Asa Jay's weblog

Sometimes when surfing the vastness that is the internet, you stumble on something that makes you say “hey that’s neat” or “I sure could use that”.  That recently happend to me, again.  I discovered a tool called “Performancing for Firefox”, and in turn, discovered I needed to upgrade WordPress on my various blogs.

“Performancing for Firefox” is a very cool plug-in for Firefox, that allows you to edit multiple blogs, in one window.  That is to say, for example, that I open a new tab in Firefox, and fire up the plugin.  On the left is an editor window, very much like what I see when logged into one of my blogs and writing a post.  The right side has a listing of my blogs, catagories, history, notes, etc.  I simply type my post in the editor and publish it.  All very neat and clean, except that it doesn’t work with the version of WordPress I had installed.

To configure “Performancing for Firebox”, I had to point to a file called “xmlrpc.php” in the root of my WordPress installation.  Hmmm, there wasn’t one there.  Off to the WordPress web site and I find I’m a few version behind.  Well, might as well upgrade.

Following the instructions on the WordPress website, I backed up my databases, blog files, etc. and then installed the new version of WordPress on each blog site.  A bit of re-configuring, one wrong click and a database restore, and I’m back in business.  Although the look of this blog hasn’t changed, it will have to.  The new version of WordPress uses “themes”, and my old index page fails to get comments working, which I’d really like to do now.  I’ll be working that in the future.

Back to “Performancing for Firefox” and I can now point to the file, it finds my blog and populates the information.  Now I can review past postings, make new postings, and do a few other things.  Very nice.

I’ll try to post links a bit later.

Asa Jay

Or at least phase one is complete. Phase one was designed to put a deck on two side of our home, to cover the front door and living room, dining room doors. This would allow folks to use our front door more easily, as well as simply walk down toward the large open deck adjoining the end of the house. Phase two is a project for the future, where we extend the deck to the other side of the house, over-hanging the garage. Phase two is totally unnecessary and we may never actually build it.

Completing this project allowed us to open the exterior door to the dining room; something we had not been able to do since the drop-off was quite high. Now, we have the BBQ set up on the deck, some nice entry mats, and it’s all set. We received our final inpection last week, passing with no further work necessary. Sweet.

Due to the design of our deck, I was unable to use the last 44 inches of many boards; I needed at least 48 inches in most cases. This left me with quite a few small leftovers. What to do? Build a patio table of course. After reviewing different designs, I settled on a home-brew plan for an octagon table. At just under two feet for the flat sides, I was able to get two outside “sides” from each leftover board, then work my way in. A total of five rings make up the table, with approximately an eigth-inch between each ring, I have a table almost five feet across at the points, and just around four feet nine inches across the flat sides. Oh and man is it heavy! Our deck is made of Nexwood, and so it the patio table. No worries about it decaying much. This makes me very happy. Now I just need to make some chairs to go with the table.

The deck was my major summer project this year, 2005. I’m glad it’s done, and just in time too; we had snow this last weekend. Now, my projects move indoors. Perhaps this winter, I’ll get some new walls tipped up in our basement. I’d really like to get our root cellar done soon.

Yea, it finally happened. Sam said bye-bye to me this morning as I left for work. After several months of both Shelley and I prompting him with bye-bye’s of our own, he finally got it. It was a proud a moment, since I’ve not been able to make out any other words from him to date.

Sam is going on two and a half years old right now. We have other friends with kids about the same age, and they are already talking. I remember Sam’s 18-month checkup with his pediatrician, who said he should be up to 18 words at that point; Sam didn’t speak one, but he knew and could understand many. It’s been a point of worry for me, Sam not talking. He mostly blabbers in unintelligble, meaningless ways. We’ve tried getting him to say “please” and “thank you”, or perhaps even “diaper” when he needs a change. It all seems in vein, until today.

We’ve been told that many kids don’t start speaking until later, and then, they usually start in almost complete sentences. I still worry about Sam, and his ability to speak. Today though, seemed to usher a small breakthrough. As I was putting on my coat and giving Shelley a kiss, we both said it was time for daddy to go bye-bye, and Sam, as usual, came over to the stairs to wave good-bye and blabber something. This time however, he simply said buh-bye. Containing my excitement, I simply looked at him and said “that’s right, buh-bye”, and we kept repeating it back and forth as I descended the stairs.

It may not be much, but it’s a start. It may not be long before I wish he’d -stop- talking.

Asa Jay

. . . I don’t write enough.

I’ve had this blog up for months now; somewhere around seven months I think. I guess part of the problem with just the blogging part, is that I was just changing jobs, or rather, I was switching from working with one company, to working with another. The transition took a lot of my time, and energy. Then, things got brutal at work.

My manager ended up quitting, probably because he started to see he might be fired. Our lead RF engineer left, and most recently, our Lead Software Architect left. Bummers all. I had wished to start mentoring under someone new, but it didn’t work out. Oh well.

I am again on my own, with no mentor. Not that I’m struggling; there is simply -no- leadership in our office. Partly that’s not a bad thing, as we all do our part as a team. The problem is that our Project Manager and other lead people are in an office all the way across the country. We are mushrooms.

But I digress. I think too much, I don’t write enough. I used to. In fact, I used to write more than I read. I have some stuff on line here at asajay.com. I’ve put up some of the poems I wrote long ago. I have many short stories as well. I only tried to get published once or twice. You see, I know I’m not -that- good. I used to write for my own enjoyment. It was like playing with LEGO.

With Lego, in the early days, you were presented with bricks. The imagination had to create, and using the bricks helped you bring the imagination into reality or least “play reality”. Eventually, through High School, I started writing as new way to bring my imagination to life. I would write, read, re-write, read, put on a shelf. I still have most everything I ever wrote in High School, and College. Oh, to me it was good, but again, not worth publishing. I’ve not really written in years though.

I was writing just as personal computers got started. I worked with a TRS-80 Model I, in Algebra class at first. Later, as a teachers aid, I moved up to a TRS-80 Model II which only certain teachers (and teachers aids) could use. I eventually talked my parents into buying a Tandy 1000EX. I thought using a computer would help me write.

I took a typing class as part of my senior year. I thought I would need to learn how to type, and perhaps how to type quickly, if I was ever to satisfy this urge to write. I passed second in my class at well over 40 words a minute. Today, on a good day, I can clear almost 80 words a minute. Pretty cool; not the fastest, but pretty darn good.

The fastest typist I ever knew, was one of the admins at our high school. She could type upwards of 200 words a minute. Using an IBM Selectric II, it sounded like automatic weapons fire when you passed by the office.

So I figured computers were going to allow me to type all my stories, poems and what-not. The sad reality was, the more I worked to get into computers, the less I wrote. Eventually, I forgot about writing atogether. It would only come in small spurts, like every 10 years. Not cool.

Today, I don’t seem to have the same imagination that I used to. Today, I get my imagination “fix” by watching other peoples imaginations come alive on TV. Blah. Movies, TV shows and books influenced my early writing; sparing my imagination to new ideas. Now though, it’s not the same. I feel tired, and I shouldn’t. It’s almost like I’ve lost that fire. I almost feel as if all the great stories have been told; anything new is just a re-hash of something old. The themes are the same, but the names, time, and places have changed.

Over the past 10 years, I’ve thought more about PC Game storylines, rather than books or short stories. Myst got me started. Then, I became facinated with history, and mystery. I’ve had some decent ideas for computer games, but again, I’ve never writting much down, and wouldn’t even know where to pitch.

At some point, I needed to make money, to live. Having a title published was not a big goal, but now, as I’m older, I realize that if I take time out of my life to write something, I should be paid to do it. Since I already understand I’m not good enough to publish, I know it’s not going to put food on my table. So I don’t write much. I sure think a lot though.

There was the one time I had a killer multi-million dollar idea. Oh it was good, I remember that much. I thought out so much, I thought it all through, design, manufacture, sales, everything. But I was tired, it was late, I went to bed and never wrote a stickin’ thing down. To this day, I regret it; t othis day, I still can’t remember what the idea was.

I’ve had at least three separate adventure game ideas. I wrote down a little, but that’s as far as it got. Oh, I’ve thought plenty of things through, but just haven’t written any of it down.

I lost a girlfriend once, because I think too much. I analyzed too much, I read too much into things. I just couldn’t leave things be. Too much of a “thinker”, and it lost a great woman.

I think a lot, I just don’t write things down.

I think too much.

Asa Jay

This entry is a quick entry to show a friend how a blog works.