I swear, I think our weekends are getting to be busier than our weekdays! ;P Friday was pretty hectic, and add the bad weather on top of that, it made for an interesting start to the weekend. Jessie’s karate test was Saturday — she’s now moved up from orange belt to a purple belt! Jim and I took pictures and filmed, so hopefully those will be up soon. We had a chance to talk to Jessie’s senseis for a bit, and both had nothing but good things to say about our little ray of sunshine. I noted that ever since beginning taking karate, she’s shown so much improvement … both in the dojo and outside of it!

Jessie left after the test with her mother. Jim and I went over to see my folks and saw my brother Jeremy and his wife Christy. They had Ryland with them, so I got to spend a little time with my favorite niece.

Isn’t she precious?

Stupidity knows no bounds

Today Jim and Jessie took me to brunch for Mother’s Day. I got a little aggravated earlier because I specifically told her mother that I was picking her up early and that we were going out to eat. Originally it was supposed to be breakfast … I pick Jessie up and find out that her mother had her EAT BREAKFAST right before I was to pick her up!

*beats head into wall repeatedly*

I swear, one of these days I’m bound to say something to this woman that I know I will regret, but that she also fully DESERVES.

So we waited a bit and went for ‘brunch’ … Jessie was hungry enough and Jim and I were starving! There was a slight ‘incident’ with a group that cut in line infront of us and another family. When I said something to one of the party members, she muttered something about us being ‘racists’ — the party members were black.

They moved on before I could say anything else, but I was fully ready to retort with, “It has nothing to do with race. The color of one’s skin does NOT exempt one from using common courtesy and manners!”

So I fumed a bit, but got over it. We were at Ryan’s and the food and service were great, which fully made up for the inconvenience before being seated. In their defense, it WAS packed, which made it a bit hard for the staff at the front to keep track of who should be where. However, that being said, I find it hard NOT to notice the general lack of manners by people I run across in public nowadays.

To most of these people, I am dying to say, “I *KNOW* your mother taught you better!”

A heart-felt and belated “Thanks!”

If all goes well, it looks like I’ll win this round in the Lunarpages’ WordPress theme design contest. I am completely overwhelmed by the response and surge in votes from family, friends, and extended community. I emailed a few close to me, and just about every one of them emailed their friends and family, and so on and so forth; and I posted on here and you each voted and responded in kind. (thank you!!) My Cotillion sisters rose to the occasion offering support and votes (thank you, girls! I love y’all!). Jim reached out to his guild and the guys have been very supportive with votes and feedback. (thank you!!) And last but certainly not least, the gargantuan legion of members over at the Soldiers’ Angels forums were a tremendous help in attaining and keeping the lead. (thank you very very much, Angels!!!)

I really should be ashamed of myself. I submitted my “Translucent Dream” theme 2 weeks ago, and figured it wasn’t going to be picked and totally forgot about it.

I didn’t read my feeds yesterday because I was out most of the day with Jess … she had an orthodontist appointment, then karate class, then she and I spent the rest of the afternoon and most of the evening working on my mother’s Mother’s Day gift that Jessie was planning to give her.

I was too tired to read the feeds or my email for that matter, last night and put it off until this morning. Now I wish I had checked them sooner! My “Translucent Dream” theme was chosen for this week’s round in Lunarpages’ WordPress theme design contest. So now I’m a total spazz, hehe.

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

This theme is not yet uploaded to Wordpress.net … hopefully soon!

Details

Translucent Dream A dark theme for WordPress 2.1+. Includes Gravatar support for WP 2.5 down to 2.1. “Before the Storm” header image courtesy of MoodFlow.com.

Download

Please read the enclosed readme.txt for troubleshooting, licensing, and other important topics!

Distribution

I have a problem over the past year or so with so-called “free theme” sites offering my themes among their downloads. The majority of these I’ve seen have added paid advertising scripts to my code.

There are only two places where my themes are available:

1. This website.
2. The WordPress Theme Viewer site: http://themes.wordpress.net/

Any other sites that are distributing my themes are doing so WITHOUT my expressed permission and may be edited or changed from the original code. I will not support my themes downloaded from other sources than those named above, sorry.

It’s busy time! Sorry I’ve been so quiet lately, work is busy, home is busy, and what little spare time I’ve had has been for cooking, eating, and sleeping — and pretty much in that order. Jessie’s into her last semester of the school year. Things are starting to pick back up at work. Jim’s really busy at NSR.

Coming up

My birthday is next week. Considering nobody’s asked me what I want yet, I’m hoping for something to go shopping with. *grin* Though cash would be nice … I’ve been eying a very nice Smith & Wesson .38 special.

Things with Soldiers’ Angels has been going great! I’ve been gathering materials for the upcoming Magnolia Festival and will have everything I need for the event mid next week. I’m looking forward to meeting people from this and neighboring communities and will hopefully gain some new SA members from it!

Time to roll, Tide!

Alabama’s A-Day Game is this upcoming weekend, so Jess and I will be headed to T-town to meet up with Teresa and her loved ones. I’ll be gathering a few travel supplies over the next few days and (if Jim lets me borrow his camera) hopefully get some great A-Day pictures!

Time to design

I noticed on the Lunarpages blog a week or so back that they are having another WordPress design contest. YAY! I’ve started on a few designs to enter, and will post a sneak peek of the first one here when it’s ready (hopefully this weekend, but realistically early next week).

I have lately taken it upon myself to do some SharePoint branding for one of our SharePoint servers here at work. I swear, I have spent the better part of 3 days just cleaning up HTML code alone! Unfortunately SharePoint uses a lot of attributes that are proprietary to Microsoft, so no chance of it ever validating any time soon.

Here are a few of the things I’ve learned recently:

• Link bars are pretty unforgiving if you screw with their code, better use the GUI in SharePoint Designer to make any changes.
• If the site might need to be updated regularly, the Content Editor Web Part is your friend! (i.e. pass it off to someone else to maintain!)
• It’s always a good idea to test out a template first for bugs first before letting anyone else know you’re almost done — or where it’s located.
• The command line is your friend! (Actually, I knew this already, but in-dept documentation for SP commands were a little scarce until I found this reference)
• If custom controls and/or code is just not possible within the SharePoint realm, the Page Viewer Web Part is your friend! (As much as I despise using frames of any kind, this wp has saved my tail a time or two!)
• Your site’s content could be the best thing since sliced bread or a splog’s “cheap hotel Las Vegas” surf cache. It doesn’t mean squat if your site design looks like ass. (In other words, never EVER use the default SharePoint templates!)

Hopefully I’ll have more to add to this list later. For now, my head is killing me but my bosses are very happy with what I’ve gotten done so far. I think I’m going to ask for permission to cut out a little early today … it is Valentine’s Day after all!