Webb Family Blog

First off, I’m new to all this stuff.  I’m not a programmer, but I am trying to understand the scripting going on here.  I found Matt Didcoe’s Weather.com Plugin for WordPress, but had issues with the graphics that it used.  For one, I thought they were a bit small.  Also, it seemed like many of the weather conditions were grouped together with the same graphic.  I looked into the weather.php file and saw how it grouped the different weather conditions.  Apparently, Weather.com uses numbered codes… 1-47 for different weather conditions (i.e. #19="Dusty" or #25="Frigid")  Some of the codes refer to night time while some refer to day time.  I also saw how the php script grabbed each graphic, by assigning the graphic name for a group of conditions.  The initial set of icons in the group are GIFs.  I found the set of icons included in Weather.com’s SDK were a bit more to my liking and already numbered based on the conditions.  These graphics are PNGs instead.  I did a little messing with the file and got it to work more to the way I wanted it to.

Today, I woke up, initially, to the sound of something crashing.  Kellie had a jewelry box sitting on top of her bedside table.  Apparently, Bear’s wagging tail knocked it off.  It went crashing onto the floor.  I was able to go back to sleep, but woke with bright sunlight streaming through the windows.  It was POURING down rain last night.  Kellie stayed asleep longer. I came out and started messing around with this here blog.  I’ve been investigating many plugins for WordPress.  I’ve been learning many new things.  I tried to implement many plugins and found many to be fouled.  After Kellie and I were both up and going, we went out to the International House of Pancakes…. this on the National Pancake Day.  I had my usual… Country Omelet without meat. 

After eating, we headed over to Costco and did a bit of shopping.  While we were there, we upgraded our membership and added Kellie to my account.  Initially, I had my brother on my account, but seeing as though he lives in Nebraska and it’s quite a ways to the nearest Costco there, and Kellie no longer is under her parent’s membership, it made sense.  We then progressed over to Green Acres Nursery & Supply and got some information about lawn care and trees. 

Upon coming home, I worked on my blog some more.  By now, it was POURING down rain again.  It has been a weird weather day.  I decided to try to get a Roseville weather report up on my blog.  Now, if you ask me about what is going on in my life OR "how’s the weather?…"  I can reply… "Go to the blog!"  Now, upon putting it up, I heard a LOUD noise outside… HAIL!  It was hailing pretty good.  It continues to be a weird weather day.

I THINK that I have now set it up for anyone that wants to subscribe to receive new blog posts via email. You’ll notice near the top of this page, a space saying “About” and “Subscribe”. Go to “Subscribe” and enter your email address. Shortly thereafter, you’ll get an email with a code. Click on that code and it will confirm you on the list. You will then get an email anytime I post a new message. I’m just making this an option because I can. I’m doing it MORE as a learning process for myself than a service to anyone else. If you do subscribe and wish to unsubscribe, follow the same process.

You can alternately enter your email address in the space below and chose subscribe.

Wow… this is the third posting in one day.  I believe that is now a record.  At least this post isn’t as depressing as the last.  This morning, I had a dermatology appointment to check out all these skin ailments I’ve been having.  On my way home, I dropped by to see if the Marco Dog Park here in Roseville was open.  It closes much of the winter time due to it being totally muddy.  It was OPEN!  It seemed like it took a long time to go home and get Bear.  He seemed to sense my plan, because as soon as I came home, he started "talking" to me.  He was jumping all over.  I grabbed a few things and finally got him ready to go.  He was very hyper upon getting him in the car.  He was even more hyper upon arrival to the dog park.  I had him on a leash for a minute or two upon arrival, but then took it off and let Bear run free.  He had a great time with the many other dogs there.  He was probably the fastest dog there.  I didn’t look at the time when we got there, nor the time we left, but I think it was only 30-45 minutes.  Bear seemed to be tired out after all that.  I then went over to the Kaiser pharmacy to pick up the meds prescribed to me by the doctor I’d seen earlier. 

The doctor I saw at the dermatology clinic didn’t seem very competent to me… actually… I think he has pretty poor eyesight.  He couldn’t see many of the rashes I had.  I specifically wanted to ask him about a rash on the side of my back that is about 3-4 inches in diameter and shaped like a doughnut.  He looked and said he couldn’t see it.  He said it very nonchalantly, like he never even looked.  He just told me that I shouldn’t use the stuff my primary care physician prescribed and prescribed me… 0.05% Desonide Cream.  Instead, he prescribed 1% Elidel Cream for use on the face and 0.1% Triamcinolone Acetonide OINTMENT.  After my trip to the dog park with Bear, I came home and took a shower.  Afterwards, I put on the prescribed medications.  Man is it annoying to have put on an ointment.  Because my skin condition covers so much of my body, I essentially took a bath in Vaseline!  Now I’m all sticky.  I’ve had to put long pants and long-sleeve shirt on, just to not stick to a chair or my arms stick to the desk as I type this in.  I just went to the Kaiser Members web page to send a message to the doctor I saw this morning.  I asked if it were possible to get the Triamcinolone Acetonide in the cream version.  I also mentioned the doughnut-shaped rash on my back WAS still visible.  I tried to make it sound from first reading it that it was a complaint, but you could "read between the lines" that I was a little upset about it.  Besides this message going to the physician, it also goes into my permanent Kaiser medical record. 

Apparently, my problem with Google was my firewall. I’ve been trying to keep my Smoothwall firewall/router up for as long as possible, but I had to reboot it. I guess my problems went beyond not being able to access Google. I found that for some reason, my DHCP server was assigning incorrect IP addresses. I have it set to assign static IP addresses to permanent devices in the house, but I found that my desktop and all my other devices were instead having IP addresses in the dynamic range. I understand many of you may have no clue what I’m talking about, but needless to say, it wasn’t working correctly and when I rebooted, everything is working correctly again. I can now read my email messages. Unfortunately, that now puts me back in the pack on the Uptime-Project. I was in 67th place… out of 121.

Now for some sad news… I found out yesterday that one Donna’s (my mother-in-law) best friends died, Kathy Yeates. She had been ill for quite some time and had been up and down. She was too ill to come to our wedding, but she wanted to be there. I met her twice… the first time we visited her in the hospital after she had had surgery. The last time was in December, at Fresh Choice in Roseville. Donna was having an outing with the “Kathys” (Kathy Yeates and Kathy Musik)… I stopped in to say “hi.”

The other bit of sad news comes from another side of the family. My oldest sister Debbie’s father-in-law, Delbert Curry, is apparently not doing well. Debbie and Homer (with Jared and Caleb) are currently missionaries in Mali. I talked with my parents yesterday and they mentioned that Homer’s dad has been in the hospital lately and has just gone home under hospice care. He is not expected to live long.

I don’t know if my problem is just with my account or is completely outside my control, but I have been unable to reach Google since yesterday from home.  I’ve tried to research this by looking at many news sites.  No one has had anything to say about it yet.  What is more upsetting is that is where I get my email… I can’t access Gmail, Google’s email service.  I know my firewall has the capability of blocking some sites, so I’ve turned all the blocking off temporarily and it didn’t make a difference. I can go anywhere else that I can think of online, but I’ve found that a few sites use Google services in their web pages and these services fail to load.  I have to go out in a bit, so I’ll take my laptop and try to get online elsewhere… to see if this lack of Google is local or global.

Kellie and I have been enjoying the fact that we are now working the same hours. Today we commuted together to work. We woke at 5:30AM; way too early for my taste. We grabbed a little food to snack on and we drove off. I dropped Kellie off and went to work. Thankfully, I got off on time. I drove over to Kaiser and picked Kellie up. We were both quite hungry. On the way home, we stopped at Chili’s for supper. We were happy to get such great service at the Chili’s in Roseville. Upon coming home, Bear was VERY excited to see us. TOO excited. I’m quite tired, yet he wants to play. I’m now ready for bed and he STILL wants to play. Kellie and I both have to work in the morning… 5:30AM again, so off to bed. As I’m typing this, Kellie has been trying to work on medical leave paperwork, as she is planning on having foot surgery in less than a month.

As you may see… I finally have my blog fully up and going.  EVERY article that I’ve ever written to the blog, as far as I can tell, is up there.  You can search the archives.  The last message I had to resurrect was the last message posted before the site was corrupted… The Week in Review .  That particular post took a bit more trickery to resurrect, but in the end, was actually easier.  I thought it was lost forever.  It wasn’t in my backup.  Where it WAS, was in my browser’s cache.  I was able to do a Google Desktop search and found a cached version of the page with that article.  I was then able to cut and paste.  After completing that, Kellie and I took off for a financial appointment. 

We have been giving Bear more and more freedom in the house.  We had the "child gate" put in to keep him in only certain locations when we aren’t here, but unfortunately he HAS learned that he can jump over it.  We found one day he jumped over it, but otherwise had behaved himself.  Another day, we found the gate down, but again, he behaved.  We have come home a couple times, including tonight and not been able to find him.  Once, while we were sleeping, he got himself locked into the guest bedroom.  Another time, he locked himself in the bathroom.  Tonight, he locked himself in the computer room.  Silly Boy!  We’ve tried to find him toys to play with.  Unfortunately, the toys that he really likes he destroys.  We’ve given him a battery-operated toy that jumps around.  It was fun to watch him go berserk trying to catch it.  Once he learned how to grab onto it, he started chewing on it.  Last night, we got a toy from Donna that was originally for Bogie… the Weifert’s German Shepherd, but Bogie didn’t seem to care for the toy.  It had a light inside that flashed.  It was quite solidly built, but after chomping on it a bit, Bear broke it.  Today, we got him a nylon bone.  I hope he enjoys chewing it.  It is just solid, chicken-flavored plastic. 

I’ve got to go to work early in the morning.  Since changing from my old unit, "603", to the new unit, "602", I have had new partners.  I now have Art and Todd.  On the first day, we were talking and I found out Art lived in Roseville too.  Not only was he from Roseville, but he was near Blue Oaks and Washington area… not only that, but he lived on Bridgeford Drive!  We live about 15 houses or so away from each other.  We commuted on Thursday and we’ll do so again in the morning.  He’ll only be on my unit for another week or so though, as he will be transferring from Sacramento to Roseville with AMR.  The Roseville operations center is less than a mile from our house.  Too bad they don’t station a CCT unit out of there anymore.  Apparently they used to staff a CCT unit out of there.

One feature that I like with WordPress is that it can use other programs to make entries.  I am using a program called Qumana to write my posts now.  It adds features that aren’t available in the WordPress’s built-in editor, plus it adds spell check.  It’s not perfect, but it does make things a bit easier.  As I’ve mentioned before, expect many new changes in the week or two to come from this here blog.

Well… I’ve had no luck in resurecting my old Blog, BUT… I have found hidden deep inside a compressed backup file of my old site many of the old postings. They are hidden inside a lot of markup text, so I’m copying the text and cleaning it up with a text editor that allows me to do Find & Replace… I’ve already recovered several postings and I’m editing the time-stamp on them to reflect WHEN they were originally written.

Well, as all of you that have been to my Blog site can tell, there have been some changes. Last Tuesday morning, I was unable to access my blog. I’ve been trying to get help through tech support from my host company since then, but have gotten nowhere. The Blog software I was using was in it’s Beta form, so it’s possible it was a software issue that was outside their knowledge level. I decided to go with WordPress, as a way to be more compatible and have more options for modifying. I’ve lost all the content that was on the old Blog. If in the future, I am able to get that info back, I’ll try to integrate it into this Blog. Obviously the look and feel is different.

Standby for many changes in the near future as I learn more.