Updates

New Job

I started a new temp job on November 21st 2011.  I’m basically a janitor but not really.  I’m working for a company called Enviroserv who is one of the subcontractors on a demolition project.  My job is to go around and clean up the job site.  This demolition project is expected to last until about April so I should have a decent paying job till then.

Dad

My dad’s health has been holding more or less steady for the last year.  His kidneys are close to failing but just barely staying at a point where he doesn’t need dialysis.  He spends much of the day sleeping which worries me since I know it’s at least partly due to his failing kidneys, although I think It’s also due to the fact that he’s just old and doesn’t have anything to do (btw why is Judge Judy on for what seems like 5 hours every day?).  I still have to drive him around everywhere and I don’t see that changing.  He still needs new glasses for driving, and his car needs some repairs and renewed registration/smog.  We can’t afford any of that right now, and really at this point I don’t think he should be driving anyways.

Web Site Updates

After being offline for about nine months my web site is back with a new hosting provider and a few changes.

I was previously using bluehost.com for my hosting and domain registrar.  My hosting expired last year in march but my domain name was registered with them till march of this year which was good because at least I didn’t have to worry about losing my domain name while my site was down.  While they aren’t bad (for the price) I didn’t like that I had to buy hosting in 3, 6, 12, 24, or 36 month chunks and that they would auto renew, charging my credit card  with out warning.

I am now using Laughing Squid for my hosting and so far I like them.  It’s only $6 a month and I get billed every month.  My only complaint would be that their site management, billing  and support sites are all at different URLs and except for the support site (which is part of the main site already) are not linked directly from the main sites page.  OK they updated their main page since last week I take it all back.

For my domain registrar I’m now using Hover.com and they are great.  It was super easy to get things set up and my registration moved over from bluehost.com.  If anyone wants a domain name for a web site or even just your own personalized email address I highly recommend them.

Most of the changes I’ve made to the main site were some minor coding changes to make the pages html5 compliant and using some of the new features available in CSS 3, most notably drop shadows both on text and boxes to replace some of the PNG images that I had been using.  As a result the site should load a bit faster (not that it was even close to slow before) the downside is that it won’t look the way I intend in older browsers that don’t support these features. (IE 8 and below I’m talking about you)

The blog is now using the new default wordpress theme Twenty Eleven since I like the way it looks and how it works.  I was considering going back to the theme I had which was Inanis Glass or that theme authors new theme Inanis Seven so I went to his blog to go get it and saw that his blog was using a new theme that I really liked but it didn’t say what it was.  After getting my own blog back online I quickly realized that it was wordpress’s new default .  So my blog is only slightly personalized and looks a lot like many others but I think I’ll be OK with that since it’s so nice.

The main bit of visual customization that I can make to this theme is the header image.  I’m not thrilled with what I’m currently using since it was kind of just thrown together.  I’d much rather have a single image that fits nicely in that really wide not so tall space that’s available but I couldn’t find any of my pictures that would really fit which is why I made a semi sloppy collage out of 4 of my more recent pictures.  However I can specify diffident header images for individual posts which I have for my last post The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim and While out for a walk.

The other thing is the menu bar along the top which is very customizable and mostly solves the issue of navigating from my blog back to the rest of my site.

 

P.S.
I purposely didn’t mention exactly where I’m working since I don’t think I’m allowed to talk about it, and doing so in such a public place might mean no more job.