I just installed a Twitter-based plugin that’ll send out a tweet every time I make a new blog entry on here. I fiddled with the options a little—I’m smart enough not to mess with coding anymore—and I’m wondering what the new tweets will look like. It’ll even show over on the right sidebar of the blog in the Twitter feed… who knows, maybe that’ll just fill up with a list of “Hey, look at this blog post!” Whether it does or not, it’s time to satisfy my curiosity and then fiddle with any options that need refiddling.
Technology Haikus
To celebrate our final class in Strategic Technology, the instructor passed out a sheet of paper that had some limericks and haikus written on them for our enjoyment. Also for our enjoyment, she invited everyone to write one of their own. The other people in class may have started chatting with each other at that point, I really don’t know—I was too busy thinking about what to write.
I ended up writing three haikus, the last one because it seemed more related to business, and read them out loud to the class. I got the best reviews from the second (it’s also the one that I mumbled an apology about after saying it), so I’m ordering them 3-1-2 on here. I hope you enjoy them as much as I do.
____________________________
All these ones and all
These zeroes rule my workplace.
I can’t escape them.
I’m hooked on Facebook.
Addicted, I can’t log off.
Be my Farmville friend.
Surfing day and night.
Suddenly, Internet is gone.
I can’t access porn.
Share this:
I had a little work done
A few days ago, the blog croaked. The reason? Me. But it was for a good cause, I swear!
Before said croakage, this sucker was ancient. WordPress has advanced to 3.0.5 (don’t ask how they figure out the decimals, ’cause I haven’t the slightest idea). Meanwhile, shawnbakken.net was somewhere in the early 2s. I thought that maybe because I wasn’t hosting the site, I didn’t have the administrative power to make the upgrade. I was wrong.
The problem was that the site was using an old web server. The person who is hosting this website switched web servers, which has much better customer service and has been much more effective overall. (I’ll get back to that in a minute.) Their instructions were to go to the site where I registered my blog, change the old web server information so it would connect to the new server, then wait until the new people upgraded the blog. It sounds complicated on paper… or on a computer screen, for that matter… but once I figured out where to go and which changes to make, it seemed fairly simple.
A few hours later, I went to look at the “Administrative Dashboard” and found a new login screen. I typed in my name and password to discover a whole type of dashboard: the type that you find on WordPress 3.0.5. Hell yeah…
As you may have noticed, the blog’s background and a bunch of other aesthetic things have changed with this new upgrade. Part of it is to make it all look prettier, although I’d like to find a picture of myself that I could use for the header instead of flowers or something (because I’m vain like that). Another part of it is because this background allows the use of “widgets”, which is how I added my Twitter feed to the right column of the screen. The old background didn’t have that option, but that didn’t stop me from trying to add them.
I surfed around WordPress’s help section and found something that referred to adding widgets to a site. It had instructions for adding a few lines of programming text to the “sidebar” and the “theme editor”. Assuming those changes worked, I could add some nifty new toys to the blog. As it turned out, the changes didn’t work. Or perhaps they would have worked if I’d done them correctly.
I copied and pasted all of the text from both pages into a Word file so I could undo the changes easily. However, that doesn’t do much good when you accidentally get rid of a line of programming from the theme editor and everything stops working. And I mean everything.
I couldn’t edit anything, I couldn’t get back to the Dashboard, I couldn’t even look at the blog. Whenever I tried, a notice came up about an error in the theme editor in line 3 (where I was making changes). It might as well have been a flashing neon sign on the screen saying, “Nice work, dumbass!” Honest to God, I had trouble getting to sleep last night because of it.
Thankfully, I got a message out to the Powers That Be (a.k.a., the new web server people who are much more awesome than the last ones) and they fixed the problem by the time I logged in today. *victory dance*
So the blog is back online for people to read and now has all sorts of little unnecessary toys that may never be used, but I thought they were neat. It shows the last five Twitter posts I made, you can “like” individual posts on Facebook, share the posts using different programs… there are some statistical toys that I can use on the Dashboard, too. Yay, toys!
So I spent a lot of time downloading and upgrading and playing with stuff this afternoon, but one thing I’m not going to do is mess with the editing tools. After all, if I screw up and the blog stops working again, how am I supposed to put a picture of myself up in the header?
Share this:
The perfect gift for the love of your life
By the end of the day, we’ll finally be done with Valentine’s Day TV commercials, meaning I’ll see a lot less of Hallmark, jewelry stores… and pawn shops.
That’s right, Pawn America has been trying to cash in as well, offering really, really low prices for earrings, rings, necklaces, etc. I’m sure a lot of men are running to the door, scrambling through the aisles to find the best deal, then running home to give it to their loved ones tonight, right? After all, what says “I love you” more than a gift of jewelry that someone else didn’t want and sold for cash at a lot less than face value?
Share this:
You’re lonely and it’s a Monday night
Talk about a double-whammy. Welcome once again to February 14th, “Remember That All Of Your Exes Are Probably Warm And Cozy In Someone Else’s Arms” Day! And because this is a weekday, you have a much smaller window of opportunity for getting drunk in your misery and vomiting all over yourself. Of course, that means there’s also a smaller window of opportunity for your exes to see you lying on the floor covered in your own vomit, thereby making them feel better about their decision to end the relationship.
For those who have loved and lost, I hope you all make it through the day without spontaneously bursting into tears every ten minutes because of your sorrows—it probably makes for a very uncomfortable working environment.
For those who have never loved at all, enjoy buying chocolaty goodness at a 50% discount tomorrow.
And for those of you in a good relationship with your significant other (or two or three others, not counting farm animals), Happy Valentine’s Day. You suck.
Share this:
I think it’s because they’re female
Last week, some people in my business class were talking about how grocery stores have designed their layouts so shoppers will be more likely to buy extra food. A lot of times, people will come in for basics like milk, butter and eggs, so where are they in the store? Tucked in the back corner. You have to walk past lots of different foods before getting to those basics, during which time you might think, “You know, cookies sound awesome right now.” Impulse purchase! Grocery store: 1, You: 0.
Then I thought about how Girl Scouts started selling their cookies this year. Where once parents would post order sheets in the office to suggest that their coworkers aren’t satisfying their sweet teeth properly, the Girl Scouts have become more devious: they’re bringing cookies to your door. You still have to order some of the specialty items, but if you want Do-si-dos, Tagalongs or Thin Mints…
Gimme a second to wipe the drool off my keyboard.
If you want any of those basic cookies, you’ve got ’em right there. You don’t need any order forms; you need young girls with delicious goodies… I don’t think I phrased that very well.
One mother gave us a heads-up a few days early, then she and her daughter came to the house—we picked boxes of cookies while they were standing in front of us instead of using an order sheet. At the office, it was easy to limit yourself to two or three boxes, but not anymore! “You know, cookies sound awesome right now.” Impulse purchase! Girl Scouts: 1, You: … lots of cookies, so maybe you’re a winner, too.
And as a final note, someone asked after buying 10 boxes if we made a good selection. I said it didn’t really matter since they’ll be gone in a week. It’s now Day 4 and I’m pretty sure my prediction will be right. That’s really not a good thing, but at least it’s been a yummy not-good thing.
