Jim went out earlier to get some Chinese takeout for the two of us, and he came home with roses and Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince. He’s so sweet! I’ve been wearing a smile all day.

I’ve been adding the links in my Toolbox, but I did want to expand on the list of WordPress plugins that I like and/or use frequently for those of you who are interested. I am always appreciative of those who work hard to make things easier for users like me.

Live Comment Preview, by Jeff Minard & Iacovos Constantinou - With this, you view your comments live as they are composed. Such a neat thingy!

RunPHP, by James Van Lommel - This one took a slight bit of editing, but works great. You can use this to execute PHP code within posts and pages.

Static Front Page & Subscribe me, by Denis de Bernardy - This guy has a LOT of plugs that I really like, and use on some of my hobby sites. His CMS theme, Semiologic, is pretty fun to play with too. Static Front Page will “sticky” any page with the slug of ‘home’ as your front page every time. Subscribe me adds the syndication links for RSS, Gator, MyYahoo, etc feed links.

Theme Switcher, by Ryan Boren - I had to search to find the URL for this one, he doesn’t have it in the plugin, so the Plugins page links to the WP homesite. A great plugin, many themes now come expecting you to already have it installed.

Site Unavailable, by Angsuman Chakraborty - I just discovered this a few days ago, but LOVE it. A great tool for those of us who like to muck up our site but want to keep visitors out while we learn how to fix it, LOL! This plugin will sticky an “Undergoing maintance. Come back in an hour” type message to all visitors, but will still allow the administrator access. Great toy, er, I mean tool!

PJW Wordpress Version Check, by Peter Westwood - Not that I really need this plug when I have the Padre reminding me to update every 30 seconds when an update is released. *wide grin* But handy nonetheless! It displays a message at the top of each page in your admin section letting you know whether or not your WP install is up-to-date, outdated, or an unsupported version and/or build.

Jalenack’s Wordspew, by Andrew Sutherland - I ended up not using this one, but liked it so much that am keeping it on for some of my hobby sites. This plug “creates a live shoutbox, using AJAX as a backend. Users can chat freely from your blog without refreshing the page.” I really like it, and might actually use it here someday.

WP-ContactForm, by Ryan Duff, Firas Durri - a handy-dandy contact form that I have embeded into one of my pages.

WP Grins, by Alex King - I installed this one out of convenience for me, it displays all of my smilies for me when I’m composing a new post or page.

Honorable Mention: Get Weather, by Jeff Minard - I loved this plugin, but it was too large to use on the new format. It’s the best/prettiest weather plug I’ve seen. It was very easy to configure and install and highly recommended.

Last night I finally finished my AdBrite account … I had started it like 2 months ago, but never finished it due to various things. It came highly recommended via several friends, so I figured I’d give it a go and see how it floats.

I don’t expect to make a fortune, but if I get a few bucks back that’s a good thing.

As I’m sure most of you are aware (or, if you weren’t you are now), the latest and final installment in the Harry Potter books is set to be released this weekend.

[Edit: My bad, the 7th book is the last, this is the 6th]

I’ve seen it floating around several Torrent sites, but have resisted the urge to download and read through it early. That’d be almost like … cheating.

Anyways, I did run across something on Harry Potter Automatic News Aggregator (or, HPANA): a link to the USA Today Entertainment section. It seems they were running a series of HP-themed articles. A cool read if you’re a heavy-Harry’d fan.

Raven posted this on the H.E. forums earlier:

A black man walks into a cafe one early morning and noticed that he was the only black man there. As he sat down, he noticed a white man behind him. The white man said, “Colored people are not allowed here.”

The black man turned around and stood up. He then said:

“When I was born, I was black, ” “When I grew up, I was black, ” “When I’m sick, I’m black, ” “When I go in the sun, I’m black, ” “When I’m cold, I’m black, ” “When I die, I’ll be black.” “But you, Sir…”

“When you’re born, you’re pink, ” “When you grow up, you’re white, ” “When you’re sick, you’re green, ” “When you go in the sun, you turn red, ” “When you’re cold, you turn blue, ” “And when you die, you’ll turn purple.” “And you have the nerve to call me colored?”

The black man then sat back down and the white man walked away…

LOL!!