren't that bad. I've just finished installing a few free HTML editors and checking out the code of some web sites in the hope I can find some free inspiration (read: borrowed from).

How do you like my dog?

Isn't life fun when you have all these plans but very little time to do anything about them? I had several ideas for what I wanted to do with my domain when I first got it, but it soon turned into a place to drop my junk for usenet and instant massager postings... Some six odd years after getting my domain.

My dog's name is Cleopatra (of Egyptian fame), and I've had her for almost a year now. She's a Shitsu cross (Bichon on her mother's side), and she is quite a spirited little pup.