Last year aflux went pink for the month of October to help promote Breast Cancer Awareness Month and I will be doing it again this year. Today I cruised on over to Steen’s and saw that she’s going to participate this year also. And you should to! So get to it, you have 10 days to come up with a cute theme and the crew over at Pink For October even have a few premade for you if you want to use them.

Its a worthy cause for our most body part!

I wanted to leave you tonight with some Haiku that Cassidy wrote tonight for her homework:

Dragonflies are best friends
Dragonflies drinking nectar
Playing a happy song

and

Best friends with people
Never running away when life gets bad
Don’t always close your mind

Yes, I realize they aren’t exaclty 5,7,5 but her teacher said they had to be 5 or more, 7 or more, 5 or more. *shurg* I don’t teach the class!

After I got the site back from being hacked, I decided to do a complete overhaul. Like, everything has been touched. I’ve updated Wordpress and every single Wordpress plugin. I probably dumped 100 datebase tables that hadn’t been used in AGES. Gallery, forum, guestbook, tables created from plugins that I haven’t used in over a year, it was a mess. A MESS! I’d been telling myself that I was going to do that for months and months and had I actually DONE it, the lame ass hacker wouldn’t have had a way in.

SO! The new theme I’m using is Redoable. I really, really, really tried to come up with something on my own and I’d get 75% of the way through a Photoshop mockup, then coding, then tweaking CSS and suddenly I’d hate it and delete the whole thing. Like 5 times. With 5 different themes.

I’d been watching Dean develop and update this theme for quite some time and I liked it from the very beginning. After he developed the twitter plugin I was pretty much sold but gave ONE MORE theme a try and still just wan’t feelin’ it. So I went ahead and started to manipulate Redoable to mold it to my liking. There are still some things I want to work on. I’m going to add back the recent comment plugin but I’m going to tweak the CSS first. I’m also thingking about doing some CSS work to the blogroll… just small stuff here and there.

Overall impressions of the stock theme though are that it’s fantastic. The admin interface makes customization so simple that even if you don’t know much about HTML, PHP or CSS, you can very easily add widgets, change color scheme’s, menu placement, and more.

So there ya go! I wanted to make sure to give the theme a proper plug.

I’m deleting/adding things all over the place to (hopefully) get the new theme up and in mostly working order before I go to bed. Hang tight, and if I don’t royally fuck things up in the next 30 minutes you will have something new to look at.

Finally.

EDIT - Okay, there’s more to do and a few things that broke between the test domain and here but, TADA! I’ve loved this theme from the first time I saw it but like every other pre-made I’ve used, I’ve changed A LOT. There are little tweaks to make here and there (like getting rid of the Firefox banner in IE because I’m sure that Julie will boycott me for life if it stays for long ) but for the most part, this is it. Enjoy!

P.S. - Don’t you love the highlight of the edit? I can make these in all different colors for different reasons. They will be abused greatly in the future.

Holy shit!! Hell finally froze over (and boo to that because I hate the idea of spending eternity IN THE COLD) and Ben FINALLY registered a flickr account! I’ve only been hinting that he do this for about… 2 years now!

People ask me why he never comments on my pictures and hardly ever on my blog posts and the answer is: Because his computer desk is directly next to mine. He doesn’t need to type things out because he can use his actual voice and mouth and stuff. Crazy, right?! Ben is my biggest critic and I don’t say that in a bad way. He often praises me highly for things that I’ve done well, or right, or just don’t totally fuck up. But he also gives me honest opinions when I ask for them, and sometimes when I don’t.

This is how it usually goes:

Me: What do you think of this so far?
Me: *points to Photoshop mock up of theme for Wordpress*
Ben: Ummm.
Me: Be honest. I’m serious, I want your honest opinion. What do you think?
Ben: It’s too pink.
Me: To PINK!? How is that even possible?
Ben: *looks at monitor, then back at me, then back at monitor*
Me: I’m serious, I want an HONEST opinion.
Ben: I gave you one!
Me: You said it was too PINK! It’s not even DONE yet how could you know how PINK it’s going to be!? Maybe I’ll just change all the pink to YELLOW, THEN WHAT?!
Ben: It will be too yellow?
Me: WHATEVER!
Ben: You are fucking crazy.
Me: Okay, maybe I’ll take some of the pink out.

About two weeks ago we kind of “got into it” because he left me a comment here that I thought was a bit on the harsh side. But I needed it. It was because I mentioned something here that I don’t normally talk about ever and made a comment along the lines of “nobody will ever understand” when I should have prefaced or finished the sentence with “because I don’t talk about it ever and don’t give them the chance”. Because if there’s one thing that Ben WILL do, it’s listen and understand. Even if it ends with him kicking me in the ass and telling me to GET OVER IT, he will listen and understand first. This is kind of my way of publicly telling him I’m sorry I was such an asshole about that situation.

So it’s not because he doesn’t read, he does. And sometimes he tells me, “Wow, that was a really great post.” And sometimes he tells me, “You SERIOUSLY think that?” And I welcome both forms of criticism. I just welcome one with open arms and the other with a drop kick to the head… and that’s something I’ve tried to work on for a long time and will continue to have to work on. I know that Ben is honest with me because he knows that it will make me a better writer, a better communicator and a better PERSON. I just need to work on remembering that in the moment when the words are first spoken.

And I could be totally wrong about why he doesn’t comment more, but I’m sure if I am, he’ll clear it up for me in a comment.

Normally I have warm, fuzzy, wonderful feelings about you. Tonight I’d like to shove sticks under your thumbnails and force you to eat slugs. Can you just SEE THE GODDAMN BORDER?! And really, would it BE SO HARD to just LET THE DIV BE 100% height? Please? I promise to be nice and make you cookies when we are done.

IE is playing nice. So until you decide that you are not ‘above’ playing with us, I’m going to have to rethink our relationship.

Not so patiently waiting,
Antigone
X0X0