Another Opinion Among Many

To answer your question, Macbros,

I am hosted with a company called DSTinternet, and yes they’re fast! I did a lot of research before I unleashed my wallet on them and I couldn’t find enough negative about this company to not use them. The pricing seems to fit my budget and the features are fantastic! The company responds to support requests nearly instantly via the chat box off the site. I haven’t tried phone support yet, so I don’t know if the number will be reachable from Canada. My only gripe is that the use the Plesk control panel and I’m used to cPanel. I’ll have to see if I can simply add IP addresses to a ban list, as I can with cPanel, or if I have to add them to my .htaccess file manually (which I will, you spammers!). They allow FTP access so whatever!

As far as the rest,

This site runs on Wordpress. I usually am running a nightly build from the development repository. I’m not quite nutso enough (but close) to go with SVN commits, but the snapshot may not work for me every time either. I test the installation with similar plugins and theming on my own computer before I replace what’s working on this site. I don’t “upgrade” every night - more likely every 10 days or so. The current version is 2.3 alpha.

I am using a completely hacked and modified version of the Fresh theme, which was ported to Wordpress by LEMONed from the original design by Wolfgang Bartelme. I haven’t even left the structure intact, as I’ve moved stuff all over the place. The theme is based on a header, footer, body, subfooter, and sidebar. It has 3 sidebars (2 custom ones for individual pages, to which I employ the Page Template function) and 3 footer/subfooters. It will not always be the one I use. There’s something being cooked up in the background…

This site uses these plugins:

• Antileech - Prevent errant parties from stealing your content and bandwidth. By Owen Winkler.
• Archivist - Selects a defined number of (random) posts from the archive and shows them on the front page By Martin Chlupáč.
• Bad Behaviour - Deny automated spambots access to your PHP-based Web site. By Michael Hampton.
• Compact Monthly Archive - Displays a compact montlhly archive instead of the default long list. By Rob Marsh, SJ.
• Digital Fingerprint - adding a customizable “digital fingerprint” to your RSS feed in posts. By Kirk Montgomery.
• DoFollow - Disable the “nofollow” tagging for comments. By Kimmo Suominen.
• Extended Comment Options - This plugin allows you to switch comments and/or pings on or off for batches of existing posts. By Mark Kenny.
• Extended Live Archives - Implements a dynamic archive, inspired by Binary Bonsai and the original Super Archives by Jonas Rabbe. By Arnaud Froment.
• Fancy Pullquotes - Creates pullquotes of given text to appear with a magazine-like style By Giorgio Gilestro.
• Google AJAX Search - Adds a Google AJAX Search box on your site. By http://dancameron.org.
• myQuote - myQuote is a simple and small Wordpress plugin which enables you to place a Quote or Text on your website. By Jesper Avôt.
• Photopress - Photopress adds some image handling tools to Wordpress, including a popup upload and browse tool, a random image template function, and a simple album. By Isaac Wedin.
• Recent Comments - Retrieves a list of the most recent comments. By Nick Momrik.
• Related Posts - Returns a list of the related entries based on active/passive keyword matches. By Alexander Malov & Mike Lu.
• The Excerpt Reloaded - This mod of WordPress’ template function the_excerpt() knows there is no spoon. By Kaf Oseo.
• Ultimate Tag Warrior - Ultimate Tag Warrior is a tagging plugin, that’s heavy on tag visualisation. I Like Pi! By Christine Davis.
• Wayback - generate a list of posts from a previous period. By Chris Goringe.
• WP Grins - A Clickable Smilies hack for WordPress. By Alex King.
• WS Tooltips - Let’s you display cool JavaScript fading tooltips! By Christopher Hartmann.

For the moment, that’s all, but I will be changing and moving things around now and then. I have more plugins installed but not activated.

That’s about it for now.  If I’ve left anything out, I may add to this post later.

I’ve upgraded this site to use the March 30, 2007 Nightly build of Wordpress (2.2 Bleeding Edge).  Something in the code has caused incompatibilities with the Ultimate Tag Warrior Plug in.  So, this is the most recent version that will work.  This is the first move since I “upgraded” to the 2.2 builds on March 7.

Let me know if the site behaves differently.  BTW, 2.2 should be out later this month - around the 21st or so - providing show stoppers like the UTW breakage is fixed.

Angela needed some more of the gum that keeps the cancer away and we needed milk and bread.  So, I walked to the drug store (open ’till midnight), drinking a can of Keiths on the way (yes, I know about the open Liquor laws, AKA stupidity for the sake of it) and got a few things (there was a sale on cheese and I do love a nice old nippy cheddar!).

I got my stuff and was heading out of the store.  I’d walked a lot today (Caleb to school, errands after work uptown, to the drug store) and I figured that I’d get a ride home, since there was a cab outside the drug store who seemed to be waiting for far too long.  So, I go out to his window and ask if he’s waiting for a fare.  He says that he has one inside but he could call for another one over the radio.  During our conversation, his vehicle was running quite unevenly.  I figured that maybe due to the cold weather, his car might be a bit out of time, as I had seen this happen to our Le Baron and the Horizon once (3 hour repair job on that beast).  By the way, this guy looks like the guy in the truck that picked up Stallone’s chracter in “Rhinestone”, saying “Git in….Ah Sayid GIT IN!”

He gets word back and tells me that he can take me.  So, I get in and he begins to back out of the parking space and pull out into the lot, without the fare he was waiting for.  I’m just figuring, “You snooze, you lose.” and think nothing much of it.  After all, he’s gotta make a living.

So then the car stalls.

Yep, I’m in a cab 1/2 way out into the main drag of the parking lot in a dead cab.  I’m thinking that I deserve this for being too lazy to walk back home.  Turns out that he ran out of gas.  The previous driver hadn’t topped up the tank before he turned in the car and the gas guage doesn’t work on that car so who’d know? After this fune event, the couple that he was waiting for finally mosey out of the store, looking for their ride.  So they get ito the stalled car as well.  The cabbie calls his dispatcher to get a can of gas sent over.

So, here we are.  Me, the 200 year old toothless, unshaven cabbie (from a company that I never use, ever), and the couple, comprised of moaning, whimpery morphine-doped she and protective, condescending he.  After about 7 or 8 minutes, another cab arrives with a can of gas and we’re on our way.  While the cabbie was out filling his gas tank, the guy asks if he was taking off on them.  I concur that he was indeed.  Guy says nothing much.  So, with a few gallons of gas in the tank, the cab starts and we’re off.

I tell the cabbie to take the couple home first, as she’s really wimpering and I feel bad for he, as I know he’s caring for her as for a small child (I went out with someone who reacted to illness and pain the same way she did - a TAD overboard).  Of course, its after they get there and she gets out to toss her cookies in the driveway that he says she’s had morphine at the hospital.  So the woozie actions have a bit of justification, I guess.  After they almost got left to fend for themselves and then had to wait for gas for their chariot, the cabbie charges them $10! The guy still takes it (do you think his ass is sore from the reaming?), forking over his credit card for the fare, as this cab company accepts debit and credit cards.

200 year old cabbie fumbles with the debit machine (a wireless job that’s kinda neat) and is not getting anywhere fast.  After the 7th or 8th try at swiping the card for the transaction, the guy paying looks at the display on the unit and says, “I thionk that you just have to push ‘OK’”.  So cabbie does and the transaction completes.  Guy gets out and “git in” cabbie finally drives me home.  The 10 minute walk home turned into the 45 minute blog material.

To think that if I’d have just brought another can of Keiths to walk home with, I’d have been home sooner!

Now, do you really think that I could have made that one up?

I got this in an email. Neat pic.

If its yours, let me know so that I can attribute you.

Normally I don’t link to popup.com, er about.com, but this page doesn’t seem to have any and its got a neat definition of the fear of Friday the 13th.

Triskaidekaphobia is the fear of the number 13. Do you have these superstitions? Do you have others? Comment on it if you want to.

So, today is Friday, the traditional last day of the work week.  At least, that is, for the semi-secular, pseudo-christian society that is loosely known as North America.  I know that sentance will not be popular with some, but if you take offence at my words only, then you’re narrow-minded and need to read them again.  There.  Now that I’ve offended the Christians and the Athiests, I can start my Friday post.

You may have noticed the sparseness of my writing the last few days.  This is not because of the move that we’ll be making in a few weeks. This is also not because of my being angry at anyone or too offended at the world to write anything.  I just haven’t had anything to say that I’d want to inflict on your eyes.

Today is a tad different than many Fridays as of late, though.  Its not some special and crazy time where I’m going to have an epiphany and learn about how the world works.  Nor, is this Friday scheduled to be a particularly busy or event-filled time.  There are no parties that I’ll be going to (never do anyways).  There are no balloon-filled events that I’m aware of.

This week, we are completely broke for the whole week, so no opulent events.  This week, I have no plans to consume vast quantities of liquid calories.  And, I doubt that this weekend will be filled with any creative web designing or e-learning.

I’m sure that we will catch a few movies (and I may even write a review or two).  That is not different.  I’m also sure that we’ll be packing.  That’s not really out of the ordinary, considering.

I can’t explain it.  It just seems to smell different.  This is not some strange odor that is attacking my nostrils.  This is something deeper, underneath.  It just seems to smell different.

I came across this neat use of computer graphics and had to share. Watch it. Its kewl!