Toy For Nate's Birthday
[Back-dated from 10/6/03 to 7/31]
Bought a NETGEAR wireless cable modem/DSL router at Fry's for Nate's upcoming birthday. Helped Nate with resume and cover letter. 

---

Bad Pizza, Bad Booze, Good EKG
[Back-dated from 10/6/03 to 7/30]
Nate and Crystal were here for pizza dinner while we helped Nate with his resume.

Oops! Chest pains, gathering in intensity. Probably a reaction to the new specialty alcoholic beverage or the Costco pizza, which I noticed has a new type of crust. Argued with wife and kids about this being a simple reaction to either food or beverage. Nothing doing.

As chest pains worsened, they bundled me off to the local urgent care clinic. Spread me out on a table, but the EKG showed nothing. Episode all done in 45 to 60 minutes total. Sure enough, some type of allergic food reaction. Once you've had a few, you recognize the symptoms. Still, better safe than sorry when it comes to chest pains.

Some of you will notice this isn't the first time Maria has tried to poison me. Practice makes perfect. 

---

Possibilities
[back-dated from 10/6/03]
Talked to Nate about an opening at Maria's college and the potential for broad-based experience. Discussion covered a lot of ground; maybe something will come of it. 

---

New Palm Toy
[back-dated from 10/5/03]
Slept fine last night; no gout pain. When the medicine kicks in, it usually works fairly quickly.

Maria returned from Reno. She bought me a new Palm Pilot m125 for $85 at the AECT conference auction to replace my worn Handspring Platinum. Much higher screen resolution. Much better backlight visibility. We had a 'welcome home' dinner at Stuart Anderson's Black Angus.

The IT director at Maria's college sent her the new design for her section of the web site.

Received the URL for Marilyn A's blog. 

---

Gout, No Doubt
[back-dated from 10/5/03]
No garage cleanup work since Maria is out of town [grin]. I could not have done any due to the gout. Woke up several times during the night from the pain. Started self-medicating first thing in the morning. Hobbled around with the cane all day; very painful. Maria still out of town, does not know about the gout. I could walk without the cane by late evening. 

---

Whippersnapper Whacker
[back-dated from 10/5/03]
Tried to install pcAnywhere on an old NT server at work today. Stubborn.

When I left work, my left rear ankle was starting to hurt. By 10:00 p.m., I was using a cane to navigate around the house. Nicknamed the cane my "whippersnapper whacker." Probably just an attack of gout? I'll know by morning... 

---

New Hard Drive
[back-dated from 10/5/03]
Installed a new Maxtor 5000DV external hard drive today. Interesting. No complaints yet. 

---

All Alone
[back-dated from 10/5/03]
Maria left today for her educational technology conference in Reno. Rather quiet around here. 

---

Happy Birthday To Da' Wife
[back-dated from 10/5/03]
Today is Maria's birthday. Still crazy after all these years, but she's a keeper. [grin] We've made a pretty good team, and she deserves more than 50% of the credit. 

---

Macs Bite
[back-dated from 10/5/03]
Saw more houses with Craig and Nancy.

Moved 900MB of images from Maria's Powerbook to my external hard drive to make space for her Reno conference material. Almost done before went to look at houses but could not access upon return. The Powerbook OS X would no longer recognize USB ZIP drive, even after reboot. Worked fine on PC laptop. Moved back to Powerbook, still no good. The miracle of modern technology bites again. 

---

The House Hunt Continues
[back-dated from 10/5/03]

No garage cleanup today. Saw 2 houses with realtor friends Craig and Nancy. Went back to Rivermark in San Jose by ourselves again and looked at 6 models.

Dinner at Stuart Anderson's for Maria's upcoming birthday.

Missed the big blogger dinner w/Winer, Scoble, et al at Premier Pizzeria in Rivermark!

All Radio UserLand weblogs offline, can't ping www.weblogs.com after dinner (6:30?), still down 9:30. 

---

Watch For Flying Deer
Friend and realtor Nancy was driving near her home today. A deer suddenly leaped down from an embankment above the road and landed on the corner of her car. It staggered off into the bushes and, by the time she backed up to take a look, had disappeared. Dents on hood, side, and slash in front grill. When driving in the Santa Cruz mountains, keep an eye peeled for flying deer. 

---

Cancelled My Homestead Account
My test account at Homestead ("your complete web site building and hosting solution") was coming up for auto-renewal in a few weeks. I called today to cancel because they do not allow on-line cancellation. Why blog this? Because Homestead screwed me, and many other customers, last year.

Flashback: Last year, I ended up with an auto-renewed Homestead web hosting account that I didn't want. I created the test account several years ago as one of Homestead's charter members. Started with a free account. Decided it wasn't too bad, so I upgraded to a paid account. Over the course of the following year I didn't use the account much and did not plan to renew it.

Unknown to me, Homestead changed their web hosting renewal policy during the year to activate auto-renewal on all accounts. They didn't tell their users in any proactive fashion. Homestead just changed the terms and conditions page on their web site and went on their merry way to the bank. This "change the policy page and nobody will notice" approach is hardly unique. They just followed the same user-hostile approach taken by many large companies. Modify an existing prepaid contract in mid-contract. Don't tell the other party in the contract. Post a new policy stating they'll change existing contracts whenever they please. The hell with the customers.

Homestead is happy, their lawyers are satisfied, their accounting department is grinning, and the customer gets boned.

Many users with no intention of renewing, such as yours truly, were auto-renewed without warning. To add insult to injury, the price was a substantial increase over the old rate. When I saw the charge on my credit card, I called to cancel. Turns out that another clause in Homestead's sneakily-revised contract states that you do not receive a pro-rated refund if you cancel. If they auto-renew your sorry ass with no prior notice, even if you cancelled the next day, Homestead still keeps the entire renewal fee. The customer service person's attitude was: "The policy is posted on the web site. It isn't our fault that you don't read the policy regularly and look for any changes that might apply to you." Customer service, my ass.

I called my credit card company, who said they would not reverse the charge. Homestead knew nobody would sue them over a $75 unauthorized credit card charge. Maybe they learned that trick from the porn web site vendors?

So, I used the Homestead web hosting account for minor testing and made damn sure to note the auto-renewal date on my calendar for this year.

Flashforward: Maybe Homestead got tired of the whining from the many customers they screwed last year. This year I received an email warning several weeks prior to the auto-renewal.

Called them.
Cancelled.
Don't let the door hit you in the ass on your way out.

"Homestead: Your complete web site building and hosting solution." 

---

Long and Short Trips
Steve left for his U.K. commute again today. Maria took his wife Terry through the Rivermark development, which is near their new apartment in San Jose. 

---

The Dragon, The Mustang, and The Asylum Connections
Dave, the Redwood Dragon, sold his Mustang. I still have the 1965 289 Hi-Perf Mustang fastback that I bought, used, as a high school student in 1969. It sits, gathering dust and boxes, in the garage.

Childhood's End. Today my mid-life crisis is officially over: I sold my 1999 Ford Mustang Cobra. It was a fun car, albeit... [Redwood Dragon]

The Mustang connection is just another in a series of odd similarities between us. There are the obvious similarities in  our blog names. We started our current blogs within a month of each other last year. We are both in our early 50s. We live within 30 minutes of each other. Among other occupations, Dave writes science fiction. I've been a science fiction fan since grade school. We had never head of each other before stumbling across our mutual blogs. We've never met. Maybe we'll remedy that. 

---

Drinks With A View
Drinks and dessert with realtor friends Craig and Nancy. Fantastic view of Santa Cruz and the Monterey Bay from their place in the hills of Bonny Doon. 

---

A New Blog
Heard from Maria that Marilyn A, her boss at the college, has a new blog. It was created by Mike S, another professor. Maria does not have the URL for the blog yet. 

---

The Never-Ending Cleanup
Another day, another cleaning struggle. Even son Bryan was here, digging through his old books, computers, and toys. We hauled a huge pile of usable items to Goodwill. 

---

Dinner for the Departing
Steve and Terry drove down from their new apartment in San Jose to join us for dinner. Steve commutes back to the U.K. tomorrow. She'll stay here for a few more weeks. 

---

Tote That Bale
More cleaning of garage and storage area under the house. Discarded more piles of old software and client project work. The floggings will continue until morale improves. 

---

Happy 12th Anniversary, Redwood Home
Love our home in the forest. Transplanted the family from Southern California all those years ago, taking possession on the easy-to-remember date of 7-11. Someday, we'll remember to celebrate by lifting a free Slurpee to salute the homestead. For now, cheap champagne.

Then: we walked through the door with two kids in tow. Now: we're empty nesters. Thankfully, both former rug-rats still live in nearby towns. And now, a moment of silence, to pause and remember. 

---

Redwood Neighbor
Congratulations to Dave Trowbridge, and future bride Deborah, on their new home.

Home Sweet Home?. Yesterday Deborah and I made an offer for a house in Boulder Creek that we hope will be our home,... [Redwood Dragon]

 

---

First Comment Whore
Kate officially announced her new Chilean blog to friends and family. One post, one photo. I played 'first comment whore' on her first post. I won't link from here, but friends and family can ask for the location. 

---

Baby Shower
Maria hosted a baby shower here this evening. Hillary, daughter of current boss Marilyn, is due any day now. I did my husbandly duty and helped set up, then stayed out of the way of the hormonally-charged festivities. 

---

A New Blogger
Bryan showed me the PHP-based blog and photo album he created for girlfriend Kate to update during her semester in Chile. 

---

Other Reasons To Redesign
Forgot to mention two other reasons for site redesign. The new CSS layout allows folks using 800x600 resolution to see the design width. The old table-based layout forced part of the right-hand edge off the screen for some of my readers. This new design also allows readers to use their browsers text sizing option to make the text larger and easier to read. 

---

Another Dusty and Dirty Day
Spent the entire day cleaning the garage and storage area under the house, making big piles for the recycling truck, and made a run to Goodwill with usable items. Found several boxes full of old computer magazines and program listings. Though once emotionally attached to this stuff, the boxes went straight into the recycling pile. Many old books of all types were given to the local college. Son Bryan sorted through his old programming and computer books and decided to unload most of them. Gave Crystal and Nate a Boshei 12-inch color TV for their exercise room. 

---

Site Template Redesign: Baseline #1 Complete
This took longer than expected. I've learned, the hard way, to make incremental changes when modifying an unfamiliar template. Joe Jenetts' simplicity.2.1 template is almost all CSS. Not that hard, but differs enough from the old template to make me slow down and pay attention.

With one eye on my many small changes, and one eye on the Comedy Channel (South Park: Bigger Longer & Uncut), I finally finished the new baseline about 3:30 AM. I started the upstream, using the "All Weblog and Category Pages" option in Radio UserLand, and dozed on the couch waiting for the upstream to finish. Yes, the more knowledgeable Radio template freaks already see the problem. Don't all shout at once.

I awoke about 4:30 AM and checked the results. Home page template migrated OK, but not the main template. [D'oh! - Homer Simpson] I should have used the option to republish the entire site. The option I chose did not upstream new template wrappers for the story pages. A complete site push takes about 2 hours over my ISDN line. Tomorrow is another day. It is now almost 5:00 AM and the sky is starting to lighten. Time for bed... 

---

Ciao Bella
Birthday dinner for Crystal at Ciao Bella. This Italian restaurant, in the redwood forest community of Ben Lomond (California), helps define the word eclectic. Some examples:

1. The parking spaces are all marked RESERVED, such as "Reserved For Elvis", tending to disorient the more anal among us. We were in the parking lot, preparing to leave, when a couple pulled in. They stopped, and would not enter the empty space next to us because they saw RESERVED painted on the ground. We waved them closer so they could finally see for whom the space was reserved. Sigh... and people say I'm anal...
2. There was a small book hanging from a string on the wall next to me titled Everything I Know About Life I Learned On Acid.
3. There was a parrot on a perch on the outside dining deck.
4. Our waitress sang Happy Birthday to Crystal in Italian.
   • <Begin rant> Screw the politically correct crap. I refer to female waitpersons as waitresses and males as waiters. Get over it. Why do I have such a hardon about this? Because my generation perpetrated this whole "political correctness" horsesh*t on America. You feel uncomfortable about something in life? You change the terminology to make yourself feel better? Grow up. Most people get over this in grade school. My generation turned feel-good language into a political movement. You don't need to fix anything, you just change the language to make yourself feel better. My parents' generation has been referred to as The Greatest Generation. My generation may some day be referred to as the Politically Correct Generation. Be ashamed, be very ashamed. <End rant>
5. The waitresses were dressed completely in black, in a lightweight Goth style. The waiters were not.
6. Several small blacklights are scattered around the walls.
7. Records (remember 12" vinyl LPs?) covered every inch of the walls and ceiling in the entry and bar area.

 

---

Redwood Asylum Gets A Facelift
Time for a change. After a year, I'm changing the Asylum's design. This is the last post using the Transmitter theme by Bryan Bell. I'm changing the main site to the jenett.radio.simplicity.v2.1 theme by Joe Jenett, the same theme used for my category sites. Thanks again, Joe. 

---

Happy Birthday, Dear Daughter
Married last September, Daddy's little girl turned 20 today, leaving her teen years behind. Mother and son-in-law kept Crystal busy shopping most of the day while a friend decorated kids' apartment for a surprise party. Love ya', daughter. Happy Birthday! 

---

Welcome To The Zoo, My Son
Today, son Bryan joined the rest of us working stiffs on the dark side. Day 1 of his full-time employment in the real world. He had some great part-time jobs before and during his college years. Now that he has the old sheepskin, life, as he's known it, is over.   ;-)  Love ya', son. Welcome to the zoo. 

---

Congratulations To A New COO
I heard today that brother-in-law Joe was promoted last week to Chief Operations Officer (COO) at his college in New York state. Hearty congratulations to Joe, da' new COO! 

---

RSS Feeds Not Correct
I noticed that one of my RSS feeds contained a post from an incorrect category. I poked around and found that weblogData.categories.[categoryname].storyList was not correct.  There was a post on the discussion group recently about this, so I made a backup and then ran Mark Paschal's storyList rebuild script. All fixed now. I guess I should get into the habit of running this script after I use Mark's Radio To The Past (Post To The Past) feature. 

---

Mountain Power Outage
Woke this morning at 5:45 to find the house without power. The redwood forest offers treats such as this throughout the winter, but power outages on a cool July morning are hardly common. As mentioned before, this geek loves his generator. I cranked up the old Honda ES6500 and life magically returned to normal. I heard at least two other generators running among the redwoods. I shut down the generator before leaving for work at 7:30 and found the power grid was running again. 

---