Category: General Musings

By:

The Dude on the Right
I’ve got so many things I have wanted to write about.  There’s the entire
New Orleans’ thing, a rant about why Kentucky Fried Chicken sucks and it’s not
related to PETA, my picture with Johnny Cash, how proud I am of Columbus, IN.,
how I’m rooting for my Indians and torn about rooting for the White Sox, about
my Jimmy Buffett weekend (Stu might need some bigger coconuts), and just general
things.  I also intended to figure out how I could get a Podcast going for
the site.  Then I decided to try an upgrade to my blog software.

So, for the past three days, the stubborn streak in me has gotten the best of
me.  The upgrade was supposed to be easy, I even had a couple of helpful
sites to make things even easier and not mess everything up.  Then, of
course, I didn’t really listen to them, then I started searching the internet as
to why I was getting this "500" error, then I just started deleting things
willly-nilly, then things still didn’t work, then I did another internet search
for some Perl code that might actually help, then I just prayed that my
Frontpage backup had all of the files that I had since deleted and it would
upload them as instructed.  Finally, three days later, I’m back up and
running with the old version of my Blog software (thank you Frontpage), and
until I actually read somewhere, or at least one of the technical folks at my
hosting site or the blog software sight, give me some help into how to make the
upgrade work, I’m sticking with the older version that was working well enough
for me in the first place.

I kind of hate when I get in that stubborn mode, spending days on something
that really doesn’t have an answer at the moment, but alas, I do that every now
and then.  So here’s the quick update – I’m not going to really try
upgrading things until I get a firm answer so I can at least switch my focus
from computer programming to the important things, like Jimmy Buffett, NFL
football, movies, music, and what scares me even more, because it usually
becomes the "I never get anything done because of," Falll TV programming. 
Most of my favorite shows are returning, I’m sure there are some new one coming
for me to get sucked into as well, and I might have to buy a new TIVO to keep up
with it all.

That’s it for this one! I’m The Dude on the Right!! L8R!!!

By The Dude on the Right
Usually I’m pretty write-ative, but tonight, this entry will be a little shorter than normal, at least that’s my train of thought right now. We’ll see how this ends up.
Anyway, it’s been a busy day, mostly playing with one of my new toys, my blogging software, trying to get the pages to look seamless with the rest of the web site. I did play slightly with my other toy, the new camera, but am figuring Monday and Tuesday will be more devoted to that one so that I am ready when the lights go down and I’m at the foot of the stage for Green Day on Wednesday night (that review coming later this week).
As far as the blogging software, let me tell you, that hasn’t been the easiest of things, especially since I rarely read the right documentation on new things, and with this Movable Type thing having many options to make things how you want, I also had to learn a few things, like dealing with a style/formatting file. The problem: After getting it to work exactly like I wanted, not realizing it was built into the program so when I rebuilt the blogging area it rebuilt based on its style file, because, well, I simply didn’t read that you need to change the file internally, not externally, so I got to start over again. Like a lot of my computer experiences, it’s been about trial and error, finding out why the errors are there, then trying again. I’m finally getting the hang of things, although one part of the commenting area still isn’t working but I actually used the Knowledge Base and know why it’s happening so I might have a fix on that. Ahh, Knowledge Bases and FAQs!
Hope you had an unbelievable weekend.
That’s it for this one! I’m The Dude on the Right!! L8R!!!

By:

The Dude on the Right
So I get back from seeing

"The Dukes of Hazzard," get near my garage door in the
dude-mobile, keep
pressing the button so that the door would magically open, and nothing happens.
Keep pressing. Nothing happens. Keep pressing. Nothing happens. Then my neighbor
yells across the way that the power is out. I hoped the battery was dead in the
little transmitter thingy, but fine, I can do some writing on my laptop, even
though I can’t connect to the internet, and then I remembered something I
haven’t done yet that I keep telling myself I’m going to do – get a battery
back-up power supply. No, not for my computer, I already have one for that. I’m
talking about getting one for my kids, I mean, my fish. It’s bad enough that the
temperature is rising, and Steve, Ashley, and Bill, well, they can deal with
that to a point, but the real problem is that the filters stop filtering, if it
was cold the heater stops heating (although I’ve read you shouldn’t really plug
one into a power supply), but now, especially with the filtering thing, bad
things are getting the chance to totally foul my fish tank, even to the point of
making it toxic enough to kill my kids. As of my writing this, the power’s been
out for about half an hour, but if it keeps going any longer I might have to
yank my computer power supply out of the wall and hope there’s some juice left
in its batteries to at least run my canister filter for awhile. Worst case
scenario, I’m off to my Home
Depot to by a small portable generator and run some power cords to keep the
kids happy. Here’s hoping
ComEd can get this taken care of quickly, because as quaint as a power
outing can be sometimes, on a hot August day, I just hope my kids can weather
the storm, and hopefully this time I have learned my lesson and will pick up
that battery backup for my kids.

That’s it for this one! I’m The Dude on the Right!! L8R!!!

Follow up note… Well, it turns out my UPS for my computer was pretty much
useless by the time I tried to see if it would power one of the filters, and
time was ticking by. So, for the next hour-ish, I kept calling the electric
folks. Low and behold, on my last call, I was told by the nice lady answering
the phone that her supervisor informed them that all of
Aurora was back up and
running. I nicely told her that maybe her supervisor would want to spend her
night at my place, and I’ll hang out at hers, since I’ll bet her air conditioner
was working. She nicely chuckled and said she would let her supervisor know
power hasn’t been restored to all of Aurora, and low and behold, 15 minutes
later the power kicked back in, so luckily, you have this blog entry to get you
into Sunday and so far the kids, I mean fish, seem okay.