Redoable.

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.

4 days.

My first photo hit Explore today on flickr. The highest it got was #371 #299 #210(!!). I’m excited because I’ve secretly wished to have something Explore but at the same time I’m perplexed that it’s a picture of my FEET! Not flowers, or a cute kid, or a car. My feet! (Although they are my feet in some of my very hot shoes. ) It’s kind of silent vindication for all of those who have called me vain or narcissistic (my dad used that one and I thanked him for finding a much longer, more sophisticated word to make fun ot me ) because it was just a road to better photography people! That’s all! Okay, so it was totally me being vain…

So, original plans were to do that Half Dome hike this weekend. A part of me is kinda sad we don’t get to do it because I’m sure I’d end up with some amazing shots with the XTi. A bigger part of me is happy that I won’t be left on the side of a mountain with an ice ax in my head.

The reason we can’t go is because Ben has some stuff that HAS to be done to the track car this weekend or he won’t make it to next Friday’s track day. So since I already had approved PTO for Friday and Monday off, I’ve decided to take it anyway. A four day weekend sounds FABULOUS, yes? I got up and took Cassidy to breakfast before school today. Took a long hot shower with nobody knocking on the door to ask a question, or worried that I was going to use all the hot water, and I SO DID! Then I met Ben for a nice long lunch. Picked Cassidy up from school and now I’m blogging before I lay down and take a nice long nap! She’s off to the park with the neighborhood posse and a few parents to play some baseball.

I had originally planned to do a power cleaning on the house today but, WHY?! I’m on vacation! That’s my montra for the next three days. ‘Why? I’m on vacation?’ I wonder how many times I can use it till Ben snaps?

And! Because I’ve had nothing better to write about lately, another conversation!

This one happened when I got home and Ben had left the cell phone bill on my chair. The same day that my site got hacked and I still had a sense of humor! Previously he said that if we were billed extra for all the Twitters being sent to my phone via SMS he’d not be happy. We weren’t being charged. But GOOD LORD, did you know that Cingular sends you a log of all the text’s? ON PAPER. All 2,356 of them I got last month.

Antigone078: SEE?! I TOLD you the texting wasn’t extra…
Ben: can you call the parents of the tree you killed and give them the bad news?
Antigone078: BWAHAHAH! When I get my blog back: TOTALLY GETTING POSTED!
Ben:

Lens Envy

Last week I bought a Canon 100mm f/2.8 USM Macro lens for the XTi. It’s. Amazing. Simply amazing. I’ve only just begun to explore around and play with it and so far it’s just blown me away. I should have gotten this MONTHS ago but I guess now was a perfect time because the weather is clearing up and I’ve realized natural sun light + this lens = MAGIC!!

Here are a few of my favorites so far but there will be many, many, many more to come. Oh, and I started 365 again and I promise not to be a complete failure this time. *grin*

Unable to Joostâ„¢.

So I got home and fell asleep. Only after Ben kicked me off the big couch so he could lay down. Totally over that though. Let it go when he bought me a steak dinner I’ve been craving since Saturday.

So when we got home from dinner I downloaded and installed Joost and BAM! I get an ‘Unable to connect error’. Quite a few people have suddenly started getting the same error today. They do mention on the Joost blog that they are expanding beta testing by “many thousands of viewers” and have been experiencing some back end server issues but after five pages of people reporting the same “Unable to connect error” there hasn’t been a single response by anybody at Joost. That is kind of disappointing. We all love that you are willing to open the beta up to new people, but in order to MAKE the beta work and for us to be encouraged and open to helping you better develop YOUR SOFTWARE, some kind of acknowledgement would be nice. Anything. A simple, “Sorry guys! We’re working on it!”

What I don’t want? Another rendition of the WordPress support forum. But I mean, I don’t want to go all Sam Fisher on anybody over at Joost yet so they haven’t reached that level of suckage, but still… Give us SOMETHING.

Anyway, I do have to give props to whoever created the error which popped up at exactly 800X600 resolution. Well played, Joost. Just when I’m starting to hate you up pops something like THAT to ruin my bad impression. From what I can tell so far, the actual interface and attention to detail and design has been fantastic. Very web2.0 and very eye candy. For now I’ll just have to sit and wait and look at more screen shots to see what I’m missing.

JOOST!

WEEEEEEEEE!!! I just FINALLY(!!) got a Joost invite and now I’m too excited to get any work done because I want to try it out. I will as soon as I get home and let you all know how much it rocks. Out of curisoty I checked the Joost Invite DIGG out to see how many people were still waiting for invites and now I feel really special. 3127 comments and counting… And to think I got mine from a flickerite.

Lesson: Seek alternatives to the mainstrean. And Flickr ROCKS!

This reminds me of an email we got at work yesterday. Very long and very wordy and as usual the most important point was wrapped up in once sentence somewhere in the middle:

Downloading your favorite song or new video file onto your Major Medical University workstation becomes a legal liability for the hospital.

I’m sure this email was sent out as a direct response to somebody doing something stupid. It’s also probably why the IT guys were here for an entire 48 hours trying to wipe out a worm that somebody let in about a week ago that stopped one of our most important systems from functioning.

I don’t understand why they don’t just walk around slapping The Stupid One’s with a large Trout. I’d think it would get the point across much more effectively.

WOW!

We are alive. More importantly, for the first time in almost four days, Cassidy didn’t spend the entire day laying on the couch coughing. The fever is FINALLY gone. Finally. Yesterday was the first day that it never got over 100. Whew. Today we went and got pedi and manicures. We were both going pretty stir crazy and really needed to just be OUT OF THE HOUSE.

And… Ben bought me WOW. So, I’ve been avoiding this game for like, 10 YEARS. Any internet geek will know why. But after having played City of Heroes and loving it, but never so much that I lost my job, I figured it would probably be safe to try. I really like it. It’s much more compex than COH, and it’s taken a bit to get used to the lingo (Quest, not mission. Priest, not healer.) and the genre change, but it’s fun. I think that I like the futureistic feel to COH more, and TRAVEL POWERS, but in time I think it will all click and feel like home.

Anyway, my main (and only, heh) character is a level 10 Night Elf Priestess on Rexxar named Sylaa. So look me up sometime and say Hi, or let me know where you are and maybe I’ll look YOU up.

And that’s really all I have to say about the last four days. Because that’s all that’s happened. Cassidy and I caught up on ALL the DVR’d TV shows, any soap opera that currently plays on TV, and we’ve eaten FIVE BOXES of Girl Scout cookies. Okay, that’s really it.