July 21, 2009
I'm going to blame Bill for my flabby abs
Tonight's activities have been preempted by Microsoft.
No blogging.
No working out (and dammit, I needed to move, move it!)
No tv.
Just several hours of frustration that have so far gained me nothing I'm capable of using.
Posted by me at 9:59 PM | Comments (0)
November 3, 2008
NaBloPoMo 3.3: It's a wonder I can even blog on this thing
Rex is having knee surgery later this month, so he's dropped out of TKD for the foreseeable future. This has the unexpected benefit of buying me some free time tonight, since he's able to take Owen along for the show.
Being left with surprise free time is strangely stressful for me. What to do, what to DO? Do I fritter the time away on me, watching DVR'ed shows and vegging on the couch? Spend two hours busy on the computer getting absolutely nothing of value done? Clean the kitchen, weatherstrip the air intake vents, declutter? Get some actual work done? Blog?
My to-do list is so long, it's hard to pick any one thing. Also, I've taken care of all the easy stuff, so what's left requires actual effort and/or brain cells.
Tonight, I decided to be responsible and do actual work for my friends site (that I actually get paid for!) As usual, completing this simple task has turned into an epic saga with no end. How hard can it be to crop six pictures and upload them to an established gallery?
Nearly impossible, since I'm still unfamiliar with my Mac. First, I accidently moved my downloads stack into a folder. A folder that I thought was empty, but either wasn't, or I accidently moved a whole shitload of other stuff into it by accident as well. I just left that alone and went on to import the pictures I needed to work with into iPhoto. Modified, exported, easy peasy. Next step, going to the site, logging into gallery, and uploading. Except the upload window refuses to show up. I allowed pop-ups, went to another subalbum and confirmed that *some* pop-ups work. WTF?
I boot up my poor belabored laptop and test uploading there. No problems. I still have no idea if this is a setting problem, a Safari issue, a Gallery glitch, or user error.
I need to get this done, so I'm going to end up emailing the pictures to my laptop and uploading them from there. This whole process makes me feel like a moron.
Any clues?
Posted by me at 7:48 PM | Comments (0)
August 30, 2008
I'm choosing to laugh about this. Ok, not really.
Last night, I put on my big girl pants and prepared to reload MT on the server. First, I rebooted my laptop to make the annoying fan shut off.
Check!
Wait, my wireless connection is down. What the hell?? Reboot. Yay! Wireless is back up.
Check!
Try to connect to web server. Try to connect to web server. Check three of the other sites I run off the same server. Well, hell. Why is it that when my site is down, my host's sales page is still loading fine? And the admin page.
I shut down and went to bed. My host is rarely down more than a few hours, if that.
Everyone went down for naps while I was making cupcakes for the new neighbors moving in. It's quiet, no one needs anything, and the web server is back up. Slightly chocolately big girl pants are on.
I changed the name of the MT folder as a backup, uploaded and unpacked MT 4.21 and configured it with the database information.
Holy crap! It worked! Except, uh, it looks exactly the same as it did before. Shouldn't my templates have been wiped out and returned to defaults?
I did a little digging, and it turns out the templates are saved in the database. I think. In any case, I'm not poking my ignorant fingers around in the database and taking a chance of losing any content.
All my angst was for nothing, I guess. I mean, not only were there no issues, but I could have skipped the whole 10 minute process and eaten more frosting. I guess I'll muck around the templates and make some more changes and see what happens. In the meantime, unless something more annoying than the server 500 error (the one where it still publishes, not the other one, that was a real PITA), I guess I'll leave the big stuff well enough alone.
Posted by me at 3:47 PM | Comments (1)
August 28, 2008
Wish me luck!
Owen slept much better last night. Thank god. I just wish I knew what causes good vs bad nights, so I could at the very least predict when I'm going to go sleepless.
I've decided to flirt with disaster and do a fresh install of MT instead of keeping this upgrade. (Side note: I *just* upgraded to MT 4.2, and 4.21 has already been released. Come on, people!) The server 500 error is somewhat erratic, but there are other inconsistencies as well. I'm ready to just start fresh.
Tonight I'm going to make some backups and get things in place. I'll probably try to do the actual install tomorrow, and then it may take me a few days (who are we kidding? It could be weeks) to get the header, etc. back together. I'll pretty much be happy if I don't lose any content and the picture links still work.
Posted by me at 9:07 PM | Comments (0)
August 14, 2008
Quick catch-up
Just a quick update before I head to bed.
I just upgraded to MT 4.2. It seems to have fixed my publishing issues and a few others, besides. I still need to mess with it a bit to see if there's anything else that was broke (it's been so long since I posted that I can't remember every issue I was having), and it didn't fix some of the layout issues (the Category links are still missing on some pages). I haven't tested scheduled posts yet, either. Those haven't worked in an upgrade or two.
I'm quite relieved that the major issues were fixed, which saves me having to blow this thing away and install from scratch. That makes me incredibly nervous. I need to find an LJ Book equivalent for MT, but that's another day.
I shouldn't have done my backup and stopped posting before MT released it's final version of 4.2. I'm glad I finally got the upgrade done. I was starting to miss posting, and I have lots to write about!
Posted by me at 10:33 PM | Comments (0)
Upgrade
Check baby, check baby, 1 2 3.
Posted by me at 9:32 PM | Comments (0)
July 11, 2008
And I'm open to suggestions
Well, damn.
I made a new banner. A miracle in itself since I don't just not know Photoshop, I don't even understand the names of the tools and have no concept what they do. I need to get a book, but unless they make one that can automagically upload to my brain, it will sit on a shelf with all my other how-to's until I upgrade and it becomes obsolete and Half-Price Books offers me 20 cents for it.
Then I went into all my templates and changed the file names from gif to jpg, because I didn't like the way the new banner look converted to gif. And I changed some of the colors in the CSS file (HELLO! orange).
Then I tried to publish all the templates.
The stupid Master Archive Index still won't publish, so now everything is half updated. I have no idea why it won't work. I've compared it to a working file and can't find a single difference. I've mucked around in everything I can find and it hasn't made a difference. I even upgraded a while back in hopes that whatever was wrong would be replaced by the new version.
I'm assuming this is part of the same problem I have publishing posts and comments. I keep hoping they'll release 4.2 and the new format they have for archives will fix and replace my errors. Barring that, I may have to wipe the whole thing and start from scratch, which scares the crap out of me since I have a tenuous grasp on how the database works, and I don't want to lose any actual content.
All that to say, sorry for mismatched look of the site.
Posted by me at 10:20 PM | Comments (0)
May 7, 2008
Accidental genius
Holy crap. I just randomly replaced the code for the category listing that wasn't working with an example I found on MT's page that I wasn't even sure what it did, and it totally fixed my problem. Except that I can't find the last post I made in the category I posted it in. Hmm. I bet that's a whole different problem.
Whatever, one problem solved!
Posted by me at 10:21 PM | Comments (0)
April 10, 2007
I really need to RTFM
I haven't gotten any comments since I did the upgrade.
At least, I thought I hadn't gotten any. As it turns out, they just aren't getting emailed to me any more. I discovered this tonight, when I tried a test comment, just to be sure.
There were 20 or so comments, two-thirds of which were spam. There were some very nice comments though, and I feel bad that I didn't see them and respond in some way.
I know I keep saying this, but I *will* get better, I swear.
And thank you!
Posted by me at 10:44 PM | Comments (0)
July 13, 2006
Argh!
I have managed to screw with my site settings in such a way that I can't comment on my own site.
DAMN THE SPAMMERS!!!
Posted by me at 10:37 PM | Comments (0)
April 16, 2006
New colors
I decided I was sick of the green.
Changing the damn header colors turned out to be a major pain in my ass. I need to read more about how to make and edit graphics, 'cause I'm just not picking it up by messing with the program.
I like the darker blue, well, the background blue. The png->gif conversion changed it a bit, and I'm not sure how to get it to stop doing that. And the light blue? Looks a little too candy-happy blue, but I'm tired and I wanna go to bed. And we're moving soon, so I may not have time to change it anytime soon.
Posted by me at 10:21 PM | Comments (0)
February 20, 2006
I don't even know what I just did
I love when I do something that I have absolutely no understanding of, and it works.
Scheduled posts are now working!
Posted by me at 10:19 AM | Comments (0)
August 30, 2005
Design Changes
I made my first changes to the CSS for this page!
I don't really know more than the very basics of CSS, and it's been a while since I learned that and used it, so this is kinda big. Of course, I did it by printing out the CSS from this page and from another page I like that's well done, and comparing it. Still, there's a damn border around the picture I posted yesterday.
Baby steps, people, baby steps.
Posted by me at 9:59 PM | Comments (0)