robglazebrook.com

In what is probably a result of being my mother’s son and carrying a fair share of her DNA, I’m still not satisfied with this site, and plan to renovate it sometime soon. My boss Dwight says his wife has the same defunct genetics, except she tends to rearrange the living room as opposed to the website. I told him to give it a few weeks, and I’d have a living room to rearrange to my heart’s content.

Partly, this is because I’m taking a step back from my lil’ WapJaw project. The idea for the site, and my vision for it, hasn’t had enough time to become something solid. My personal vision of the site changes daily, which changes my focus on the work I do, which changes the layout of the site… it’s a vicious circle. So, I’m going to step away from that site for a while, and give my mind a chance to mull it over. Do I want to focus on text messaging and micro-flash fiction distribution? Do I want to focus on a WAPZine with longer stories? Do I want to focus on file sharing and media distribution? Can I somehow combine portions of all of these things into a viable wireless community? I dunno. So I’m going to keep my busy little hands off for a bit. :)

More partly (not a term, but I’ll use it), I want to change the focus of this website slightly. Right now, the focus of this site is my weblog, and everything else is secondary. Long-run, I think it would serve me better to give this site a more generic homepage, with links to the individual areas, such as site design stuff, scripts I’ve written, links to published stories, this journal, and so on. That way, I have sections of the site personalized for my audience. Basically, I don’t want people coming to this website as a client looking for a designer, and have them find my personal journal right off the bat. I want them to have the option to click “design services” or something, and get to that section first.

Most partly (grin), I learn best by trying new things. Each version of this site, in my opinion, is a little bit better than the previous version in at least one important way. As I try a new technology, or learn a new skill, I figure out new and (possibly) better ways of doing what it is I do. I like to test the boundaries of my skill and creativity by seeing if I can improve on what I already consider to be good, or at least adequate; that is, this site. When you consider that, two years ago, this website was a rudimentary html file hosted on ISU’s free server space, and I had to rewrite the HTML file anytime I wanted to make an update such as this one… I’ve come a long way. Now that I’m gaining an understanding of PHP and MySQL (they’re what makes things like the WapJaw Community and WapJaw Lockers possible), I’d like to utilize those tools here to make this site run a little bit faster and a whole lot more effectively. For instance, I know a few people are zealous enough to use this site as their homepage. Wouldn’t it be nice if the website recognized them and loaded a user-created list of favorite links in a sidebar? People could set up links to their Hotmail or Webmail accounts, online banking, and so on. :) I like the idea, anyway.

Speaking of Webmail, I’ve replaced the Art&Craft link above (which went nowhere anyways) with a Webmail link for those of us who have email accounts at rootarcana.com. I’ve also mutilated the look of the top menu options. What it looks like now isn’t final… I was just playing and will continue to play until I start in with the site redesign.

Quick question I’d like feedback on:
What type of blog updating do you guys prefer? The all-info-in-one-entry such as I do now type, or would you prefer a shorter entries, but multiple entries a day? Right now, I avoid doing multiple small entries a day because I don’t want to bump stuff. Meaning, if I post an eight-line update at noon, will anyone notice the twelve-liner I posted when I woke up that morning? If so, I think I’d prefer to update in that fashion. Besides, I’m still very much nerd enough to want to set up a system where I can update my journal via my PDA and/or cellphone. :)

Additional idea for comments:
What do you think ‘works’ with the journal now, and what would you change? For instance, I think the main date header, followed by time subheaders, works (because then I can post several entries in on day). However, I find the comment system atrocious, and I don’t think it works at all. I plan to change the way comments are done (something closer to the old, pop-up system, I hope) in the next site update.

I got a turkey for Christmas from the place I work. It was a big turkey. Actually, it was a twenty-five pound turkey. I’m sure it weighed even more than that before it was murdered and beheaded and plucked and had its neck stuffed up its… well, you get the idea. It was a big turkey.

Long story short: I had to cook this big turkey in my very small kitchen. I let the bird thaw in the fridge for four days. On day three, it broke through the plastic shelf it was sitting on and ended up partially in the vegetable drawer. On day four, I was afraid to wait much longer. It was still icy on the inside, though, so I let it play in the sink for a bit.

I have no turkey experience, so it took me quite a while to find all of the extra pieces-parts. I almost didn’t find the “gibblets” until it was too late. :) I got turkey juice all over myself and the kitchen counter and a decent portion of the kitchen floor before I wrestled the turkey into the cooking bag (Eric helped with that part) and then the bag into the pan, and then the pan into the oven. I had to remove all of the oven shelves but one, and place that shelf as low as it would go before the turkey would fit at all.

Took four hours to cook, which wasn’t bad. But then I had to carve the thing. We weren’t eating this thing up-front, of course. So Jake (Eric’s little brother, who was visiting) and I spent probably the better part of an hour cutting up the turkey and sticking it in plastic baggies bought for that purpose. And now I have no idea what we’re going to do with the pan full O’ bones and juices. We have to throw it away, obviously, but garbage day isn’t until Thursday and we have a raccoon or some other viciously smart animal regularly going through our trash as it is, and I’m guessing the turkey part would only make matters worse. The animal likes to spread the garbage out across the driveway, meaning I have to pick it all up before I can leave in the morning.

—-

I’m really, reallyreally tired, so that might not have made any sense. I’ll write more later, maybe, once I’ve had the chance to sleep a bit.

Stuff to note:

1. I added Eric’s journal to my list of blogs on the left. He’s “Zk’s Journal”.
1a. Megan and I gave him exactly three weeks notice. So nyah. :)

2. I made the Message Me program prettier. At least, it’s prettier here. I haven’t had a chance to test it elsewhere yet. It should look roughly the same everywhere, unless I really goofed up. Check it out so I can feel like I’ve done Something Important.

3. Did I mention I was tired? Yeah. I’m going home now. :)

Okay, so I’ve got a lot of stuff to say tonight, so you’d better just settle in with a big steaming cup of Joe (or whomever you’d prefer) and get ready. Everybody settled? Good. :)

First up, I might as well talk about my grades last semester, and get them off my chest, even though they’ve only been available to me and therefore ~on~ my chest for the last few minutes. I seem to be a big fan of telling my stories reverse chronologically.

My worst class was American Lit, which I’d counted on ahead of time. It’s a little ironic, considering I probably invested the most time and worry in that class overall. I just couldn’t get into the groove of that class, no matter how hard I tried. And I *did* try, too. I’d try and listen to the professor lecture in class, but I’d end up sitting there and counting how many times she used the phrase, “to be sure,” to close a sentence (on average, seventeen times in a seventy minute lecture). That gets on one’s nerves in a hurry, to be sure. :) It was like her version of a closing “um” or something. I’d also spend hours nightly (or as close to nightly as I could manage) trying to read for the class, but the literature for that class always made me doze off. I’m sure that my physical exhaustion played a part in that, but I rarely fell asleep while reading for Medieval Brit Lit, and I never once fell asleep wading through my web design reading assignments. Saw what you will about the Puritans in early America, but they wrote like a man with Alzheimer’s walks: they can both usually make it from point A to point B, but the actual path taken is a convoluted mess. My sentence structuring is messy and slow enough, but it’d be recklessly fast by their standards.

Anyway, enough about that class. It’s over now. In fact, unless I find a literature class that I ~want~ to take, I’m done with them for the rest of my undergraduate career. I think so, at any rate. I’m pretty sure I have 21 credits of pure literature now (if I include my two Greek lit classes), and that’s enough generalized reading for anyone. Well, for me. My problem is, I’m horrible with names. I’ll remember scenes and situations and lines of dialogue from all these works until my dying day. But unless I make some sort of Herculean mental effort while I’m reading the work, I won’t remember the name of the author, the book, or the major characters a week after I’ve finished. Even if I never touch it again, I’ll probably be able to visualize and describe “The Miller’s Tale” by Chaucer when I’m thirty. I probably won’t remember Chaucer wrote it by January thirtieth. :) Some well-ingrained mental fallacy is at work there, methinks. I musta landed on that part of my head particularly hard when I was younger.

Gah! I keep getting distracted. That’s going to make this post even longer. *g* Okies, without further adieu whatsoever, here’s my grades from last semester:

English 313 (my Web Design class):     A
English 314 (Technical Communication): A
English 360 (Early American Lit):      B
English 373 (Medieval British Lit):    A-
French  101 (this space is useless):   A

So, yeah. Not so bad. :) That works out to a semester GPA of 3.75, which is slightly above an A- average, which is what I was shooting for. Not so bad at all, considering how exhausted I was (am?) most of the time. My cumulative still isn’t above a 3.0, but it should be next semester if I can repeat my performance. No guarantees about next semester yet, though. This body of mine is bound to drop sometime.

— Insert witty and completely relevant transitory paragraph here. —

Speaking of that (heh), I have some news that has earth-shaking significance (or something like that) for my life, and probably far less significance for all of your lives. And it’s probably not as much “news” as “the worst-kept secret since that military base that doesn’t exist in Nevada,” since several people that read this probably already know by now. If not, consider yourselves hereby knowed.

Megan and I are planning on striking off into this big, wide world and getting a place of our own. I’m sure a few of you like this idea and a few of you hate this idea (and a few of you couldn’t care less), but in the end we can only trust ourselves and what we think is right. And we think that this is right. :) We’ve been dating for 16 or so months now, and living together with Eric for the last few, and through it all we’ve grown closer. And now, we lay awake at night and dream about getting a place of our own.

And the cool thing about Ames is, that dream is fairly easily turned into a reality. :) We did an extensive amount of searching and research on our own before we started talking to realtors, but we ~have~ talked to realtors now, and we’ve found a place that I’m willing to bet we’ll take. It’s an apartment, about a five-minute drive from where we live now. Because all of the utilities except electric (including heat and basic cable) are paid, living there would be cheaper than living three-persons-deep is for us now. And to make the deal even sweeter, the current tenant is in a bit of a crunch (due to a job he’s starting in Omaha on the 1st), and has lowered the sublease a full $100 a month. It has a dishwasher, a deck, and its own water heater. The bedroom is a bit smaller than I’d like, but I’m guessing I’ve just been spoiled by the bedroom I have now (hardwood floors, and it’s holding a queen-sized bed, two dressers, two desks, a bookcase, several small tables and all my other miscellaneous stuff with plenty of open floor space). The kitchen is much nicer than the one I’ve got now, which is an important feature for We Who Cook.

So we’ll see. If we do move in to this place, we’ll likely be moving the weekend of January 18th (three weeks from now), which doesn’t leave a lot of time to find a subleaser for our piece of the place we have now. I’m going to start probing the minds of my friends as soon as possible. Sometimes, the friend of a friend is good for filling a position in a pinch. If that doesn’t turn up anything, then I’ll post a bunch of fliers in the dorms when they reopen after the holidays. At the beginning of new semesters, there’s always a quiet but significantly sized exodus out of the dorms as people realize that this coming semester would be one semester too many in a ten by twelve foot cell. Between the two sources, I’m pretty sure I can find someone who like the idea of having a bedroom to themselves that’s easily twice the size of their dormroom (or four times the size of their half of the dormroom) for roughly half the price.

Well, that’ll do for now, I think. I have more to post about an adventure with a very large frozen turkey in a very small kitchen in very inexperienced hands, but that can wait for another day, I think. :)

This website is maintained using MovableType 2.64 by Six Apart. Previous versions of the site, the archives of which did not survive the initial transition to MT, were maintained using Greysoft’s Greymatter and a custom-written content management system I called ArcanaBlog, which was abandoned due to lack of time and waning interest on the part of yours truly.

The site is XHTML compliant and uses a tables-free layout. All of my CSS, at least at the moment, is W3C validated.

The site’s skins are loaded via a very small set of PHP scripts I wrote myself. The menu hide/show abilities are JavaScript, and were more or less stolen from Jeff Zeldman’s old “hide/show externals” script and reshaped to fit my own needs. Both setttings (skins and menus) are remembered via cookies.

The random title and the Message Me scripts are both entirely my own creations, spawned of spare time, curiosity, and a desire to learn Perl.

You are more than welcome to use my CSS to learn the art, and feel free to email me for any of the scripts I’ve used on this page. However, the graphics, however rudimentary, are not up for grabs (the buttons are a notable exception), and please either ask permission or send a TrackBack if you quote me outside of this website. Thanks. :)