August 28, 2005

Moveable Type 3.2

So, anyone using Movable Type and has already upgraded to 3.2? I haven't had a chance to look at all the changes yet, and I'm worried about upgrading and then having to completely redo my templates again. This wouldn't worry me too much except I've done so much work for a client recently getting her blog set up that I'm really tired of looking at templates right now. And, actually, my bigger worry is having to redo ANYTHING on my client's site at this point. I've had a blast working on it, don't get me wrong, but if I have to make one more change to every page on the site, I'm gonna scream.
(And Dana, don't worry, yes, I have had fun working on your site and I don't regret taking the job in the slightest. This is *just* venting, okay?)

Anyhow, if you've upgraded and have any horror stories or "no problems here, mate" stories to tell, please leave a comment!

Meanwhile, I'm off to church this morning and then off to Fort Wayne for the McNair something Imaginu!ty workshop. Some kind of creativity workshop with a guy from the old Disney studio. (And for some reason, I haven't looked him up in my animation books yet to see what all he worked on. Hmmm. Interesting lack of curiosity on my part.)

Posted by Red Monkey at 7:27 AM | Comments (2) | Blog | Stumble

August 22, 2005

Aries Spears

If you ever get a chance to see Aries Spears performing at a comedy club near you -- GO!

We went to see him Saturday night and it was well worth the $20 bucks a ticket (the extra $5 a ticket was to be guaranteed seating in the first four rows and to not have to stand in line for a ticket the night of the performance).

We wound up sitting in the front row, directly in front of the mic. (Yes, miC, dammit. It's a microphone, not a mikeraphone.) When the security dude seated us, I though, oh crap. We are going to get picked on.

Actually, we were the only people in the front row who did NOT get picked on and it was pretty cool.

You see, South Bend, Indiana, is a town with some serious racial and redneck problems. In fact, I've seen WAAAAAAY more Klan activity here than I EVER saw in Texas. And the Funnybone was full of rednecks Saturday night. The mullet-haired, wife-beater wearing, chain-smoking Camels specimen who was sitting next to me was a prime example. And evidently his wife neglected to tell him that the headliner was a black dude. Talk about changing his body posture. I thought the guy was gonna throw one of his beer bottles at Aries just for being up on the stage.

At any rate, when Aries went into his routine about gays in the news, he got a little startled at the rabid response from the audience. He cut that spiel a little short (the bit about how he doesn't get how guys can be gay because ... well, look at how ugly male genitalia is). In fact, he looked at us when he said his usual "I don't want to offend any gay folks out there," but he wasn't so incredibly obvious about it that mullet-boy got fussy.

I'd seen a fair amount of Aries' material recently in some Comedy Central special or another, but it's really worth it to see him do his impressions in person. It's just hysterical. His material is clever and really well timed and well performed. If you've never seen him on MadTV, make an effort to check him out. It's well worth your time!

Meanwhile, I think he's going to be in a film with Snoop Dog sometime soon! Can't wait -- I just love this guy. (And what's not to love about the incredible Joker tattoo he's got on the left bicep?)

Posted by Red Monkey at 10:52 AM | Comments (0) | Blog | Stumble

August 21, 2005

Mishu

I don't even know what to call this post, so lemme just tell you what happened.

One of our cats is a little bit on the special side. This is a cat who has been an indoor kitty since she was five weeks old (she's now nine years). She has been known to get all four sets of claws stuck in the carpet and stand there and twitch, trying to get free. (And yes, it is hysterically funny to watch her try to get loose.) I have often heard her plaintive mew and come to free one claw from the top of the couch, after she's already jumped to the seat of the couch. She sits there, plaintive and twitching, not really knowing why all of her did not jump to the seat below when she did.

Now, in her defense, I will say she has the most curved and long kitty claws of any cat I've ever seen. But still.

Friday night, Miss Mishu comes walking out of the litter box and her paw makes this funny clunky sound on the hardwood floor. I'm thinking what you're probably thinking: gross. She's probably got some clay stuck in her paw and she's tracking it around.

We'd be wrong.

My next thought is, as I'm getting to glance at her paw before she yanks it away, is that "Oh, she has managed to forget how to retract her claws."

This was also wrong.

Now if you've not been around cats, you might not know this, but cats' claws grow from the inside out and the outer claw is periodically shed.

What I saw on her paw was something I had never even HEARD of:
some of her claws had stopped shedding.

Her claws were growing longer, curved around and were buried in her paw pads! Here's an example of how long her claws had gotten:
This is a claw that we used some dog clippers and cut off her. Note: this is NOT the entire claw. If you're used to cats, you've seen shed claws that look similar -- Mishu still has more claw on her paw after this bit was cut off. And while this claw has been cleaned up, most of the small, sharp part of the claw was buried in her paw pad. If you look closely at the top of the claw, you'll see a faint line there -- that's one of the newer claws that grew in under the top layer of claw. There are at least 4-6 full-sized claws contained inside this one claw! (We dissected one out of curiosity and found 9 claws inside - only looked like 4 or 5 until we kept peeling more layers away.)

Essentially, she was clawing her own paw pads, just from the way her claws were growing. I have NEVER seen anything like this!

We got two claws cut off and pulled out of the paw pads before we realized what a mess her feet were in. One of the worst paws was nearly split in half -- yet she wasn't limping or acting like she was in any pain! It was at this point: 6:45 on a Friday night, that we realized we couldn't get all of these out outselves -- somehow, two miniature dachshunds milling about the floor, crying and loudly yipping because they couldn't see the surgery and what we were doing to one of their kitties did NOT make Mishu a very calm kitty.

After pulling two of these things out of one paw and realizing that the other front paw was even worse, we figured this was going to be a vet job. Luckily, our vet does have some Saturday hours and luckily, I've been through the rigamarole of a declawed cat before, so I knew the drill for dealing with these sore paws.

We picked up the litterbox, tossed it into the garage and took off for the pet store on the other side of town. Snagged a new litterbox and some of that newspaper pellet litter. And some anti-bacterial spray for her paws.

Walked into the vet's office first thing Saturday morning and announced, "We need an emergency declawing, but it's not what you think."

The receptionist was confused.

"Her claws have grown too long and not shed and now they've grown full circle back into her paw."

The receptionist looked at me as if I'd suddenly grown kitty claws and was insisting that the vet look at me.

The vet tech who first looked at her, though, had actually heard of this before. Seems as some cats get older they just stop shedding their claws as readily. With both of us to hold the cat and the vet tech to snip out the claws, we were finished in about 10 minutes.

They didn't even have to stitch any of the paw pads despite the rather gaping wound in a couple of them -- we're giving her antibiotics for a week and then she should be good as new.

Except we'll be trimming her claws about every two weeks from now on!
Bizarre.

Posted by Red Monkey at 11:27 AM | Comments (5) | Blog | Stumble

August 18, 2005

Ooooh, a review!

Ooooh, I'm so excited! Blog Advance, a wonderful blog which reviews other blogs, good and bad, reviewed mine today. Check out the review here.

I'm excited. I should be posting the "bad ghost" ghost story some time tomorrow. :)

I know, I know. Like you've all been waiting with bated breath. I'll make it worth the wait.

Meanwhile, I'm still bouncing around after reading my review.

Happy happy joy joy.

Oh, and really, do go over to Blog Advance and read their reviews. You can really find some wonderful blogs there, and you can quickly see what kinds of things turn off readers, too. They're a wonderful resource I fully intend to utilize more fully in the future. Go, go, you'll enjoy it.

Posted by Red Monkey at 10:41 PM | Comments (1) | Blog | Stumble

August 14, 2005

hmmm, my first meme

10 Years Ago Today:
I was celebrating L's 27th birthday, and the end of our first full year in South Bend, Indiana, and my first year of graduate school. I was preparing to start my first year of teaching English 109 at the University of Notre Dame. And I was trying to figure out if it was simply my imagination or if we really did have a ghost in the basement.

5 years ago today:
I was still reeling a bit from the breakup. L and I had been "married" for 10 years, but upon her showing me an important diary entry she'd written, I saw clearly that she saw me only as financial stability ... not as a partner.
I had just finished going through chemo every two weeks for Hodgkin's disease (Cancer-lite)
I had gotten my graduate degree and was teaching at Notre Dame, but the job was considered "part time," so I had not had health insurance. But, I had been offered a full time position at Notre Dame that would start in a few weeks. I was ecstatic to be the computer guru for the Writing Program and to be teaching two classes a semester. I thought I had finally arrived where I wanted to be. My salary? $25,000 a year. Oh, and it actually wound up being $24,999.98 that first year. No idea what happened to the extra two cents.
Oh, and there really were multiple ghosts in the basement of the house. Everyone who'd been over to the house more than once had heard them and/or seen things get knocked over. They never did show themselves. It was creepy!

1 year ago today:
I was unemployed. I'd been told in February that my services were no longer needed at ND. The administration felt that so long as students showed up for class and turned in something, it really didn't matter if they could write well or not. After all, ND students are bright and work hard. Never mind there was no help in place for the ESL kids who could barely speak English, much less write in English.
The fact that I had allowed two kids to fail/failed two kids because they simply hit print for their first draft, second draft, third draft and final draft of their papers without changing ANYTHING or addressing ANY of the issues both their peers and I brought up, showed that I was not toeing the party line, so to speak.

Never mind that my students won the writing award three or four times in nine years (we almost had an every other year thing going).

Yeah, a year ago I was beyond depressed. I should have been preparing to teach. Instead, I was job hunting and filing for unemployment. And even with the unemployment there was a battle -- my ND HR paperwork claimed that I had left for personal reasons - not that my job had been eliminated (they never filled my position, to my knowledge).

Yesterday:
I was doing some stylesheet work for a client and trying to read a hideously academic book for Sunday school.

Tomorrow:
Back to work.

5 snacks I enjoy:
popcorn
salsa & (crackers, tortillas)
guacomole
pretzels
cheese & bread

5 bands that i know the lyrics to most of their songs
Billy Joel - still, after all these years
Indigo Girls
Pink Floyd (some albums)
REM (some albums)
Eminem (some albums)

5 things I would do with $100,000,000
1) pay off the house and the brand new car
2) donate at least a few million to our church so we can:
fix the parking lot (there's almost more grass than asphalt now)
install air conditioning
build the planned sanctuary so we don't have to worship in the fellowship hall
3) start a charity to help those people who usually fall through the cracks
4) buy a bigger house, preferably in Austin and finally get around to adopting my kids
5) go back to school

5 locations I would like to run away to
1) Austin, Texas
2) Talequah, Oklahoma
3) New Mexico
4) Ireland
5) New Zealand?

5 bad habits I have:
1) spending far too much time at the computer
2) curse too much
3) don't get enough exercise
4) thinking i'm an agent of karma (actually, I don't think this is a bad habit, but my partner does!)

5 things I like doing:
skateboarding, reading, playing on the computer (web design, Flash design, etc), making action figures, leatherwork

5 things I would never wear:
a dress!!!!!!!!!!, Daisy Dukes, a bikini, anything pink and frilly

5 TV shows I like(d):
Pretender, Firefly, Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Deadliest Catch, Batman: the Animated Series

5 movies I like
Stand By Me
Dead Poet's Society
8 Mile
Fried Green Tomatoes (the film of my people, after all)
Lilo and Stitch
(an extra) Radio Flyer

5 Famous People I Would Like to Meet:
1) Wil Wheaton
2) Arlene Klasky
3) Amy Ray and Emily Saliers (Indigo Girls)
4) Rosie O'Donnell
5) Melissa Scott

5 biggest joys at the moment
my dogs, my cats, my partner, my new car, our house

5 favorite toys:
my Fisher Price Little People, especially Chris
my fisher Price Adventure People
my Ewok Village
my iPod
my skateboards

5 people to tag
hmmm, this is hard as I flit through the blogosphere looking at the diversity far more than I stick to a certain few sites.

Posted by Red Monkey at 1:05 PM | Comments (0) | Blog | Stumble

August 13, 2005

Stylesheets and Such

So, I'm working on a stylesheet for another website and I have a couple of questions that some CSS specialist might have an idea or two about.

Problem 1
I have put the header/banner in the stylesheet for the site. My client would like to rotate between several different header/banner graphics. Now, there are plenty of javascripts which will do this, but I can't put that into the CSS. Anyone know how this could be done in the stylesheet? I don't even want to think what would happen to the overall site design if I have to move the graphic to the HTML and then set the stylesheet below that. It'll be a nightmare.

Problem 2
An oddity. While my site centers in the browser, the new one I'm building is on the left of the browser. Every time I try to move it to the center, the container's backgrounds disappear.

That's it.

But working for this client is why I've been a bit quiet this weekend. I'd like to finish it up -- poor woman was originally hoping to have the site debut in June, only to have one designer flake out and then for various other things to postpone the date. If you want to take a stab at any of this, comment or email me and I'll forward on the bits of code I'm talking about -- the site is supposed to be something of a surprise. :)

Posted by Red Monkey at 7:19 PM | Comments (0) | Blog | Stumble