Busy weekend and belated ‘thanks’

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. :roll:

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!!!)

Posted by Nicki on May 11th, 2008 at 8:14 pm

Vote for me?

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?)

Posted by Nicki on May 6th, 2008 at 8:08 am

I think I’ll sit this one out

I saw that WordPress released an update over the weekend. It’s now up to 2.5.1. There’s a ton of fixes, but among the highlighted are:

  • Performance improvements for the Dashboard, Write Post, and Edit Comments pages.
  • Better performance for those who have many categories
  • Media Uploader fixes
  • An upgrade to TinyMCE 3.0.7
  • Widget Administration fixes
  • Various usability improvements
  • Layout fixes for IE

I doubt I’ll be upgrading because I hear some users are having trouble receiving their password emails (e.g. when it’s recovered), so I figure it won’t be too long until 2.5.2 will come along. I’ll upgrade then.

Besides, I already have a lengthy “to do” list for each of my sites as it is … don’t these WordPress people know I’m busy?!!? ;)

Seriously though one thing about this release did pique my interest: I was reading about the addition of SECRET_KEY to the wp-config file (edit: this was added in 2.5). From what I understand, it helps secure your WordPress cookies — nice.

More security is always a good thing, right? :mrgreen: Like Fenphedra to a speed freak, heh!

And speaking of WordPress…

Have I mentioned that the upcoming South by Deep South conference will have a full-on WordCamp?

They are looking for speakers, so if you’re going to be in the area and are interested, be sure to drop by the WordCamp Birmingham wiki and leave your info!

I’m definitely looking forward to that. Mark your calendars, people! :D

Posted by Nicki on April 28th, 2008 at 12:39 pm

How to: Del.icio.us links auto-post

Several people have asked me about the Del.icio.us posts. These are generated automatically by a function in your Del.icio.us account. :)

Get started

To find this function, go to your Del.icio.us account. Go to Settings. Under Blogging, click daily blog posting. Click add a new thingy.

Now the following settings will vary based on your blog’s platform and/or provider…

Edit: Big thanks to Conservative Belle for the GMT conversion table link!

WordPress (WordPress.com not confirmed)

- job_name this can be anything
- out_name your WordPress username for your blog
- out_pass your WordPress password for your blog
- out_url the full URL of the XML-RPC interface for your WordPress installation, which will be http://www.yourdomain.com/xmlrpc.php, or http://www.yourdomain.com/directory/xmlrpc.php if WordPress is installed into a subdirectory
- out_time the hour (from 0-23 in GMT) to post your links at every day
- out_blog_id your blog ID number (can be any number, probably 1 if you have only one blog)
- out_cat_id optional: this is the ID number for the category you would like these to be posted to

Typepad

Courtesy of Kyle Eslick

- job_name this can be anything
- out_name your Typepad username
- out_pass your Typepad password
- out_url http://www.typepad.com/t/api
- out_time the hour (from 0-23 in GMT) to post your links at every day
- out_blog_id In typepad, this can be found by clicking on the manage link. It should appear in the address menu link this: http://www.typepad.com/t/app/weblog/manage?blog_id=[Blog ID Number]
- out_cat_id optional: this is the ID number for the category you would like these to be posted to

Movable Type

Courtesy of Kyle Eslick

- job_name this can be anything
- out_name your MT username
- out_pass your MT password
- out_url http://blogname/mt-xml rpc.cgi
- out_time the hour (from 0-23 in GMT) to post your links at every day
- out_blog_id your blog ID
- out_cat_id optional: this is the ID number for the category you would like these to be posted to

Blogger / Blogspot

Courtesy of Kevin Lim

- job_name this can be anything
- out_name your Blogger username
- out_pass your Blogger password
- out_url http://videoblogging.info/tools/translator/
- out_time the hour (from 0-23 in GMT) to post your links at every day
- out_blog_id your Blogger blog ID
- out_cat_id this doesn’t work in Blogger, put any number here.

Got it? Good!

I hope I explained everything OK, feel free to holler at me via the comment form below if anything’s unclear. :)

Posted by Nicki on April 23rd, 2008 at 7:25 pm

South by Deep South dates/location set

Courtesy of Ike via Twitter, the dates and location have been set for the South by Deep South (SxDS) conference: September 26-28 in Birmingham, Alabama.

Not a whole lot up yet about it, but the blog does say that current tracts include:

  • Social Media/PR/Marketing
  • Web development
  • WordCamp

Yep, that’s right — a full blown WordCamp, down here!

There will also be the 10th Annual Sidewalk Film Festival going on that weekend as well, so this should be fun!

Posted by Nicki on April 18th, 2008 at 4:13 pm