greyduck.net

Looking For Quacks In The Pavement

Author: Karel Kerezman

  • NaDoWhaMo

    It’s been a while, hasn’t it?

    Excuses I have. I’ve been sick for a week and a half, missing two days of work during that time. My job has become more tiring and tedious. My personal life is in a state of flux. I’m broke, in spite of landing a substantial bonus from work last week. (That’s that last of those I’ll be seeing any time soon, too.) The mornings and evenings are darker, in the “sun rises later and sets earlier” sense if not the metaphorical sense, so I’m engaging in my annual battle against the onset of seasonal depression.

    I considered joining one of the “national something-or-other month” activities such as NaBloPoMo. (During a particularly manic phase a few days ago I decided that I was going to do BloPoMo with a theme, such as “30 days of musical artists” or “30 days, 30 anime” or some-such.) I even considered WriMo, which I have insisted for years that I’d never do again. I realized, however, that I’d end up even more depressed if I started something like that and then failed to complete it. Given my track record with unfinished projects lately it seemed the better part of valor to forgo that particular form of punishment.

    So, this month I’m just going to sit back and participate in my own little event: National Do Whatever Month. You may get a couple of the music mixes I came up with. You may get a rambling about animation from that planned theme. You may get two weeks with no posting whatsoever… yeah, that would be new around here, wouldn’t it? At any rate, I have several unfinished posts that need fleshing out and tidying up, so it’s not like I don’t have anything to say. (Of special note is the upcoming photographic journey through the building of the Very Expensive Media Center Computer.)

    If nothing else, I can at least take some comfort in the fact that October is over. Hooray.

  • Gravatar Support Added

    For what it’s worth, the comments portion of this journal now supports Gravatar images. Now that they’re owned by the WordPress folks, I figure performance shouldn’t be too much of an issue going forward.

    What can I say? It’s an excuse to use “buddy icons” in my journal. I’m a sucker for that sort of thing.

  • Annoying New Comment Spam Trick

    Well, this is amusing. And by “amusing” I mean “annoying and frustrating,” of course.

    A while back I posted an entry containing a music selection. Several comments were made at the time, and then life moved on. This is all normal so far. This morning, however, I saw two new comment notifications in my mailbox for that entry… and one of them looked really familiar.

    It should have, since it was Kyla’s comment exactly, repeated by someone claiming to be “GoDaddy” using GoDaddy’s support email address. The next comment from them was a few characters of gibberish… which got approved because the previous comment was approved, probably because it looked identical (from the spam filter’s perspective) to an existing comment.

    So, yes, I deleted them both and marked the gibberish comment as spam. I just hope this isn’t the new trend. I have enjoyed a couple years’ worth of peace and quiet on the spam-fighting front and don’t want to go back to the bad old days of playing whack-a-mole.

    Hell of a way to start my Friday, let me tell ya.

  • Aquarium Trip, September 2007

    Kyla and I took a long weekend back in September, planned well in advance for the specific purpose of taking Alex and Erica out to the coast for a tour of the Oregon Coast Aquarium in Newport. (Who did they have to kill to nab “aquarium.org”, anyway?). The kids and I had been there before, during the years between Keiko’s departure and the completion of the underwater passage exhibit, which we were keen to see.

    Crazy aside: We ended up renting a Chevy Malibu sedan from Enterprise; the previous renter brought it back because it was too old. If that car was manufactured before 2004 I’d be stunned, people. “Too old?” As Kyla said, “Let me show you my beat up old Ford Escort, lady.”

    At any rate, after a few hours’ travel spent kibbutzing and listening to Daft Punk and other odd road-music selections, we arrived and proceeded to wander the length and breadth of the place, looking at fishies and crustaceans, snapping photographs, and amusing ourselves with silly banter.

    Photographs, I said!

    Some of the pictures make for good journal fodder, so we’ll highlight them…
    (more…)

  • Tag, I’m it!

    This journal is now upgraded to WordPress version 2.3, for good or for ill. This upgrade required a few behind-the-scenes changes so I took advantage of this opportunity to do a little “out with the old, in with the new” action.

    The Old: I wasn’t using the Timeline at all, and only rarely did I update my Status page. The plugins which made those pages work aren’t fully compatible with 2.3 so I ditched them. Since I was already on a housekeeping binge, I made the Technorati widget go away (you could count the referrals I received from them on the fingers of one hand) and removed some of the old themes & plugins that I was never going to use again anyway.

    The New: Tagging. I don’t think I’m going to go through my back catalog of nearly-1800 posts to add tags, but I can add new tags as I go and as I find the need to touch up an older posting.

    The Unchanged: I was going to spring a new theme on you, but I couldn’t find one that didn’t annoy me in one important aspect or another. I think in the long run it’ll have turned out wise to just plug new code revisions into this theme just as I’ve done with the WordPress 2.0, 2.1 and 2.2 upgrades. This upgrade was infinitely less annoying than the last one, at least.

    The Linkage: If you’re going to retrofit an existing theme, you should absolutely pick up the Advanced Tag Entry plugin and the Configurable Tag Cloud widget plugin. With Advanced Tag Entry, you actually get to manage the tags you’re using on each of the posts. The default WordPress 2.3 installation provides no meaningful control over existing tags whatsoever, and ATE remedies that handily. The Configurable Tag Cloud, meanwhile, gives you the sidebar widget we should have been given with the stock WordPress install in the first place. Get it, use it, love it.

    Well, this took a bit longer than I originally expected. I guess I’ll have to work on my long-overdue image manipulation projects later this week, eh? (There’s a gallery to fill with pictures from the coast trip, there are banner images to craft for both of the forums…)

  • On Where I Go From Here

    I startled myself a few days ago with a simple realization. It’s not one that leaps readily to mind when I look back at my relationship history, considering the years during which I had no idea what I was doing as well as that ugly stretch of time when I wasn’t quite the model of a responsible partner. Perhaps, then, it’s not such a surprise that I didn’t think of this sooner…

    I have been in one committed primary romantic relationship or another almost continuously since I was about 19 years old.

    Let’s set aside just how committed I was at any given time; I don’t make a big secret of the fact that I didn’t do a very good job of it for the bulk of my marriage, so we don’t need to delve into that here. The important part is that I don’t know what it’s like to be a mature adult and not be in a primary partnership arrangement. Is this normal? Don’t most people go through on-and-off cycles or something like that? Maybe I’m just naïve but it seems like I’ve led a peculiar life in this specific regard.

    What does all of this mean, then, given my current situation?

    My first thought is that I should spend time being Just Me. Not that I was going to run out and dive straight into another big romantic entanglement anyway, but now I’m certain that taking a bit of a sabbatical before my next one is a Very Good Idea. I’ll grant you that certain aspects of my current life make that plan more palatable than it might be for most other people, but that’s one of the benefits of the path I chose and the person I’ve worked to become over the past half-dozen years or so.

    Following up on that thought is that I’ve reinforced my belief that I need to spend some time taking stock of who I am, what I value and where my boundaries are. My relationship style has long relied on being reasonable when I can be; in the future I want to be certain that I don’t cross the line between “reasonable” and “doormat.” (Not, mind you, that I’m saying I’ve been a doormat up to this point. I’m talking about assessing the big picture, not pointing fingers or engaging in self-recrimination.)

    On the flipside of that, I also need to get a firm grip on what sets off my anger, what kind of things I should get angry over and which (of course) I shouldn’t. Much of the problems and baggage I contribute to a relationship stem from my temper triggers, and I’d like to repeat as few of those mistakes in the future as possible. (The idea is to avoid repeating old mistakes so you have the time to make all new ones, after all!)

    Of course, I also need to make certain that I don’t let inertia rule my future. You can imagine how easy it would be for me to go into full-on hermit mode. I don’t think I need to take after my father in that particular respect, do you? Besides, if I don’t (eventually) get out there and put all of this planning and introspection to good use, what’s the point?

    Deep thoughts for a train ride home. I think I’ll do something light and fun when I get home. (Have I mentioned yet that my laptop is awesome, by the way?)

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