hushed gray: the Kevin chronicles

Friday, February 29, 2008

Quote of the day
Which I overheard the new cleaning person at work utter was something along the lines of, "I've never smelt any Lysol that didn't have a smell." Now while I completely understand what she was saying, that particular wording amuses me.

For any of my friends who may be snowbound, perhaps there's a reason. Maybe not...but maybe. Take it for whatever it's worth.

I feel a vague interest in eating something, so let me see what I can find in the kitchen. Happy Sabbath!

posted at 6:39 pm | permalink | 1 comment

Thursday, February 28, 2008

Stop and think
Anyone else see this story? Did the USS Liberty come to anyone else's mind? (If you're not familiar with it, look it up.) Yeah, we're 40 years down the road and it's a different situation, but it's the Middle East. Things go boom.

I have half a mind to stay up late tonight to actually do fun stuff (write a letter, sort some stamps, whatever). The other half of my mind says I need to get all the sleep I can. It shall be interesting to see who wins.

I'm going to have to buy some new socks--I'm wearing holes in the ends of all my dress socks, which I'm wearing more in my current job. Sorry, white socks with black pseudo-dress shoes just don't cut it, though I have worn exactly that at the laundromat (choosing to change out of the dress socks after work so I could wash them). Probably far more than you wanted to know about my footwear habits, huh?

Alright, back to my dinner now. Goodnight.

posted at 7:43 pm | permalink | 1 comment

Brrrr
Yeah, yeah, I know, the new design is no good unless I add new entries! Oh well. I have to work with the same number of hours per day that everyone else gets, and there's sometimes stuff that doesn't get done.

It has turned cold again. It was cool and breezy yesterday, but with the temperature still up around 50 it was at least tolerable. Supposed to be a higher high today, but it's colder this morning than yesterday morning. It's that extreme that's the "problem."

I actually "caught up" on e-mail on Monday night. My inbox is not totally empty right this moment--a couple of stamp-related messages came through after I went to bed last night--but it's definitely in better shape than it has been for a long time.

I've heard from a collector who has actually gone and modified the original files for my stamp album pages using OpenOffice.org. And I say right on. That's the reason I put them on my Web site in .odt format as well as .pdf format, so people can freely edit the pages to better fit their own collecting styles if they wish to do so. It's nice to know that somebody is actually doing that.

posted at 6:26 am | permalink | 0 comments

Sunday, February 24, 2008

That was more involved than I expected
But I shouldn't be surprised--and I'm not, really. I was going back and editing code that I hadn't touched in a year and a half, or in some cases much longer than that. At least I was able to finish applying the site's new outfit today.

Besides the new design, the text on the site is now resizable. In most modern browsers you should be able to make it larger or smaller by going to the View menu.

That's all for the moment--comments are welcome.

posted at 6:36 pm | permalink | 1 comment

Friday, February 22, 2008

So little time
But so many ideas! Hopefully this weekend I'll have time to work on some stuff. I'm pretty sure I'm going to register a domain name--it is available and I think it could prove popular provided I offer the right sort of content. More to come on that. I've also been musing over ideas for the redesign of this place, and I think I have a reasonable direction to go in. One improvement is that the text you're reading right now will no longer be a fixed size--if you tell Internet Explorer to display the text in "larger" or "largest" size, it'll actually do it. (Yeah, I've been reading bits and pieces about accessibility.) For the most part it's going to be window-dressing, though--that PHP/MySQL book I mentioned some time back has not been examined recently, so I can't really do any backend changes at this point. But this site has had basically the same design for 5+ years. It's time to re-skin it, give it a fresh name. So stay tuned!

The last couple of days the left side of my throat (not my neck--my throat) has been sore, and kind of ached all the way up to my left ear. There have been some folks from work out sick this week, but then there have also been some just fighting allergies, so I'm not sure whether I've actually caught something or whether maybe there was just some drainage that plugged something up one night while I slept. I dislike the limbo of not knowing, though--let's either just go ahead and get being sick over with or get back to 100% already!

So how about this deal with Kosovo declaring independence, right? Now granted, I don't have a TV--and no, I don't want one--but I've been amazed at how little play that whole story seems to have gotten. Last Sunday, boom, it was on the Internet, but by that evening, boom, it was gone again. And were it not for the rioters at the U.S. embassy in Belgrade, I don't know that it would have even been mentioned again. All the talk is about Hillary and Obama (which mildly annoys me simply because it's not symmetrical; it should be either Hillary and Barack or Clinton and Obama) and John McCain and the NYT. I thought there was a time when a country declaring independence was a big deal, but I guess maybe that's no longer the case. One interesting thing is that the U.S. is supporting Kosovo, which if I understand correctly is predominantly Muslim, while predominantly Christian Serbia is being back by the same Russia that (as the Soviet Union) was generally atheistic. Interesting times, indeed.

We've gotten some nice rain here this week. For the second week in a row the pseudo-business dress shoes I wear to work got damp enough on the inside due to me having to work my way through puddles that I had to just set them aside to let them dry out. I'm fortunate to own more than one pair of shoes so I have that option.

Work has been going okay. It's interesting to watch the dynamics of how individuals interact with each other. Can be a bit confusing at times trying to figure out exactly what I need to do on any given project, but at least the volume of work has picked up compared to in December and January. There were some slow days along there.

posted at 10:00 pm | permalink | 1 comment

Tuesday, February 19, 2008

That would be cool
During my wanderings on the Web, I ran across this operating system that's under development. Apparently it has been under development for years, so I don't know whether or not it will ever become anything usable--their Web site itself warns it's not yet ready for everyday use. Still, the idea of an open-source operating system that people like me who are familiar with Windows (but not with Unix/Linux systems) could use sounds very appealing. If it ever comes to fruition, I just might have to build my own computer, as there would be absolutely no software I'd have to buy--not even the OS.

All the Web site stuff at work has me wanting to work on my own Web sites. I'm still trying to formulate some decent designs, though. I do think I need to recognize my current limitations as far as knowledge and skills go--especially in the graphics department--but I also want to come up with the best designs possible, even if it's "only" for this site, even. So we'll see.

If I haven't mentioned it before, I like Reese's Peanut Butter Puffs (cereal). It's not necessarily something I'd want to make a staple of my diet, but it makes a nice breakfast or, when combined with peanuts and raisins, a tasty snack mix. I recommend.

Alright, it's my bedtime. Goodnight.

posted at 9:47 pm | permalink | 1 comment

Saturday, February 09, 2008

If you're interested
I had a bit of time at work on Thursday and yesterday to get a little bit creative, and here's the result. Compare it to, say, this page--and yes, it's a different region, but all the regions' online registration forms for a given year are the same. I was not responsible for the event series logos or the content, but on the 2009 page I decided on the layout. I think it reflects my minimalist Web design tendencies. My boss approved of it. Yay! I'm kind of itching to finally do the redesign/update of the Philosateleian Post site now.

Afternoon services today because of the fun show, but I have a sermon on CD to listen to this morning, so I'm going to get to it. Cheerio.

posted at 9:24 am | permalink | 1 comment

Saturday, February 02, 2008

That's just wrong
In regards to yesterday's terrorist attacks in Iraq, the Washington Post reports: "Brig. Gen. Qassim al-Moussawi, Iraq's chief military spokesman in Baghdad, said the female bombers had Down syndrome and may not have known they were on suicide missions. He said the bombs were detonated by remote control." I don't guess there's any reason to be surprised terrorists are using the disabled in that fashion, but that's just wrong.

posted at 7:54 am | permalink | 0 comments

Friday, February 01, 2008

Numbers
Some interesting numbers:

Stamp trades requested through Philosateleia in January: 10 (from eight different collectors). I don't keep stats on how many trade requests I receive, but January is without doubt the busiest month I've seen.
Solicitations received from non-profits in January: 33 (approx.). And no, that's not something I planned to track, but I've just been tossing aside the envelopes and they were available for counting.
Paper fragments causing printer at work to register "paper jam": 2. But it's fixed after yesterday.
Times this week I had to explain about the "Refresh" button and "Temporary Internet Files": 3. I question the need for caching on a high-speed connection.

posted at 7:15 am | permalink | 1 comment