Clouds Debugging

Dear Friends and Family,

I didn't realize when I made the change to cloud labels that something broke on Explorer. Well, it's visible now. I just need to make formatting changes.


Cheers!
mouse

PS: The issue was using hexadecimal color codes vs. RGB.

HTML Code for Tables

Dear Friends and Family,

I'm going to need this for my budget post, so I'm playing around with it now.

Description	Amount
Train Pass	$XX.XX
Lunches at Work	$XX.XX
Snacks, Coffee, Soda, etc.	$XX.XX
Dinners with Friends	$XX.XX
Total	$XX.XX

Cheers!
mouse

PS: Not crazy about the amount of space above the table. But, it'll do for now.

Clouds, Clouds, Everywhere

Dear Friends and Family,

I had a couple of minutes this morning to futz with ye olde blog. And, I was motivated enough to attempt converting my labels from list view to cloud view. It wasn't bad to all. The directions were really easy to follow.

New Blogger Tag Cloud / Label Cloud


Cheers!
mouse

New mouse

Dear Friends and Family,

Time for a new profile picture.

Old mouse:


New mouse:


Cheers!
mouse

Justified? Justified!

Dear Friends and Family,

I just noticed the button that allows you to justify text. Has that always been there? Have I just not noticed it for the past year? Huh... You learn something new every day.


Cheers!
mouse

Label Counter Fixed

Dear Friends and Family,

100% sure none of you care, but Blogger finally fixed an error they had with label counts. It's not retroactive to old posts, but does seem to not double-count re-posts now.

Yeah!


Cheers!
mouse

Map It Experiment

Dear Friends and Family,

My parents are pleasantly occupied so I'll spend some time working on my blog. I'm going to experiment with adding a map it function to my eating out blogs.

Wish me luck.


Cheers!
mouse

PS: mom is translating a brochure from church, dad is reading yesterday's paper, Mr. mouse is cleaning and generally bored out of his mind...

PPS: success! example

Category Miscounts

Dear Friends and Family,

I love the category feature in new Blogger. It's one of the main reasons I made the switch to new Blogger - using Firefox to manage all of the random cookie issues with making the switch. But, there's a glitch in the category count that's bugging me. Still have no clue how to fix it. I wrote Blogger - yeah right... I'm hoping, somewhat optimistically, that they'll notice it, release a patch and the problem will solve itself. Otherwise, I'll just live with my miscounts.

Okay, what on earth am I talking about? If you label a post before publishing, it automatically adds the category to your post. And, the category count (in parenthesis) goes up by one. Voila. But, if you then modify that post (say you found a spelling error or wanted to add a post script) and then re-publish the post, the category count goes up again. But, really, there's no additional post... You'll see I'm off by two in work and by one in eating out. C'est la vie. It's annoying, but not enough for me to spend the time to figure out a fix.

My lame work around? I try to remember to remove the category label before editing a post. Then, re-label it once I re-post it. Usually it works, sometimes it doesn't. Then, I get annoyed with myself for forgetting. Sigh.

I am grateful these are my worries and not bigger things.


Cheers!
mouse

More Cookies Please, Not!

Dear Friends and Family,

I nearly threw the computer out the window yesterday. Mr. mouse was able to find and fix the problem.

Cause: remember when I disabled cookies on my computer so I could track who was tracking me? Blogger required a cookie to use, which I was okay with - I just cleared the cookie frequently. Well, when "new" blogger came out, it required a Google cookie in addition to the Blogger cookie which I was less okay with - after all that adds my search info to my cookie info... okay, more manual clearing. I can deal. Now, there's a third cookie www2.blogger.com that needs to be allowed to make blogger function.

Symptoms: Blogger couldn't login... You'd enter your user id and password and it would get stuck in a continual, indefinite loop trying to authenticate you and login on. Instead, it would redirect between sites and get stuck.

Solution: I downloaded a second browser and allowed all three Google cookies. It'll be used only for posting/reading blogs. And, my primary browser will go back to being my primary browser. Problem fixed.


Cheers!
mouse

01.01.07: Home, At Last

Dear Friends and Family,

Happy 2007!

I won't spend a lot of time stating the obvious... While 2006 went very quickly, it was the year that seemed like it was never going to end. It reaffirmed my lesson of resilience and perseverance and reminded me I need to have faith in the end goal.

I'm going to recap and kick-off the year, section by section, so be warned, it's going to be a long post. Ready?

2007 weekend updates: We flew back to the mouse house neighborhood for the weekend. Our neighbors were having a New Year's Eve party and we wanted to count down with them. We landed just ahead of a quick but intense snowstorm. We ran a couple of errands before the party. We dropped off some business school recommendations, picked up some shot glasses, loaded up on caffeine and got some take-out sushi to kick-off the evening. The party was a ton of fun, as to be expected, and we toasted in the new year with some of our closest friends. We also had a chance to meet the new owner of the mouse house, he came over for the party. Sunday, we went over to Trixie's for brunch, but didn't stay long. By 1:30, we had our plants loaded into the car, and we made the long drive over to the mouse pad. Officially, as of this moment, everything we own is in one location. Wow!

baby... maybe: Apparently, the next lunar year is the year of the Golden Pig. It's an event that occurs every 600 years and is apparently going to result in a mini baby boom in the Far East. So far, no news news on this horizon for Mr. mouse and me. Although I might write more one day about this Golden Pig phenomena, if I end up researching it.

blogs - news - technology trends: We've got both computers and our wireless network up and running. The TV is still in the box, low on the priority list. I love my blog. That about sums up technology trends for us.

clutter diet: You'll see a lot of posts in this section this upcoming year. We have a lot less space for storage in the mouse pad. And, we've gotten a lot of low grade stuff we need to get rid of. Basically, we're combining 3+ households into one. We've got the staging+remnants from the first house, we've got the mouse house, we've got staging from the mouse house, we've got miscellanea Mr. mouse picked up to get by in the old apartment and we've got mouse pad stuff. My head is spinning from the amount of stuff we have. For example, neither of us drink coffee, we have four coffee makers. We don't squeeze fresh juice, we have two juicers. The list is endless. On top of redundancy, remember, we have less storage space. And, I never took a hard stance on tossing things. This year, this will be a top priority for me.

eating out: Although we're going to try and eat in often, I've made the commitment to post restaurant reviews here.

food: This was a spot for me to post food items I was discovering through Weight Watchers. It's been on the back burner for the last couple of months as my Tuesday posts have been regular updates. Not sure if I'm discovering a bunch of new food or if I've settled into a new lifestyle. This might be another section of the blog that evolves.

infrastructure: OK. What gives? I can't access blogger from my computer. It works fine from Mr. mouse's. Very annoyed. Will need to figure this out.

life in general: Top on my Top 3 is transitioning. I've got a long list. In no particular order, there's job, house, wellness, financial planning, commuting, eating with Mr. mouse, lunch routine at work, living with Mr. mouse, gym routine, work schedule, sleep routine, car, driving in the new city, learning roads, finding service providers, pilates, etc. Wish me luck.

money matters: Now that Mr. mouse and I have some discretionary cash flow, we need to think about how best to invest it. Also, now that we've got some time, I want to seriously think about who we should be using as a financial adviser. And, we're putting plans together to refinance the mouse pad. We want to take the check from selling the mouse house and use it to lower our monthly mortgage payments. By my math, that makes my income 100% discretionary, taking a lot of pressure off me if the new job doesn't work out.

mouse pad: Mr. mouse wants to dive into a kitchen remodel. But, I've got some more practical considerations before we begin tearing the place apart. I'd like to finish unpacking and get the place to a livable state. Then, in my opinion, we need to fix the roof leaks, overhaul Mr. mouse's car, and figure out a mysterious bed creak which is most annoying.

Top 3: I could go back and look at what my Top 3 was, if I wanted to be consistent and accurate. But, I won't, not today. Today, I feel like looking forward and not being totally concerned about being connected to the past. My Top 3. Well, wellness is still on my list. Transitioning. That's on my mind. And, the house refinance. I think that's a good list for now.

wellness: To say this is going well is a huge understatement. If you had asked me last Jan 1, I would have never thought I could be where I am now, in one short year. Sometime this next year, most probably, I will hit whatever is to be my "goal weight". Then, I'll focus on other aspects of health and wellness. For now, my focus is on finding a routine and on getting back to the gym. Between my heart, quitting work (thus losing access to the gym) and the holidays, it's been close to two months since I've had a decent work-out. Time to ease back into it.

work: So far, so good. Five days under my belt, so still in honeymoon phase. Will write as relevant things come up. If I say nothing, assume it's all good.

archive - career hunting: I guess it went quickly. Wow.

archive - mouse house: This was a big focus of 2006. And, it feels good to have it behind us. I'll miss the community and the convenience. But, I'm excited to be together with Mr. mouse. I'm glad this chapter is closed.

archive - old work: Four and a half years... Longer than any other company I've been with. Still a great company with a great future. I learned a lot about work and about myself. The work being done on women's leadership is an amazing component of old work. If Mr. mouse had found a job in the area, we'd be happy at the mouse house and at old work. That's okay. Last year was a tough year, and I'm glad to be in a new environment.

archive - transitions: A temporary area to write about the transition from old work to work. Ten days that went very quickly. Without the blog, I'd probably forget them. Now, they're captured for me to revisit.

archive - vacation 2006: Now that we're not spending every weekend working on the mouse house AND we live together so time alone is less of an issue, we'll be doing a lot more traveling. High on my list is going back to visit my grandfather. That'll probably be this spring. And, we'll see a lot of our friends on short weekend trips. And, once we settle in and take a breather, we'll plan a vacation for 2007.

Still with me? Well, I've got to go and scrounge some dinner with Mr. mouse. Hope you're as excited about the new year as I am.


Cheers!
mouse

Made the Switch to "New" Blogger

Dear Friends and Family,

Sometime between yesterday morning and this morning Blogger announced new blogger, formerly known as blogger beta. Okay, maybe it's a good time to switch.

I know there are a lot of good reasons for making you create a google account, which Mr. mouse got for me awhile ago, but, I can't say I like account consolidation. More importantly, now, it requires you to turn on cookies to use blogger. This, I am not happy about. Not sure if I'll stay on blogger for my tiny audience or move to another service. We'll see.

For now, I'm curious to see what the post looks like and see what the other capabilities are. So, short post for this morning. Will be working on looking at infrastructure instead.


Cheers!
mouse

PS: word of advice to the smart people at google, maybe you should include the words blogger and google in the default dictionary for this service, no?

Yahoo! Avatars

Dear Friends and Family,

I'm going to try updating my profile to show my yahoo avatar. Let's see if it works.


Cheers!
mouse

PS: Eh. It's okay. It's not in the box. But, more importantly, the resolution on it isn't too impressive. I'll probably remove it on Monday, but it was a fun attempt for the day.

Test

Dear Friends and Family,

Just a test as my blog is currently showing up as someone else's chess blog...


mouse

PS: Hmm... Posting fixed the problem. Weird.

Categories

Dear Friends and Family,

I'm going to skip this morning's journal entry and categorize one more month.


Cheers!
mouse

Mouse Working

Dear Friends and Family,

I'm going to be working on adding formatting to the right hand side for categories. Excuse the mess while I'm working on it. Most of it won't be functional until I'm done.


Cheers!
mouse

Relief

Dear Friends and Family,

After fighting Blogger all last night to make it look right, I had to have a second look this morning. The pictures, still dicey, but it works. The font, really, I was on the wrong screen. And, the javascript error - who knows.

But, the main thing I realize in the fresh light of morning is that I blew over two hours last night fighting the computer on something that didn't merit 15 minutes of my attention. I was hungry. I should have stopped and eaten and slept.

Know your limits.


Cheers!
mouse

HTML coding

Dear Friends and Family,

Okay. I'm making this way too difficult. Or, rather, Blogger is making this way too difficult.

For some reason, images aren't posting correctly. So, I hard coded the HTML to add a picture. Then, the border and the non-transparent background...

WTF?

Okay, enough time wasted on this for now. And, what's with the javascript error?!?!

Off to dinner.


Cheers.
mouse

PS: Hey! Where's my font control?!?!

PPS: Found it. Guess it was time for dinner. Sigh...

Stonyfield Farm Organic Lowfat Yogurt

Dear Friends and Family,

So in the spirit of continuous improvement, I am evolving this blog. I'm not sure what the end product will look like, but I've come to the realization that frankly, my life isn't interesting enough to warrant daily posts - especially midweek. Come on, seriously, nine times out of 10, nothing new really happens on a Tuesday. Now, if something did, well, no worries, I'll write about it here.

So... Tuesday is my Weight Watchers "weigh in" day. Since I weigh myself every day (I know, I know) to get a feel for what normal fluctuation looks like and since I am doing the online program where I weigh myself and enter the information on-line, weigh-in isn't as climatic as it would be if I only weighed myself once a week at a meeting. Nevertheless, I thought it would be a good day to co-opt, and talk about food.

So, I'm going to try writing on Tuesdays about some food item or other that I like that has IMHO a good bang for the buck on the weight watchers point system. I refuse to begin eating fake food to lose weight, so the stuff I write about will, generally, be good for you whether you're watching what you eat or not.

Cheers!

Oh wait! I didn't write anything at all about Stonyfield Farm Organic Lowfat Yogurt. There's a lot of research out there about calcium. The jury's still out on whether it helps on osteoporosis, etc. but, overall, smart people out there seem to agree that it doesn't hurt. But, that's not my motivation. I read an article on WebMD that calcium may alleviate PMS. Now we're talking! Being who I am, I'm not as motivated by the long term gain as I am by the immediate benefit.

It (the yogurt) comes in 10 yummy flavors - blueberry, caramel, lemon, maple vanilla, mocha latte, peach, plain, raspberry, strawberry and vanilla. They're all 2 points on Weight Watchers for the 6 oz. container with the exception of caramel (4) and mocha latte (3). So, I eat the "cheap" flavors. They provide 35% of your RDA of calcium. Which, to quote Martha Stewart, is a good thing.


Cheers!
mouse

PPS: Mouse Journal Formatting

Dear Friends and Family,

Obviously I lost the battle in deciding not to reformat. I did it.

Sigh. Off to work.


Cheers!
mouse

PS: Mouse Journal Formatting

Dear Friends and Family,

I learned how to use the list feature on blogger to write about stitches. But, I'm not going to go back and fix last night's blog with the A's and B's to 1's and 2's. It's too time consuming since the whole blog needs to be retyped. And, I'm not sure how to get letters instead of numbers.

C'est la vie.


Cheers!
mouse