PLANET3RRY

So I thought that the Upgrade to my blog would be easy… well, it was except that I had an error saying that I couldn’t upgrade to WordPress 2.9.1 because MySQL db was something like 4.0.69 and it needed to be like 4.1.3.

No Problem… Export old db, Make NEW MySQL database 5.something, Import and I would be good to go.
Except that whole IMPORT thing didn’t work… or at least I didn’t know what check boxes to check/uncheck. Of course needing the internet, this was something I wanted to do here at work, since it was already in the middle of upgrading and I didn’t want to leave all of my readers in suspense on when Planet3rry.com was going to be back online.

So, I did it the old fashion way… by hand. Except in the world of computers… that is the Ol’ Cut N’ Paste. So I opened two windows of phpMYAdmin, one of the old WordPress database and one of the new database. Then take each table from the old database and Export it to SQL code, Go to the new database and run the SQL code which creates the table (and thankfully) and populates the data. I had 29 Tables…

Finally it’s done, the upgrade seem to have took. I don’t have time to fix/upgrade my plugins, because while all of this is going on at my desk at work. The GREAT BLIZZARD OF FRIDAY 3pm is happening right now. Of course, you may think that I am CRAZY for doing all this in the FREAKIN’ BLIZZARD, but this is how I look at it…

Everyone else scattered earlier… they’ll find all the slick spots before I do… and just by the sheer number of people leaving there will be less idiots out on the road when I make it home. Well, according to some, there will be at least one… I do have a contingency plan if I can’t get the car home… I have my running clothes with me!

SEE! I do have clout with The GOOG.

They have added a way to save-guard yourself from starting off on ALL ITEMS. If you go to Settings>Perferences, you can choose what you want your starting folder to be. You could either set it for a blank folder (tag) or set it something that if you clicked “Read All Items” it wouldn’t be determintal. Plus you can also click “View ALL Items” and you’ll see what you missed.

Problem Solved. Your Welcome.

Dear Google,

Let me start off by saying how much I enjoy the products that you put out. They have really increased my productivity. I do have one small suggestion with Google Reader though. It seems that when you accidently push the “Mark All As Read” there is no way to undo. This is bad when you have a bunch of your friends blogposts that you want to read but now you have to do it the old school way and go through each post one by one. This takes alot of time, especially when your list to read was around 2000 entries. I’m sure that you’ll say that Reader is in “beta” the loophole of software. And that’s fine, because you can just roll out a new feature on the back end and it’s like Christmas for the users of the product. So, why don’t you roll out a “Are you SURE that you want to mark all as read” when you are on the ALL ITEMS screen. Just a thought. I am not sending this to the customer service email address because since you guys monitor and store every single page on the internet, I know that you’ll find it somewhere between 0.0045 seconds and 5.658 seconds and I may just be 1 of more than 1,000,000 users ( that’s USEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEERs in Google Math) that might have the same request. So until next time…

CHEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEERS,

Terry

This past week has been a doosy. If it wasn’t one big thing then it was a HUGE thing (or two).

On Monday, I left work early because My Lovely and Talented Wife was sick, really sick. I was gone for most of the day and when I came home around 2 or so, she thought I had never left for work. We put a call in to the doc, based on her sickness ailments, it was looking more bacterial and not viral. I was able to go out and get a Z-pack for her to start her on meds.

Tuesday, I was supposed to run around 10 miles, but it turned out that I spent most of the day ironing out the final detail for the Form 1023 for ASD Athletes. Actually, I went to the post office around 11pm to make sure that it was in the system.

Wednesday was also pretty busy. I went to a networking meeting in the morning as a guest to promote the event at the end of the month. Also to get pledges, this way we’d be able to have an idea for a budget for the upcoming year.

Thursday, I was supposed to run after work, but I had this slight pressure in my left ear. It just wouldn’t go away. So, I decided that instead of running, that I would go to the Urgent Care. Sure enough, an ear and sinus infection. So, I got my meds for that and when I got home, the race directors of the Worldwide Festival of Races had our first conference call for the 4th annual event!

Friday, I was hoping that I would be able to catch up on some stuff, but I woke up late. Too late to take the trash out. Then when I got to work, it was one thing after another. Mid morning, it was a computer crash where I thought I had lost the hard drive. But, Linux to the rescue, I was able to have an operational OS in about 20 minutes and found my dilemma. I will have to try to make my computer dualboot. I think that if I use the web version of my outlook that I would be functional in that enviroment. Then after lunch, it was a meeting with one the head honchos from DC. That lasted until about 2 or so and then I was just getting my day started.

Saturday, I did make it out to run… I had planned to run 18 miles, but it worked out that I would make it back to the van at 15 miles. I stopped there with the intent of running 18-20 next weekend. This way, the step to the marathon, won’t be a big issue, especially if I am running at a slower pace. But when I got home, I was really tired and took 2 naps in the afternoon while I had the kids. Then being uninspired for dinner, we had waffles that I had made before. The Elder was showing signs of being under the weather… confirmed during the middle of the night. I went to bed early as I was really tired. Make that really, really tired.

This upcoming week does have a number of appointments and meetings, but hopefully if everyone is on The Mend, that it won’t disrupt the schedule too much. You can’t just mess up my schedule! Come on! But now I have to play catchup on everything else.

I woke up with morning at the nape of Dawn… that’s slightly higher than the Crack… HAHAHA.

Actually, it was around 3am and I could not go back to sleep. Thankfully, I had gone to bed early and so it wasn’t that I wasn’t getting enough sleep… it was that I was getting my regular amount. So, to keep my body on a schedule, I went ahead and got up and started the day. I was able to reconcile some of financials that have been lingering around. I even did some organization and straightening of the Workshop (which could be called The Focal Point of Chaos). And even had some domestications of putting some laundry into the washer and the dryer.

Not to worry though, I proceeded to go outside, to burn some more wood. FIRE. ME. MAKE FIREEEEEEEEE. And of course, the Loud and Loveable Skipper Doodle heard me, so that meant some rounds of Fetch… at 5am… in 30F weather. That dog is a MACHINE!

I was worried that I would be too tired today to have a productive evening. After all… it IS Terry day and I do have a long run for my training which I am behind on. I thought that I would be getting something around 16 miles in today… but given that I just did 14 miles on Saturday and I didn’t run yesterday, I thought that I would shift down to 10 miles today. I think I could do a 2.5 clover-leaf (out and back then out and back) on Neyland and 3rd Creek that would be pretty entertaining.

I am not exactly sure how I am going to make the jump to 26.2 miles on March 29th from where I am now. I am toying with backing off the long runs a notch and keeping my training speed the same for Flying Pig (May 3rd). As a result of missing the Strawplains Half Marathon on 2-14. I am not sure that I want to keep the mileage the same, even IF I try to run one of the long runs at my Knoxville Pacer speed of 12:30 min miles. I think that I will save that for a short distance to get a “feel” for the pace, but keep my endurance runs at the pace that I plan on racing Cincinnati in May. I probably should start breaking in a new pair of shoes… just in case.

I had been hoping to leave work early today, so that I could start my run earlier, but it seems once I started checking a report that has to be sent up to DC, some of the output is wrong. So that meant, I had to cross-check what I had sent the programmer and, sigh, one part of it was my fault… but the other stuff… I dunno. I don’t have a clue how they coded some of the stuff. So, that’s when I thought that I would go for 10 miles today instead… something a little shorter and more managable for the week… and I will have the weekend to get a good long run in… either 16 or 18. I might even try another “run to work” escapade. It’s just so c-c-c-cold (relative) in the morning.

I have been in the mode to Re-tag my MP3 collection. Or I should say, standardize, my MP3 collection. Directories… Filenames… Tags… all OVER the place. So, I am up to “N” right now with the (almost) final edit. I did find a pretty fast way to Rename the File name using the existing Tag AND using the Filename to Tag the MP3 file. I know… pretty crazy… but since I took the time to make the directory structure the same through out my library, this part of the project is pretty easy.

Oh… and I need to update to WordPress 2.7.1. I really just need to upload the files at this point. Yes, I KNOW that you can do it automatically, but I had some stuff that got “overwritten” and so now I need to make some manual changes and some mental notes that if I do the automatic update in the future, there are some files that I need to upload so that all my plugins work.

Well, off to run.

My Running Calendar has me down for 16 miles today. I don’t believe that is going to happen today. I think what will be more in line will be 6.3 or 8.4 depending on how many laps of Lakeshore Greenway that I will do. I only had some mild soreness yesterday morning and I tried to drink a bunch yesterday. What is humorous, in a cynical kind of way, is that now that my Kidneys are feeling better, my throat is very scratchy. As in “Dare me, Runner! You Run, I will hurt you.”

Since I am a Jedi, I decided to take some meds yesterday at the first signs of some chest congestion. And well, I think that I have made a good stand at keeping this illness that is trying to take me down and take out my kidneys and sell them on eBay. I probably need to sit down and give my training that good look see.

In other running related items that I saw yesterday, Palm is going to come out with a Smarter phone than the Treo and Centro and it has a Runner written ALL over it. It’s called the Pre. I will be naming mine Fontaine. When I get mine in 2015. It’s going to have the fancy-schmancy stuff of the Blackberry and iPhone together, but with some pretty neat features: Magnetic Charging, 3MP Camera, REmovable Battery (if needed), GPL which means that people can write their own applications… kinda like FireFox of SmartPhones.

Off to go get some more water for the kidneys.

I THOUGHT there would be more Blogging and defintiely MORE running… but Nope. There’s been more blogging then running and NOT BY CHOICE! It seems that when I start to get something together… there is a schedule change and so I am forced to hang the shoes up for that day. THEN when I try to go at lunch time, there is something called RAIN, that keeps me from running.

NOW, I have a head cold of sorts that I have battled back over from the weekend! If I keep up with the tylenol and meds, I would be able to run… but there is a schedule change. Maybe Thursday, Maybe Never. The first week was fine and dandy… and even the second week was “okay”… as I often say “Never Underestimate the Power of a Rest Day” but now that it’s been since 11.23 since I have ran. It’s getting a little old. and I am getting a little poochy… as in the stomach.

But the ideas on Blogging haven’t been missing. it’s just that My Lovely and Talented Wife wanted a new laptop, so she sabotaged mine. Forcing ME to buy a new laptop for her, which I then get the “hand me down”. Yeah… that’s how it rolls in my house.

And WordPress is kindly asking me to upgrade…so I better tend to that… My My Lovely and Talented Wife’s new computer should be here on or near the weekend. Perhaps I will have more time to blog. Oh wait, my in-laws don’t have wifi… History seems to be repeating itself.

I am alive! I made it through the Flying Monkey Marathon and now have the qualification needed to apply for membership to the Marathon Maniacs. I would have done that already, but it seems that all my work stuff from my 40 hour job kinda got crammed into a couple of days with the short week.

If you happen to celebrate Thanksgiving, Happy Thanksgiving. For all you runners out there, that means a mid-week (usually) race that has something to do with Turkeys and/or Trotting. We do have our Turkey Trot 5k in the area (this Saturday I think) but the main event is Thanksgiving Morning… Autumnfest 8k.

And I will be at that race… volunteering! As of right now, I am going to be working the water station… which should be interesting to say the least.

Hopefully tomorrow, I will be able to announce the winners of the Guess My Times, Win Crap contest. I’d like to make a nice blog spectacle of it… if I can. Which reminds me, that the winner of the contest before this… Big South Fork hasn’t emailed their address. I think they got the clue that winning crap from me is evil and that only bad things can happen… MUHAHAHAHAHA. nah… it’s all good. I was actually looking at Big Lots at all the crap, I mean prizes that would be GRRRRRRREAT! I do need to start thinking about 2009 and whether or not, I am going to let my fitness level diminish to the point where I go out for a 6 mile run and it seems…HARD!

But for the conspiracy… there seems to be a pink laptop conspiracy. For some reason, my laptop will not boot-up. It turns on and does some spinning and stuff, but nothing happens… nada. Luckily, I have been consolidating our files, so the only things that would have really been lost will have been a couple hundred pictures, but that’s only a small fraction of the pictures we have AND I think I may have most of them that were on there anyway. Stupid HP makes a funky hard drive, so I couldn’t pull the hard drive out and try to access and do some diagnostics on it. Oh well… maybe I’ll throw some chicken bones or tea leaves to see if it can be resurrected. But if it can’t, there is a young lady in the household who has done some advertising for a pink Laptop…. Mmmmmm I wonder who that could be? Laptop stops working and she ADMITS to being the last one to use it! And now she wants it. I SHOULD be getting the pink laptop… and those who have seen my phone would agree.

Anyway, I need to get back to important stuff like pay bills and that stuff so that I can get up at a reasonable hour. Maybe the kids will let me blog tomorrow… yeah… I know… one in a million (“so you are saying there’s a chance”)

If you’ve staring at my site all day refreshing to see what exciting content I am going to be up next, do yourself a favor… get a RSS feed reader. It’ll save you TONS of time.

But if you are still living in 2004, then you’ve been hitting F5 (or if you are in-the-know) Shift-F5, then you’ve seen a possessed blog with white space showing up, disappearing, moving, disappearing… something like The Excorsist.

Actually, I wanted a 3 column theme but I love the color scheme and so I decided to go ahead and just change my theme to a wider, faster, sexier theme. Well, once I figure out what was going on…

The code was written like a TV season finale… to find resolution of the code in the current PHP file, you had to go to the next PHP file to get it. It’s like a puzzle. Instead of a box of smooth squares that where it’s own piece by itself, these were true puzzle pieces… So, in something that I wish I knew Yesterday! (adam sandler)… I figured out one out.

Thanks to Sam I Am (short name version) for sending me to a tutorial about expanding the column function of a column impaired Word Press theme, I was able to mash together something that didn’t look pretty but works.

I now have to work on the CSS (read: make it look pretty) and as much as I want to love GIMP… it’s so annoying because it’s not potatoshop (borrowed slang). I don’t think that I will be able to work on the image files until later tonight. So, if the screen looks a little messed up, it’s okay, you can have another Tequila Shot, or shot of espresso… you aren’t imaging things (I don’t think)

I ran into a wall yesterday as I was migrating our family pictures from Coppermine Gallery to Picasa Web Albums.

Our evolution in web pictures: I originally constructed webpages by hand to host our pictures. Cut and Paste Code to construct the pages, format the pictures, upload, etc.. Then, I found this great tool that built the web albums for me, but I still had to have space to host the albums and I had to upload all the files myself. I could batch resize pictures within the program and all the coding was done for me and such things such as auto-navigation and thumbnails were a nice treat. Next came Coppermine and the other Database-type web albums. You had a TON of options and uploading and constructing the webalbums was much easier. Then, after seeing my brother in law using his Picasa Web Albums from Google, you could just select the pictures you want in a GUI interface and a couple of clicks it was done… I could create 10 albums in about 90 seconds…

However, despite you having a 1 gig of space to use, you can only create 250 web albums. So right now, I am stuck and I still have 750+MB of space left. I can’t make anymore albums unless Google ups the limit or I open another Google account. The latter being that I have to have 2 URLs for our pictures which is something that I want to avoid and was my reason for moving stuff over to Picasa since it was so easy, fast and user friendly.

I have an email to them inquiring about Picasa, so we’ll see…