Headline News 2006-01-04

From ABC News:
Church Selling Toilet Paper to Raise Money
Holy crap!

From ABC News:
Building Owners Find Hidden Second Story
Finally figured out where those stairs went

From ABC News:
Studies: Women Genetically Programmed to Cheat
Men still are not allowed an excuse

From ABC News:
Gas Station Owners Must Decide on Post-Katrina Gouging Charges
Still leaning towards charging as much as possible

From ABC News:
Barbie Accused of Being Part of the Transgender Movement
Ken: "I knew something was wrong, but I didn't know what"

From ABC News:
Microsoft Prepares Patch for Windows Flaw
Available at www.linux.org

From ABC News:
Super Bowl Wants Only Young Dancers
Michael Jackson in charge of coreography

From ABC News:
Pete Townshend Warns iPod Users
Meet the new boss, same as the old boss

From ABC News:
Actor Nick Nolte completes drugs charge probation
Nolte excited about prospects of using drugs again

From ABC News:
'Nightline's' Koppel to join Discovery Channel
Koppel: "On my new show, just like on 'Nightline,' I can reject your reality and subsitute my own"

From AFP:
Global warming 55 million years ago shifted ocean currents
Bush blamed

Only 6 More Days Of Vulnerability!

Thanks, Microsoft. Only 6 more days until you fix the 7+ years old glitch in the Windows Operating Systems.

Microsoft's goal is to release the update on Tuesday, January 10, 2006, as part of its monthly release of security bulletins. [entire bulletin]

Now, in fairness to Microsoft, they say they have a fix ready, and are spending a week testing it. Testing's a good thing. SixApart could try it some time. But it still seems like a long time.

Of course, we were vulnerable for 400 times as long, so I guess I shouldn't complain.

For those that don't want to wait for Microsoft's fix, Ilfak Guilfanov, a programmer and blogger, has a fix that can be uninstalled.

Of course, there's always other options

Picnic 01-04-2006

Items I found while perusing my blogroll:

• Wil Wheaton has a follow-up conversation with his family


• B Relevant is excited about a special on the Holy Land


• Phin engages in gas warefare


• Brothers Dim have fun with the AP


• aTypical Joe says maybe we're not so divided after all


• Connected for Life gets a new Tiki


• The Therapist wants more on the Marion Barry robbery


• Public Eye provides more on the Marion Barry robbery


• Dizzy Girl rubs it in


• Confederate Yankee says Iran's cruisin' for a brusin'


• Charmaine Yoest is following the situation in Iran


• Jack Yoest looks at managers and sociopaths

Making Dessert

This past Christmas, we all got together and had us a good time eatin' dinner and supper. Some folks make a turkey or a ham. Some make casseroles. Some make cakes and pies. I got me a dessert specialty I made.

Actually, Basil has the recipe for his fluffy banana concoction. I takled him out of it and I decided to show everyone that I can make do in the kitchen myself. After all, I've been eating for most of my life. And I can cook.

Anyway, here's the recipe for that Fluffy Bananna Conction Concoction.

1. Look through the cabinets until you find the flour.


2. Open the tupperware contain of flour. Pull hard.


3. Clean flour up off the floor.


4. Pick bugs out of flour that's still in the tupperware container. You can stop when you get enough flour to fill up a coffee cup.


5. Open refrigerator and look for butter.


6. Take the two small end pieces of butter that fell down to the egg shelf and put in a microwavalbe dish.


7. get the other piece of butter that has been scooped out across the top by the butter knife and put it in that microwabavle dish.


8. Put dish in microwave and microwave on high for five minutes.


9. Take dish of burnt butter out of microwave. Throw away.


10. Clean microwave.


11. Run to store to buy more butter.


12. Ask lady with shoppping cart if there's a difference between the Winn Dixie brand and the one with the little Indian girl on the box.


13. Buy the one with the little Indian girl on the box. Return back to the house.


14. Put three sticks on butter shelf.


15. Put fourth stick in clean micrwavable dish.


16. Throw away box so the old lady won't know you messed up the butter we already had.


17. Microwave stick of butter for 10 seconds. Repeat. Repeat Repeat.


18. Take out of microwave.


19. Open freezer and find zip-lock bag of pecans.


20. Take rubber band off bag of pecans. Unfold.


21. Look for any sign of a date on bag.


22. Smell pecans.


23. Feed a pecan to cat.


24. Make note to get a new cat.


25. Throw pecans away.


26. Go back to store to buy pecans.


27. Get small bag of pecans.


28. Pick up poptarts, bag of fun-size snickers, and beef jerkey.


29. And a coke.


30. Eat beef jerkey and five fun-size snickers on the way back home.


31. Put bag of pecans in large bowl.


32. Add flour to bowl.


33. Put hardened butter back in microwave for 10 seconds. Repeat.


34. Pour melted butter in bowl.


35. Open drawer to look for wooden spoon.


36. Open other drawer to look for wooden spoon.


37. Look in sink for wooden spoon.


38. Wash wooden spoon.


39. Using wooden spoon, mix flour, pecans, and butter.


40. Open cabinet and look for dish.


41. Look in other cabinet for dish.


42. Look in drawer under stove for dish.


43. Put blob of flour/pecans/butter in dish. Mash it flat.


44. Turn oven on at 350 degrees. Wait for it to heat up.


45. Go the the bathroom. Take book.


46. After teh light goes out on the oven, put the dish with the mashed-flat crust inside.


47. Look for watch.


48. Figure that it took five minutes to find watch, so use watch to time passing of 15 more minutes.


49. Take dish out of oven.


50. Quickly put dish on counter top.


51. Put salve on burned hands.


52. Add oven mitts to shopping list.


53. Wash bowl.


54. Open cabinet and look for confectioners sugar.


55. Call someone and ask them what confectioners sugar is.


56. Call someone else and ask them what confectioner sugar is.


57. Open cabinet and get bag of Winn Dixie powdered sugar.


58. Put half a cup of powederd sugar in bowl.


59. Take about half of it back out.


60. Open refrigerator and get out box of cream cheese.


61. Put cream cheese in bowl with sugar.


62. Look in cabinet for mixer.


63. Unplug toaster. Plug in mixer.


64. Open drawer and look for the beater things.


65. Open another drawer to find the other beater thing.


66. Put beater things in mixer. Push hard.


67. Put band-aid on finger. Wait for it to quit hurting.


68. Turn mixer on high and start mixing cream cheese and powered sugar.


69. Stop mixer.


70. Wipe powdered sugar off face and shirt.


71. Turn mixer on low and start mixing cream cheese and powdered sugar.


72. Increase speed on mixer until it's all mixed in together.


73. Open cabinet and look for instant vanilla pudding mix.


74. Go to store to buy two small boxes of jello instant vanilla pudding mix.


75. Dump the pudding mix in bowl.


76. Go to the refrigerator and get milk out.


77. Smell milk.


78. Throw milk away.


79. Go to the store to get a quart of milk.


80. Put half the milk in the bowl.


81. Open refrigerator and get bowl of cool whip.


82. Empty bowl of cool whip in bowl.


83. Turn mixer on low.


84. Start mixing stuff again.


85. Turn the speed on the mixer up a little bit and keep mixing.


86. Turn mixer all the way up and keep mixing.


87. Take mixer out of bowl. Turn off.


88. Wipe mess up off the walls. And cabinet. And side of the refrigerator.


89. Find funny-shaped spatula thing. Lay aside.


90. Find banana. Throw away brown parts. Repeat.


91. Cut bananas up and lay across the cooled crust.


92. Remember to let crust cool first.


93. Finish cutting up bananas and spread them out across the crust.


94. Find spatula thingy and use it to dump the stuff on bananas and crust.


95. Using spatula thingy, spread the stuff around.


96. Look for cover for dish.


97. Find saran wrap, and cover dish.


98. Put dish in refrigerator.


99. Let chill overnight.


100. Enjoy!

Basil's recipe is actually pretty good stuff. And the dish I made was a big hit. I hope you enjoy it.

More Whtie Trash Wednesdays

Agent Bedhead
Alabama Improper
And Rightly So!
BOBO BLOGGER
Dangerous Logic
Feisty Republican Whore
HECTOR VEX
It Is What It Is
Lost In Lima Ohio
Mean Ol' Meany
Merri Musings
MY Vast Right Wing Conspiracy
Pennsylvanian in exile
Pirate's Cove
Public Figures
Riehl World View
Right Truth
Rightwingsparkle
Six Meat Buffet
Sortapundit
Stupid Random Thoughts
The Jawa Report
The Nose On Your Face
The Therapist
Vince Aut Morire

Headline News 01-03-2006

From ABC News:
Rescue Work Halted at German Ice Rink
Snoopy, Woodstock feared dead

From ABC News:
Oklahomans at the Mercy of the Weather
Sooner State now like other 49 states

From ABC News:
Israel's Sonic Booms Terrifies Gaza Children
Gaza children now like children in every other part of the world

From ABC News:
White House Says Web Site Counts Visitors
Whitehouse.gov now like every other Web site in the world

From ABC News:
Iran says will resume atomic work
Bush offers to airdrop bombs for Iran to examine

From ABC News:
Yellow Roadway Becomes YRC Worldwide Inc.
Land of Oz incorporates

From CNN:
California declares state of emergency
Realized Schwartzenegger was still governor

From CNN:
Remember the Betamax
Rumsfeld new battle cry yet to catch on

From WTAE:
Woman dies after fall from window
Eric Clapton to hire new babysitter

From WRAL:
Murder suspect dead in suspected suicide
Suicide ruled justifiable, no charges to be filed

Picnic 01-03-2006

Items I found while perusing my blogroll:

• Euphoric Reality has a Guard the Borders post


• Sean Gleeson finds that cookies are just the tip of the iceberg


• The Commissar upgrades to WordPress 2.0


• Steve H shops for man toys


• Little Green Footballs has the Idiotarian of the Year poll running


• The Nose On Your Face has predictions for 2006


• Point Five has an example of the Windows Image File issue [graphics warning]


• VW Bug (One Happy Dog Speaks) finds the toddler finds an alternative to shaking hands


• Beautiful Atrocities interviews Feisty Republican Whore


• Jack Yoest saw no big monkeys on New Year's Eve


• Charmaine Yoest has a final Happy Chrismahanukwanzakah for everyone

Upgrading To WordPress 2.0

Last week really threw things out of kilter.

First, we had to resolve the issues with code I wrote. You see, I had some features on this little blog that I wrote. Now I'm not a programmer. I know a little bit of coding, but I'm not an expert like some others. In particular, I took some plug-ins that others had written and made some changes to them.

What's a plug-in, you ask? Well, WordPress (that's the blogging software we're using here) allows blogs to add features by adding plug-ins. Think of it like adding a room or a carport/garage on to your house. Or adding a scanner to your computer system. The idea is something is added to something else to expand its functions.

With WordPress, there are plug-ins that reduce spam, for instance. I'm also using a plug-in that shows the most recent comments in the column on the side. That kind of stuff.

By default, WordPress lumps comments and TrackBacks together as comments. But I like them separate. And there was a plug-in that did just that. I modified it to allow me to display it in a way it wasn't designed. And I'm thinking I screwed something up. Oh, it worked, but not efficiently. And the Web host I'm using (Dreamhost) sent me a nasty-gram about the "resources" on the server I was using up.

So, I had to fix it. But, I had made lots and lots of changes to many, many pages of code. So much so that disabling a plug-in caused the blog to quit working. I had to clean up my mess.

So, I backed everything up and decided to start over with clean code, then add the plug-ins I needed, taking care to be smarter about how I implemented things.

That's when trouble began. You see, Dreamhost had already upgraded new installations to WordPress 2.0 ... and I was running WordPress 1.5.2 ... and my database backup wasn't compatible!

So I was screwed! Or so I thought for a minute. Then I calmed down and figured a way out.

I found an old copy of WordPress (the same version I had been running) and installed it. Restoring the database worked just fine. Then I went ahead and upgraded to WordPress 2.0, since the upgrade method works just find. (My original attempt to put WordPress 2.0 on wasn't actually an upgrade, since I had wiped everything. It was a "clean" install, and the database I had wouldn't work with a "clean" install, but it did with an upgrade. Computers. Bah!)

Then, I had to find plug-ins that work. Did you know that some plug-ins don't work with 2.0? Well, they don't.

Spam Karma, for one. Oh, it works. Catches spam, lets good stuff through. But for me, it screws with the date of posts. All new posts show up dated in 1969! That's not good.

WordPress 2.0 comes with a spam filter called Akismet. It works, but it gets more false positives than Spam Karma. It hasn't let anything improper through, but it's treating lots as spam that it shouldn't. More so than Spam Karma.

Travis Benning (Metaphysically Wrinkle Free) is currently running both Spam Karma and Akismet. So far, no problems, but neither he nor I are recommending you do that. He's going to watch it for a bit. But so far, no issues. He did mention that it appears that Akismet runs first, then anything it lets through is then checked by Spam Karma. But, the general consensus if that running two isn't wise. We'll keep you posted.

On the other hand, the Commissar had no problem at all with Spam Karma 2, once he installed a patch. So it appears that, if you prefer Spam Karma, you might want to try it. If you have no problems with it, you're in good shape. Likewise, PaulaO of Thought Patterns had Spam Karma issues that were resolved with Spam Karma 2.1 (beta). I followed the suggestions for installing the beta version, and it works. However, because it's still in beta, I'm not recommending it. Yet.
Oh, I had some code on the blog that caused it to break out of frames. It's just something I always put on sites I'm involved with. But you can't do that with WordPress 2.0. You see, when you write a post, WordPress 2.0 shows an actual copy of the post in a frame on the same page. And the break-out-of-frames code I had interferred. Had I read things carefully, I would have known, since there is a plug-in that does the same thing that's on the list of "incompatible" plug-ins.

The final issue I've encountered with WordPress 2.0 relates to TrackBacks. Oh, I receive them just fine. But sending them with the WordPress 2.0 interface doesn't seem to work. I can send them with third-party forms, so it's not the receiving site; it's the sending site.

If I had done a better job of reading up on WordPress 2.0, perhaps I'd have know about these things, and wouldn't have had to figure them out. So, if you have a WordPress blog, and are looking at 2.0, keep these things in mind:

• Not all plug-ins are compatible. Check the plug-in compatibility list before you upgrade.


• Spam Karma doesn't work. Okay, it does, but all your posts will be dated 1969. At least, it's not officially compatible. You might not want to use it until a compatible version is released.


• Akismet is a fairly good anti-spam plug-in. It works, but it doesn't allow nearly as much configuration as Spam Karma. It catches more than it should, so you got to check the queue more often.


• There's a big change in the database structure. You can't backup a 1.5 database and restore it to 2.0.


• Many have encountered problems with TrackBacks not working as expected.

Bottom line, if you're upgrade to WordPress 2.0 from a lower version of WordPress, be sure to read the WordPress documentation carefully.

If you're looking to move to WordPress from another platform, that's a "clean installation" and you shouldn't have any issues.

Either way, be careful when adding plug-ins. Not all 1.5-compatible plug-ins work.

Take it from someone who's been there.