Technology = Fail!

I might as well rant some more about technology issues.

• Thingamablog freaked out on me, I spent 10 minutes trying to publish a blog entry. Had to reboot my PC to get it to work today.
• Bulleting in Thingamablog is also acting wonky tonight!
• A friend's home PC blew up, and I had to walk them through on the phone how to fix their bios settings for it to work.
• Cell phone issues (already covered) - I have to point out though, that from my past knowledge of the cell industry Text Messaging is unreliable. A call is better really. Why? They use excess bandwidth and capacity to deliver text messages (cell providers). If the network is full, or there is a bottleneck the voice calls typically get routed and text messaging gets the short end of the stick.
• Pidgin, it's an Open Source IM client. Well, looks like Yahoo changed something, because it doesn't work with Yahoo IM anymore. I updated it, but no luck. So I downloaded YIM, and it was a good thing I did the expert install because it planned to SPAM my machine something fierce. Replace Google as my search choice, add toolbars to my browsers, that kind of stuff. I hope the Pidgin development team releases a patch soon.
• The Vulcan has some sort of SLOW leak at the rear drive shaft. So I gotta take it in and have it serviced I think, and have that fixed.
• The truck is due for a oil, V-belt, and transmission fluid change.
• Oh a bright note, I noticed my Chickens and Hens are actually spreading through their flowerbed. But then again, they don't run on electricity or gasoline do they?

mrbun.com is NOT for sale

I've owned the domain mrbun.com since 1997. I originally registered it for a comic strip, and as a personal website. It's been a place to post my art, to post a journal, photos for friends, images for e-bay, photoshop entries for fark.com, etc... It's my personal website, and one I am quite attached to.

Imagine my shock today when I get an e-mail from rbtech.biz which appears to be a company which does website design in South East Asia. They sent me a message asking me to sell them my domain. They didn't e-mail me using my feedback form, they e-mailed me directly with the form's address. Normally I delete any messages which show up that bypass the form (my spam filter does it by default anyway). I am assuming their client, which appears to be a bakery in Malaysia, is searching for a domain.

Anyway, the message is below, along with my response.

Windy City Reflections

The last time I traveled for work was Dallas, Texas for MapInfo training earlier this year. At the time I was fairly miserable traveling alone. The class was very small, only 3 people (including myself) and the other two students were local. That left me with nobody to hang out with or go out with, and I thought of looking up or contacting my friend Jason in Dallas, but I didn't get around to it. I was lonely because I missed Marie terribly, I'd always hated being away from her because I loved her so much.

This last week I went to Chicago, Illinois for a Web Content Management Conference. It was snowing when the plane landed at Chicago, Midway and I took the CTA Orange Line to State/Lake. I walked to my hotel for a half mile (across the river) in the snow. I checked in, dried off, and went to dinner and to Macy's and bought some christmas ornaments. The next day I went to the conference. It was very good, all about Wiki's, Blogs, Social networking and how they can be used internally and externally in a corporate environment. I went out to dinner with a friend from the conference, Dan, and then we went to Hooter's for a couple of beers and to the ESPN Zone for a short time. I flew out the next day, the skies were clear.

This time I didn't have anyone to miss, anyone back home waiting for me to hug me when I got off the plane. It was a lot different than ever before. When I went to Disney earlier this year, it made me sad. This time, I was just null, there wasn't any sadness nor any happiness about it. It was just life.

I bought a book for my trip, The Book of Lost Things. It's very good, I highly recommend it. I finished it yesterday (Sorry Courtney!).

Test

My webhost (Canaca.com) upgraded me to a new server today for free... This is a test!

Stylesheet

I changed the stylesheet for the site a bit, to make the fonts and layout more consistent between IE and Mozilla.

Fixing up the Blog

Okay, it took some massaging... but I FINALLY got the Thingamablog configured the way I want it.

I thought it was great initially, and when I tested it with Firefox it looked great.

Since I don't use IE, I never tested it with that. Well, I check the page and it didn't look good with IE at all.

So I spent about an hour or two recoding some things to show things the way I wanted it.

mrbun.com

Well, as anyone who read recent entries knows my life has gone through a lot of low spots this year.

In order to be able to post more often, and update the site more often I have finally switched to using Thingamablog. This takes my site in a different direction and will make it easier to maintain.

I've kept the original header and look and feel for consistency since the original site is now just a link off the main header menu. I'm keeping the old site for archival purposes as some of my entries about my bikes have proven to be useful to fellow motorcyclists... and I do not want to try and erase the past because Marie decided she wanted to be single and we went through a divorce this year.

She and I agreed to remain friends, and we still are. It's still hard for me to look back at photos, think about past memories, and know that there won't be anymore made with her and that our lives as husband and wife are over.

I've moved on, and accept it as reality and know that there will be more memories and that life goes on.

Anyway, hopefully I'll be posting more often here.

You can also check out some blog entries on myspace.com. I have a page there at http://myspace.com/misterbun

Blogware Testing

This is a test entry using Thingamablog. Disregard! :-)

If you're looking for the Old Site please use the Site Archive link from the header menu.