$#!@& Gallery

Last night after I sucessfully loaded up the new Florida Trip gallery I was feeling good about myself, so I tried something I tried back in June, upgrade the gallery script to the new and improved eSPG.

Big mistake. Before uploading the newer version I backed up the existing files (I may be crazy, but I’m not stupid) just in case something bad happened. I made all the appropriate changes to the config files, uploaded the new files, changed all the permissions as required and checked for the results. Sure enough it wouldn’t work, kept throwing server errors. Re-uploaded to make sure I used ASCII and not binary when FTPing. Re-changed the permissions and tried again. Crap, still not working. Seems like this is how it went when I last tried it. I must be doing something wrong, but what?

I erased the new files and put the old files back. Guess what, now the old gallery didn’t work either. Let’s see, now what? Made sure I uploaded them correctly, yep, but still error pages. Last time when the thumbnails weren’t working I emptied the cache files, maybe that would help here. That didn’t make any difference, still no galleries.

I then figured I had nothing to lose, so I uploaded the new gallery files and one directory of pictures. When that failed to work I just went to bed.

This morning when I got up I checked the original galleries and for what ever reason (Internet Elves?) it was working again. I checked the new gallery and I got the main thumbnail page, but clicking on the thumbnail to enter the gallery returned my server error message. I logged on as admin to see if that would work and it did. I could even see the photos that I couldn’t before. The admin functions worked and even when I dropped out on an image, the image would display in public view, but that was it, you couldn’t go forward or backward. Curious. Oh well, at least the original galleries are back up.

Started down, went up, back down, still down.
Miata Top Transitions since 01/01/06: 504

Monday Madness

Rollerbladed this evening for the first time in a while. I’m afraid it has fallen into the same bucket as the blogging. I take every opportunity to procrastinate and when I finally do do it, it is half-hearted at best. Could just be that time of the year – its dark in the morning and nearly dark at the end of the workday too.

Big news is I went through the scads of photos I took on the Thanksgiving Florida trip and made a 20 image gallery – Florida Trip 2006 right now and as always there is a link in the sidebar.

I got this via email today with the title Redneck Timeout:
Redneck Timeout
This is funny on so many levels…

Started down, went up, back down, still down.
Miata Top Transitions since 01/01/06: 502

Sunday Shopping

Besides the normal weekly grocery shopping trip, we did a little Christmas shopping for ourselves and others. Plus some shopping for normal replacement wear. Amazing how quickly a couple hundred bucks can get added to a credit card.

Yesterday’s mail contained a couple niceties; 1) a Christmas mix CD from Andrea (thanks girl) and 2) a long lost box that I had given up on (that’s all I’ll say on that for now.)

The cold snap has abated and the temps have returned to normal so we got to ride around this afternoon with the top down. The down cycle meant for the first time since I’ve been keeping track of the top changes I’ve gone over the 500 mark.

I may not keep track of the top transitions next year. The main reason for that is, as I approach the 5 year anniversary of blogging, I’m tired of *having to* write something every night which causes a lot of filler posts (like this one) that I’m not to proud of. I say that, but if I didn’t do this every night what would I do with my time?

Started up, went down, still down.
Miata Top Transitions since 01/01/06: 500

300 Miles

The post office doesn’t open until 9:00AM on Saturday. It’s 8:30 on weekdays.

Postmarks for this year’s Christmas boxes to family will read North, South Carolina.

There is no such place as South, North Carolina.

Lunch in Darlington. The meatloaf sandwich at Cracker Barrel is pretty damn good.

Dinner in Columbia. The 1/2 lb. burger at Fudruckers is pretty damn good.

The orange light on dash shaped like a gas pump is bad.

Christmas light decorations are good.

Started up, still up.
Miata Top Transitions since 01/01/06: 499

Good Hair Day

I’ve been telling Donna she looks great with the hair she has for a couple weeks now. The last time we went in for haircuts, when the stylist was evening her hair out, she told her that she looked great and should go for it. But her hair was still shorter than it was when we cut it all off back in May and she wasn’t feeling comfortable with it yet. I thought for sure she was going to keep it covered up until it was as long as before, which would be still another couple months, but today, out of the blue, Donna decided to go sans bandanna/scarf/headdress.

She got one or two double takes, a lot of compliments and even a couple hugs. But mostly she got a lot of people wanting to feel her hair. It is different than before that’s for sure, it is softer, a little darker, a lot more gray and way more curly. People say the tight curls are temporary and eventually your hair returns to its pre-chemo shape, I’ll let you know…

Started up, still up.
Miata Top Transitions since 01/01/06: 499

I ♥ The Internet

No L Decorated the cubical for the holidays today and even Captain Jack Sparrow got into the spirit. Remind me tomorrow to tell you about Dead Man’s Chest and overstock dot com.

I own about 48 DVDs of movies I love, movies that I could watch over and over again. Trouble is I hardly ever watch them again after the first time when the shrink wrap came off. If I have a spare couple hours and think, “Hey let’s watch a movie!” I’ll open the cabinet and start looking at titles to pick a flick, then as I look at the box I watch the whole movie in my head in about 15 seconds, well, I guess I don’t have to watch that one. Pick up the next box, fast forward the movie, put it back. I never get to put one in the player. I think what would work though is one of those 200 disc changers where I could have it play a movie at random, once it got going I know I would enjoy the movie.

I have about 48 movies in my Netflix rental queue. Whenever I add a movie it goes to the bottom of the queue. I could move it to the top, but that would displace movies that are already there and most likely they got to the top by slowly percolating up as I watched the ones ahead of them. I really want to see most of the movies that are in the queue about equally, so its kind of hard for me to pick which ones to see first. Somewhere a while back I took the time to mix the genres up so I wouldn’t have a bunch of the same kind of movie back to back. One comedy, one drama, one sci-fi, one independent, repeat. But over time my careful mix has become scrambled again. What I need is a Netflix Queue Randomizer. I wrote to customer service to ask if they though maybe they could add that to the queue page. The response was typical customer service, “Thanks for your interest. We will hand your idea over to the development team for further study. Don’t call us, we’ll call you.”

Searched for Netflix Queue Randomizer with Google and got a bunch of hits. I found four different ways to accomplish my goal; 1) a script for Greasemonkey, 2) a script that you just copy into the address bar while on the queue page, 3) a small executable file that you could download and 4) a bookmarklet. I used the address bar script a couple of times to really shake things up for now, but I got the bookmarklet one all ready to try next. I ♥ the Internet.

Oh, yeah, I finally washed the Florida bugs off the front of the car. To make it even I washed the whole rest of the car too.

Started down, went up, back down, back up, still up.
Miata Top Transitions since 01/01/06: 499

Following A Path To Enlightenment

The PathYesterday morning when I fired up the car in the garage I could see that one of the fog lights, AKA DRLs, was out. On the way home from work we stopped at the local auto parts store and bought a new bulb. At first I thought, to be safe, I should change out both bulbs under the theory that if one goes the other can’t be far behind. Then I referred to the wealth of knowledge that only the internet could house, the blog known as “Life of Brian.” In July of 2005 I changed just the left fog light bulb and now a year and a half later the right one bit the dust. A decision was made to go ahead and replace just the bulb that burnt out.

Changing the bulb is the not so simple matter of jacking up the front of the car, removing the front wheel, removing a 10mm bolt, taking out 5 weird plastic screw/snap fasteners and bending back the fender liner. Then you unsnap a spring clip, twist to unfasten the bulb base from the housing, unclick the wiring harness connector so you can get the base & bulb out where you can see it and pull the bulb out of the base. reverse everything you just did the put it all back together. It takes about an hour. So if you had the dealer do it, it would set you back about $75. That’s just the labor, they would add about another $20 for the six dollar bulb…

Yesterday I wrote about my leave covered yard, today I posted a picture depicting just that. Yesterday I changed a fog light bulb in the car, today I posted about that. I guess I figured if that whole non-linear story telling thing worked for Tarantino in Pulp Fiction, why not for me here?

Started up, went down, still down.
Miata Top Transitions since 01/01/06: 496