New link added, Sgt Zach’s blog

I’ve added a new blog to my link list, A Soldier’s Thoughts by Army Sgt Zachary Scott-Singley. I found out about this from an article posted on Common Dreams. I’m sorry that so many American people were too lazy and foolish to see this invasion for what it really was, at least in time for us to prevent it. Now the brave and honorable people in the military are once again putting their lives on the line and getting royally screwed by stop-loss, long tours of duty in-theater, and short stays at home.

I’m too pissed off at the war criminals who orchestrated this to write any more right now. Sgt. Zach, my thoughts and prayers are with you and all your sisters- and brothers-in-arms. Keep your heads down, and come home safe!

Posted in Uncategorized | Tagged , , , , | 4 Comments

Why WordPress?

One of the reasons that I chose WordPress for my blog software was because of Joseph’s and Acetylene’s blogs. Now I need to upgrade from my out-of-the-box theme and get something a bit more interesting!

Posted in Uncategorized | Tagged , , | 1 Comment

Grilled potatoes

We had these at Barbara’s & Reggie’s last week. Very tasty!

Grilled potatoes
Ingredients:
– potatoes (“new” potatoes are better, leave skin on), cut into quarters or eighths depending on size
– olive oil
– rosemary
– kosher salt
– garlic
(You’ll have to judge the amounts for yourself. Adjust to taste, taking into account freshness of your ingredients.)

Partially boil the potatoes–they should be firm, not easily pierced with a fork. Drain the potatoes thoroughly, or the oil won’t stick to them.

Meanwhile, fire up the barbeque. Mix the remaining ingredients in a large bowl or plastic bag, add the drained potatoes and toss to coat. Spread the potatoes out on the BBQ in a single layer. Turn after they have charred a bit, usually just a few minutes. Usually cooking on two sides is all that is needed. Serve and enjoy!

Posted in Recipes, Uncategorized | Tagged , | Leave a comment

We bought our house, time to start remodeling!

Remodel journal 2005-05-13: We closed escrow on our “new” house today. It’s a 2-bedroom 1-bath ranch style house built in 1948. We are supposed to vacate our Galt home by 3:00 pm, and it’s Friday the 13th!
Continue reading

Posted in Our home remodeling project, Uncategorized | Tagged , , | 1 Comment

CSUS Bookstore employees getting screwed

This is a raw deal for the (formerly-)PERS employees. They now have the option of trying to find another PERS job (so they can retain their retirement) or start from scratch with whatever retirement program that Follet offers.

Posted in Uncategorized | Tagged , , | Leave a comment

WP-Gatekeeper blocking pingbacks and trackbacks?

Joseph and I have been testing WordPress’s pingback and trackback features, neither of which were working for either of our blogs. After flipping a whole bunch of options on and off, we determined that the culprit was WP-Gatekeeper. (This is not intended as a slam on Eric Meyer, who does excellent work!) Joseph is digging into Eric’s code as I type up this entry, so hopefully a patch will be on its way to Eric ASAP.

The diagnosis of this problem was greatly simplified by RedAlt’s Ping-o-mation tool. Multajn gratulojn!

Posted in Uncategorized | Tagged , , , , | 3 Comments

New blog up and running

Well, I finally got on the blog bandwagon. I was interested in blog software which supported pingback and trackback, and which I could install on Pair’s systems without root access. After checking out a few packages, I settled on WordPress.

Anti-spam plugins that I’ve bolted on include Farook’s WPBlacklist and Meyer’s WP-Gatekeeper. I wasn’t able to get the blacklist to use URI updating, due to “URL file-access is disabled in the server configuration” error, so I just browsed the blacklist and saved the contents locally. This will need to be manually updated from time to time :(, but it’s a reasonable start.

After browsing Joseph Scott’s blog, I decided to supplement the category system by adding Felix Wong’s WP-Tags plugin.

I decided to leave the blog timezone set to UTC, since I live in the Pacific timezone while my server’s timezone is 2 or 3 hours ahead of me.

Posted in Uncategorized | Tagged , , , , | 3 Comments