Be a better blogger

There is much work going on behind the scenes here at EckenrodeHouse.net. I am in the process of switching over to a new blog content management service – this is running in parallel with our getting to know each other as a married couple. Part of this process is to add a more inclusive photo management application, which means that you will be able to see some of the albums in the sidebar for the blog.

So, keep your eyes open for the upcoming revisions to happen in the next couple of weeks, and yes this will take into account allowing you to continue using that broken web browser called Internet Explorer if you really must (although truth to be told, you should really upgrade to Firefox or Opera.)

Lots of work is happening here that is not yet visible, but it will go very far towards improving the user experience here at EckenrodeHouse.net. Today, Steve and I solved the problem I was having installing Gallery2 on the the webserver. Now there is a new photo hosting solution for the website. Currently I am in the process of uploading my digikam database, once everything is up, then I will switch over to a link.

Not that I am actually putting anything important out into the ether, I continue to add more and more bytes into the Great Database in the Sky. As I write this, EJ is sitting in my lap and playing with my keys. She is really growing up nicely. She walks around and acts like a little tiny version of both Steph and myself. It’s Awesome!

I had something totally witty and sublime that I was going to share with everyone tonight, but it has totally escaped the prison cell block that is my mind.

Our little girl is toddling all over the house, she has a new gesture that she learned today. You know how you shake your head to say yes? Well, that is her new gesture, she is beginning to shake her head. She saw me do it and now she does it all over the place.

She was so sad tonight when I was leaving on the bike without her, she kept grabbing my helmet and bringing it to me. SHe really wanted to go out on the bike, she would point to it and get all forlorn. I imagine she even cried when I left.

MAybe that’s why she crashed the computer! ;-)

Read this before you pass on another chain letter.

ON Thursday, I had the stars and the planets all iin a line. I should have known when I nearly touched my toes in yoga class that things would be so sweet. Then in the afternoon EJ and I went to the grocery store and got the necessary things we needed for the house and felt good about ourselves. We also got the mail on the way back up and my student aid showed up – I wasn’t even really looking for it. So in celebration I went to the internet and looked at craigslist.org and found a guy selling an old powerbook for less than $100 because the screen was cracked!

WOW! I needed it for spare parts so I snatched up that bargin.

Today, I installed the hard drive and memory into my broken down TiPowerbook, and currently I am in the process of creating a Dual-Boot computer so I can work in OS X or Linux. Dude! So awesome!

May 20

• 325 – The First Council of Nicaea – the first Ecumenical Council of the Christian Church – is held.
• 1570 – Cartographer Abraham Ortelius issues the first modern atlas.
• 1932 – Amelia Earhart takes off from Newfoundland to begin the world’s first solo nonstop flight across the Atlantic Ocean by a female pilot, landing in Ireland the next day.
• 2003 – Buffy the Vampire Slayer ends it’s seven year run on UPN.

• 1913 – William Hewlett, American engineer and founder of Hewlett-Packard (d. 2001)
• 1940 – Sadaharu Oh, Japanese baseball player

• 1503 – Lorenzo di Pierfrancesco de’ Medici, Italian patron of the arts (b. 1463)

Feast day of Saint Lucifer in the Roman Catholic Church:

Day after day, there is more of the incessant march of time and activities. These thing just do not quit, the garbage always needs to be emptied, the cat always needs to be fed, the litter box always needs to be emptied, the baby develops new skills everyday, which means she becomes more and more dangerous. I wonder exactly how, we are supposed to keep up with the changes of life. Well, I guess that’s why the expression “One Day at a time” came about, because there is really no way I could deal with more than one day at once.

Well, I crashed another OIS last night and with my recent purchase of the Mac Mini I got a DVD of OS X Tiger. So, I was up until dawn installing onto my Ti Powerbook the Apple OS. Well, at least for now, I am back on teh standard operating mode and no longer running the experimental linux. It was not that Linux is problematic, it is certainly a fine Operating System, in fact I really do miss it already. There are many great things about it, like vast amounts of configuarablitiy or the features that were included in the applications were very slick. The prtoblem is the guy who was using the computer. He wanted more on the edge of sanity development versions when what is necessary is stablity. There is a very stable branch of linux that is quite attractive and fun. I wanted to get on teh development version and play with that too bad I crashed again.

I am just going to have to learn more scode and more techniques before the next go around. I am trying to get involved in learning more about the administration of systems as well as package development, and Linux is an extremely beneficial place to do that, so once we get more settled in here, get the DSL hooked up, I am going to get myself back into the Linux realm, until then, I’ve got a couple of nice Apples that are happy to talk to each other.

Recently, due to a self-imposed critical error, my Powerbook crashed. I tried over a couple of days to stop it, but I was unable to do so. Then when I attempted to recover the OS using a Live CD, I just was not clever enough to do so, not this time. Since I had university assignments due immediately, and I had been talking much smack over the last couple months about Open Source software, I went ahead and wiped out the hard drive and installed Ubuntu on my Mac.
Yup! That’s right, no more OS X on my machine. The only data that I lost was the purchased music on my itunes account, since everything had been backed up already. I spend a couple of days reconfiguring the system so that instead of running GNOME as the Desktop Environment, it now has KDE. Some minor tweaks and I got the sound card and DVD player working.
I have been really enjoying some of the features of this new operating system, with the speed and power of the hardware, it is a real pleasure to work on. I enjoyed using Mac OS X, however most of the applications I used were Open Source software, so since I had it set up as a Linux box, it only makes since to go ahead and be a Linux box.