Published on
February 28, 2006.
Never give an imaginary cookie to a 14 Month Old. I am speaking from recently gained experience.
Among the numerous other toys that our spoiled older child has accumulated of the few years of his life is a set of “play” McDonald’s food. Among them are RJ’s and Tony’s favorites, cookies, fries and chicken nuggets. They frequently get grilled on the toy grill, and have been “eaten” too many times to count. However, this time was different. Tony is finally at an age where he comprehends much of what we say. Like any child that age he comes running when he hears the word cookie.
We were in the basement, the boys playroom, like we are most evenings, when RJ began playing with his “food.” He said, “Goof boys share, so I am going to share.”
He proceeded to give everyone a piece of this imaginary cookie. When it was Tony’s turn, Tony delightfully reached for some nonexistent cookie. Upon the realization that there was no cookie, Tony lost all composure. I am firmly convinced passers assumed that something heinous was transpiring in our house. Tony let out a burst of blood curdling screams that could have roused someone in a coma. Yes, it was that loud.
Like I said: Never give an imaginary cookie to a 14 Month Old.
Published on
February 23, 2006.
Google has launched a free page hosting service. The editing page and a published page are pictured above. I would have posted the link to the page, but I used my personal address, and the subdomain name is your gmail user name.
This looks more promising than a lot of the free web space places that I have signed up for before, and editing the HTML(link) is easy. There is an option to upload files, up to 100M of storage, for your web pages.
Published on
February 21, 2006.
Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof;
There is a really good write up and a great discussion going on over at Say Anything. The basic premise of the post is that overemphasizing no law respecting an establishment of religion by the ACLU and like-minded groups, they are suppressing the free exercise thereof.
I have long felt this way, but never put it so succinctly. Go check it out.
Published on
February 19, 2006.
It is a wonderful thing to see the world through the yes of a child. I am amazed every time RJ comes up with something that we have not taught him, and even more amazed what derivatives he comes up with on the things we did teach him.
According to RJ, the four magic words are:
- Please.
- Thank you.
- You’re welcome.
- Abracadabra.
Yes, I know that these are not all “words,” but rather are phrases, but RJ is three, so I will give him some leeway.
RJ’s latest revelation is that he has a brain, but it is little. I do not know where he comes up with this stuff, but Beth and I were rolling on the floor laughing.
Published on
February 18, 2006.
Not that I think too highly of FrontPage (anymore), I am disappointed to see it drop from Microsoft’s roster.
Microsoft will close the book on its FrontPage Web-design program with the release of Office 2007, formerly known as Office 12, late this year.
Microsoft acquired FrontPage in the mid-1990s, and it soon outdistanced Adobe’s PageMill and other popular low-cost what-you-see-is-what-you-get Web-creation tools.
FrontPage was the software that I used to build my first web site. That was over a decade ago. It was a simple site for a college project. My undergraduate degree is in music education, if that tells you anything about my complete ignorance at the time. I saved that site for nearly four years before it finally saw the world wide web. I went out and bought FrontPage the day before I registered my first web site, just to update and upload the site I had began four years earlier.
I continued to use FrontPage for probably the next six or seven months. Then I got persuaded, mostly because of the lack of any other option, to update my company web site. Of course FrontPage was not available, and I was introduced to DreamWeaver. It was with the introduction of DreamWeaver that I actually started looking at code instead of using a WYSIWYG editor. It was a crash course for me, and to this day I can definitely say that I have learned just enough to be dangerous.
With that little knowledge of code I switched to using Notepad++ as my editor of choice. It is small, quick and supports syntax highlighting, which I am lost without. It also integrates nicely into Firefox via use of the run menu. That, in conjunction with the Web Developer Toolbar and other great extensions, is my complete toolkit.
The other day I was asked to update a not as yet functional section of the intranet where I work. As I embarked on this task, the person I was helping opened FrontPage and, looking back, I had to chuckle.
Published on
February 14, 2006.
This is the second, out of five, Valentines Days where Beth and I have been together. The last one had a bit more hustle thought. We were preparing to move her and the boys back to Ohio while I finished my tour of duty. I miss the Marine Corps, but it is on days like today that I really relish the my decision to become a civilian again and spend more time with my family.
Although I believe Valentine’s Day to be a “Hallmark Holiday,” I do believe in the sentiment. I am lucky to have such a wonderful woman in my life, and I am glad to have a day to reflect on that fact. I love you Beth.
Published on
February 14, 2006.
Measure Map has been aquired by Google. I had actually read this earlier in the day, but I just received this email:
I want to share some important news with our earliest users of Measure Map.
Since its inception, my colleagues and I have seen tremendous potential for Measure Map to influence how people blog, and how they understand participation on the Web. We have always expected it to be big, and as such, our desire was to give Measure Map its start and then send it out into the world to grow and evolve into a strong, meaningful application.
Through the dedication of a fantastic team, along with your tremendous support in the form of feedback, feature requests, and overwhelmingly positive comments, have built a product that is fundamentally different from every other analytics application available today. We’re both grateful and proud.
So I said there was news, and here it is: I’m writing you to announce that Measure Map has been acquired by Google, effective today. For the near term, you will see no difference in its operations. In the not so distant future, you can expect great things from this acquisition. We couldn’t be happier to find such an ideal home for Measure Map, and are thrilled at the possibilities.
I currently use both Google Analytics and Measure Map to track statistics of my sites, but this site has always been my test bed. I would like to see more analytic type of functionality with the format Measure Map tracking, although lately the comment tracking has not been working for me. I also hope that the statistics RSS will gain some more functionality.
Published on
February 12, 2006.
I finally got around to upgrading the photo gallery from Gallery 1.5 to Gallery 2.0.
Published on
February 10, 2006.
Beth took today off. It was originally for a doctor’s appointment, but the need for the appointment was no longer there, so she cancelled. Her supervisor said that it was too late not to take the day off, so she had a day off and nothing to do. Unfortunately, I had to go to work as usual.
This day off afforded Beth the opportunity to sleep in as long as the kids would let her. Both of the kids sleep with their doors closed and are good about not coming out until we come in and get them. Although, until today, Tony had no other recourse.
Beth was awakened by one of the children pounding on their door. That is not too unusual. Beth got up to get RJ and then saw that RJ was still sleeping. Tony had gotten out of his crib!
It is now only a matter of weeks before we will take down the crib and put Tony in a toddler bed so that he does not fall out of the crib and hurt himself.
