While doing some photo housekeeping, I noticed that I had enough spider, insect, and creature pictures to start a new Creature Photography gallery. Enjoy it, and help me identify some of these things.
Blog
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Holly the Data Entry Worker
While I was tediously copying and pasting entries from my old (non-blog) web design, I started thinking, “Even a monkey could do this job.” Holly’s not as monkey-like as Andrew, but she was around and willing to work. She modified, copied, and pasted the HTML source from almost all of the year 2000. Thanks, Holly!
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Switching to WordPress
After many complaints from various sources about not updating the site, I’ve finally gotten started on the arduous task of catching up on 9 months worth of family happenings. I even heard from one person that they were “sick of that darned telescope” that was at the top of the page for so long.
One thing that has taken me so long is that I’ve been trying to develop a “theme” for WordPress that matches the look of my old site. I wish I’d started on something easier, because I’ve hit dead-end after dead-end and wasted considerable time trying to figure out advanced style-sheet stuff without even fully understanding the basics. Now I’ve decided to put that off for a while and just start entering some articles and updating the gallery. There are lots of ready-made themes available, and I’ll just use one of those until I get mine working.
People told me that my website looked like a blog, even before I knew what a blog was, and it may have, but now that I’m using some real blogging software, lots of neat stuff becomes available. For example, I am able to group articles into categories, so if you want to see every article pertaining to “Home Theater”, you just choose that category from the sidebar. You can also leave comments or questions about a particular article instead of having to use my old goofy “Contacts” page, or the guestbook. You can also select dates for old archived articles, and there’s now a nicer “Search” facility.
I wish I had been using some kind of blogging software for the last couple of years. In order to take full advantage of these cool features, I want to get all my old articles into WordPress. If I had been using any of several pieces of blogging software instead of my own made-up format, I’d now be able to automatically import the articles. Unfortunately, as it is now, this is mostly by hand, with lots of copying and pasting, and manually back-dating things so they’ll be in the correct order. I hope it’ll be worth it.
So anyway, let me know what you think. It’s real easy to leave comments, and after I “approve” your first one, the rest will appear as soon as you leave them.
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To Kill a Mockingbird
I just read To Kill a Mockingbird and I must say that I enjoyed it tremendously. It’s almost shocking that I’ve never read this classic before, and it has whet my appetite to seek out some other classics I may have missed. It also makes me wonder about how I wasn’t forced to read it in high school. I’m not saying that it should be required reading per se, but I’m hoping that lots of kids are at least encouraged to check it out. I know my kids will be. -
Indoor Soccer for Holly
Holly has joined an indoor soccer team: The Midlothian Lady Strikers. There are a few girls from her previous outdoor team, as well as some of her best friends from school that she hadn’t played with before. This is a “no practice” team, and is basically meant to be a warm-up for the Spring outdoor league. The girls started off with a tough loss against an established team. But you could see that they enjoyed themselves and were going to improve quickly. -
Andrew’s School Play
Andrew was in Drama for the first half of this school year, and according to the teacher, he shows some real promise as a thespian. Michelle and I went to their in-school production of “Why Teachers Go Nuts”, in which Andrew had a sizable role as the school bully, “Tuffy” Tooks. He’s the one standing up in the second picture.
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Another Skate Ramp Build
This time some of Ace’s neighborhood pals picked up some scrap lumber from a construction site and we made another ramp: A “spine”. We did have to buy some new plywood for the actual surface of the ramp, but using the scrap certainly saved us some money. We started out with some plans from the Internet, but because we are experienced skate ramp builders now, we soon abandoned them and built the spine however we wanted to. It turned out pretty good, and the guys have been getting lots more use out of it than I expected.
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Happy Halloween
Holly dressed as a witch for the second year in a row, and Andrew went the budget route. “Dew Man” may make some people think “Son of Busch Man”.They went Trick-or-Treating with friends throughout the neighborhood, pretty much unsupervised, while Michelle and I stayed home watching “Shaun of the Dead” and handing out candy.
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Andrew’s National Junior Honor Society Induction
We all know about Andrew’s straight A’s, his athletic accomplishments, and the fact that he’s an all-around great bunch of guys, but it is nice to see him officially recognized too.Andrew was inducted into the National Junior Honor Society in October, 2005. There is a gallery available here.
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First Day of School 2005
Holly’s starting 5th grade and Andrew’s in 8th. Holly still has to leave before the sun even comes up, and Andrew gets to wait until about an hour later. Though the kids are now used to their new school, the first day is still exciting.
