For those who’ve asked: bleg = blog + beg

Well, the Lunarpages WordPress Theme Design Contest final vote is upon us at last. I currently have two designs in the final vote, but I would like Translucent Dream (what I view as my best design) to win, so here I am — blegging.

Please please PLEASE go vote for me! (Please?)

(It’s the 3rd one listed.)

Voting will run until July 7th and the winners will be announced July 8th!

This is one of those times when doing things “the right way” also happens to be the biggest pain in the ass…

I spent the last 2 hours messing around with a layout that I created a few weeks ago. I thought, “No problem, I’ll slice it up and throw the pieces in some DIVs and start on a new SharePoint layout.”

In the words of the immortal Vizzini … “You’d like to think that, wouldn’t you?!”

The problem I was having was that the left and right borders (background images) of the “main” div wouldn’t tile because I didn’t (couldn’t) set a height. So I looked ALL over the web, read up on every ‘clearfix‘ known to man, hundreds of X/HTML and CSS help boards, (and accidentally ran across this air tools site, not sure why it was in the search results!) and then FINALLY stumbled across this article on A List Apart. (and considering how long I spent looking for it, it’s titled appropriately! LOL!)

See? I *knew* it could be done, and remembered reading the article, but could not for the life of me remember where I saw it!!

And so now that my pretty layout is behaving, all I need to do is spending the next 3 weeks beating SharePoint into submission.

We’ll be heading down to Montgomery this weekend. Jim’s brother is on leave from Afghanistan and flew in sometime last night. We’ll be visiting with him a while and will be bringing Jessie back home with us. In a way I feel sorry for her mother … she’s been really lonely without her. She depends on Jessie for companionship and entertainment, and has no idea how to function without her. (Honestly makes me wonder how she lived BEFORE Jessie was born!)

Jim and I have enjoyed our “quiet time” together. Both of us recently have been stressed from work and other matters and needed some time to reconnect … these two weeks have given us just that. I’m indebted to Jim’s mom for allowing Jessie to stay down there with her and her cousins.

I know Jessie enjoys staying with them, so that’s always a bonus!

I came home one night this week and Jim had already prepared dinner and bought a gallon of my favorite brew. What a man, what a man, what a mighty good man.

Our trip to New Orleans will be coming up soon. I’m really looking forward to seeing the Big Easy again and seeing where Jim grew up. I’m also looking forward to meeting up with my Cotillion sisters who live down that way. (OMG, which reminds me … I still need to order my tiara! LOL!!)

I see a shopping trip in the near future!

Jim’s really been looking forward to this trip and has been working out to try to lose some weight before the reunion. Exercising, taking bodybuilding supplements and vitamin supplements, I’m proud of him he’s done really well. Me … not so much. I haven’t been able to get my weight quite down as low as I’d like … being on the amitriptyline is setting me back. I’m hesitant to ask my doctor about being switched to another migraine preventive. This work is working the best out of all I’ve tried so far, but the gain in appetite has been a real bitch to deal with. ;P

Oh well, I’m still relatively healthy so I can’t complain too much … right?

I know I drive some of my clients crazy when I do this, but sometimes it helps that I’m “extremely detail-oriented” (that’s PC for anal-retentive bitch). I had a client email me earlier this week with a laundry list of changes that she wanted made to her organization’s site. (quick history: this client is notorious for requesting large or extensive site changes and needing them literally “tomorrow”)

The list was broken up into several PDFs containing screenshots of the website and what I interpreted were change requests … or, at least some of them I could interpret. There was one PDF, not too huge, about 15 pages … mostly containing links. The problem wasn’t that I had a problem removing them, it was that it was never made clear in any of the documentation that the client wanted old links, bad links, etc. removed. One would assume that they would want them removed, but considering that my personal history in dealing with this client is that they are notorious for wanting content removed and not an hour later wanting it restored. I’m serious. They have no concept whatsoever for budgeting and planning ahead and request most everything at the very last minute.

Many times, I have wanted to reach through the phone and strangle one of these people!

So anyways, rather than spend the next few days going back and forth by email, I printed out every page of every PDF that they sent me, requested clarification for every (what I would assume was a) request and scanned them into a PDF and mailed it back to the client. My co-workers found this funny and I joked about feeling like “being an asshole” … but an email I received a few minutes ago confirmed what my intuition had already told me — indeed they did not want large chunks of their website content deleted.

Gee, what a surprise.

So most people think I’m a real pain the ass when it comes to my job, but experience has taught me this: get everything in writing and make sure it is absolutely CLEAR on exactly what’s to be done with the content I’m handling.

Today’s funny comes courtesy of my mother:

Post Turtle

While suturing a cut on the hand of a 75 year old Texas rancher, whose hand was caught in a gate while working cattle, the doctor struck up a conversation with the old man. Eventually the topic got around to Obama and his bid to be our President.

The old rancher said, “Well, ya know, Obama is a ‘post turtle’.” Not being familiar with the term, the doctor asked him what a ‘post turtle’ was. The old rancher said, “When you’re driving down a country road and you come across a fence post with a turtle balanced on top, that’s a ‘post turtle’.”

The old rancher saw a puzzled look on the doctor’s face, so he continued to explain. “You know he didn’t get up there by himself, he doesn’t belong up there, he doesn’t know what to do while he is up there, and you just wonder what kind of a person put him up there.”