Rottweilers Ate My Laptop

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

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

Upgrades ahead!

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I peeked in on WordPress.org a couple of times during the day, but the final release of 2.8 hadn’t gone live by the time I left work. I just looked again and it’s live now. I’m debating whether to “relax” until bedtime by installing it here.

You probably think that is a strange definition of “relax.” Especially since I’m already knee-deep in the “relaxing” activity of resurrecting my old blogs, which were running on Movable Type 3.17 when I left them. Movable Type is now up to version 4.26 so I don’t expect a particularly smooth move. I’m debating whether to move these blogs from Movable Type to WordPress as well.

Speaking of blogs, look down there at my count… I’m halfway there for the 75% Challenge! We’re a NaBloPoMo group who knew from the get-go that we were not going to blog every day in 2009, but we were willing to commit to 75% or 274 days. So far, so good!

UPDATE 6/11/09 11:00 AM: My auto-update bar didn’t show up until sometime after I left the house and before I arrived at work today. I was too lazy to do a non-auto-update last night (although I did spend some time getting the MT blogs ready to update) so I’m changing the time frame for the last paragraph below!

If I am still here in the morning later today, you know that my “relaxation” was successful. If not… I will be back sometime tomorrow with a technology fail story. Still Ssounds like a win-win, huh?

(NaBloPoMo | June ‘09: 10 of 30 | 75% Challenge: 137 of 274)

Observations, more tech-y than not

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  • New iPhone 3GS is really tempting, until I come back to the part of having to switch to AT&T. Cut-copy-paste will finally be enabled, as will MMS. Oh, wait. Back to that AT&T thing again. No MMS right away for AT&T customers. Plus, less bars in more places. I will be fair and say that AT&T has less bars in more of the places that I have to or want to be. I’m sure coverage is fine for many people who are not me. Still, no deal, yet again.
  • Also not making the cut for me, even though as a longtime Palm PDA user I would have loved it to: Palm Pre. I would so love a smartphone like this with touchscreen and “real” keyboard both, and an included navigation app, too. No SD card is a minus, and having to switch to Sprint would be a bigger minus. See above about coverage in the places that I have to or want to be.
  • This Facebook user name thing is probably going to bite me in the ass. Hopefully the other 30-something people with my same first and last name will be asleep at the switch, so I don’t get the lame versions of the user name.
  • And I’ve said it before and will probably say it again: does every damn thing have to be a freaking video? I don’t always want to sit through even a few minutes of video. Sometimes I just want bullet points that I can skim in a few seconds. Can’t you give me both?

(NaBloPoMo | June ‘09: 9 of 30 | 75% Challenge: 136 of 274)

WordPress 2.8 is almost here

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I should actually say that the stable release version of WordPress 2.8 is almost here. The beta version has been out since mid-May, and Release Candidate 1 is out now.

Much of what I’ve read about 2.8 seems to be about incremental improvements rather than major innovation (not that there are no innovations as it seems that Widgets have gotten a complete overhaul). And of course, with every update comes the fear that my favorite theme or plugins will break.

My big hope was for improved performance, as in speed. The only reference I see to that is something about faster loading of admin pages. Obviously I won’t complain if that is true, but not quite the performance overhaul I’d really like.

I will probably do the update sooner rather than later. I feel pretty brave following the server move. What could go wrong? Heh, don’t answer that yet!

(NaBloPoMo | June ‘09: 8 of 30 | 75% Challenge: 135 of 274)

Nothing much to say tonight

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I have a number of things I should be doing on the computer, both online and offline. Instead I am writing this post and watching the weekend replays of older CSI: NY, CSI: Miami and Cold Case. Well, maybe not Cold Case as I would like to be asleep by then.

Somehow I missed tonight’s CSI: NY episode, “One Wedding and a Funeral,” the first time around. The storyline sends Mac Taylor back to Chicago and as the episode closes, he is getting a mysterious phone call just after he’s looked at some of the rock pieces from famous places that are embedded into the wall of the Chicago Tribune Tower (in the CSI: NY storyline, they are clues in a puzzle that started out in New York).

My first job in downtown Chicago was in the Mandel Building, which no longer exists, but was right behind the Tribune Tower. I always enjoyed taking a minute to look at some of the rock pieces before or after work. I still don’t work all that far away from the Tribune Tower, but it’s been quite a while since I’ve been around there. I never have seen the piece of steel from the World Trade Center that is now in the wall. Maybe I’ll walk over there one day this week if the weather is nice.

(NaBloPoMo | June ‘09: 7 of 30 | 75% Challenge: 134 of 274)

Godspeed, Donna

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This evening, we said a final goodbye to Donna Hedl, Freya’s breeder and a great friend in Rottweilers. Donna passed away on Wednesday. It was quite a shock. Even though she had been fighting cancer for quite a long while, she had been doing well lately and had been out and about to many dog events over the last month.

The last time I saw her was at the ATTS temperament test last month. I hadn’t seen Donna for quite some time prior to that, and she hadn’t seen Freya in even longer. Our group had a great time socializing, and both of the dogs that Donna bred passed the test, along with most of our group’s dogs.

Freya was a gift from Donna and her then-husband Joe following the unexpected death of my heart dog Heidi on Christmas Eve 2003. After they split up, it was more so Donna who kept in touch with me about Freya and the other littermates, and who always had a moment to hear about Freya’s ups and downs.

Godspeed, Donna. Thank you forever for Freya and for your friendship.

(NaBloPoMo | June ‘09: 6 of 30 | 75% Challenge: 133 of 274)