I upgraded my installation of WordPress to 2.7 today at the behest of WordPress 2.6 and I am enjoying all of the newest little features of the app. I am not sure if WordPress felt it was in need of a face lift or if it just needed to feel the excitement of youth again, but this is a mid-life crisis I can see having a lasting consequence.
When you log in to the new admin panel the first thing you notice is the change of color and scenery. Gone are the beautiful contrasting blues and oranges with big lettered phrases and invitations. Gone is the horizontal navigation bar with all the easy to reach features of the dashboard.
Now what used to be a pretty interface is a nice monochromatic splash of what TV used to look like in the 50’s. Of course, this gray on gray action does offer a lot of whiz-bang, but looks very gray. Did I mention it is gray?
It’s all good though, because now I can move a box here or there that I did not want there or here before. And I also have these outrageous gray outlined icons in my admin lists as well, which makes the already prominent gray just a little more gray.
I suppose I shouldn’t be too picky, seeing as I only paid $0.00 for the entire application. But it would seem to me that if you are going to improve something that you would shoot to improve it. Yes, WP2.7 works very well, is pretty compact in terms of squashing everything into a single page and uses some cool, three year old Javascripts to make things flashy. But I am not sure that makes WP2.7 that much better than WP2.6.
So I am undecided for the time being. I am sure that I will come around to the newest version of WordPress. I did when WP2.0 came out. It took a while, but I did come around. I am just hoping that at some point the WP development team will decide to make admin themes a part of WordPress. If I was able to make my own admin theme or find one on the internet, well, then I would be utterly happy about this update.
Until then, I think I will go practice my Eeyore voice and ponder when the sun will be coming out again.
Well yesterday was a complete disaster for my two picks. I think this was the case for many people speculating on the NFL playoffs this season. The thought that Arizona could beat Atlanta as well as it did yesterday AND that San Diego could take Indianapolis to overtime and subsequently march all over them in the extra period to beat them is just unfathomable.
But I digress. Let’s see if I can do better today.
Game 1 - AFC Wildcard: Baltimore Ravens at Miami Dolphins
Everything in me tells me that Baltimore is going to hand Miami their butts. Miami is a lucky team this year, having gone from a 1-15 league laugher to an 11-5 division winner in just one season. Baltimore has a solid defense, a winning heritage (as heritages go in the NFL among expansion teams) and has played pretty darn well under rookie Quarterback Joe Flacco. But as things go when I am making winning picks, if I say I think Baltimore is going to win then Miami will. So I am going to have to say Miami will win knowing in my head Baltimore will.
Game 2 - NFC Wildcard: Philadelphia Eagles at Minnesota Vikings
This one is a complete guess on my part. The Eagles have played poorly all season long when it counted. The Vikings have been a sort of sleep team with a stellar back in Adrian Peterson. The only real deciding factor is that they are playing this game in Minnesota inside a dome. I have to say that advantage goes to Minnesota in this contest. The fact of the matter is that I don’t really car about this game though. So whoever wins, it just means more football for me next week.
There you have it. I was 0-2 yesterday. Can I get to 2-2 on the weekend?
Few things throughout the year get my engines roaring like the NFL playoffs. I love me some football. But I really freaking love me some playoff football. It just seems to me that the level of play grows exponentially the farther into the playoffs a team goes which makes for some exciting action, great plays and in half of the games, significant heartbreak. It is why they play the game. To see who the last team standing is.
This weekend starts the 2008 NFL season playoffs. There are some surprise teams in the hunt this year, and some surprise teams absent from this post-season. I will not spend any time on the teams that did not make the playoffs. No, in fact I will have a hard enough time putting together my picks for just this weekend. But I am going to take a shot at it anyway.
Game 1 - NFC Wildcard: Atlanta Falcons at Arizona Cardinals
To be painfully honest, I don’t know much about either team except that Kurt Warner is my favorite player and that Arizona has been on a downward spiral for the last few weeks. While this game is a home game for Arizona, I think that given the way Atlanta has been playing, they will walk away from this game with a solid victory. I mean solid, as it the Cardinals are going to stink it up the way they have for the last three weeks. Fans in Arizona will be disappointed, but really, they will have expected it. Falcons for the win.
Game 2 - AFC Wildcard: Indianapolis Colts at San Diego Chargers
Indianapolis comes to San Diego riding a nine game winning streak and featuring the league MVP in Peyton Manning. San Diego hosts this game as the winner of the AFC west, a division they did not win until the last game of the year. San Diego had to win its last four games of the season in order to take the division away from Denver, including a game against Denver in week 17 to seal it up. They are riding a wave of confidence this weekend, and have been known to upset a team or two (can we say Indianapolis?) in the past. Look for a high scoring affair with the Colts squeaking one out by just a few points.
I know, I would probably never make it as an NFL analyst. But this stuff sure is fun. 
… then I do it anyway: today was teh suck.
What made it the suckiest day of the year so far was a combination of miscommunication, lack of financial accountability and complete failure of management on my part. You see, it was just after noon today and Sandi had gone to the store. While she was out a black, unmarked tow truck slowly drove through my court. Up the court it went, down the court it returned. And it stopped, in front of my house.
Anyone that has ever been even remotely associated with the car business knows that plain Jane tow trucks, whether white or black, mean only one thing: The repo man cometh. But it couldn’t be for me.
Immediately I thought that there was no way that this truck could be at my house to take my Vibe. I just paid it, just before Christmas. And the Suburban had to be in at least decent shape. At least I thought it was. But to be on the safe side I decided to call GMAC and see where my account stood. Apparently it didn’t stand at all.
I was told by my account rep that my account was severely past due and that I needed to come up with some ungodly amount of cash to remove the repo order that was on my account. Yes, you heard that right, my truck was slated for repossession. And that scared the hell out of me.
I had a vehicle repossessed once before, back in 1997, and it took forever to get that case resolved. It was costly, embarrassing and detrimental to my credit for years and years. There is no way I could allow this to happen again. So I had to negotiate and negotiate fast. And I did.
In the end I agreed to immediately pay some smaller ungodly amount of money to hopefully get the repo man off my back. That was, of course, after I discovered that GMAC has apparently been trying to get in touch with me for weeks. Though I have had no messages from them at work, at home or on my cell phone. There has been this one 800 number that has called quite a bit but every time I answer it there is no one on the other line. I guess this must be the times my rep says he left messages for me.
Either way I had to get the repo order lifted, so I ran around today getting large sums of cash gathered up and sending it by wire to GMAC in hopes that the repo man could be called off in time. I am still not sure if it worked, but I am hoping that when I wake up tomorrow that my vehicle will be where I left it (which incidentally is not at my home - I cannot take the chance that the order didn’t get lifted in time). This is a hell of a way to start the year.
Pray for me. I need it. Times are tougher than I thought they would be two days into the year. I really cannot afford to start off this way, so I am coveting as many prayers as I can get. And pray for my kids, too, please. They are taking this well without knowing everything. But I can sense they can sense something. So I need prayer for them as well.
Regardless, something has to give. I cannot end a year like last year by getting off to a start like this year. That is a recipe for disaster.
Happy New Year to all. May your 2009 way exceed your 2008 in terms of blessing, abundance, success, achievement and satisfaction. I know 2008 was hard, but 2009 is a clean slate, a fresh canvas, and is just waiting to be lived to its fullest.
Enjoy your year. May you be richly blessed in it.
Perhaps this post could be titled “2008 - what I remember of it” as it seems as though it was just a few days ago that I was celebrating the passing of 2007 and considering what an awesome year 2008 was going to be. Of course, as things go, 2008 was the year of teh suck. And while there were many cool and happy things that occurred this past year I would have to say that the most memorable things were purely of a fantastically negative type.
I’d love to be able to go month by month and talk about things that happened throughout the year. Seriously, who has time for that (ok, who has time for that who is not getting paid to do that)? Instead I am going to try to recall things that happened throughout this year within my home, my community, my country and the world.
I don’t know about you but it seemed to me that this was one of the hottest years we have ever had. Not hot like the term used in Hollywood. No, hot, like the term used to describe the fires of hell. It was hot. And dry. And as a result we had one of the worst fire storms I can recall this past year in California. Half the state was lit up at some point. So much so that the smoke from the fires were visible by satellite. So much so that the air looked like a foggy fall morning at 6:00 in the evening in July. You could taste the air, and on a bad day, you could wipe off the burnt ash remnants of someone’s property from your car miles away from ground zero.
Gas prices hit an all time high (or at least all time for those that didn’t live the fuel fiasco of the late 70’s). At almost $5 a gallon, many people were opting for public transportation or even not going anyway to save on gas. It was a freaking nightmare, trying to figure out how you were going to feed your family AND put gas in the car at the same time. Sometimes the family won out. Other times it was the car. All the time it was a struggle.
Then something amazing happened. In just under a month the price of gas plummeted from just under $5 a gallon to just under $2 a gallon. That’s right. A three dollar drop in about a month’s time. And it has stayed that way since. I am not sure if I should be trying to stockpile as much gas as I can for the impending increase of prices, but for now I am sooooo glad that gas in down. I can now fill up my Suburban for less than the cost to fill up my Vibe during the high price months. That by itself is teh awesome.
Speaking of my Vibe, this year saw the failure of my Vibe’s motor and my subsequent reliance on public transportation. Given the financial situation of every living soul on Earth, it has been just about impossible to get my car fixed since it dies several months ago. The main bearing went out, and just about every mechanic that I have talked to has said one of two things: replace the motor or rebuild it. No, don’t just fix the main bearing. Fix the entire motor. Crap. This is going to cost me between $2500 and $3500 to fix. I don’t have it. So Bart is now getting all the money I would normally be putting in my car for gas.
As for the economic downturn, the recession if you will, that has had an enormous impact on our family. But not really directly. While we did fall into the credit mess during the boom period, it was my lack of attention to detail that really allowed us to collapse financially. All told I have allowed my household to amass about $60,000 dollars in secured and unsecured debt. Mostly credit cards, but there is the issue of my refinancing my car to pay off bills earlier in the year. Yes, the Vibe that is busted and sitting in my driveway, I don’t own that anymore. The bank does. And the saddest part of all this is that I have spent everything I have, everything, to keep us out of the very mess we are in. I have no credit anymore, no savings anymore, no retirement anymore. All I have is a ton of financial obligations and a little bit of cash. That does not carry a family of seven very well at all.
Of course there were a few victories this year as well. My wife’s struggle with anxiety and depression eased quite a bit toward the end of October, and by year end we were only seeing minor bouts with listlessness, weariness and anxiety. Sandi was able to make it out of the house on her own and by herself for the first time in over a year in November. She is able to attend social gatherings and prepare the children to leave the house. She has been able to do a lot as she recovered. And while there is still significant work ahead of her, and the rest of us as we support her healing, there have been major strides made on her part to get better.
Also this year saw me develop as a man. Yes, I know that sounds weird coming from a 34 year old husband and father of five. But to be honest, I really let go of my masculinity a long time ago and kept it at bay until this year. With the help of a few friends (Greg, Sean, a few others) I was able to see that I was at the helm of a lot of what was happening in my life. If not directly by doing something to invoke than indirectly in doing something to support it (or worse yet, doing nothing to prevent it). All in all, finding my manhood this year was probably my favorite thing about the year. I am still disovering things about me, and I am loving every minute of it.
And lastly, this year I was able to do two things that I have really wanted to do as a programmer: I finally got my Zend PHP 5 certification and I was asked to give a presentation to a local meetup group. Getting my ZCE was not as major a thing as I thought it might be, but dude, I really felt good about myself as a programmer having achieved that. I have not thrown it around much (because really, why would anyone do that?) but just being able to say that I am a ZCE means a lot to me. And being asked to present to a group of peers was another thing that I wanted to do for a while. And this year, thanks to Mr. Tish Wood, I was able to do just that.
I wish I could put more into this post than I did. There were so many things that I could talk about, like the election of Barack Obama to the presidency of the United States, and the surrounding controversy of his qualifications and background, or the passing of proposition 8 in California, which finally defined marriage recognition by the state as being between a man and a woman. Or I could have mentioned this year marking the 20th anniversary of my mother’s death, something that still rocks me every now and again. There are so many things to talk about. But alas, this is only a blog, and 2008 was an entire year, so I guess it goes without saying that some things just aren’t going to get their props.
Oh well, it was still a good year. It was bad in so many ways, but at the very least it got us out of 2007 and into 2009, which I know will be a much better year. It has to be. The chances of it being worse than 2008 are, well, I really don’t want to think about that right now.
For all five of you that follow this blog you would have noticed over the last month and a half that I have been completely absent from producing any new content. No rants, no politics, no marriage issues, no financial woes, no parenting challenges, no funny kid sayings, no code. Nothing. Nada. Zilch. I would love to say that there is good reason for this, but the reality of it is, there is no good reason.
Part of my being away as long as I have been has to do with burn out. I am tired. Really tired. I have been busier than crap over the last year and it has taken its toll on me. I am also burnt out on blogging. Yes, I did say that. I don’t produce that great a variety of content and frankly it has been a struggle trying to come up with anything to write for a given day. Well, it hasn’t been difficult to come up with stuff to write, but it has been difficult to find the time to put that stuff into writing.
Another reason that I have not blogged lately is that I was seeing a pretty nasty trend that saw the bulk of my topics centering around negative feelings I had been having over something. The sad fact is I was using my blog to vent about things that I was going through. Yes, that is a perfectly legitimate reason for even having a blog, but it is also a pretty stupid thing to offer anyone that might read your blog. Who in their right mind would want to hear about your struggles when they are in the throws of their own? I apologize for that. But taking time off has meant that I haven’t taken the opportunity to spew forth the negative dribble about what has been going on in my life so I have, in effect, spared you that negativity that is my life.
Lastly, I have had to take time away from many of my personal hobbies to focus on taking care of my family, taking care of work and taking care of my business. Anyone that has a child knows that families take time. While I love to do things that I really like to do sometimes I have to do things that I really have to do. Like feeding my family, cleaning my home, disciplining my children and taking care of my wife. Of course, my work life has its own challenges and all of those need to be addressed as a high priority. My business is no different.
So that is where I am. I had no intent to fall off the intarwebs completely without notice. No, indeed I’d rather be able to spend time here like I used to. But I also need time to come to grips with what is really happening in my life while at the same time trying to not continue to flood this place with negativity, complaints and a sense of general discontentment. I hope you understand.
I do plan to begin blogging again at the beginning of 2009. I might even write up a brief 2008 recap. We’ll see. I just didn’t want to leave all five of you hanging. Seriously though, thanks for your patience and understanding. I am really looking forward to a 2009 that will be much better.
I’m not sure if I was lucky or unlucky today, but I can say that I had fun regardless of my fortune. A few weeks ago my wife had me pickup a work table for her. Well, it was really a solid core that had four 4 X 4 posts attached to it as legs. She really wants to add counter space to our kitchen and felt this was a good way to do it. The only thing was the table was about nine inches too wide.
A wide table is a useless table. It had to be shortened and the only way to do that was to run it through the table saw. Which is not really a difficult thing to do. When your saw is set up. But mine was still in the box it came in. Which meant I got to become Bob the Builder for a time.
The nice thing is that the assembly of this saw was not rocket science. It did take some time, but it wasn’t hard to do. In fact it was easy enough that I was able to set it up almost completely before we had to take a small break and head out for a little while.
See, three of my daughters were performing in a recital. So we had to head to Hayward in the middle of the day so they could awe the throngs of parents (all 10 of us) with their magical fingers and playing prowess. A nice little surprise in the midst of all this was that my daughter Alaynah was on the performance list. I had no idea she would be singing. And it was awesome.
The kids did great, the parents had fun, and after a little bit of snacking and mingling it was time to head home so I could get back to work on the saw. It didn’t take long to get the saw completed. I wish I could say that for cutting the door.
The door, as I said, was a solid core door. It was heavy. And it didn’t want to be cut. At least not by some small little table like the one I have. Don’t get me wrong. My saw is fine for cutting smaller pieces of wood. But for solid core inch and half think doors, making a seven foot long cut is probably too much to ask it to do.
In the end though the saw won. It did what saws do and it cut that door. And I was able to assemble it and give my wife the counter space she has wanted for a long time now. Plus I was able to to play with power tools. Heck, I was able to even build the power tool I used. Throw in the fact that I was able to watch about three minutes of football and I’d say today was a pretty cool day.
And if nothing else I now have even more surface in my kitchen to stack crap that never gets cleaned.
Yesterday was a busy day for my family. Most weekend days are busy days nowadays, but yesterday was one of those days where at 6:00 in the evening you could swear it was 11:00 in the evening and you are wondering why everyone is still awake.
It started out the day before. Yeah, I know that sounds silly, but Sandi had sent me an email late Friday evening asking me if I would be willing to wake up early to go garage saleing with her. How could I say no? So we woke up early on a Saturday, had a quick and light breakfast and headed out the door. We were able to hit a couple of sales before we had to head home to get ready for…
We left the house almost as soon as we got home to head over to Calaveras Skate for my neices birthday party. Well, it was actually just a roller skating time before the party unlike what I was led to believe, or perhaps misunderstood. Regardless, the skating rink portion of the day was just the beginning of what was going to be a much longer part of the day. But I digress. I left the rink a little early with three of my five kids because it was time to …
I hit the barber shop at around 12:30. I desperately needed a haircut. My hair is usually pretty short, so when it starts to grow it looks like it is starting to sprout. I began to look like those little trolls you see on the tops of pencils. You know, the pink headed Don King lookalike troll? Yeah, that was me. Just without the pink. And it needed handling in a serious way. So I hit the barber shop up before …
The real birthday party started at about 2:00. We headed over to my brothers place for the festivities and it wasn’t long until I was at the barbecue handling carne asado with chips and guacamole in one hand and a Heineken in the other. Few things make a sunny and warm day better than having a pair of tongs in one hand and a cold beer in the other while being surrounded by family.
After the cooking and the eating and the drinking and the eating, wait, did I already say eating? Nevermind that, we headed out for a little street football. I shouldn’t have done this because I was still sore from the pillow fight the other night and I had just eaten and I had just drank. But how is a guy supposed to say no to street ball? Seriously?
It didn’t last long.
Yes, I am fat and out of shape. And I was still sore. And after that fiasco, I was exhausted. So I hit the table again and made sure I would not be hungry until next year. Then my family helped clean up some of the mess before heading home.
It was a crazy busy day. It was exhausting. But it was also a blast. And I would not have traded that for the world.
Last night I had the bright idea that I would invite my wife and children to do something that I have not done in a long time. I set the stage with my wife early, letting her know what I had planned but I did not let the kids know until just before the festivities began. This is what I did.
I called my wife just before leaving work and told her I was going to be picking dinner up because I did not want her worrying about cooking dinner. I set up dinner and picked it up, but before going home I hit the store for some ice cream for desert and for extra “motivation” to get things rolling. I got home, fed the kids then told them that once dinner was over I had some sweeties for them to partake of because I needed them to be super hyper in order to get the living room cleared out. They responded well by eating their ice cream then helping me get the living room cleared.
After the living room was cleared I told the kids that there were going to be a few safe zones that they could go into should they need to. Of course, they had no idea why they would need a safe zone or what they would need to be safe from. Nor did they have any idea why they would need to spend time in the penalty box if they did something wrong in the safe zones. Again, they had no idea what this was all about.
Then I told them all to go get one pillow from their room (the older girls needed to bring two) and to set them down in the middle of the living room. Then I had them sit on their pillows. This dispelled any ideas that this was about a sleepover. Then I grabbed one, sat on it myself and told them that they were about to participate in the first Gonzalez family Ultimate Pillow Fighting Championship. The game was afoot and the stage was set.
1-2-3 was counted and we were off. And the carnage came right along with it. Rebekah, Babe Ruth Jr. I like to call her, learned very quickly to tee off on me as though my head were a satellite waiting to be shuttled into outer space. She hit with a purpose and my head was the target. Every time.
Sarah was a tad more restrained, but not by much. Aaron and Alaynah got into the mix pretty deep too. Annah, she was just Annah, all over the place hitting everything. But it was still cool because there were many times that they all attacked me. It was awesome.
In all we battled hard for about 30 minutes. In the end we were all exhausted, warm, breathing heavy and in desperate need of rest. Which worked out good since it was just about bed time. And was it ever a quiet, fight-free bed time.
Now if I could just make my body not hurt so bad that would be top class. Has anyone seen my right ear? Bekah hit it so hard last night I think it ended up in my neighbors yard.