Added A Featured List
I haven’t added much to this blog for a bit. I’ve been concentrating on other things, such as my RebelZero.com site, and haven’t found the time to post anything. The most I’ve been doing is moderating any comments that come in. The most recent comment comes from a Walter N. Pruiksma who served with the 783rd MP BN during World War II.
That prompted me to add a featured list to the far-right sidebar starting with Mr. Pruiksma’s comment. Most of what I have here is a mish-mash of a variety of topics, so I wanted to highlight certain areas that will most often be buried and unnoticed from the general view.
I should be getting back into the swing of things, shortly, with some new content from my brother. I’ll have to start referring to him as this website’s on-location correspondent who is embedded with the 783rd MP BN. Most of this site’s traffic has been for those related posts, so I would like to cater to those visitors a little more. I know there’s few, if any, that come just to read my rants about such things as people causing automobile accidents, which consequently began after a phone conversation with my brother as his unit was boarding the plane heading out to Afghanistan.
In any event, more to come as time progresses.
(Today’s secret word was: most)
Added A Gallery
I came across a real decent plugin for the plug called PhotoXhibit by Benjamin Sterling that helps to incorporate photo galleries into WordPress. Now I can easily share some of the photos I have rarely been known to take. That is, I have a camera but rarely remember to take it with me to memorable moments or events. For instance, I start the gallery off with my visit to my brother’s Army unit when we dropped him off for deployment. I didn’t have my camera but luckily my mother had hers. We took a few snaps of the unit in formation.
Vacation 2008.08 Day 4
Vacation plans are going smooth and slow. My license plates are renewed for another year. My car was due for an emissions check (E-Check) since I’m lucky enough to live in one of the few special counties of Ohio (Cuyahoga, Geauga, Lake, Lorain, Medina, Portage, and Summit). Luckily, the E-Check is free for those vehicles required to get one. Unfortunately, you need to hand your car over to strange people while you sit in a little booth and wait for them to perform all the little tests required for your particular vehicle. Mine, they just plug in a computer to tell whether or not my car’s computer is doing its job. Older cars, like ones I’ve previously owned, get operated on a dyno machine. That calls for some alcohol to calm the nerves while you watch some teenager trying to keep your car from jumping off the dyno.
This vacation has given me the time to catch up on website work. RebelZero.com is slowly coming around as I learn the Drupal CMS. I began another site called SungInBlood.com which is a tribute site to my favorite author, Glen Cook. It, too, is based on Drupal and, since I haven’t officially released it, I’ve been able to take my time adding content to it while experimenting with how Drupal works. I’d like to concentrate more on customizing the theme. Of the available ones that I’ve found, only a small handful seem to fit and only to a certain degree.
Insert catchy segue here… (that’s segue, not segway)
The teacher notes on the back of my report cards always mentioned that I rarely applied myself. I could never understand what they were referring to and, if possible, how to change that. After a while, I thought it was one of those rubber-stamp phrases they had for certain students in which they didn’t have the patience to teach. I see now that my problem was never a lack of applying of myself but rather the opposite. Concentrating on one task until its completion before moving on to another is the problem I see before me today and must be what my teacher’s were referring to. I always apply myself to the task, but my interest wanders from task to task until I have so many tasks going on at once that I don’t seem to complete any of them.
At work, I can manage priorities based on the needs of the day. If need be, I can micro-manage tasks off to others instead of assuming them for myself. This comes in handy when my boss is too busy to see how unbalanced the workload has gotten throughout the day. But at home, there are rarely no real reasons for tasks to become prioritized. Just looking around the room, I can see nine tasks that need completion. I can also see that my beer is empty. And with that, the distractions continue.
Vacation 2008.08 Day 1
On the first day of my vacation, I woke up… at frigging four in the morning!!! After wandering around on the internet for a few hours, I proceeded to pass out until the ripe time of twelve noon.
I recently migrated this blog from Movable Type “Open Source” to WordPress which went very smooth in regards to the text. Any inline pictures, logo, graphics, screen shots weren’t part of the import. Luckily, I had a backup done before I wiped the MTos installation off of the host’s server. I think I’ve gotten most of the images back. This current theme likes to float them to the left whereas I like them to the right. After trying to hack the css file to make it work, I decided to live with it and adjust.
Aside from the blog, I have other action items to prioritize for my vacation that include renewing the plates, replacing the rotors, and performing an oil change for the car. I’ve got a few books from my reading list I want to either finish or start. I’m also looking into re-organizing the home network so I can move a more robust and feature full server forward to act as the router/firewall while at the same replacing the current Linksys router by converting it into a simple wireless access point.
The Type-A personality side of my brain must be taking over as my re-organization tasks all began with the few websites I’m currently administrating. During this re-organization, I noticed that my page for working around OpenOffice.org’s bug while using a dark GTK theme was missing. It was due to move to my RebelZero.com site, but the link to its original location was still in place. In the mean time, I place a static page at its original location until I find the time to officially move it.
Now I’m off to get a bottle or three of Labatt’s Blue and enjoy the start of my well deserved vacation.
I’m Dumbfounded
And here I thought the migration from Movable Type to WordPress was going to be difficult. My hat is off to WordPress. Bravo.
WordPress’ Import feature did all the work. It actually took me longer to get the web host and the domain name to work with the correct folder. All that’s left is to clean up the posts from the intended move to RebelZero.com and get the plugins working.
A big thanks to the WordPress coders for removing one more task from vacation plans.
Just found that the Export/Import didn’t bring with it the Pages. I’ll have to add those back in.
Movable Type vs. WordPress…. FIGHT!
As if I hadn’t had enough on my plate, I’m moving this site to a WordPress installation. Movable Type “Open Source” has been fun, but I feel more at ease with WordPress.
I had used WP in the past and wanted to try something different once I finally decided on a course for this domain by choosing Movable Type. MT is a fantastic blogging tool with a lot of depth. But, so is WP. I put together a new site just a couple of weeks ago with WP and it brought back some good memories. Seeing how well it’s been improved upon since I last used it really impressed me.
I think I have a pretty good idea about how to migrate my posts over to WP. I’ll be on vacation from work starting on Friday, August 1 until I go back on Monday, August 11, so I should have plenty of time to work out any snafus that arise along the way. Unfortunately this is a bad idea in terms of SEO strategies as all of the Google search engine links will be dead. I’ll have to wait on their web crawler to re-index the site.
I found some really clean, appealing themes to use by Brian Gardner that should add a bit of class to the blog. We’ll be removing “Big Show” from the site’s title as it doesn’t apply there. I’ve also found some other locations on the web with that title that are more established. I don’t want to create any confusion in respects to who is whom. AdamStovicek.com is still quite unique and not necessary to change.
TTFN
RebelZero.com
I decided that RebelZero.com was just about the best place for me in which to move my Linux oriented posts. Using a content management system, Drupal, I hope to learn how to organize it all in some manner that’s easy to read and use. It’ll be a slow process for me to move everything, but it shall be done.
Askew As Can Be
Apparently this blog has become more about Linux than I’m comfortable with. The original focus was supposed to be about me personally for friends, co-workers, and family. Linux has become an important part of my life, but this blog wasn’t meant to be the soapbox for me to preach about it.
With that in mind, I’ll be moving the focus back away from Linux, move the posts I have already to another location, and move on to current events. I’m fully aware that moving information from location to location can really screw with the online community in regards to linked content and search engine results. I’ll try to provide static “markers” to link away to new locations where possible.
I’m looking at using Drupal for the content management. I’ve played around with it in the past and was pleased at the time. There’s been some significant improvements and changes since then that I’ll have to familiarize myself with, but that’s all part of the fun. I’ve got a number of URLs to choose from and I’m leaning towards my most recently acquired RebelZero.com for my Linux soapboxing.
It was a trying week at the fulltime job and I’m looking forward to putting my brain power to work for myself this weekend. Until next time….
New Toy Lowers Productivity
I’ve neglected the blog this past week. My new found neglect coincides with my new found toy, the Asus Eee PC 8G. I’ve been trying to use it as much as I was using my Thinkpad. Unfortunately, that means I haven’t been using my Thinkpad which has become the nerve center of my daily internet activities including RSS feeds, email, chatting, and blogging.
I would like to perform all those tasks with the Eee since they really don’t require a lot of computational power and the form factor of the Eee means I could do them virtually anywhere. However, doing so would mean carrying around an unsecured laptop with sensitive data, and that’s just not acceptable.
I’m waiting to place an order at Newegg for some upgrades which includes memory and storage. I’m hoping to attempt something radical that I haven’t seen mentioned anywhere. Either no-one’s thought of it, or I haven’t been looking in the right places. Be that as it may, once I get the Eee secured enough to be happy with it, I can move my operation over to it.
As I look at the collection of computers, I never imagined that I’d be operating more than one machine. I currently have two laptops and two desktops. They all serve specific functions and enjoy a fluctuating state of powered status. I am currently planning a fifth computer to act as a central file server. That’s five. Any more and I’m going to start needing a second hand to count them all.
The beginning…
I’m not sure what will come of this, or what direction I will take it. It’s definitely a personal blog where I’ll share tidbits of my own life, musings that I find, ideas that come to mind, and anything else that relates to myself. I doubt it will make an impact on the Internet.
If I can keep friends and family in the know, I’ll consider this a success.
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