OK, so WP-Spam Free has been causing problems. So I’m going to turn it off and see if I can find a suitable replacement–preferably something that doesn’t involved captchas.

If you have trouble commenting, please let me know immediately, and I’ll try something different.

Commentary on the Technology Poll here, including “other” if you chose it.

You know, I really thought more people would have two or more cell phones.

I was also expecting snarky comments on my options. :)

Several friends have noticed that we’re suddenly being friended more frequently.

I’d been pretty much checking out Facebook every couple weeks (mostly to keep tabs on my cousins), until sometime last month when I started getting contacts from people I hadn’t heard from in years.

Which is cool, because it’s nice to see how people are doing.

But it’s also made me somewhat uncomfortable.

As I said before, I’ve been using it for the past year and a half to keep tabs on my cousins, and a couple of friends–primarily friends from the Internet, but some friends that I knew/know in person as well. And it’s been fun for that, but the applications I quickly grew bored with. If I’m going to waste my time on the Internet, I’d rather waste it leaving comments on friends blogs than testing my trivia knowledge (Yes, the Princess Bride trivia game is addictive, which is why I stopped playing.)

But as I said, things suddenly picked up, and that’s where I ran into difficulty.

As I’ve said before, I really didn’t like high school. I was a geek, I was unattractive, and my depression and OCD were out of control. That is not a recipe for happiness, let me tell you. So with some exceptions, I don’t have fond memories of that time in my life.

Part of the reason is because I felt like an outcast. (See: unattractive geekiness) I often felt like I was on the outside looking in, and it was a really horrible feeling.

Then I went to college, and eventually from there I graduated, and at some point after that (not immediately mind you) I started to get my life together. (And that’s about all that needs to be said about that.)

So what does this have to do with Facebook?

It has to do with “friending” people.

I remember what it was like to not have friends, and to have people who didn’t want to be my friends. I got over it, but I remember the feeling.

Which is why I really dislike it when people I really don’t want to get back in contact friend me.

Let’s face it, I’ve got this place that I’ve had for years. If someone really wants to know about me they can come here and read about me and comment if they want. I can’t keep anyone from reading here, although I can control what people say. (NOTE: Unless your comment is spam or incredibly crude and offensive, I won’t delete it. You remain obnoxious I may disemvowel you, but I won’t delete you.)

And that’s fine with me.

Facebook isn’t the same way.

You have to choose to let someone be your friend.

What if I don’t want to be Facebook friends with someone? Isn’t refusing to friend someone kind of mean? Isn’t it exclusionary? Isn’t it the same thing that made me unhappy when I was younger, being purposefully excluded?

I know. I’m agonizing over a decision that someone may or may not even notice, because I’m remembering that someone was mean to me 20 years ago.

But it does makes uncomfortable. I must either be a liar and pretend to be friends with someone who I don’t consider a friend, or I purposefully exclude them.

So far, I’ve just ignored those friend requests, not knowing what to do with them. But it still makes me feel like a jerk. Especially since I like being able to keep track of people with whom I’ve lost contact. But I’m afraid that as Facebook continues to expand, I’m going to be faced with this dilemma more and more often.

So what do you all do? (Other than not having anything at all to do with Facebook. That horse has already left the barn. Guess that’s the problem with being an early tech adopter.) Or am I the only person in the world to feel guilty about things like this?

Here are some cat pictures combined with pictures of my new netbook, to give you some perspective on the size of the netbook of course. (Why did I get the “Pearl” colored netbook? Because it was $10 cheaper, and I didn’t care enough to spend $10 for black (now if cobalt blue had been a choice…)

Here are Kit and the Netbook. Since Kit’s a relatively small cat (at least compared to Kat) it doesn’t seem all that impressive.

Perhaps this gives a little better perspective?

Or this?

And finally a cat free comparison:

Laptop, netbook, cellphone.

Michael is an enabler.

I mean, he actually allowed me to convince him that I needed a netbook before my Dad’s surgery on Friday.

After all, I need something to distract me while I’m waiting, right?

And not only is it running Linux (which I really want to become comfortable with, so I can get away from Windows), it also has Open Office, and bluetooth, so I can use Michael’s phone to access the internet.

Wheeee!

And I had a couple Amazon reward certificates hanging around, so that makes it all better, right?

Michael made some comment about, “our new computer.” Sure thing, dear. Keep believing that.

So…

I modified my css to run the following:

#content a {
margin-top:-9em;
padding-top:9em;
}

#content a:link {
margin-top:0em;
padding-top:0em;
}
#content a:visited {
margin-top:0em;
padding-top:0em;
}
#content a:active {
margin-top:0em;
padding-top:0em;
}
#content a:hover {
margin-top:0em;
padding-top:0em;
}

To work in Firefox and Seamonkey, but not Opera or Safari. (Have I mentioned that I dislike both opera and safari? Why is it so hard to find things like “clear the cache”? Grr!)

IE 6 & 7 work because they aren’t using the fixed positioning or CSS menus.

I’ve got some other things I’d like to try though, and we’ll see from there. I’m still trying css first, because I really don’t want to change all the pages that use those style sheets (and there are a lot of ’em).

ADDENDUM the First:

Found a different fix for Firefox that doesn’t work in Opera and Safari.

<a name=”A” class=”anchor” id=”A”></a>
with
.anchor {
margin-top:-9em;
padding-top:9em;
}

in the style sheet.

So I’ve got a technical question. That means most of you should wander off and go write Nathan some Vogon Poetry.

So here’s the question:

On my books pages, specifically the main page for each genre, I’m using fixed positioning to allow the content to scroll while the header image and navigation remain in place (yes, yes, yes, I have a separate style sheet for stupid IE that doesn’t freaking work correctly.)

My problem is that I have anchors throughout the document. So if instead of selecting an author from the drop down menus you click on a letter of the alphabet, you jump down the page.

The problem is that the content jumps *under* the header. Although, with the author menu the way it is, I’m not sure how many people use the alphabetical menu, it would still be nice if it the content viewers wanted to see didn’t scroll under the header image.

I found one or two suggestions, neither of which worked properly for me.

Does anyone have a good solution for this? I’ve got three separate fixed elements (header image, alphabet navigation, side navigation), and am using ems for my positioning of the content section, but I don’t think that should make a difference. I tried playing with positive and negative margins, and ended up with a mess–probably because I was doing it wrong, since the idea of positive and negative margins seems like it would work. Except that it didn’t. When I applied them to links, it screwed up regular hyperlinks. When I applied it to a specific style, things were screwed up in a different manner.

Anyone?

So last night after dinner, I proceeded to rebuild my database. I dumped everything into Access, and created new tables from there. Why Access? Because I can *see* what is happening in Access, whereas in MySQL I have to take extra steps to see my results. The rebuilding wasn’t really as bad as I thought it would be, as I only needed relatively simple Access queries to manipulate my data.

From there, I uploaded the tables into MySQL, and proceeded to rebuild my php files to query the database.

With a minimum amount of bickering and quibbling, Michael and I were able to do that, although he kept trying to make one query much harder than it needed to be. Needless to say, by the time we finished up last night it was past my bedtime, which is why I didn’t have a post ready for this morning.

But the important thing is the new database is up and all public queries are working.

Now I just have to rebuild the administrative back end to allow me to add, edit, and delete books from the database. Hopefully now that the tables have better relationships, the rebuilding will be easier to do.

Hopefully.

Grandmom: What are you two arguing about with the computer?
Michael: Michelle has a database of her books and we’re trying too…
Michelle: Stop. We’re trying to get answers from the computer, and we can’t figure out how to ask the right questions.
Grandmom: Ah!

So, many years ago, what is now my on-line book database started out life as a simple Excel workbook.

When I had to learn MS Access several years ago, I took that Excel file, and tried to convert it into an Access file. It worked… ok. But at least got me comfortable with the basics of Access.

A year or so later I started working with the woman who was helping me re-write our Access classes, and as an exercise she helped me again convert my Excel file into an Access database, and this time I had a better idea of what I was going, and built queries and life was seemingly good.

Well, when I wanted to learn MySQL, I took that Access database and imported it into MySQL, and that’s how my book database began. I’ve used that database to learn to write queries of various types, and all kinds of PHP/MySQL manipulations. And I’ve gone on to write other databases since then.

Well, I’ve been tying to learn more of MySQL, and been playing with my database and been running into a LOT of trouble. It’s been frustrating, but I’ve mostly been able to get things to work. And as a matter of course the more I learn the more I discover that I should have done things differently, and gone back and changed this in light of this.

Well, yesterday I had a problem I couldn’t figure out, so I had Michael look at it. He was playing with the queries, and then asked to look at the database structure. Since he was driving, I was looking at everything from a different angle, and I suddenly realized the whole damned database had been set up wrong.

That’s right. Instead of having foreign keys liking the databases together, I repeated every bit of data in multiple tables.

(deep breath)

So I’ve dumped the entire thing back into Access, and I’m going to see if I can actually repair the damage.

Wish me luck.

I’ve spent the last month working on my PHP/MySQL skills.

Now I fully admit I’m not a master of the subject, but I’ve managed to beat my book database into submission.

There are still things I want to learn to do, such as making changes to multiple selected records, but I’m pretty sure I’ll eventually figure it out.

Meanwhile, I invite you to peruse my library database, and to make suggestions as to improvements. (Yes, I need to eventually make a single search form that includes genre with the other fields or allows you to select multiple genres, but that’s coming. Eventually.)

So, I’ve been looking at my sidebar, and I think I need some more reviews.

Your task, should you choose to accept it, is to review me (Michelle), and post it on your blog. If I like your review, I’ll post an excerpt and link to it.

Gina, you’re already on the sidebar, from a comment a couple years ago. :)

It came! It came!

The process was, of course, far more painful than expected. Primarily because we have a corner armoire cabinet entertainment center. If there is anything more difficult to deal with, I can’t say what it is.

View the insanity behind the cut. (more…)