Domestic Geek

Hey all! Sorry I've been MIA for a bit. Since I wrote my confessional last week, I've been really taking a good long hard look at my habits and why I'm doing them. When I catch myself doing something undesirable, I try to put something more productive in its place. One thing I must rid myself of is the mindless Internet surfing I've been doing. Since this all really got started back when I lost my job, it's been easy to tell myself that I need to stay online to find that job opening. Then I started doing paid blogging and I had to stay online to find the next good opp. Well, I have a full time job and I haven't had but 7 opps in the past 30 days, so I can't use those for justifications for my actions anymore. So in it's place I put the excuse that I had to help get everyone's alexa scores up. Here I go, justifying again. I never gave hoot about PR, alexa or technorati scores before, why now? It certainly isn't that have decent scores already in those areas has brought me more money making opportunities. So, the solution has been to not spend so much of my precious time in front of this computer or if I do, I go to sites for tutorials and stuff so I'm actually increasing knowledge instead of just wasting time.

Saturday was a bad night here in the old mobile home park. When I got home from work on Friday, a whole bunch of people were at the neighbors (whom I detest) helping them move! I was so happy. I had been getting clues that they would be leaving, but no real proof. These people have been a thorn in my side since the day they moved in — loud Mexican polka music, neglecting their dog, kids screaming on trampolines, no respect for anyone, etc. I think the woman was also running an illegal day care. Well, except for a little bit on Saturday to get some more stuff, I thought I had seen the last of them. Well, when I went to go to bed about 12:30 Sat/Sun, it sounded like a party going on over there. Loud music, tons of people, a dozen or so cars in the street, some of them drag racing. Wow, I was not happy. Marcus looked out the door and said he thought they were moving the last of their stuff. Then it got ugly: hooting, screaming, yelling, windows breaking, general mayhem. I got afraid and called the cops. By the time I had hung up with the 911 dispatcher, everyone there had jumped in cars and took off, leaving every light on in the place and the front door open. The next morning, there were definitely broken out windows. When the people looking after the park in the owner's absence came by, they told us the neighbors had been evicted and when they looked in the front door, they place was totally trashed. Like I said, no respect. Since the owners were suing these people for back payments and now he can't resell this one right away, I'm waiting for him to take it out on the residents by upping our lot rents.

One final thing and then I have to get ready for work. My allergies are kicking my butt this year. I've felt so shitty the last two days. Once again, NyQuil could've been my friends had it still a decongestant as an ingredient. The runny nose is so bad it made my nose bleed overnight. Eww. This is not cool.

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.