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Hrm. I’m not really in the mood to update at the moment, but I feel some sort of obligation to do so (seeing as how I had a fairly good day, and such), so my plan at the moment is to simply try very, very hard, push through this mood, and hope that it passes. Much in the same way a kidney stone is gotten rid of, I think. I’ve never had one. *g*

Lorenzo and I (boy, he keeps showing up a lot in here, doesn’t he? I keep trying to talk him into starting a blog, but so far, no luck. He says he doesn’t see the point. And I have a hard time getting past that sort of barrier, because I was blogging before I knew there was a term for it. :) C’mon folks, give him a bit of encouragement. Go, ‘zo! Go, ‘zo!)

Eh… I got distracted. I’ll start over. Mister No-Blog and I were far more productive today at work than either of us had intended. This week has been funny like that. See, it’s just the two of us at work these last twelve or so days, because our boss has been on vacation. He left us a list of things to do in his absence, and we’ve been slowly but surely working our way through it. Last Thursday, he and I updated all six of our current checkout laptops and added four more to the lineup. This Tuesday, he and I started out replacing the college-owned Ethernet hubs in the computer lab with our own department-owned hubs (because the university charges us monthly to use their hubs, and that’s pretty darned anal), and we ended up rewiring most the lab to make sure it’s compatible with the future 100MB department upgrade.

[paragraphs improve legibility. did you know that?]

And today, we went from wires to wireless. Our department had three wireless access points in the building, and another owned by the university (another one of those rental things). However, there were large swaths of the building without any wireless access whatsoever. So, today No-Blog and I remedied that. We strategically (using our WiFi-enabled PDAs as guides) dispersed the four new access points, removed two of our old ones, and eliminated the university’s hotspot entirely. The result? Roughly 95% of the building has good wireless access, and the important rooms (i.e., the classrooms) have redundant coverage, meaning if one access point locks up or something, the classroom will still have access. The only rooms without access are a couple of offices surrounded by several feet of steel and concrete, and there wasn’t a heck of a lot we could do about those.

We had a great time doing it, we made a significant improvement to the building’s network, and we got to run around the building all day with our PDAs, checking signal strength, barging in and out of offices, and picking up birthday cake from the chair of the department. It was great. :)

I also got most of the way through developing a generic-y business-type website template. The reason, you ask? None of your business! Nah, kidding. I unofficially have a new part-time job as a web designer for a new web hosting company. *beams* I say unofficially, and I leave said company’s name unsaid, because I’m still waiting for paperwork and so on that would make such arrangements legit. Once that is done, I’ll give you all more information. Suffice it to say that, if this works out, I’ll finally have the opportunity to get the experience I’ve been harping about for god knows how long here. :) Cool, eh? I certainly think so. Especially if it makes me some moola.

Time to e-mail Eric and start making plans for our camping trip in one week’s time. Those of you who haven’t been updating, update! Those of you who have, nag those who haven

I was planning on posting my notes on Gnomedex, but looking over them now that I’m home and without the crutch of context, I realize that my note-taking ability leaves something to be desired. Therefore, you’re going to be spared my notes. If you’re legitimately curious as to which speaker said what (whether you missed the speech, or are just trying to freshen the memory), check out Beth Goza’s (AKA Beth G from Microsoft’s) blog. It looks as though she was blogging during the speeches, so her notes are more accurate than mine would have been regardless.

So! I guess I’m just about done boring all you non-techies with posts about Gnomedex. The point is, I loved it, I saw and met a lot of people I would have otherwise spent the rest of my life not seeing (but wishing I had), and there are already plans in the making (so I hear) for a Gnomedex 4.0. Let’s hope I’m still in the state next September, eh? Or, at least, that my schedule is as flexible as it was this year.

I’m still in the mood to try new skins, so if any of you have any thematical suggestions, I’d be tickled a pretty shade of pink to hear them. Usually, when I’m designing for my website, I sit down, play with images until I find something I like, and then repeat that same step until I’ve got a sufficiently large layer of clutter to call a skin. Maybe working from a thematical standpoint wouldn’t be such a bad idea. :)

Before I get a chance to forget again:

Happy Birthday, M’ris!

M’ris turned 25 on July 26, meaning the two coolest geeks I know celebrated a birthday that day. :) If you’re not using today as one of your birthday days, M’ris, feel free to save the greeting above until a day you ~are~ using as such. And if you e-mail me your snail-mail address, you’ll likely get an honest-to-goodness birthday card out of the deal, because I seem to have misplaced your address again. :)

I’m feeling far more productive today than I probably have been. Lorenzo and I spent all morning rewiring the computer lab upstairs, and we did a damn fine job, if I do say so myself. And I do. :) Anyway, it’s time to relax by doing something less productive. Reading blogs and scanning stock photo websites for thematical ideas sounds just about right.

This is just a quick entry to keep all of you (my loyal fans) on the up-and-up regarding the goings-on here at JA. I still have more to say regarding Gnomedex, but this entry isn’t going to be it. :)

Goings-On Alpha: Another Skin Introduced
Those of you who have waited patiently for a new skin have been rewarded for your patience: a new skin, Gazette, has been introduced. Gazette is intended to look like an online newspaper, such as the New York Times, whose site I used for inspiration. The skin is also my first real attempt at using absolute positioning to rearrange my menus. The ’search’ menu has been moved from the sidebar to the top of the screen, without touching a single line of my HTML. I may tweak this skin a bit yet, but I wanted to get it out to you all. This way, any (helpful!) comments can be taken into consideration for future revisions.

Goings-On Beta: Blogrolling Gold
In a move entirely contrary to my nature, I’ve paid for a piece of software I use and consider valuable. :) I’m an official member of the Blogrolling Gold club, which means that for $20 a year, I get to have greater control over my Blogroll. I doubt you notice a change right away (though the code has changed a bit), but the ~opportunity~ for change is now there. :) Multiple blogrolls and even facerolls are now within the realm of possibility.

Goings-On Gamma: Gnome-Girl Added
Take a gander at my blogroll, and you’ll see a new link: Gnome-Girl. I’ve been reading Gnome-Girl’s blog off-and-on for nearly as long as I can remember, but I’ve never linked to her for the same reason I waited so long to link to Chris Pirillo’s blog: they’re both already too damned popular for their own good. *grin* However, I met Gnome-Girl at Gnomedex, and I came to the realization that I like her as a person, popular or not. Even more significantly, she’s a real human being, and not just a conglomeration of random text. So nyah. I’ll probably be adding a couple of more links that I check out more-or-less daily in the next few days.

Goings-On Delta: Da RSS Feed (sorry, I needed a ‘D’)
I was inspired by Chris Pirillo’s talk on RSS at Gnomedex, so I spent this morning working on my RSS feed. I’ve had RSS .93 and 1.0 for a while, but they were just the default feeds generated by MovableType. This morning, I scrapped them both, and figured out my own template for RSS 2.0. Those of you with feed readers (news aggregators) should be fine subscribing to http://www.rootarcana.com now. :)

That’s all for now. I’ve got a busy day at work today, so I ought to get started. Hopefully, I’ll have time later to talk a bit more about Gnomedex. Later this week, I may even have some pictures to post.

So much to say, so much to say! This has been an absolutely incredible day, with absolutely incredible speakers. Gnomedex truly is a unique experience, and it has been worth its paltry $99 entry fee more than once over. Today, while surrounded by my friends, peers, and fellow technothusiasts, I heard publishing little-g god Tim O’Reilly heckle columnist and grumpy-old-man extraordinaire John Dvorak from the crowd. Where else would I have such an opportunity?

So much to say, I’m not even going to attempt to record it all in one post. This is going to be quite short, actually, since I’m still at the conference and have (frankly) better things to do with my time than blog. :) Of course, I feel a sort of obligation to share the wealth of knowledge that has been bestowed upon me, so I can’t leave off blogging entirely.

I sort of feel like I’m gloating, because I’m sure that a lot of the people who will read this aren’t here right now, and I don’t want to make anyone feel as though they’ve been left out. Even if they have. *g* Luckily for you, if you are one of those who feels left out, it sounds as though you’ll have a chance in years to come. Gnomedex has been held in Des Moines for the last three consecutive years, but there have been a lot of rumors floating around that suggested that next year’s conference might not be held here. There was nothing ever official in that thread, of course, but that doesn’t stop rumors much. However, I think my fears of such a future have been set aside for a while to come. The mayor pro tem of Des Moines spoke today at lunch, and announced that today, July 26th, the last day of Gnomedex and incidentally Chris Pirillo’s 30th birthday, is hereby Lockergnome Day in Des Moines. Chris Pirillo was honored by the city of Des Moines in one of the most powerful was possible. So I don’t see Gnomedex wandering too far from the true heart and heartland of the Gnome world anytime in the near future.

More later, when I’ve got more free time. :)

A Haiku is a form of poetry. I recently found out that, in addition to having a regular 5-syllable / 7-syllable / 5-syllable form, a proper Haiku should referrence the season in which it is written, however bluntly or obscurely. It is Summer now, I am in Iowa, and it is hot. I’ve attempted to relay the feel of the season in the following Haikus.

Caffeinated snacks,
Blog names bloom into faces,
Lockwood, she is hot.

Rob Malda speaking:
Ran Slashdot beneath a desk.
Gretchen, too, is hot.

Chris’s mom is nice.
His dad made boobs from balloons.
Gnome-girl: Suprise! Hot.

You’ll hear from me again. :)