Which Action Hero Would You Be? v. 2.0

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Today is my Dad’s last day of radiation therapy. He’s had a surprisingly easy time of it, with very few side effects, and the only real issues come from the five times a week drive to Wheeling. (Though to put things in perspective, if we all lived or worked in a big city, that may well have been the time or distance of a commute.)

Everything looks good, we’ll just have to see how his next batch of tests turn out.

Happy Rain Day!

At least the West Virginia front.

I’ve been learning PHP like a mad-woman. I went through a pretty basic book, so now I think I’m the equivalent of someone who can point at objects and name them, and gets the gist of what other people are saying, but would be completely unable to have an in depth conversation on my own.

However, I’m learning. (Notice the countdown on the sidebar. Of course in 26 days I have to come up to something new to count down to.)

And speaking of languages, here’s some time wasting for you…

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This is why I’ve always been afraid to read books at the bookstore!

There’s an interesting post at Stuff on my Cat asking what nicknames you call your cat.

Glancing through the list, I realized that I definitely do not have the same relationship with my cats that these people do with their cats.

Kat: Mr. Furry, Mr. Pissy, Sir
Kit: Kit, Evil

Both of them respond to “GET OFF THE COUNTER!”

Michelle: (Banging pots in the sink while doing dishes) Clang! Clang! Clang!

Michael & Grandmom: (singing) Went the trolley!

Michelle: …

Happy Birthday to my FAVORITE husband!

Done!

Yay!

If it weren’t for the fact that I absolutely abhor crowds, I could have had the last Harry Potter book in my hands right now.
However, I hate crowds, so Amazon will be sending it to my house tomorrow.

So my original plan was that once the book arrived I would remain incommunicado until I finished it. Unfortunately for me, plans were thrown awry, and I must instead head out to my parent’s house at 5, bringing my Dad’s surprise birthday dinner with me. (He’ll be really surprised, since tomorrow isn’t his birthday.)

I was thinking today about all the Harry Potter mania, and why I’m going to read the book tomorrow. It’s not as if I’m absolutely in love with the series. I think it’s good, and I really like some of the things JK Rowling as done with the story and the characters, but it’s by no means my favorite series (See Garth Nix,Lian Hearn, and Runaways for some other excellent series for younger readers)

So why have I fallen victim to Harry Potter mania? It’s simple: I don’t want to learn the ending before I get a chance to read it myself. So the only way to do that is to finish reading the book before going anywhere on the Internet or listening to any news other than NPR (they already promised they wouldn’t discuss any details.)

Plus, if I don’t read it right away, Michael will read it first, and I hate that.

That said, there are a couple of things that will make or break the last book. If Snape isn’t redeemed, will be more than sorely disappointed. I’ll be pissed off. I don’t believe that there are many people in the world that are beyond redemption, and I will be royally pissed off it she makes him evil for the sake of being evil.

I’ll also be unhappy if the door is left open for sequels. To that end, I won’t even be unhappy if Harry dies, because then she won’t be tempted into write more about him. Sometimes it is important to end while you’re still on top.

Other than that, I don’t care what happens, as long as I find out by myself and don’t hear it from anyone else.

Well, I have the majority of work done on the Books section of my website. Things don’t look much different, but I’m hoping that the file sizes will be smaller, and that might make the load times faster.

Might.

The other house cleaning was cleaning the actual house. Specifically the basement. We filled about 10 half-empty paint cans with kitty litter to put them out in the trash, Michael threw away the vast majority of stuff his mother dumped on him (we’re not having kids, so we really don’t need his christening outfit) and generally got rid of a LOT of stuff that had been shoved into corners and not so much in the corners but more in the way from the work we did on the basement in the fall.

It’s a wonderful feeling to be able to actually move around without constantly running into boxes and cans and bags all full of junk.

Of course we also have a pile of stuff to go to the computer recycling center, to the everything else recycling center, to Christian Help, and to the used bookstore. It never fails to astound me, how much crap we accumulate. Three boxes of journal articles and class notes went out. Old text books from undergraduate school (though for some reason I kept the organic chemistry model kit). I’ve still got an entire box of craft supplies that I’m wondering why I kept, except that it’s all usable. (Anyone want a box of craft supplies? I don’t have the space to either sew or do crafty things right now.)

So my vacation hasn’t been overly relaxing so far, but I did get to spend the better part of two days with my aunt and uncle, which was very nice. There’s a huge difference for family visits centered around family events (weddings, birthdays, etc) versus nothing planned and you can just sit around and talk. As much as I like weddings and birthday parties, I prefer the later kind of visit.

Now that I’ve settled in with WordPress, I’ve decided to take what I’ve learned about php and redo other portions of the site. Essentially, I’m making a whole bunch of work for myself right now, so I’ll have less work for myself in the future.

At least that’s what I’m telling myself.

I’m also learning more than I ever wanted to know about .htaccess files.

And I’m sure you’re now completely jealous of how I’m spending my week of summer vacation.

I have to say that despite the fact that it’s been a frustrating evening for dealing with computers, none of those frustrations are related to WordPress. Everything with WordPress is simple and straight forward and as customizable as I’d hoped it would be–after learning the basics of php that is.

Now I just have to see what happens with the comment spam.

And the old pages should redirect here. If you run into difficulty, please let me know.

Otherwise, now that I know enough php to be dangerous, I’m going to do a little bit of work on the site. So expect cursing to continue for the foreseeable future.

Here’s the new place… looks an awful lot like the old place.