Category: computing

In a different life, I worked in Tech Support. My friends set up a site called Tech Hell where we all posted sad and depraved stories of calls we had to answer. Some of them have been published in a book called Techmares. One of my stories (maybe more than one) is featured in Chapter 3. How cool is that?

And on the “why haven’t you been posting” front, I pulled a bunch of muscles in my neck this weekend carrying Max around Target (he’s big now). He was leaning over the whole time forcing my head forward at an odd angle. It didn’t hurt at the time, but as soon as I got him down, I couldn’t move my head back to its normal resting location. I could only turn maybe 15 – 20 degrees either left or right, and was in a great deal of pain. So, I spent all weekend on the couch with heating pads around my body. I went to the chiropractor yesterday morning and found I’d only been making it worse with heat. So, after much pain and contortions over two days, I’m covered in ice packs. But, I can turn my head almost all the way; I can type; the pain is gone from my right side and all that’s left to fix is my left side.

So, that’s why I was gone. Good excuse, huh?

If you blog, check out BlogTree (my branch). I’m not usually into memes, but I think this one could be really interesting, not only in giving credit to those who inspired us to get started, but in seeing the growth of the blog community and a timeline. Go check it out.

If someone really had it together, I mean if someone really had it together, they’d build a message board module for Movable Type. Then, Movable Type would be pretty much the perfect Intranet system. Everyone in the group could have a blog, and you could create message boards where everyone could collaborate, ask questions, etc. Wouldn’t that be cool? Now, if someone would just get off their butts and learn Perl, it could happen. Yeah, sure.

So, my favorite thing about Movable Type so far is the modules. My whole pages are modular, and I love it. I can change one file and rebuild, and it changes everywhere. You wanna see? Here’s my homepage template:

<$MTInclude module="pageHeader"$>
<$MTInclude module="menuHeader"$>
<$MTInclude module="menuLastTenOffset"$>
<$MTInclude module="menuLinks"$>
<$MTInclude module="menuFooter"$>
<$MTInclude module="blogHeader"$>
<!-- start entries -->
<$MTInclude module="blogFrontPage"$>
<!-- end entries -->
<$MTInclude module="blogFooter"$>
<$MTInclude module="pageFooter"$>

And the stylesheet’s even better. Change one file, and I can change pretty much anything I want about the layout. I love the web. You’d think after all this time, I’d get bored and go do something else. But nope, still hooked.

More random goodness, it’s a mechanical dinosaur!!

Here’s a tip for all you frustrated pixel pushers who really really want to love CSS but can’t seem to get things where you want them: using margin, margin-left, margin-right, margin-top, margin-bottom is just as good as top, left, right and bottom. In some cases, it’s better. Why? Because IE for Windows 5 and 6, IE for Mac 5.x, Mozilla (and therefore Netscape 6.x and 7) all seem to support margin attributes equally. So, if you want something positioned 10 to the left and 10 down, don’t use top:10px; left:10px. Use margin:0px; margin-left:10px;margin-top:10px; Trust me, it works. When the new lawver.net launches in a couple weeks (that my new deadline for the big launch – 8/1), you’ll see. I’ve finally figured out how to get a groovy menu on the right without killing myself, and margins did it. Yessiree bob, I love me some margins. I love me some padding too, but that’s a whole different story.

For whoever searched for “can’t login root on YellowDog”, ummm, sorry. If you forget the root password, you’re pretty much hosed. You hopefully set yourself up as a normal user and you remember that password. Even so, you’ll never be able to install another RPM or setup any new services. Yeah, you’re in a world of trouble. The only way to get the root password is to set a new one, and the only way to do that is to start aaa-aaaaaall over by reinstalling.

I have some serious stuff I want to write about today or tomorrow, but I’m going to wait until I’m more awake before I do it. I got Movable Type installed on the Powerbook yesterday because I realized I’m never going to get anything done if I work on this stuff just at lunch. So, I spent an hour last night playing with the new template. The layout’s all done, and let me tell you, it’s butt-ugly without the stylesheet to go with it. But, the good news is it built and all the right information is showing up. Stuff is coming along… stay tuned.

In completely unrelated news, I found this goofy CD on a friend’s computer. The MP3’s have no track names, and I doubt this is really the name of the CD, but it shows promise. The first song is this weird techno mix of Rock Lobster by the B-52’s.

Today has flown by! I’m building a reporting system between interuptions. It’s going to be really cool, and uber-maintainable so I can add people to contact lists, add and schedule reports and other neat-o stuff without having to restart anything. Sweet, huh? Yeah, I know, it’s keen.

In other news, apparently it’s Canada Day. So, to the 30 million Canucks up there protecting us from the North Pole’s advance, Happy Canada Day! Yes, think about it folks, the country that gave us William Shatner, Martin Short, Tom Green and The Kids in the Hall is populated by 30 million people. That’s fewer citizens than AOL has members. I swear there were more Canadians than that.

It takes forever to format a drive. Yes, I’m actually doing it. I am toasting my hard drive as I speak. My Windows desktop is getting a nice little refresh that will hopefully fix my phantom crashes and odd behaviors (I mean, other than the odd behavior built into Windows). Wish me luck. I hope I didn’t forget to backup anything important.