The ants have come out in force. Weather maps at COLA IGES suggest southern California will have some drying over the next week. Coincidence? Perhaps the ants sense that spring is on the way. (read more . . . )

On edit, February 23, 2005, I added: The following technique does not appear to work. We’re still getting referral spam in spite of keywords existing in WordPress’s moderation keys. It’s possible that I disabled its functionality when I modified the explode() and implode() commands in order to eliminate browser errors; or perhaps it’s not working for some other reason. I’ve left the rest of this article mostly as originally written. Dave’s technique for Row_deletes is useful, it works great.

Here’s the original text: (read more . . . )

This evening I was tired, and fell asleep early, about 7 PM. I really hate it when I do that, invariably I wake a few hours later, then have insomnia till early the next morning. Anyway, during this nap I dreamt about being back at CMA. I was crying, crying loudly for what seemed, in the dream, like hours. Then I awoke.

Culver: Usually, such thoughts of you are only caused by looking through Rollcall, your yearbook.

It’s now been about thirty years since I was with you:

Will your punishment ever end? Ken Klaser

The following recipe I cloned from a particular brand I grew up with and now have trouble finding in the stores near me. It’s similar to some other recipes on the Internet, but there are a few subtle differences. According to my records, this recipe went through 11 iterations before I was happy with it.
(read more . . . )

In case you haven’t heard, ChoicePoint, a personal information data aggregator, has had 145,000 records stolen from them: was your personal data among the records stolen? If so, be on the lookout for your identity to be used by criminals. (read more . . . )

Greenspan appears to have a new take on the government’s often-repeated citizen’s meme: homeonwership is “The American Dream.” Might it soon become The American Nightmare? (read more . . . )

I’m making available the basic template we adapted from Ruthsarian’s Skidoo Too layout. In my mind, it is only fair, since his template was in the public domain. The colors were modeled from the bird named the California Scrub Jay of the Pacific Coast, a sub-species of the Western Scrub Jay.

While the older templates below for Wordpress 1.2.x are still available, they will not be updated. I’ve updated the basic template for WordPress 1.5.x using newer versions of Ruthsarian’s Skidoo Too HTM templates. Portions of these templates have been copied from the WordPress Classic theme by Dave Shea and Matthew Mullenweg, covered by the GNU GPL.

Disclaimer: I’m not a programmer, nor a commercial site designer. I will change the template used on this site somewhat from time to time, and the files below will probably not be updated. If you notice any bugs, feel free to make a comment here to tell me, but consider that the files are offered “as is”, and any features that you don’t believe are working correctly are your problem to figure out.

Update of 12/12/2005: Fixed a left-column rendering issue for visitors using Internet Explorer 6.0. This issue was related to WordPress’s calendar and my lousy CSS skills. Please note that this update only applies to WP version 1.5.x. The template for the older WP version, 1.2.x (see below) was not updated as I no longer use that older WP version.

One file below, comments.txt, has only one or two minor changes versus the released WordPress 1.5.1.2 Classic theme.

index.txt style.txt comments.txt

Save the three links above by renaming each one:

1. index.txt as index.php
2. style.txt as style.css
3. comments.txt as comments.php

Create a new directory in your WordPress 1.5.x theme folder, I have assigned the name “bluejay” to that directory:

/wp-content/themes/bluejay/

Move the three files you saved from here into that directory on your blog using an appropriate tool such as FTP or a file manager of some kind. You can change your blog’s active template in the Presentation > Theme administration area of your blog.

Simply open the two links above then save the index.txt file as index.php, and the wp-layout.txt file as wp-layout.css. Before uploading them to your server, make sure you backup the files of the same name used on your current Wordpress 1.2.2 blog: rename them to something like indexbackup.php and wp-layoutbackup.css. Then upload the files you saved from here to your blog.

His blog is titled The Forgettable Mister Ruthsarian, and if you’d like to look at some nice CSS layouts, his are not copyrighted: “© Nobody. All CSS/HTML is released into the public domain.” Don’t let the empty blog fool you, the layouts are easy enough to find.

I’ve spent the last few days—um, let me correct that—Barbara and I have spent the last few days recoding his Skidoo Too layout to work with WordPress 1.2.2.
(read more . . . )

This bathroom remodel is a project I recently completed. Generally, at least in recent years, I don’t do much of this type of work. Moving 60 miles away from my friends who’d occasionally toss me a bone and into a town where no one knew me slowed these types of projects considerably, and forced me to find other types of activities to occupy my days. Still, I occasionally take on a project like this for its diversion from my normal routine. I love the exercise, getting outside, and building something from time to time. It’s a welcome respite from desk-jockeying a computer, staring myopically at a screen.

The photos are not a complete documentation of every step, they were simply taken by me at points in the project when I thought about taking pictures. (read more . . . )

I websurfed across this chart while looking for some information on bottled water—the chart is courtesy of Palomar Mountain Spring Water. All the analyses of competitors’ water are also claimed as spring water sourced, except for Sparkletts which is classified as well water. Both are underground sources, aren’t they? What’s the difference?

According to the International Bottled Water Organization, the IBWO, well water and spring water are two FDA approved label designations for the source of the water that’s been bottled; in addition, the approved labeling list also includes: artesian water or artesian well water, purified water, mineral water, and sparkling bottled water. (read more . . . )