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I like Safari, but …

For a while, I’ve been following the progress of Mozilla’s mobile browser project, codenamed Fennec. As the Mozilla team’s efforts push the project forward, I can’t help but hope that one day soon it will be available on the iPhone. Of course, this will mean that Apple will have to actually APPROVE the app for inclusion in the App Store.

As of this post, Apple has yet to approve any major 3rd party web browser application for the iPhone (meaning not based on Safari). That’s one of the few things where Helio had them beat. When the Opera “mini” browser was released, Helio embraced it. And how could they not? Let’s face it, the Helio native browser was sluggish and seriously lacking in many features where as Opera was sleek, fast, and surely had it beat. Heck, you could even manage your bookmarks online from the Opera website and easily synchronize with the browser on your device.

I would LOVE to see that kind of capability on my iPhone!

I had hoped that by now, Fennec would be far enough along that Helio users could use it. But since Jim and I have jumped aboard the Apple ship, my hopes are now that Fennec could one day soon be made available for iPhone users.

Please, Apple? Please???

Don’t get me wrong, I like Safari … but I’m a Mozilla fangirl through and through!

Businesses lending a hand to job hunters

I’m sure y’all don’t need me to tell you that finding a job is hard work. I know that I am extremely lucky to have found another job within a month of being laid off. Jim was laid off last week, so having me working again so soon was a real blessing. But I know plenty of other people who are still looking.

Looking and applying for a job is hard work, and I’m happy to see that some businesses are looking to lend a hand to those still trying to find work: in particular, Staples and Office Depot. I ran across a couple entries on Mommy’s Wish List that I thought some of y’all might find useful in your search (or you could relay to someone you know who’s searching):

• Office Depot is offering free printing and faxing services to customers until May 30th. (more details here)
• Staples is offering free and business cards to customers until June 13th. (more details here)

Hopefully that’s helpful to someone out there! Please feel free to share related hints or treats in the comment box below.

Hoppy Easter

Happy Easter everyone! I’ve two cute things to share today:

The cutest little rapper I’ve ever seen:

And by far one of the funniest Easter Eggs I’ve seen:

(H/T: For the Lose)

NeoVizion Silver Award

This arrived last night:

Thank you for submitting for the 2009 Gold Award. We enjoyed reviewing your website.

We are presenting you with the Silver Award. All we ask is if you decide to accept this award please link the award back so others like yourself can submit for the awards.

Your site is listed on our award page with a link.

Thank you from the NEOVIZION, Inc. review department.

Thank you!

My own blizzard

Boy, such a flurry of events have been whirling around me and my kin lately!

An American Visit

Friday I chaperoned Jessie’s class field trip to American Village in Montevallo. Even with the bad weather coming through (tornadoes and rain galore, yuck!), we still had a very good time. And I tell ya, I really wish I had visited American Village when I was Jessie’s age … I think I would have looked at history a whole LOT differently!

I’ve suggested to Jim that we head down there one weekend for one of their events or sometime in the summer when the weather is a little more accommodating!

Despite the bad weather and dampened spirits (my Lord, I’ve never seen so many pouty faces in one place! LOL!), I did manage to snap off a few shots:

The Home Front

We had our first interested party view the house last week. Friday night, to be exact. Our realtor called this weekend to let us know that they liked the layout and wanted to come back and see it again. So this weekend we busted some tail and cleaned and painted the entire bottom level. Jessie hasn’t packed a whole lot because she’s with her mother more these days, so we’ll get around to finishing her room last.

I’m trying not to get TOO excited, but I can’t help but want to get my hopes up!

We still haven’t gotten an answer yet on whether or not we got the loan on the new house. More paperwork was needed and faxed off last week. I’m hoping we hear something this week.

OMG … snow? In the South?!

Yes, it snowed here. We received between 3 and 4 inches here. Some parts of Birmingham received up to 7 inches!!!

Jessie was at her mother’s, so I’m sure she had a good ole time in it. I did manage to get a few shots of the pretty white stuff before the other neighborhood kids ran amok and transformed it all to dirty snowballs and lumpy stick-wielding snowmen. :lol:

Pass the Halls!

Either it’s the irritants in the cleaners, the paint fumes, or being out in the rain all day Friday (or a combination of all three), but I have been sick all weekend and feel generally like death warmed over today. I traipsed in to work to discover that my machine was hosed, so I couldn’t have done much of anything productive even if I wanted to.

Everyone kept telling me I should’ve stayed home because I sounded terrible — I think I’ll take their advice and stay in tomorrow. *ugh*

And last but not least …

One of my themes has recently been featured in a WordPress tutorial over on YouTube:

A big thanks to Kristie for letting me know about it, and to ktinboulder for selecting my theme!

Humpday Hilarities

I have several today, so let’s get started! This one is from one of my WOSIB sisters:

How to Deal with Party Crashers

It was at a party and the host was getting worried because there were too many people and not enough refreshments.

She was sure that not all of these people had been invited but didn’t know how to tell which ones were the crashers. Then her husband got an idea …

He turned to the crowd of guests and said “Will everyone from the bride’s side of the family stand up please?” About twenty people stood.

Then he asked “Will everyone from the groom’s side of the family stand up as well?” About twenty five people stood up.

Then he smiled and said, “Will everyone who stood please leave. This is a birthday party.”

This one is from my pal Cookie:

Understanding the Stimulus Bill

Shortly after class, an economics student approaches his economics professor and says, “I don’t understand this stimulus bill. Can you explain it to me?”

The professor replied, “I don’t have any time to explain it at my office, but if you come over to my house on Saturday and help me with my weekend project, I’ll be glad to explain it to you.” The student agreed.

At the agreed-upon time, the student showed up at the professor’s house. The professor stated that the weekend project involved his backyard pool.

They both went out back to the pool, and the professor handed the student a bucket. Demonstrating with his own bucket, the professor said, “First, go over to the deep end, and fill your bucket with as much water as you can.” The student did as he was instructed.

The professor then continued, “Follow me over to the shallow end, and then dump all the water from your bucket into it.” The student was naturally confused, but did as he was told.

The professor then explained they were going to do this many more times, and began walking back to the deep end of the pool.

The confused student asked, “Excuse me, but why are we doing this?”

The professor matter-of-factly stated that he was trying to make the shallow end much deeper.

The student didn’t think the economics professor was serious, but figured that he would find out the real story soon enough.

However, after the 6th trip between the shallow end and the deep end, the student began to become worried that his economics professor had gone mad. The student finally replied, “All we’re doing is wasting valuable time and effort on unproductive pursuits. Even worse, when this process is all over, everything will be at the same level it was before, so all you’ll really have accomplished is the destruction of what could have been truly productive action!”

The professor put down his bucket and replied with a smile,

“Congratulations. You now understand the stimulus bill.”

This one is from one of my coworkers:

The Coping Diet

This is a specially formulated diet designed to help women cope with the stress that builds during the day.

Breakfast
1 grapefruit
1 slice whole wheat toast
1 cup skim milk

Lunch
1 small portion, lean, steamed chicken
1 cup spinach
1 cup herbal tea
1 Hershey’s Kiss

Afternoon Snack
The rest of the Hershey’s Kisses in the bag
1 tub of Hagen-Daaz ice cream with chocolate chips

Dinner
4 glasses of wine (red or white)
2 loaves garlic bread
1 family size supreme pizza
3 Snickers bars

Late Night Snack
1 whole Sarah Lee cheesecake (eaten directly from the freezer)

Remember: ‘Stressed’ spelled backward is ‘desserts!’

And last but not least, another funny from one of my WOSIB sisters:

In addition to communicating with the local Air Traffic Control facility, all aircraft in the Persian Gulf AOR are required to give the Iranian Air Defense Radar (military) a ten minute ‘heads up’ if they will be transiting Iranian airspace. This is a common procedure for commercial aircraft and involves giving them your call sign, transponder code, type aircraft, and points of origin and destination.

I just flew with a guy who overheard this conversation on the VHF Guard (emergency) frequency 121.5 MHz while flying from Europe to Dubai. It is too good not to pass along.

The conversation went like this:

Iranian Air Defense Radar: “Unknown aircraft, you are in Iranian Airspace. Identify yourself.”

Aircraft: “This is a United States Aircraft. I am in Iraqi Airspace.”

Iranian Air Defense Radar: “You are in Iranian Airspace. If you do not depart our airspace, we will launch Interceptor Aircraft!”

Aircraft: “This is a United States Marine Corps FA-18 Fighter. Send ‘em up! I’ll wait!”

Iranian Air Defense Radar: (No Response — Total Silence)

WP Themes How to: Revolving Images in the Header

I was contacted a while back by Barbara Weibel, a very nice lady with a question about a WordPress theme modification. She wanted to know the best way to add a set of rotating images into the header — not like the rotating images php scripts that have been making the rounds for the last few years. She needed something dynamic, similar to the “cover flow” effect used by iTunes.

Boy, that one stumped me. I’m not a Flash or Ajax guru, and Jim was tied up in his own projects. I gave her what little helpful advice I had and hoped for the best.

Barbara emailed me again last week to let me know she had found a solution. She’s used my Translucent Dreams theme as a base for her blog‘s design (which, by the way, is a VERY good read if you’re looking for new bloggers to add to your blogroll!) and has found that using the NextGEN Gallery in the header accomplished the effect she was wanting.

Take a look at her blog, Hole in the Donut, and you’ll see what I’m talking about.

Barbara was nice enough to allow me to publish her notes detailing the steps she took to implement this into her blog. I took the liberty of adding some screenshots from my own test blog to help make it easier to follow along.

Note: You may need to play with the settings once you have it set up to adjust to your liking …

First, I installed and activated the WordPress NextGEN Gallery plugin. This adds a settings panel to the Dashboard that is titled “Gallery”

Second, I installed and activated the NextGEN ImageFlow add-on for the NextGEN Gallery. This shows up as an added option at the bottom of the “Gallery” settings panel on the Dashboard.

**IMPORTANT:** Be sure to upload reflect2.php and reflect3.php to your WordPress root folder!!

Next, I created and uploaded a gallery of the photos I wanted to show up in the header using the “Add Gallery/Images options in the NextGEN Gallery settings panel. I made sure they were all the same size (500 x 333) and although the documentation says you can use vertical format photos, I limited mine to horizontal, simply because I knew they would work better in the header.

Some changes were needed in the stylesheet in order to get the design to align correctly. Add this to the style.css file:

#gallery {
height:259px;
width:800px;
position:absolute;
top:-100px;
left:40px;
}

Then I modified the header.php to be:

<body>
<div id="wrap">
<div id="header">
<div id="gallery">
<?php
echo nggShowImageFlow(2);
?>
<h1><a href="<?php echo get_option('home'); ?>/"><?php bloginfo('name');
?></a></h1>
<h4><?php bloginfo('description'); ?></h4>
</div>
</div>
<div id="sidemagic">


NOTE: The (2) in the above php echo code refers to the number of the gallery I created — your number may be different!

Then I went back to the style.css and made the h1 and h4 position absolute and tinkered with the height for the headline and sub-headline to get them to lay where I wanted them. It now looks like this:

#header {
margin:0 auto;
padding:0;
height:259px;
width:900px;
background-image:url(images/header.jpg);
background-repeat:no-repeat;
background-position:top center;
position:relative;
}

#header h1 {
font-family: Trebuchet MS, arial, sans-serif;
font-size:35px;
color:#ffffff;
line-height:normal;
position:absolute;
top:100px;
left:-30px;
}

#header h1 a, #header h1 a:hover, #header h1 a:link, #header h1 a:visited, #header h1 a:active {
color:#ffffff;
text-decoration:none;
}

#header h4 {
text-align: right;
line-height: 25px;
font-family: Trebuchet MS, arial, sans-serif;
width: 300px;
height: 80px;
overflow: hidden;
font-size: 16px;
font-weight: normal;
font-style: italic;
color: #5dc6cf;
position:absolute;
top:105px;
right:-30px;
}

Also, you’ll need to replace the header.jpg file in the images directory with this one.

You may need to tinker a bit to get everything in just the right place. The nice thing about the NextGEN Gallery plugin is that you can exclude photos with just a check mark, so I still have all 36 in the gallery and I can go back periodically and change which ones show up.

A note on gallery settings

These are suggested, but feel free to deviate to fit your theme:

Gallery, ImageFlow, General Settings:

For this one, set “Max. number of images” to zero: (Gallery, Options)

Barbara’s information

Barbara Ann Weibel, Writer/Photographer
Blog: http://holeinthedonut.com
Photo Library: http://easywebsite.net

In closing

A big thanks goes to Barbara for sharing this with me and allowing it to be posted here. Again, I hope this is helpful to some of y’all. Feel free to comment and ask questions via the comments form below!

Humpday Hilarities 2

I couldn’t resist posting this 2nd bit. This is from one of my WOSIB sisters:

Children’s Science Exam

Q: Name the four seasons.
A: Salt, pepper, mustard and vinegar.

Q: Explain one of the processes by which water can be made safe to drink.
A: Flirtation makes water safe to drink because it removes large pollutants like grit, sand, dead sheep and canoeists.

Q: How is dew formed?
A: The sun shines down on the leaves and makes them perspire.

Q: How can you delay milk turning sour?
A: Keep it in the cow.

Q: What causes the tides in the oceans?
A: The tides are a fight between the Earth and the Moon. All water tends to flow towards the moon, because there is no water on the moon, and nature hates a vacuum. I forget where the sun joins in this fight.

Q: What are steroids?
A: Things for keeping carpets still on the stairs.

Q: What happens to your body as you age?
A: When you get old, so do your bowels and you get intercontinental.

Q: What happens to a boy when he reaches puberty?
A: He says good-bye to his boyhood and looks forward to his adultery.

Q: Name a major disease associated with cigarettes
A: Premature death.

Q: How are the main parts of the body categorized? (e.g., abdomen.)
A: The body is consisted into three parts – the brainium, the Borax and the abdominal cavity. The brainium contains the brain; the borax contains the heart and lungs, and the abdominal cavity contains the five bowels, A, E, I, O, and U.

Q: What is the fibula?
A: A small lie.

Q: What does “varicose” mean?
A: Nearby.

Q: Give the meaning of the term “Caesarean Section”
A: The Caesarean Section is a district in Rome

Q: What does the word “benign” mean?’
A: Benign is what you will be after you be eight.

Ah, the mind of a child …

The Con is on!

Remember last year when we attended OmegaCon? We had a blast, and considering it was the con’s first year, I’d have called it a major success. But I became worried that it had been too successful and had moved on to another town — the website had gone down, the MySpace page had gone quiet and hadn’t been updated in a coon’s age, etc. It seemed to have dropped off the face of the planet … until I re-discovered it today!

I had been sitting in a meeting and had the good fortune to be sitting near a terminal with internet access. (Google to the rescue!) I ran across a reference on a local Star Wars forum to an event called “ImagiCon.” Another quick Google and I had found the website: ImagiCon.org. From the sound of it, it’s the same con, but renamed, with a spiffy website, and by the look of it a lot more to see this year.

YAY!

Ok, so who else is going?

Senior Year in High School … BACK in the Day!

I was tagged on Facebook for this and decided to post here. Feel free to play along in the comments below!

Fill this out about your SENIOR year of high school! The longer ago it was, the more fun the answers will be!! At the end, choose 10 people (or more) to be tagged. You have to tag the person who tagged you. If I tagged you, it’s because I want to know more about you.

IN YOUR SENIOR YEAR DID YOU…

1. Did you date someone from your school? Nope.

2. Did you marry someone from your high school? Nope.

3. Did you car pool to school? Nope.

4. What kind of car did you have? A Chrysler 5th Avenue (aka “the tank”)

5. What kind of car do you have now? A Hyundai Santa Fe

6. Its Friday night…where are you now? At home or out with my girlfriends.

7. It is Friday night…where were you then? Most likely at the football game.

8. What kind of job did you have in high school? Cashier at Dairy Queen.

9. What kind of job do you do now? Web designer for UAB.

10. Were you a party animal? Not really.

11. Were you considered a flirt? Nope.

12. Were you in band, orchestra, or choir? Not during my senior year, no. I was more into sports by then.

13. Were you a nerd? LOL, yeah pretty much.

14. Did you get suspended or expelled? Nope.

15. Can you sing the fight song? Yep, LOL!

16. Who was/were your favorite teacher(s)? Mrs. Dawkins, Mrs. Dunn, Mrs. Wallace, Mr. Bradford, and Mr. Parker

17. Where did you sit during lunch? In the lunchroom with my friends.

18. What was your school’s full name? Corner High School

19. When did you graduate? 1993

20. What was your school mascot? Yellow Jacket

21. If you could go back and do it again,what would you do? Study more!

22. Did you have fun at Prom? Not really, my Junior Prom was a lot more fun.

23. Do you still talk to the person you went to Prom with? That’s a big ‘no’ there.

24. Are you planning on going to your next reunion? Certainly!

25. Do you still talk to people from school? A couple, yeah.

26. School Colors? Black and gold.

27. What celebrities came from your high school? None that I know of …

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