Quicken Documentation

September 27, 2003 by

the first time i saw paris….

ok, i’ve never actually seen paris. i’ve driven through paris, kentucky and paris, texas; but neither was particularly exciting.

i’ve been ignoring my webbage today, while reading up on the exciting world of financial management (which is a snobby way to say that i spent a couple hours reading quicken documentation so that i could figure out how to do what i wanted to do).

if only it were as easy to organize life as it is to lay out a web page. even if you allow for the nonsense of browsers and platforms, it’s still boatloads easier to smack a table on a page than to figure out how on earth to file your papers so that you can find them again, let alone how to enter all your bills so that they are actually paid when you actually have money in the bank. banks are picky about wanting you to have money when you send out checks.

but enough of that nonsense. i’m tired. my body is complaining about the 4 miles that i’ve walked today. it’s a lovely, crisp autumn night. i believe that my bed will be warm and snuggly. not as warm and snuggly as it could be if {fill in this blank with the name of an excellent hunk} were there to be my snugglupagus, but it will do. besides, it’s late. maybe he’s snuck in there when i wasn’t looking. he’s bound to be sleepy and ready for bed by now too.

Filed under Journal

Converting from Blogger with Dreamweaver

September 26, 2003 by

i’ve managed to use the dreamweaver template that i created to convert the base pages for the site. none of the subpages, like the lists of ten themselves. and i skipped the travelogues, mainly cuz i’m not sure what to do with them. they’re more journal entries than anything else. i may just convert them into archives for the changelog. i could move over those and the older changelogs to create past entries that i just hardcode links for into the blogger template. lots of the other stuff is hardcoded, so why not that too?

not sure how much i’ll get done on all this during the weekend, but at least i have a plan. i have some other things to get to—like napping, sleeping, and resting.

Filed under Journal

Discombobularity

September 26, 2003 by

it’s beginning to feel as if i spend as much time fighting with mac vs. windows issues as i do actually writing anything. font sizes may be working now. but really who knows? i’m in such a state of despair that the muse of discontent settled upon me with sad rhymings.

i am so hungry i could eat a squid
and jesus is getting jiggy with the mayo
my father says i’m a very bad kid
he’s just mad cuz i won’t obey — oh!
the wheels on the bus go round and round
but the monkey in the back is screaming
he’d really like to but he can’t sit down
cuz the fish sticks can’t stop dreaming
it is so sad that things are thus:
the man right there in the greasy pants
is most certainly not Locke’s Gus
yet singingly, he does the dance
i’m just a rhinestone cowboy
oh dear puddin’ come to me
you make this life a pure joy
for jesus, the mayo, and me

i pray this woe will lift soon. it’s all a matter of discombobularity however, and no one can really know what turn bob will take next.

Filed under Journal

Browser Compatibility Rant

September 25, 2003 by

so i think i’ve finally managed to get all the blogger doodahs to blog out onto the page in the right font face and size. you gotta really, really, really wanna make things consistent to stick with it long enough to get things right. it’s a shame how hard it is to make a consistently professional-looking page. i mean, think about it. it doesn’t matter what word processor you use. you can get a nice looking page with any of them. even allowing for differences in printers and the paper you put in them, you get something that looks nice.

we’re in a world where html wysiwyg is more like wysiwymgoagd (wysiwy might get on a good day). maybe you have to look at all of this as a product of the competition in the browser world. but frankly, i’d rather support a browser that played nicely with the rules. the bells and whistles don’t interest me.

of course, my preference doesn’t really matter. it’s all about what everyone else uses. a page has to work for whoever may come along and want to read it. it’s about the audience, not the author. and as long as people are blocked from making personal choices by administrators and IT folks, individual preferences are going to be limited.

maybe i’m overly pessimistic. ok, i am overly pessimistic. just ask anyone who knows me. the thing is on this issue, i’d really like to be more optimistic. when i came to blogger and started playing around with the pages, i really wanted to believe that the system could work for a variety of people (and therefore, a variety of browsers and platforms). that kind of optimism just gets anyone designing for the web into trouble though. it’s a sad reality of the way the computer world works right now.

Filed under Personal Journal

Site Redesign

September 24, 2003 by

so the homepage entries mostly work, and they’re readable in older versions of netscape. but i have to say that the layout is pretty ugly. for some unknown reason, the template has padded out the vertical space. i’m not sure if it’s the stylesheet or something that i’ve put in the html. either way, i’m not going to do anything else till i look at this thing on windows. (so kind of microsoft to give me reasons to procrastinate)

i’m guessing that it will take a while to convert the entire site to the new design, but perhaps i can get at least the main pages listed in the menus on the right done by the end of the month.

the one thing that i’m still unable to figure out is how blogger is deciding what a week is. i can find the settings to tell it what i want it to do, but it is including 9/14 info twice. maybe it’s because i have so few entries? for now, i’m not going to worry about it. just note that it’s happening.

Filed under Personal Journal

1/24 Journal Update

September 24, 2003 by

and now i’ve applied the new template to these entries, using tables rather than layers so that it works on older versions of netscape. still working on the details, but making progress.

Filed under Personal Journal

Another 1/24 Journal

September 24, 2003 by

ok, so after a little over an hour, i redesigned the lists of tens page to use the new design. i also tried dividing the lists into categories. listing them chronologically worked, but wasn’t necessarily the best idea now that there are so many. i hope that this subject-based index will be more useful.

Filed under Personal Journal

9/24 Journal

September 24, 2003 by

it feels like it’s been weeks, but i realize that it’s not even ten days. so what i’ve done is work on a table-based layout of my own that mimics the look that I want.

that, and i organized all my files, well, the paper files anyway; and i wrote a TechNotes entry on Microsoft’s decision to require credit cards from anyone who wants to participate in their Chat.

but now to get on with working on this template so that I can use it throughout the site. i’m so tired of the layout as it is.

Filed under Personal Journal

Cross-Browser Complications

September 14, 2003 by

so i’ve just figured out that this looks like hell on netscape/mac so um, back to rethinking things i guess.

Filed under Personal Journal

Converting to WordPress

September 13, 2003 by

so far, so good, though it did take annoyingly long to get to the archive bit to work and even then i had to do trickery on my side rather than letting it work as it is apparently supposed to. the sftp doodah that they’ve added does make this whole thing a lot smoother, and i think that managing the length of the page will be easier. still things to figure out, and we all know that i’m really just procrastinating because i don’t want to get my life in order. i’m always avoiding my life.

Filed under Personal Journal

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