Domestic Geek

Ten Things I Love About Springtime
Even though the temps are supposed to be back down in the 50s here today, the weather was beautiful yesterday. I've definitely got a case of spring fever, as my seasonal allergies can attest!

1. Flowering trees
2. Longer days
3. Garden centers reopening
4. Daffodils
5. Rain instead of snow
6. Thunderstorms
7. Sunroof open
8. Dry, ice-free pavement
9. Lilac bushes bloom
10. Open the doors to let fresh air in

When we were out for our weekly Saturday evening dinner date, my friend Nina told me about a great t-shirt that I would probably like to have over at Jinx. She mentioned it was about knitting and the Jolly Roger. I was picturing the "knit or die" shirt they had on Gilmore Girls, but this one is way more cool!

I remember being able to save my MovableType files as external docs on my server so I wouldn't have to edit them in the the program's editor. It's one of the things I've always been meaning to see if it could be done in Expression Engine because I hate working on my templates in the editor with a passion. I think it's one of the reasons I haven't really been working on my sites. I'd much rather work in BBEdit (my mac text editor of choice) and have the proper outline format and be able to see the color coding. Makes it a heck of a lot easier to spot problems, let me tell you! Instead of just figuring it out a long time ago, I've been copying from the editor, pasting into BBEdit, making changes, copying it back into the editor — not the most efficient workflow. Anyway, I was working on couple of friends' Wordpress templates the last few days and I was tinkering with their files on my own test server via my FTP program (Transmit) and BBEdit. So much easier! I decided today I was going to figure out how to make that happen in EE or I was going to dump the platform.

Fortunately, there is indeed a way to Save Templates as Text Files. The hardest part was figuring out what my server path was. I uploaded a page called pathinfo.php into the root of the site with this code: <?php phpinfo(); ?> and loaded the page. Down at the bottom was my server path. Yay! So, now I can code directly from BBEdit via Transmit. It is done and one more thing I've been putting off for so long is crossed off my list. Now it's late, but I'll get to working on my new design first thing in the morning.

You know you're getting close to the book release when a big announcement is made revealing the cover art. For J.K. Rowling's final book seven of the series, Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, that announcement came this past Wednesday on The Today Show. [via Shalla]

I found a link with a large version of the entire cover art and immediately made it into my computer's desktop image. I'd post a pic of it, but there are a ton of files on my desktop, obscuring the image. Maybe once I get those files put away or thrown out.

As I've been soul searching today trying to figure out where my life got so off track, I got to thinking about high school and the people I knew then. I wrote before about how I have such a hard time keeping relationships with anybody going. I don't know why it's so hard for me to connect and stay connected with people. I no longer have contact with anybody I went to school with and haven't for many years. That's really sad with a graduating class of over 600 people and I still live in the town I grew up in.

Anyway, I started looking for the links to the old reunion sites that were up for our 2004 20-year reunion and found out the reunion committee made a site in anticipation of our 25th reunion in July of 2009. I think I'm going to attend that one. I noticed that a handful of classmates are already deceased. If I don't go this time, I may regret it later. I'm not going to set the reunion as a goal for getting my shit together, because those kind of things never work. That being said, however, I do want the person that goes to that reunion to be happy and on the right track. I've made some small steps over the last couple of days. Fessing up was the biggest. It made me pull my head out of the sand and start taking a good, hard look at my behavior and what it's doing to me.