Isn’t this a beautiful theme?

Obviously not mine, I could never do anything this pretty. And that’s probably part of the reason why my site’s been MIA for awhile. I just wasn’t happy with it, couldn’t decide what to do with it, and was getting annoyed every time I looked at it. So I removed it.

I still don’t know if I’ll be sitting here talking about nothing important and being happy about it. I wish this journal had a better focus. On what, I don’t know. Writing? Photography? Music? I’ve thought about all three, but if I’m honest with myself, I’m simply not dedicated to any of them to make it worth while.

So for now, I guess this will be what it’s always been. Which isn’t much.

My son is emptying my wallet.

No, it’s not time to buy him a car. He hasn’t broken anything or gotten in trouble with the law or anything like that. Nope – he likes to text.

Three months ago I warned him he was going over his text messaging limit. Two months ago I said if you do this again, I’m going to make you pay the bill. Last month, he went over his 200 message limit by over 400 messages. I told him he would be paying me back the 40+ dollars I had to spend.

I got the AT&T Bill yesterday. Checked my son’s number because my bill was unusually high. 937 text messages. That’s better than 30 a day for the month of March – and he claims he never texts while he’s at school. Now I know why his homework is never done. He’s sending text messages to all his friends.

Needless to say, his phone has been confiscated.

WordPress 2.5 is out. I’ve updated the site here to it – it was quick and painless for the most part, however I did forget to re-activate the Askimet spam plugin and in the space of less than 24 hours, I had 50+ pieces of comment spam. That quickly got activated!

WordPress 2.5 also has galleries now. I’ve talked about it for years, and it’s finally a reality (though I’ve been using smugmug to store my photos and I’m completely happy with them). I hope to have more photos here soon.

I’ve also been really digging into Expression Engine on my Harley site and have accomplished a lot. Hopefully I’ll actually get that launched sometime in the next millennium. No foolin’.

Have I mentioned how much I’m looking forward to Firefox 3 and its improved memory handling?

Slack’s recent posting about something funny his son did reminded me of a story my wife told me that I wanted to get down, so I wouldn’t forget.

When Sarah was much, much younger and learning her words, her mommy and she were reading a book on animals and the different noises they make. Gail would read the page, which went something along the lines of “See the cow? The cow says…” and Sarah would fill in the sound. She was doing a great job of supplying the “moos” and “meows” and “oinks” where needed. The Gail got to a page and read “See the gold fish? The gold fish says…”

And Sarah started to cry, because she didn’t know the sound. But she made an effort. Through big tears and half sobs she said “bloop?”, and then cried even harder.

I laughed so hard when Gail told me that…is that wrong of me?

Well – that went swimmingly.

/sarcasm

ch3y905: Hi
ch3y905: I’m bord
shad: so you thought you’d IM a complete stranger and alleviate the boredom?
ch3y905: Uh???
ch3y905: How old are you
shad: older than you
ch3y905: How older
shad: I can drink legally, rent a car, and run for president…
shad: that tell you anything?
ch3y905: I’m older
ch3y905: Yes
ch3y905: And I can drink to
ch3y905: And I can rent a car
shad: can you run for president?
ch3y905: Soo what
ch3y905: Maybe yes or no
ch3y905: Give me numbers
shad: 38
shad: 32
shad: 56
shad: 29
shad: 75
shad: 86
shad: 245
shad: …how many numbers do you want?
ch3y905: I mean ur age dumb ass
ch3y905: And I finish college
shad: oh you do?
ch3y905: 8 years ago
ch3y905: So
ch3y905: I maye be older then you
shad: Well, geez, what kind of college did you go to? It should have been “finished” college
shad: they sure didn’t learn ya good in them thar classes did they
ch3y905: Bitch,
ch3y905: You are dumb
ch3y905: Plus I have kids I’m older then you
shad: Wow, you must be REALLY old then – and you know how to operate this here internet thingy?
shad: I am most impressed
ch3y905: You need to learn how to treat ur olers
shad: I thought it was the providence of only the young
shad: and what the hell is an oler?
ch3y905: Yes of course I know how to work with the internet
ch3y905: Who dosent you
ch3y905: Cuz ur a dumb ass bitch
shad: I iz a dumazz bitch
shad: tha’s right!
shad: see, I can talk ghetto talk like you youngsters
shad:
ch3y905: Thanx for the confessing
ch3y905: I anit young
ch3y905: Bitch you a child ok not
ch3y905: Me
shad: you know, for a self-confessed college graduate, you sure come off sounding about as bright as a box of hair…
ch3y905: I’m not going to waste my time so goodbye ass hole
shad: bye!
ch3y905: You shouldn’t talk about ur mom like that
shad: Mom???
shad: Hi!
shad: How’s Dad?
shad: How’s his gall bladder?

This theme will be in place temporarily while I work on my own redesign – it’s also an experiment of sorts. Since I started working on my own theme bit by bit, I’ve noticed a huge increase in the amount of comment spam I was receiving. So I’m going to leave it up like this for a few days (weeks??) and see how it turns out.

It’s also been getting busy again at work, and who knows, I just might chuck the whole kit-n-kaboodle and just live with whatever I decide.

I’ve done it before!

Sitting at work yesterday, one of the marketing managers leans over my pod wall and says “So what’s going on? First I hear you’re working with us, now I hear you’re not?” This manager works in the group I’ve been hoping to work with for the past 6 weeks. So for him to hear I wouldn’t be working with them was a bit disconcerting to say the least. Especially since I myself hadn’t heard a thing. I looked at him and said “First I’ve heard of it…” He stammered something about not sure if that’s what he heard for certain and quickly made his exit.

Enough with the not knowing, I figured. If I don’t get this job, I have no severance, no leads, nothing to fall back on. After I finish moving banks off our servers, it was going to be “Thanks, don’t let the door hit you on the way out” if I didn’t have a job here. So I figured I’d go straight to the source and emailed my would-be boss. I told her a not-so-little birdy told me I wasn’t going to be working with her group at all, and, to be blunt, what the hell is going on. Naturally, I didn’t frame it like that but I did layout my concerns and told her in no uncertain terms, I needed to know *now*.

I sent her that at about 2pm, and didn’t hear from her at all. Whereas the old saying is “No news is good news”, I knew this wasn’t the case, and because she was so long in replying, I prepared for the worst. This morning when I got in, there was mail from her saying to come see her.

The short of it is, I got the job. 100% have the job, according to her. The delay stemmed from her boss’s end. She was trying to get budget stuff finalized and what not, and he apparently just kept putting it off. When I sent her that email, she realized how stressed I was becoming. She forwarded that email to not only her boss, but the SVP of the department, basically saying “do you see what kind of position you’re putting him in?” That got them to approve whatever it was that needed approving and I am 100% still going to be employed when all is said and done.

All I can say to that is “Hallelujah and amen, holy shit do I need a drink” For damn near two months it’s been uncertain.

On an un-related side note, because I don’t have a sidebar up yet, I wanted to give a little shout-out love to Heidi. I used to work with her back in the old AOL-Tucson days and her husband and I still chat. So head over to Sweetmunkies to read about Heidi’s adventures in parenting, gardening and vegetarianism, along with other topics. Oh, and she’s a hot redhead. That’s aces in my book.

Don’t kill me Slack!

Earlier I said I would post only when I’d made some changes to the site to help it move along in its redesign. While it might not look like much has changed (“woo, Shad, you put the date at the *top* of the post. Impressive!”), I have been working on it. Most recently I’ve been wondering what direction to take it, and realized I didn’t even have a good plan. So I sat down and created a wireframe mockup. First I sketched it out on paper, and then I created a mockup in Photoshop. Sometime this weekend, I’ll go back and take another look at it and decide if I like it. If I do like it, I’ll start working on coding the html for it. I’m keeping my fingers crossed that I like it.

I’ve also been pondering the start of yet another journal (I hate the word blog). This one would stay, and be geared towards family and general stuff, while the other one would be aimed at web & design. I think if I get this job where I’ll be doing print work as well as web work, I’ll take a shot at it. I know the world doesn’t need another web/design site…but who cares.

That’d bring the totally number of journals I have floating around to…erm….6

Yeah, like I need that many.

In the meantime, work is still up in the air, I still don’t know what my future might be here and I’m still balls to the wall in dealing with sites and trying to make sense of stuff like what’s below:

This screenshot is what the Web Developer extension for Firefox sees when I’m working one particular bank site. Yes, that is 7 nested tables.

I love my job.