Tuesday, October 10, 2006

Tue
10
Oct
2006

I’m Still Here (Now With Audio)

Hey everybody.

I'm still here, just haven't felt like posting. The change in weather coupled with not hearing from the guy I interviewed with on Friday and realizing my unemployment runs out on the 21st triggered major blahs yesterday. It's starting to feel like I'm never going to find another job. The feelings of worthlessness set in. I started feeling the weight of another crappy Christmas coming. It's only 2½ months away. I had a little pity party for myself. I'm feeling a little better today, though, but not much.

I wanted to post about the little project I had Marcus working on for me. During the Blogathon, I noticed several sites that had audio links in their posts. A lot of people were using a service called hipcast, but that costs $$. People using Wordpress have a customizable flash audio plugin that is really cool and requires just a tiny bit of code in your post. I used Radio Blog Club to put the audio link for my Thursday Thirteen Favorite Songs post, but that only works if they have the song you're looking for in their database and the site is down alot. I know I could just use Object to embed audio, but I like the look of the Wordpress player and the tiny bit of code in the post.

There was a thread on the EE forums where somebody was asking if anybody could make a plugin for EE based on the Wordpress plugin. Stale Betty came up with a solution, but it requires a lot of code in the post and a custom field, so only one audio thing per post. I wanted the ability to have many. Anyway, I put the challenge to Marcus and he wrote me one, using both the wordpress plugin and stale betty's code. The only problem is I also have to use the Allow EE Code plugin in order to use it, but that's OK. Anyway, here's the little bit of code (I assigned it to a custom html button, so I only need to click one button to put it in my post):
{ exp:my_stream name="songtitle.mp3" id="1" }
Neat, huh?

MacDude iPod PumpkinAll it cost me was making Marcus a Halloween graphic for his site! Isn't it cool?

I need to do a little more testing by going back and replacing all the songs in my Thursday 13 post. That'll test the "id" function of it. If every song has a different id, then they can't play at the same time. I realy need to get my head straight and figure out how to do these things. I've always wanted to learn php and I like tinkering with code, but this underemployment and depression is kicking my ass.

I've got a final rant I need to make. We get East and West coast stations on our Dish. I've been using the East coast to get the shows I like on CBS. Last Friday, I missed the last 10 minutes of Ghost Whisperer and two weeks in a row I haven't gotten the whole Without A Trace. Pisses me off. I'm trying to bit torrent them as we speak. I've switched to taping the West coast ones. We'll see if that solves this stupid problem. I'm also mad at CBS, the network. Your The Class show is stupid and nobody is watching it. Thanks for switching your line up to put it in between How I Met Your Mother and Two and a Half Men in a lame attempt to gain viewership. You're lucky I was looking for something else in the program guide and noticed your switch. If I had sat down to watch How I Met Your Mother on my PVR and found out then that I had The Class instead, I would've been pissed instead of mildly irritated. Jerks.

OK, enough posting for now. I've got housework and template fixing to do (I have got to get the comments template DONE!). Have a good Tuesday everybody.

Sunday, October 08, 2006

Sun
8
Oct
2006

Testing Vox Crossposting

I finally installed Yoshi's Vox crossposting extension. This is only a test.

Monday, October 02, 2006

Mon
2
Oct
2006

I’m Feeling So Lost

The contest was a nice diversion from this whole unemployment mess. I finally got a response to one of my many resumes out there, but once again, it's for a job that's a contract "as needed" basis. I need stability with a set minimum income. If I had known things had gotten this bad, I wouldn't have been so quick to tell my old place of employment that I wanted to leave. Granted, I don't see that company staying around for the long term, either, but at least I would've been employed while trying to figure out where to go next. *sigh*

It appears this is the future for graphic designers. These companies don't want to have full time employees that require benefits and taxes and such. I'm not working for $10/hour or less if I'm responsible for paying all of my own taxes out of it. I made more money as a pizza insider than that, never mind what I made as a driver. I'm so tired of it! I went to school and I've got skills—I deserve to be paid for the use of those skills. I've started looking into other fields, but I don't know what the hell I want to do.

Sunday, October 01, 2006

Sun
1
Oct
2006

Busy Day Today

Wow, my body is really sore. I know I'm out of shape if the kind of work I did today totally wore me out.

We filled up the dumpster with our old bed parts. It was kind of sad to see it all in there, but I won't have to deal with a leaking bed anymore. Hooray!

The big project today was getting all of our remaining crap out of the storage place. Ugh, the dust I inhaled while sweeping it out made my poor throat all raw. The manager of the place said he'd find a home for the 9 bags of concrete we had there. Yay! It seemed a shame to throw them out when there was absolutely nothing wrong with them and we couldn't find anybody else that had any need for them at the moment. Marcus was also not looking forward to lugging them all over here. So, we still need to find places to stash the stuff we brought back here today, but for the most part, that whole ordeal is over. Yay to us saving $110 a month, too! No more storage until we move again.

We went to Anthony's Pizza & Pasta for dinner. The one over on 40th and Airport has been open for a bit, so Marcus wanted to go try them. When you dine in and order an 18" pizza, they actually make you a 22" pie. Man, that thing was tasty! There was so much left over I have lunch and dinner for tomorrow. Their dinner salad was pretty yummy, too. It had pepperoni, olives, cheese, romaine letteruce (not that crappy iceburg stuff) and I can't remember what else. I'd go back for just that salad again. The woman running the place was really nice, too. Definitely on the repeat visit list.

I cut Marcus' hair this evening. I'm not really that good at it, but Marcus doesn't care because it saves him money and he's always wearing a hat. For once, I didn't cut the skin in between my index and middle finger. I always manage to draw my own blood when I cut his hair, but not this time! It actually came out pretty even and I didn't leave him with any weird little bald spots. My back really hurts when I do it, though. I don't see how hairdressers managae doing that all day. Of course, they have chairs that they can adjust up and down.

Weird Al's "White and Nerdy" video was on VH1's top 20 countdown this weekend, but they cut the end off. I wish iTunes would get it. I'd really love to have a high res version of it.

I had intended to work on the old blog template, but that didn't happen. I've been too busy checking PPP for new puzzle pieces that didn't materialize. Oh, well...I've got all day tomorrow.

OK, I'm gonna go spend the evening in my comfy bed. G'night.

Saturday, September 30, 2006

Sat
30
Sep
2006

It’s Gonna Be a Busy Day

I've got a lot I need to accomplish today.

When Marcus gets back from biking with Mike, we're heading over to Denver Mattress to see if there is anything there that can replace our crappy waterbed insert. I'm never owning a bed that requires water in it ever again! We also need to head over to get the last of our junk out of storage.

Pink for October 2006My blog is Going Pink for October in observance of Breast Cancer Awareness month, if I can get the darned template I'm working on finished. Hopefully I can concentrate on that this evening after dinner while the guys game. Hopefully my Veronica Mars season 1 discs come in the mail today and I can watch those while I code. I had to send the Firefly discs back. I just couldn't get into them. Maybe at a different point in my life I'll be in a mindset where I can try again.

I have to finish styling my expaning link list menus to save room in the sidebara nd hopefully speed up the site's load time.

I want to be the first to find all the PPP puzzle pieces. There's a $1000 prize at stake for the first one to assemble the pieces and post it on their blog. We all know how much I really need money right now!

Oh, crap...I have to go put Marcus' checks in the bank. Gotta go!