Domestic Geek

All right, on to something more pleasant (well, the aftermath of a nuclear bomb is not pleasant...just clarifying).

I'm starting to notice that I watch CBS a lot—when did that happen? I also noticed that I do not watch a single show regularly on ABC. Only an occasional Supernanny when nothing else is on. Hm.

Anyway, the week before last I caught my first episode of Jericho. I hadn't heard a thing about it and didn't know what it was about. I guess the US was attacked by nuclear bombs and the show is about what happens afterward in a small town named Jericho. In the episode I saw, a brief news report they saw on a satellite feed from Japan showed that one of the bombs had hit Denver. Boy, did that send chills up my spine. I knew on Wednesday, I had planned on watching again, but for the life of me, I couldn't remember what I had wanted to see. While watching Without a Trace yesterday (I actually got the whole show on the later recording time), I caught a Jericho commercial and was instantly reminded. Whoops. Fortunately, Jericho is one of the shows that the CBS website shows in their entirety. I can't watch them on the Mac here because I refuse to install the Real Player plugin, but at some point I did install it on the laptop. I think it was to see something about Harry Potter. Anyway, I wish they would put all shows up that way. Of course, I watch too much television as it as. Maybe it's good that they don't.

Just as I said before, the HTML comment formatting buttons would be fixed when Marcus came home. Although he didn't actually spot the problem, having him looking over my shoulder as I talked him through my code allowed me to see the error. Yes, a simple missing right curly brace broke my CSS. Isn't that always the way? I wasted so much time today staring at that durned page. Grrrrr.

If you edit css alot and use Firefox, may I suggest the Web Developer Extension? Using the "edit css" funtion is great for isolating errors, playing with margin/padding or checking colors without having to edit and save your actual CSS each time. You can also have it outline block level elements to see if something funky is happening or show you the class names being used. It's pretty cool. The thing is a real time saver for me.

Now that that is fixed, I'm going to go try and get some sleep.

Man, I am NOT having a good day.

First, I'm dragging bad. I'm so tired, but I don't want to take a nap and mess up tonight's sleep. I haven't done squat as far as cleaning. I had good intentions this morning that are all shot to heck now.

The dog has gone totally mental. Getting him in and out to go potty is becoming an ordeal. He can't get up the steps, but he won't let you pick him up, either. When you finally chase him down, he screams like you're murdering him. *sigh* I had to run to the bank for Marcus and tried to get the dog to go out before I left. He wouldn't wake up. When I came home, however, he had pooped all over. At least it wasn't diahrrea, but still. I was only gone 30 minutes.

Why do people who have lengthy transactions insist on going throught the drive-up at the bank? If what you need to do requires sending stuff back and forth to the teller more than once, park you car and take your lazy ass inside and do it. I swear the old bag in front of me sent the cannister back six times. One time was to break a large bill the teller had given her. If you require a certain breakdown of your cash, send a little note the first time.

One of my old coworkers called today...not for me, he needed to talk to Marcus because he couldn't get his computer on their wireless network and the owner was out of town. Yeah, like I give a rat's ass that you can't do any work. You're got Marcus' number, you call him. Jerk. If he was busy and didn't answer for you, he's not going to answer for me. Marcus did call him back later and he asked Marcus how I was doing. Terrible, if you must know. I'm still unemployed, you a-hole. If you really cared squat about how I'm doing, you would call and inquire when you don't need something. Loser. Gee, I think I'm still bitter. Just when I think I'm starting to move past that anger, he calls and stirs it up again. I really wish I had never worked there.

I've only added 3 new pieces to my PPP puzzle collection today. Another postie said on the boards that he had collected 43 total (14 more than I have) and my heart fell. Turns out later he was joking, though. They are dragging this one out, though. There's at least 192 pieces, I'm guessing, and I've got 29. A lot of pieces still to be found!

No news on the job front. I'm really getting discouraged. I've been trying to find a new job for almost six months now. Whaat sucks is I know I'm smart and talented, I just can't seem to get anybody else to see it.

Something from time to time runs on my computer, hogging up the processor and memory, but I have no clue what it is. I don't have a whole heck of a lot of memory anyway (512 MB) and can't afford to buy more. It got so bad this morning, I finally closed everything down and rebooted. It seems to have helped for the time being. I wish I could figure out what it is and either disable or remove it. When Marcus moved me from my old G4 to his G5, I should've just done a clean install of the OS. Oh, well. Another day.

I still can't figure out what I did to mess up my HTML formatting buttons in my comments. Maybe fresh eyes after sleep will find the problem (or Marcus will see it right away when he comes home).

I've noticed a trend in the web design towards predesigned templates. Many sites are offering ready to go out of the box designs, especially for sites needing an ecommerce solution. All the end user needs to do is put in their product info and logo and they're set to go. One such site is The osCommerce cafe. The business was set-up by Myles O'Reilly, the author of the popular book The Programmers' Guide to osCommerce. While they claim they are a resource for web designers, they are also an econimical solution for anyone needing to create an ecommerce web presence.

They offer three separte membership options to gain unlimited download access to the current selection of 70 templates: $89.00 for three months, $158.00 for six months or $299. 00 for a year. Definitely a more economical solution for a business to get on the web instead of hiring a web designer that would have to charge much more. As a designer, these are means to get a working site to a client with a limited budget. There are currently nineteen categories of templates—Art, Hobbies, Sports, Food & Drink, and many more. A lot of sites offer boxy, boring templates, but those offered by The osCommerce Cafe look pretty classy. They don't all look the same, make excellent use of color and spacing and look very professional and clean.

While you can use them as they are, they can be customized by anyone with graphic and html knowledge. They have a Button Generator as a service to create customized navigation buttons for your template. They offer tutorials on how to integrate the templates into your site. There is even an affiliate program, if you wish to join.

As a graphic designer, I was originally wary of such template sites. The fact is, they are a great resouce and can be a starting point to fulfill a client's need. From a small business person's standpoint, though, I can see the appeal of this low-cost alternative to get their businesses on the web. As long as the site sells their product, the cheaper to create it the better.

Man, I just noticed that I somehow broke the CSS formating on the HTML Buttons in my comment form. WTH did I do to cause that? Grrr. Well, I guess I'll have to look into that later. *sigh* I'll put it on my list of stuff to do.