Tag Archives: website

1 Year Ago…

The last time I posted on my blog was exactly one year ago. It was a different time then. I was 28, we had a different president, I missed playing volleyball, and Joshua was still talking to me. I’ve chosen today to “relaunch” my blog since it’s my one year anniversary of my last post.

I was hoping to be able to post this yesterday, and make it 364 days, but alas I couldn’t pull it off. As you may have noticed I’ve completely switched out the theme (thanks Woo Themes for the free theme) and I’ve moved from Typo to Wordpress. Wordpress seems to be the defacto standard these days in terms of blogging engines and after setting all this up yesterday I know why. It’s a heck of a lot more powerful than my last rendition using Typo. I’ve wanted to switch for awhile, and just hadn’t taken the time to do it, and since I knew I was going to have to post by today (a goal I made at the beginning of March) I figured I should take the opportunity to redo everything. So I stayed up until the wee hours of the morning last night (don’t ask) and got it all working. I was able to import almost everything into Wordpress except for the tags, which I had to do manually. That took a little bit of time since I had to touch every single post, but it was worth it. So I’m now fully on Wordpress, I’ve got a new design, new functionality, and a new lease on my blogging life.

I’m also going to get my Joshua back. It’ll be good to find out what’s going on with him again. Since he uses my blog as his sole means of communication with me you can imagine when I stopped posting that he stopped caring. He probably has 2 kids and a chihuahua now that I don’t know about.

More Comment Fun

So I had this gem of a conversation with Pam this afternoon…

>5:16:06 PM Pam: wow… I missed a whole lot on your blog
>5:16:40 PM Jeremy: really? I’ve been pretty sporadic
>5:17:10 PM Pam: I don’t mean what YOU wrote… I meant the comments!
>5:17:28 PM Jeremy: LOL
>5:17:31 PM Pam: :)
>5:17:42 PM Jeremy: of course…upstaged by the comments….AGAIN
>5:18:07 PM Pam: that’s what it’s all about, isn’t it?
>5:19:06 PM Jeremy: so true…so true

As I wrote in my last post (about a day ago - we’re making progress) my website has started to take on a life of it’s own. The comment bonanza on yesterday’s post is further proof of this. Let’s be honest. Without the comment submissions this site would have been pretty dang boring in recent weeks. Luckily I have friends who enjoy making fun of me (and each other). I’m so glad Google has indexed this for all time. My kids (and maybe yours) are going to love this stuff. :)

My Blog Without Me

An actual conversation I had over IM earlier today (OK yesterday for those of you who actually look at the time I posted this)…

>3:34:38 PM Josh: comment submitted
>3:35:04 PM Jeremy: I think I’m just not going to submit anymore…..and let you guys take over my website…you’re way funnier
>3:35:13 PM Josh: NOOOOOO
>3:35:14 PM Josh: POST
>3:35:18 PM Josh: then we’ll rip you
>3:35:25 PM Jeremy: yes I know
>3:35:27 PM Jeremy: I was only kidding

And kid I have. For you are currently reading the newest blog post by none other than yours truly. In recent weeks my website has taken on a life of it’s own. This has been spurred on by the likes of Josh, Erika, and Sara. They’ve had quite the time commenting on my last post mostly because I’ve been too busy to post anything. It’s all very very exciting and frankly more exciting and funnier than I could ever be. Perhaps I should stop posting and allow the readers to run rampant. Perhaps I should let Josh’s insult machine run free. Perhaps I should let the world come to an end as we know it. Or…perhaps not. :)

The Week In Review

I was going to put these all in separate posts, but the last time I did that I set unrealistic expectations on the number of posts that could be expected, and we all know how that story ended. :) So here it is, the last week in review in shorts bursts. Buckle your seat belts and hang on.

**Last Saturday**

Last Saturday was the second quiz of the 2007-2008 quizzing season at Kankakee First Church. It was originally supposed to be at Danville Southside, but because of overbooked hotels we had to move it. My kids did OK, taking 15 out of 17 teams. At our first quiz we took 16th out of 17 teams, so we’re definitely moving in the right direction. I’m still working on getting my kids motivated to study. If I can do that I think we’ll be able to crack the top ten. After the quiz we went out to Blue’s Cafe for pie with the team. The girls (Agnes, Angel, and Leann) didn’t want to try the pie (supposedly the didn’t like pie), so they just got ice cream. Of course after all of us adults got pie they had to try each one and they said they liked it. Kids are funny sometimes. :) If you ant to see pictures from the event check them out here.

Also, a tragedy occurred when I woke up. As many of you have been following my eye injury (the stat on the right hadn’t changed since march), I am sad to report that I injured my eye again as I woke up on Saturday morning. My eye just got really dry and stuck to the inside of my eyelid. Fortunately it injured to the right of my pupil and not over my pupil so my vision wasn’t affected. However, it did make for an interesting morning as it felt like I had something in my eye for 3 or 4 hours. I have since updated the stat on the right to reflect the newest date. Oh so sad. I’m beginning to think I’ll never wear contacts again. I have started putting ointment in my eye before bed again, so hopefully that’ll help. I think the onset of cold weather is what’s causing it and I’ll just have to be more careful in the future. I’m also going to reinstate the use of a humidifier in my room.

**Last Sunday**

Sunday was pretty standard; church, small group, a brief nap, and then some volleyball with my small group peeps at an open gym in Glenview.

**This Past Monday**

My boy Peter visited me on Monday. He flew in to town for a client meeting on Tuesday morning, so he took the opportunity to visit me by flying in Monday night. I picked him up form the airport, we headed to Lou Malnoti’s for some deep dish pizza, and then hung out and talked for awhile at my house. As I’m sure Joshua will bring up in the comments (so of course I’ll preempt him here) we watched my performance in the Wizard of Oz when I was in 8th grade as well. Boy was I short back then. It was great to see Peter, and was a slight preview of my trip next month to see Joshua in Arizona. Of course when Joshua gets involved we’re going to take it to a whole new level.

**This Past Tuesday**

Tuesday was game night. We played the Age of Renaissance game again, and I think I finally figured out how to play it. It’s a rather complicated game of trading/attacking set during the Renaissance. I did terrible the first few times I played it with the guys (mostly due to the Crusades card which gives a player a free sport on the board), but this time I was able to pull out a win.

**This Past Wednesday**

Wednesday I had German as usual, but I left during the break to head to Glenview to play some volleyball with my small group peeps. They joined a league on Wednesday nights and I was subbing for one of their guys who couldn’t be there. It was a ton of fun. I don’t think I’ve had that much fun playing volleyball in an awful long time. I was just playing well, getting blocks, hits, good passes. It was pretty amazing. We won 2 out of 3, though the game we lost was by a score of 29-28, and the last point was actually ruled incorrectly, so we might have still yet won. Ah well.

**This Past Thursday**

I got to play racquetball with Ben, something we haven’t done in forever. I also got my YMCA ID card made, after a year of being a member. Ben whooped me in 2 games (15-6 and 15-7), but it was a ton of fun to play again.

**This Past Friday**

I was pretty sore on Friday after playing volleyball and racquetball on back to back nights. It was a good kind of sore, but I was sore none the less. I also had quizzing practice on Friday night, which was fun, but a little stressful. Mary and I spent a significant amount of time trying to explain the Trinity to Agnes, Angel, and Leann. I never realized how hard a concept that is to convey to junior highers. I think they got it, but they’re still young so they’ve got some time to figure it out.

**Yesterday**

Yesterday was semi relaxing. I went to worship practice in the morning, and then spent a majority of the afternoon relaxing. I really meant to do some work / work on my room, but after my super busy week at work, etc., I just had no energy. I also attended the second annual Chili Party at Simon and Becca’s place. That was a ton of fun. I arrived late (due to reading the start time incorrectly and helping my mom with something), but I arrived just in time to have my chili judged in the competition. After sampling the myriad of chilis available mine didn’t have any taste anymore. :) We also played this super fun game called Telephone Pictionary. The concept is that you draw a picture, pass to the person on your right, they write down what they think you drew, then they pass it to the next person who has to draw what the first person wrote. You continue this way around the circle until everyone has drawn everyone elses’ picture or word. It was pretty hilarious to see some of the progressions of things. I think my favorite was the word “Half Zipper Fleece” turning into a “Magnetic Bear Trap.” Try drawing it, I dare you. :)

**Today**

Toay was also pretty standard. I had church, then hung out with some church peeps while I waited for small group, then had small group, then watched the end of the Bears game. After that I went home, cleaned off my desk and my night stand, did some work on my computer, and watched game 7 of the ALCS pitting the Red Sox against the Indians. I wasn’t really routing for either team, as I’d be happy with either making it, but it was a fun game to watch regardless. We’ll see how the Sox do against the red hot Rockies come Wednesday.

There you have it; my week in review. Please remain seated until the ride has come to a complete stop.

The Reason

This post is merely to explain myself. This is to let my faithful readers know why I’ve failed you once again and why I should be reported to the center for better blogging (no Josh that is not an invitation).

Two reasons. The first is I’m just busy. You know how it is. I’ve got work, all of my extra-curricular activities, and countless phone calls from women wanting to give me affection. It’s just too much for one man to handle alone. In all seriousness I have a ton of side projects and things I’m involved in. I have quizzing, german class, various ministries I lead at Church, and several websites I’m doing on the side. It’s really a lot of stuff.

The second reason is I get demotivated to write anything, or to better state it I get overwhelmed. I simply have so many things I want to write about that I just don’t do any of them. I feel the need to start at the beginning, but the amount of effort required to “catch up” to where I’m at is just daunting. I also try to put in a lot of detail. I like being through, and it takes a ton more time to write out everything that happened, rather than a brief summary.

So it comes down to this. I need to just throw away everything I was going to write about (or start from a relatively close point in time instead of 45 days ago) and start writing shorter posts that at least get the gist of what I’ve been up to.

So look forward to some new posts soon. I’ve already started working on them.

Webcam is back up…

My webcam is back up finally after a hiatus of over a month. The software I was using expired, and I just hadn’t gotten around to buying a license. So I did that today. Now everyone can stalk me at work again. :)

I hate spam.

Why must the spammers hate me. I certainly don’t like them any either. First it was the trackbacks, and as soon as I turned those off they started submitting comments. Luckily the worst I’ve gotten is some links to Cialis and Viagra. Tame compared to what I got before.

For the last 2 weeks I’ve had to delete at least 5-10 comments a day off of my blog from bots that are randomly posting. I tried modifying all the spam settings within typo, but none seems to work. I think I’m just going to have to switch blog applications. C’est la vie.

Webcam Back In Action

Ever since I got my new laptop I’ve been trying to find a new webcam application for linux that supports my built in isight camera. It was a painful search, but in the end I found an app that does it. It’s a little darker than I’d like, but I think that’s because I can’t adjust the brightness/contrast the way I can when I’m in OSX. Anyways, it should update every 30 seconds, so if you’re bored and you want to watch me work feel free. :)

I’ve Been Hacked!

I made a startling discovery today. It turns out someone has been using my blog to spam. It wasn’t nearly as serious as I first thought, but someone was using the trackbacks functionality (the ability to link to my blog from another blog or site which lets you see who’s linked me) to link my site to porn sites. This allowed my site under trackbacks on each article (which thankfully aren’t shown by default) to show links to porn sites. Simply fantastic. You can imagine how mad/annoyed I was.

Anyways, it took me awhile to clean it up because I had to manually clean up stuff in the database, since there were probably close to 13,000 different links to various places. And that’s probably not even .01 percent of the crap that’s out there. I think it’s all removed now and I’ve disabled trackbacks. So hopefully it doesn’t happen again, but the Internet is a scary place which I chose to take up residence in, so I guess it’s to be expected. I guess I just wish people weren’t so stupid.

Danny Overstayed His Welcome

So I’ve had lots of complaints from people that their tired of Danny. I can understand that. Danny’s belief in God has graced the front page of my website for 46 days now. That 16 days longer than the average month. Yes, I am pathetic. Yes, I didn’t even post in December. Yes, I will probably look back on this time in my life and wonder what happened, since I have no documentation of it. Such is life I guess.

To all the faithful who still check my site even after 46 days of inactivity, bless you. To those who have stopped coming I hope that I can one day regain your trust.

So, all of that being said I’ve made a New Year’s Resolution to post at least once every other day. Considering it’s already January 7, I’ve already broken this a few times. No more.

Bye Bye Danny. Hello 2007. :)