I’ve now gone through the whole site and made the main pages consistent and readable. For the most part, broken links and bad formatting have been banished. A host of upgrades to the scripts driving the site are now in place. Only error messaging and subdirs remain a problem.
Ah the joys of web site renewal. I think I’m ready to call it good enough and move on to something productive… like writing!
If you know nothing about PHP, Apache, or server side scripting this next statement won’t mean much to you: paths suck! As I continue to rebuild the guts of this site to be “easier” to manage, I’ve discovered the joy of absolute vs. relative paths. Seems like you need a little of both, but where and when to use each is a mystery to me.
I guess I need “wasting time scripting for dummies.” I wonder if it comes in an audio book format?
It looks like most of the guts of the CSS page script is now in place. The site is starting to look a bit better. Sometimes I wonder why I do all this. Oh well, off to bed.
Behind the scenes of this site a lot of scripts are changing. This is happening to allow me to do content on a more regular basis without breaking navigation, flow, and most importantly to not have to do lots of work. It looks like it is mostly working for now. More tests soon.
There are days when the web works great. Then there are days like today, where things just don’t click at all. PHP, a server side language for web sites, is giving me fits. Because of this, throughout this site you’ll see errors that shouldn’t be there. I apologize and I’m working on it, but it’s driving me nuts!
I’ve just had one of those weeks where things just don’t seem to be much fun. My job, such as it is, has been stressful and uncertain. I’m running on very little sleep, after a previous weekend of virtually no sleep. I got a few bills that I wasn’t expecting asking for hundreds of dollars. And of course, I keep running into people who turn sour when I’m around.
The world is just filled with crud these days. Joy.
Sometimes things get old, dirty, and forgotten. You just have to toss them out. Other times new stuff gets broken and you have no choice but to toss it. Today I had to do both, only it was all RC airplane related. I’m now down to a single flyable airplane, after the total loss of my newest airplane, the spitfire. Why? Lame new batteries. For the second time.
So, rather than complain (who’d of thought?) I’m in the market for a new .60 size plane, and probably some electronics as well. Sucks to be me.
I’ve posted my pictures from this past weekend’s air show at Moffett Federal Airfield in Sunnyvale, CA. You can find them here.
Since some amount of people have asked, I shot these pictures with a Canon 10D D-SLR camera, ground shots with a Canon EF 24-85mm USM lens, and air shots with the Canon EF 75-300mm IS USM lens. I happily filled a 512MB compact flash card with the days shots. Enjoy!
I spent the day at the local air show today (Moffett Air Expo 2003) and ran into some very rude folks. Not just any folks, mind you, but extremely pushy people.
First they put their kids down in front of the people next to me. This is understandable, they are short and need to be close to see the planes. Next, one of the wives moves in, spreading the kids out into two different parties areas. Next, the fathers move in, push all those new arrivals aside, and try to carve out a large area from about 3 parties. I am now one of the parties.
What amazed me is the complete lack of tact or reason these folks had. I refuse to play the race card here, but I have to say if these were American’s they would have at least asked before butting in. Instead, they pushed in, two at a time, until they took up far more room than they started with. Then they proceeded to tell everyone around them how “they were doing it for the kids” but the kids were not remotely interested in the air show. By about mid-way through the show the kids had split, the daddy’s had PO’d everyone around them, and the mom’s were tired of holding down the fort, as it were.
In the end, they all left and many happy folks got their personal space back. Why people do things like this are beyond me. The oldest kid couldn’t have been more than 10, and with an attention span of a typical TV commercial. How these people thought the kids would enjoy sitting in the hot sun, with noisy planes, craning necks upward for 6+ hours is a mystery.
I enjoyed the planes, though. 
I got to spend a birthday in hot and humid Dallas, TX. Working, too, I might add. I had forgotten how much humidity really sucks and I was blissfully reminded of this fact with three days of exposure to it. How the people in the mid-West and South cope with this issue I’ll never know.
I can say that I had also forgotten just how amazing Texas women are. They are beautiful, well dressed, polite, and just the right amount of sass. If only they could be exported to the female starved CA/BA peninsula I’d be set. For now I’ll have to live with the memories of it all. 
