For whatever it’s worth, my upgrade to 2.8 didn’t go completely without issue: even though I reported success, my Gallery plugin had some issues with new the version. A quick “automatic upgrade” fixed my issues with it though. So, feeling empowered by these recent successes, I decided to upgrade to the latest version of my underlying (iNove) theme too. It wasn’t quite as easy as the Wordpress update was, but still pretty painless. I had to comment out some PHP, make a handful of CSS changes, and upload a few new images, but overall, things are the way I like them.
The new drag and drop Widgets interface is pretty neat. I don’t like how Wordpress (or is it my theme??) handles ‘empty’ sections, though: it assumes that if it’s empty, you really want the default widgets there, like Blogroll. In fact, if it’s empty, that means I want it to be empty! I was able to work around this by rearranging my widgets, but it was a tad bit annoying to start.
In other news, we should be finishing up our pool wiring/lighting project today! I’ll have to make another quick trip to Home Depot, but all the hard stuff is done (base wiring, switches, etc.) and all that’s left is drilling a few holes and pulling cables through conduit. The lights themselves are coming out really nice too – I frosted the glass panes with some Valspar Frosting enamel and mounted them directly to my 5×5 PVC post caps.
A new minor release of Wordpress was released about a week ago, and I have been tracking the user response of it so far. Given that everything looks smooth, I went ahead and upgraded. If you’re experienced with upgrading other web-based systems, you know that this process can be painful (in some cases, VERY painful), but with Wordpress, it’s as simple as clicking a button – literally. It’s still recommended that you take a backup of your system, but the ease with which a major upgrade can be applied to the system is still a joy to behold. Wordpress makes things drop-dead easy, and, as always, it just works.
Re: the pool – we’re almost done! The rain has been keeping the crew from handling a concrete grading issue, and we’re still without a slide for now, but overall, things are looking great! The deck is very nice and our new automatic chlorinator (we switched to a Salt Water system) is chugging away – I can’t wait until I have the opportunity to jump in and give it a shot. Supposedly, salt water pools have a very nice, silky feel to them, in addition to being easier on the eyes and skin – and, of course, not having to put chlorine in is great too!
I’ve taken the opportunity to run some wiring in the pool area, too, so we can have better night-time lighting, and more accessible electrical outlets. It’s definitely been a lot more effort than I expected, but both Mary Lou and I are really liking how it’s all coming together. Pictures of the entire project will be posted soon!
Thanks to a suggestion by a friend of mine at work (thanks Cliff!) we all headed out to the 20th Annual Upton Police Fishing Derby today. It was at Pratt Pond in Upton, and we were amazed at the amount of people who showed up! We were there early, and got a pretty good spot.
Jacob caught a nice perch early on, and almost placed with it (he was a 1/2″ short). Rebecca caught a catfish, and that was just shy too. But Jacob got his wish of not only a “first bass”, but also a trophy bass! All-in-all, we had a great day, met some really nice folks, and found out about a local bait-and-tackle shop that I’ll be visiting often for minnows. For what it’s worth, I think Rebecca would have gotten a trophy on the first fish she caught, which was a decent sized Bluegill, but I didn’t realize that there was a category for it, and threw it back – ah well!
Images from our day of fishing in Upton on June 6, 2009. Jacob came away with a trophy!
4 Photos
Mary Lou and I took advantage of the nice weather about a month ago to open the pool, and we consider ourselves lucky we did: the water level had dropped significantly since we closed it last winter, so we knew we had a leak that would require a new liner. In addition, however, we wanted some work done on the deck and some other smaller enhancements we’d been considering.
So, after some quotes and negotiations, we landed on a contractor and a plan. They started work last week, and poured concrete on Monday. Overall, we’re pleased with the progress, but I’ve been surprised at how much I’ve needed to pay very close attention to what they’re doing.
In any case, we’ll have some before and after pictures up soon, and hopefully a good 4th of July party too!
In other news, I made the ‘mistake’ of introducing my two oldest children to pen+paper (”old school”) Dungeons and Dragons, with yours truly as the DM. I suppose I should have seen it coming, but have been amazed at how much they were interested in it: Rebecca has become transfixed with races and classes, and what types of armor and weapons are available. I bought the whole set of 3.5 edition books (4th ed. looks like crap from my reading) and she’s been staying up reading the Player’s Handbook. It’s a very odd feeling seeing my children so taken by this stuff (but admittedly, I was too at that age).
My old mouse was developing some annoying left-click habits, so a few months ago I decided to get a new one. I am not a huge fan of wireless mice because the batteries always run out at the most inopportune times, so the new one was definitely going to be wired. I also am a big fan of the old (some would say clunky) Microsoft Intellimouse Explorer. So, when I started my research and ran across the Microsoft Habu, my choice was made pretty quickly and painlessly. Of course, I bought it at Newegg, and it was delivered promptly.
I’ve been working with it for a couple of months now and really like the performance of it. The scroll-wheel performs well (no gimmicky “left and right” scrolling here) with a very faint but very satisfactory scrolling tactile feedback, and both buttons have good solid clicking mechanisms.. The color is nice too, and looks great next to my ABS keyboard, Logitech Z-5500 speaker control, and Smilodon case, all of which are blue-neon. The only thing I’d change would be to give it a bit more heft – it’s a nice solid feel, but I’d prefer a bit more mass.
The photo above was taken with our new Canon SX1IS, as was the photo of Rebecca’s first bass. Overall, I’m still struggling with the auto-focus on it, which doesn’t seem to function well at all, and also the graininess of the photos, even with flash. I’ll continue to work with it to see if there are any settings I can adjust, but I’m not impressed, and am afraid this camera might have to be relegated to occasional snap-shot use only. I definitely don’t want to have to use a tripod to take quality shots.
