Rottweilers Ate My Laptop

Rottweilers. Computers. Cameras. World Domination. Not necessarily in that order.

Rottweilers.
Computers. Cameras.
World Domination.
Not necessarily in that order.

My kennel website, or lack of same (22 of 30)

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I used to have a website for our dogs, even though I have never bred a litter and don’t compete in shows or trials very often. I’ve actually had the kennel name domain since 1998, and the site was started a couple of years before that. I stopped maintaining and updating it a few years ago when two of our older dogs passed away.

When Freya came to live with us in January 2004, I thought I’d resurrect the website. I tossed some ideas around in my head, and even went as far as making Photoshop comps of one of them, but I still didn’t get the website back online.

When Axel came to live with us in January 2007, I went through that whole process once again. Still no website. As you know from yesterday’s post, Freya is now five years old. Axel’s second birthday is coming up in a matter of days.

I’m not sure why it’s been so hard for me to get motivated to put something new up for myself. I do maintenance and updates for a few dog club/organization websites, and my husband’s motorcycle club’s website. I also designed and maintain Axel’s breeder’s website, and a website for another breeder friend. But when it comes to my own site, I have the equivalent of writer’s block. Or maybe that should be designer’s block, or coder’s block.

I know, I know… I should stop overanalyzing my designs and just go ahead and do something, anything. So who is going to slap me to my senses and help me sort pictures of Freya and Axe?

What did I say about technology being fun? (11 of 30)

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This time it’s not self-inflicted, like it was earlier in the month.

My older relatives have all refused to get cable or satellite television, for a variety of reasons, some good and some extremely bad. This has made our task of getting everyone ready for the switch to digital television approximately 100 times more difficult than it needs to be.

We have not been entirely successful at getting across the very important concept that if you start out with a weak and crappy signal, it will not get better, even when fed into a brand new HD-ready Sony Bravia. The visual evidence is pretty strong but it’s getting a bit (ok, more than bit) frustrating that the point has still not quite hit home.

Analog man in paradise (9 of 30)

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The idea of blogging from vacation is probably not my most brilliant one ever.

Today was not spent enjoying sea and sun and other typical Hawaiian vacation things. Since TV is going 100% digital in February 2009, and my dad is total analog man, it’s up to me and my husband to leave my folks’ house digital-ready before we go.

I am sure I am not the only one who has had to fight past parents’ reluctance to adopt technology. There is no cable or satellite TV in this house. I am not completely sure why my dad is so adamantly against getting it. He usually blames me, for a variety of reasons going back to when I was about five years old that are so absurd that I will not put them in writing.

To add to the fun, Hawaii is going all-digital a month before the rest of the country. I can totally get behind the reason for doing so. The dismantling of the analog broadcast facilities needs to be completed before the nesting season of the Hawaiian petrel on Maui. I’m all for saving birds and their habitats. But this means we have to get the digital converters installed on this trip for my parents and two of my aunts.

This burden falls mostly on my husband because my technology smarts are limited mainly to computer matters. I’ve done my part there. I’m typing this on my mom’s year-old iMac which is connected to the ‘net via wireless high-speed broadband. She is not nearly as analog as my dad and actually uses this computer quite a bit.

Hopefully tomorrow I’ll actually get to somewhere more scenic than Sam’s Club and Best Buy, and have a tale more exciting than one of dragging reluctant people into the 21st century. Once again, a fond Aloha!

Technology is so much fun! (2 of 30)

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My intent was to produce today’s post early in the day and then get out to enjoy what is supposed to be a nice sunny day with temperatures in the 60’s. So far, that hasn’t happened, unless you consider noon-thirty to be early in the day.

The problem is that, as usual, I couldn’t leave well enough alone and just write something about life, love, laughter or whatever. I had to go and screw around with technology. At first, things went well with the installation of Google Analytics and Akismet plugins proceeding successfully. Not that I will need either one for a while, as very few people even know this blog is out here yet. I can still count visits on one hand without the help of Google or anyone else, and even the porn link spammers haven’t found their way here to invade the comments.

Then, I began the attempt to make my blog posts here also appear on my NaBloPoMo page and generate a one-liner on my Facebook feed. This is where technology decided to bite me in the butt.

Not right away though. Setting up the RSS feed to the NaBloPoMo page was very easy. Quite a few things at NaBloPoMo’s Ning site are not working at the moment (blog list randomizer, and worse yet, the friends feature) but the RSS feed is not on the longish list of problems.

After trying and rejecting Blog It (good app made by the Movable Type folks, but has some known issues with some WordPress blogs that are not part of WordPress.com) and FriendFeed, it looked as though Wordbook would solve the problem. And it would have, except that the server my blog resides on is still using PHP 4. Since it is a VPS server to which I have root access, I’m supposed to be smart enough to take care of all the geekly stuff, including noticing when I need to upgrade anything on it. This has not always been the case. In my defense though, all of the other PHP scripts that I’m currently using on the sites on that server are supposed to run under both PHP 4 and PHP 5, so I just took the path of least resistance.

I’ve got a ticket in for support as I do have a couple of questions before making the move to PHP 5. While I wait for the answers, I’m checking to make sure that all those other scripts don’t in fact have any issues with PHP 5. How fun would that be, to break everything else on the server just so my Facebook feed gets updated whenver I post my deep thoughts here?

I wasn’t planning to do much in the way of customizing or tweaking this blog. I spent quite a bit of time on making graphics, modifying layouts and adding little whiz-bang things to my old Movable Type blog. It was often enjoyable, but it was also very time-consuming and in the end, it didn’t really make things any more interesting or informative for the readers.

Technology was not my intended topic for the day. Before I got caught in the technology trap, I was debating between current events (specifically, my personal concerns about Barack Obama’s Election Night rally in Chicago) or Rottweilers (specifically, my own beautiful and intelligent Rottweilers) as today’s topic. We still have a couple of days to go until the election, so both of those topics can keep for another day.

Back to the wonders of technology. Enjoy the beautiful day if you are in my sector. I hope to be done here and join you outside before it gets chilly again!