Easy Upgrades Sometimes Aren’t.

By:

The Dude on the Right

I’ve got so many things I have wanted to write about.  There’s the entire
New Orleans’ thing, a rant about why Kentucky Fried Chicken sucks and it’s not
related to PETA, my picture with Johnny Cash, how proud I am of Columbus, IN.,
how I’m rooting for my Indians and torn about rooting for the White Sox, about
my Jimmy Buffett weekend (Stu might need some bigger coconuts), and just general
things.  I also intended to figure out how I could get a Podcast going for
the site.  Then I decided to try an upgrade to my blog software.

So, for the past three days, the stubborn streak in me has gotten the best of
me.  The upgrade was supposed to be easy, I even had a couple of helpful
sites to make things even easier and not mess everything up.  Then, of
course, I didn’t really listen to them, then I started searching the internet as
to why I was getting this "500" error, then I just started deleting things
willly-nilly, then things still didn’t work, then I did another internet search
for some Perl code that might actually help, then I just prayed that my
Frontpage backup had all of the files that I had since deleted and it would
upload them as instructed.  Finally, three days later, I’m back up and
running with the old version of my Blog software (thank you Frontpage), and
until I actually read somewhere, or at least one of the technical folks at my
hosting site or the blog software sight, give me some help into how to make the
upgrade work, I’m sticking with the older version that was working well enough
for me in the first place.

I kind of hate when I get in that stubborn mode, spending days on something
that really doesn’t have an answer at the moment, but alas, I do that every now
and then.  So here’s the quick update – I’m not going to really try
upgrading things until I get a firm answer so I can at least switch my focus
from computer programming to the important things, like Jimmy Buffett, NFL
football, movies, music, and what scares me even more, because it usually
becomes the "I never get anything done because of," Falll TV programming. 
Most of my favorite shows are returning, I’m sure there are some new one coming
for me to get sucked into as well, and I might have to buy a new TIVO to keep up
with it all.

That’s it for this one! I’m The Dude on the Right!! L8R!!!

No apologies, only excuses.

By:

The Dude on the Right

I
was going to write that I apologize for not updating my blog in about a week,
but you know what, I don’t apologize, I just have excuses. Excuse 1: In
preparation for my trip to the
old country
, alright, just
Ohio
, I spent way too many hours trying to get a wireless internet adapter
to work in my old laptop that would just keep crashing my laptop because my
laptop is too old and this adapter doesn’t work with lowly Windows ME. Sadly,
all of that time was wasted anyway because my brother still has his wireless hub
set at slow speed instead of fast speed anyway so my laptop card was fine
anyway. Excuse 2: In preparation for my trip to the old country, alright,
still just Ohio, I felt it necessary to upgrade
my virus software on my
laptop so when I check my e-mail I would be safe. Eventually I got it working,
but it’s really hard to do when you’re too stubborn to realize that the wireless
adapter in Excuse 1 was causing all of your problems and not the anti-virus
installation. Excuse 3:
The
Dude on the Left
and I went to see

George Thorogood and The Destroyers
on Wednesday night. The show was great,
but by the time I got back, all I wanted to do was quickly see if some of the
photos turned out and go to bed. Excuse 4: All packed up and ready to go,
I headed back to the old country, yes, still just Ohio, on Thursday, getting in
in time to go to bed. Excuse 5: After intending to start getting some
work done while at the old country, fine, Ohio, I was still struggling with my
laptop trying to connect to the home connection because I was too stubborn to
ditch my new wireless adapter in favor of my old adapter, and then finally, I
switched back to my old adapter when low-and-behold, all began working like it
should have in the first place. I’m such a dope.
Excuse
6:
I intended to write a blog while I was in Ohio, I mean, the old country,
when it occurred to me that I had left my
blogging software
passwords sitting on my desk in the
new country
, I mean
Illinois
, so the blogging update went out the window. And to top that off,
there, in my computer in the new country, was stored my movie preview template,
which I failed to upload, or is that download, I always get that backwards, but
in any case, I never transferred it over to my laptop so I would have 90% of my
movie preview work done, all I would need to do was finish the preview portion
and I would be able to post a ton of them upon my return. Excuse 7:
Traveling back to the new country from the old country, alright, from Ohio to
Illinios,

nearing the Ohio/Indiana border
, I thought about writing a blog when I got
home, but well, didn’t, as doing laundry and just getting situated back at home
got in the way. Excuse 8: The Dude on the Left had an extra ticket to the
Cubs/Braves game Monday night, a game which sucked because the
Cubs
lost because they suck, and hopefully we can finally stick a fork in the Cubs’
chances for the postseason because they are done. Getting back late, I really
needed some sleep because I had some consulting to do today.

But now, I’m back! Yay!!! Next time I travel I hope to remember at least my blog
password (that’s a drawback of letting your computer remember your passwords for
you I guess) to do some kind of update on the road, although, in all honesty,
the weekend Jimmy Buffett is playing at Wrigley Field over Labor Day, I have a
feeling I’ll have a lot more excuses why I didn’t get any updates during those
few days, and I also have to admit, liquor will probably be involved with at
least one, if not all of those excuses.

That’s it for this one!  I’m The
Dude on the Right!!  L8R!!!

I Guess Some Things Just Take Time

By The Dude on the Right
Usually I’m pretty write-ative, but tonight, this entry will be a little shorter than normal, at least that’s my train of thought right now. We’ll see how this ends up.
Anyway, it’s been a busy day, mostly playing with one of my new toys, my blogging software, trying to get the pages to look seamless with the rest of the web site. I did play slightly with my other toy, the new camera, but am figuring Monday and Tuesday will be more devoted to that one so that I am ready when the lights go down and I’m at the foot of the stage for Green Day on Wednesday night (that review coming later this week).
As far as the blogging software, let me tell you, that hasn’t been the easiest of things, especially since I rarely read the right documentation on new things, and with this Movable Type thing having many options to make things how you want, I also had to learn a few things, like dealing with a style/formatting file. The problem: After getting it to work exactly like I wanted, not realizing it was built into the program so when I rebuilt the blogging area it rebuilt based on its style file, because, well, I simply didn’t read that you need to change the file internally, not externally, so I got to start over again. Like a lot of my computer experiences, it’s been about trial and error, finding out why the errors are there, then trying again. I’m finally getting the hang of things, although one part of the commenting area still isn’t working but I actually used the Knowledge Base and know why it’s happening so I might have a fix on that. Ahh, Knowledge Bases and FAQs!
Hope you had an unbelievable weekend.
That’s it for this one! I’m The Dude on the Right!! L8R!!!

A Power Outage and I’m Worried About My Kids.

By:

The Dude on the Right

So I get back from seeing

"The Dukes of Hazzard,"
get near my garage door in the
dude-mobile, keep
pressing the button so that the door would magically open, and nothing happens.
Keep pressing. Nothing happens. Keep pressing. Nothing happens. Then my neighbor
yells across the way that the power is out. I hoped the battery was dead in the
little transmitter thingy, but fine, I can do some writing on my laptop, even
though I can’t connect to the internet, and then I remembered something I
haven’t done yet that I keep telling myself I’m going to do – get a battery
back-up power supply. No, not for my computer, I already have one for that. I’m
talking about getting one for my kids, I mean, my fish. It’s bad enough that the
temperature is rising, and Steve, Ashley, and Bill, well, they can deal with
that to a point, but the real problem is that the filters stop filtering, if it
was cold the heater stops heating (although I’ve read you shouldn’t really plug
one into a power supply), but now, especially with the filtering thing, bad
things are getting the chance to totally foul my fish tank, even to the point of
making it toxic enough to kill my kids. As of my writing this, the power’s been
out for about half an hour, but if it keeps going any longer I might have to
yank my computer power supply out of the wall and hope there’s some juice left
in its batteries to at least run my canister filter for awhile. Worst case
scenario, I’m off to my Home
Depot
to by a small portable generator and run some power cords to keep the
kids happy. Here’s hoping
ComEd
can get this taken care of quickly, because as quaint as a power
outing can be sometimes, on a hot August day, I just hope my kids can weather
the storm, and hopefully this time I have learned my lesson and will pick up
that battery backup for my kids.

That’s it for this one! I’m The Dude on the Right!! L8R!!!

Follow up note… Well, it turns out my UPS for my computer was pretty much
useless by the time I tried to see if it would power one of the filters, and
time was ticking by. So, for the next hour-ish, I kept calling the electric
folks. Low and behold, on my last call, I was told by the nice lady answering
the phone that her supervisor informed them that all of
Aurora was back up and
running. I nicely told her that maybe her supervisor would want to spend her
night at my place, and I’ll hang out at hers, since I’ll bet her air conditioner
was working. She nicely chuckled and said she would let her supervisor know
power hasn’t been restored to all of Aurora, and low and behold, 15 minutes
later the power kicked back in, so luckily, you have this blog entry to get you
into Sunday and so far the kids, I mean fish, seem okay.