You may have noticed that I've changed the default layout for the site again. To the "Cotton Candy" design, which I also fixed up a bit. It seemed like it needed a little love. If you'd like to change to the default design just click here. Be sure to hold your ctrl key and click the refresh or reload button to be sure it's the right one. Or feel free to change to whatever layout you like using the gallery.

I also fixed the problems the "Neapolitan" skin was having in Inernet Explorer. Or I think I have. I've checked the skins in Mozilla, Firefox, Opera, and IE. I haven't gotten screenshots from the Safari generator so who knows what that looks like. I've also finally fixed the links list. In the links section of the sidebar there's a "blogrolls" form button. Click on it and you'll get a matching popup list of some of my bloglines - yeah I have a LOT of bloglines subs.

Here's an example that matches the new default skin:

I have not figured out what's going on with the "remember me" cookie function in the comments section. I think I'll have to go in and tinker with the headers in all the skins to have this work universally. I also haven't checked to see if there's a new version of Movable Type that may have fixed this. However, if you log in using a (free) Typekey account, it does seem to remember you that way. And it will work in all capable versions of Movable Type as well as all Typepad websites. But I'll get this remember function fixed someday. I know it's a pain.

I feel somewhat ashamed that I work harder fixing other people's sites than my own. Seems to be a sort of "cobbler's children having no shoes" type of situation. But I'm trying a little on mine anyway.

In related shoe news, Cody and I braved it over to the Coronado Mall yesterday and I had some fun visiting the Torrid store. It's always interesting to see the stuff in person as opposed to the online store. This shirt is much better looking in person. It looks like barf on the site though. This, while it looks cool on the site looks like cheapo trash in person. And I'd been wavering back and forth on getting this shirt online but wasn't sure. Then saw it in person and really wasn't sure. But when I tried it on I couldn't believe how flattering it actually was. Particularly since it's fitted in the belly area, which usually means very bad things. But the panel down the middle with ruching on the side looks really good!

So I got a few things and got a chance to use up one of those "ten punches for 15% off" cards. Which was nice. And we found a shoe store across the hall from the Torrid which seems to be closing and has DOC MARTENS ON SALE! Cody finally found two pairs that were comfortable enough for him. Is it strange I find him sexier wearing them? And I got a cute pair that's pretty close to what I wanted. For twenty bucks. Let me say that again: Doc Martens for 20 bucks.

In beverage news (ha) there's a Boba Tea Company in the mall now. Of course this is the mall that's clear across town from our house, not the one that's just down the hill. We still have to cross the river and I-25 to get to Bubble Tea. But isn't that weird? Bubble Tea in a mall. And I got to use another one of those "ten punches for a free smoothie" cards at Keva Juice. Go me being a conscientious consumer.

We never did get to Trader Joe's. Maybe next week? We did get to the regular grocery store though so I'll get to eat this week yay.

Yay the cable's back on! Yay yay yay! This would be the fifth time the construction guys behind the house sliced through the cable, ladies and gentlemen. So I haven't been online since Wednesday around noon. Oddly I didn't feel that deprived really, just worked on a new sock. Ironically, it was a cabled sock. Did you think we were off doing dirty anniversary things? Alas, he had to work. And we're awfully old and dull these days.

Thanks to everyone with the sweet notes and good wishes with the marriage thing! I wasn't sure if I was being longwinded and self-involved. But it's our little story. And I like the part about the sketchbook. I really didn't even think about how cheeky it was to bring nude self portraits to a first date. Photos of yarn to follow in a bit. Yep.

The default skin for the site has been changed to little miss Punk Rock Fairy for the month of October. But you'll only notice that if you've never changed the site's style before or your site doesn't accept cookies or something.

If you want to choose another look feel free to use the Gallery.

the site looks wonky (aside from the usual wonkiness for the ms internet explorer users whom I've decided to just ignore) I'm in the process of upgrading to the new version of Movable Type and trying to get the plugins to work properly. Not entirely sure how long my patience and/or attention span will last for this. Although this walkthrough helped a lot. Amazingly this upgrade was more annoying than the 2.x to 3.x transition. You expect annoyances with major number changes, not the decimals.

Now if I can just figure out how to get the new version of mt blogroll to recognize my old link entries...

You might not have noticed (unless you're using MS Internet Explorer, and shame on you anyway, but I'll get back to you in a second) but I've been changing some things on the sidebar. As I mentioned before one of my blogrolling accounts expired on the 7th so I've had to change how I manage the Like You Care section and my blogrolls. Being the code-dinker I am, had to take the opportunity to mess with as much stuff and see just how lazy I could be on a daily basis while still mantaining fairly dynamic content.

Blah blah blah. Anyway, consuming, crushing, and reading are all being displayed through MT Blogroll 2.0b now.

I'm particularly happy with how the books are being displayed because when I used Blogrolling the Currently Reading was a completely separate blogroll from the Books read this year list - so every time I'd want to add a book, I would first have to remember which blogrolling account I used for these blogrolls (since I was limited to 10 blogrolls even for a paid account I'd given up sometime last fall and created another account), then I'd have to check what number the previous book had in the notes so I could specify the next number for the new book so it would display properly when I moved it to the other blogroll to save myself the trouble the next time, add the new book to the list, then move the previous book to the books read this year blogroll, and make sure that it was all displaying correctly. Whew. What a pain in the ass no wonder I kept forgetting to add the latest books right? What I go through to share stupid random information about my life with you!

Now all the books are in the same mt blogroll. Unfortunately, since there's no "display by date added" function (yet) for MT Blogroll I'm still using a strange system to display them in the the reverse order of when they were read, and since it was doing weird things with numbers (showing 1, 10, 2, 20, 3, 30 rather than in actual numeric order), I decided to assign a letter system like AAAAA, AAAAB, AAAAC. Now that I've got the way I wanted to display them under control I can just add the latest book to my mt blogroll and assign it whatever letter comes next, the most recent book will be displayed while the book before it automatically moves to the list below because I'm able to specify that I want to list the last book in the list for currently reading and list the books read in 2005 in descending order offset by 1. Cool eh?

The listening section is a very cool change mostly thanks to a nifty little program called iTunes Blogger, a nice website called ituners, and the snarky lady who runs the website where I first saw them both being implemented. Basically iTunes Blogger is a very small program that keeps track of what songs I'm listening to in iTunes. When a new song starts to play, it pings ituners to let it know what the new song is. Ituners takes that information and creates a neat little feed which my website reads every time you load my page. If I had more php knowledge and patience I'd be able to process iTunes Blogger's pings on my own server (thus cutting down on the page's load time since right now it's accessing another server for the feed) but alas I'm low on both at the moment. But even though I'm using ituners to process the information I think the idea that the latest five songs I've heard on itunes is being displayed on my site without me having to do a thing other than listen to the songs is a very cool thing.

The watching section's change was very easy to implement..it's the five movies I have out at Netflix - processed by the MT Netflix Outstanding plugin from the MT Netflix Suite. Netflix automatically provides three rss feeds for your account: what you have out, what's in your queue, and recommendations (You can also pull what you rated movies on Netflix using Mt Netflixratings). Cake! And now that the movies I have out are out on display for all the world to see maybe I'll remember to return them more often.

I'm still working on the all the weblog blogrolling lists. Mostly because I've been using a different popup page for each page design so I'm having to rebuild seven very differently-designed pages each with their own css codes. And since the way I wanted to use the popup window as a "remote control" hasn't been working exactly the way I want I'm implementing a little javascript to make that work better (the script basically assigns the main page you view my site as "main" and makes all the links on the remote popup target "main"). Right now I have it working on the ice cream and the holiday skins. But I've hit a snag...

(Now back to you Internet Explorer users) For some reason the sidebar for the ice cream skin isn't displaying properly in internet explorer now - but showing below all my main posts.. To be honest I use IE so rarely I don't think I ever saw the design with it before I started screwing around with all this but I'm going to assume it's something I've done. It shouldn't be anything major because the holiday skin is working just fine. I've messed around with trying to fix it but whatever makes it even slightly work properly in IE screws it up for Opera, Netscape, and Firefox so I'm just going to leave it alone until hopefully Joelle will have some time to come by and fix whatever I've fucked up for the sake of her great design.

In the meantime I'd just like to ask all the people on my blogrolls and those who use IE to just bear with me ok?

Have you caught the punk rock fairy's special st paddy's day message? Just thought I'd mention it even though it's been there since the first of the month. She has a shamrock tattooed on her ass but you can't see it from the photo.

Just got home from a late lunch and shopping with my friend Jocelyn. Still loving that fesenjoon stew from Pars- that chicken stewed in walnut pomegranate puree served over basmati rice. Damn.

We also went to Bath and Body Works and I got some new foaming hand soaps because I was almost out. They just make me so happy and if you have something that's going to make you happy several times a day then you should make sure you never run out right?

Went to the new Shoes on a Shoestring and I found some cheap black 8 hole Doc Martens to replace my old ones that got eaten by the dog years ago. And some cute stripey over-the-knee socks. I think I'm stuck in a "shoes in the early nineties" rut - I still love the big-soled square-toed black shoes and doc marten boots. I'm just not a strappy shoe spiky heel girl. I like feeling a bit more connected to the ground I guess. Less likely to step the wrong way or break a miniscule strap and fall on my clumsy ass. But I guess there are worse shoe eras to be stuck in than the early nineties right?

We stopped by Sonic on the way home and got a small cups of that sweetheart chocolate covered cherry flavored shake. Today was not a dieting day.

When I got home I checked my email and it looks like Miz Joelle has done it again! This is a design concept I've been wanting for a long time but don't have the skills to create in the way I really wanted. So I put it in the hands of an expert and she's done a wonderful job doncha think? That albino hedgehog's so ugly it's cute. But I guess that could be said about most hedgehogs.

I'm just going to drink my yummy shake and enjoy the new look :)

working on an actual job. WordPress is kinda weird. First time I've ever installed and worked on it but I think I've got all that silly code figured out now. Anyone have a quick idea of how one goes about posting the latest post to a specific category on a sidebar in WP? I'll figure it out eventually but I'd really appreciate a timesaver.

2/6/05 update: After much searching I finally found a plugin for this exact use! Although it was written for Wordpress 1.5 and we're running 1.2.2 it's working perfectly! It fits very nicely in an include on the right sidebar. Thank you Tony! Look! A nice guy named Tony! Let's call him Tony the magnificent wordpress hero!end update

Really been enjoying Accuradio today. Even if it only works in Internet Explorer. I'm checking the pages I'm working on in IE anyway but man am I a spoiled little tabbed browser uh, browser.

Seems my host is having some hardware issues so the site (and consequently the email) is going to be up and down for the day. Oh, hey, good news. It seems my favorite anti-spam plugin, Conversation Killer, which will close comments on posts older than a set number of days, has been updated to close down trackbacks as well. Well hot damn I could sure use this in light of the recent "screw you google and mt and your "no follow" crap I'm spamming everyone's trackbacks" spam. Too bad all my files are read-only at the moment because of the Dreamhost issues. But I'm looking forward to upgrading my Conversation Killer when that's all done.

Weird. I start typing like a B-movie cowgirl when I'm tired. Ok, me and my weird sleeping schedule are going to bed now.

I don't usually base my posts on what other people write in their weblogs (except for memes and crap) but I had so much to say the other day after reading a post at princess wildcow and today after reading one at Jeckles where I felt it would be rude to put everything I wanted to say in a comment on their sites. Seemed almost like hijacking their post to write that much. So I'll write it here where the bulk of my random useless thoughts belong.

My first weblog was created in 1999. This was after creating a personal website focusing on women in the arts in 1997 by learning html through trial and error and playing around in photoshop. Then I starting a design company, joining a silly elitist group of technologically inclined women. Don't remember which one of us jumped on the blogwagon first but I jumped right in after with both feet - using an old domain and my own design running blogger. Attitudes among webloggers seemed different then. Less friendly, not as much fluffy camaraderie and much more competitive.

But politics were not nearly as polarized either. I don't remember that many scary conservative weblogs. In fact I don't remember one. They were usually personal ramblings, gossip about other webloggers, news and tech links. It was a much bigger deal to have the latest code and design and css standards (which seemed to change every few minutes then) and basically attempt to beat others about with your big geek phallus or be the first to provide the most obscure link in the universe. And get mentioned on a famous weblog. Gee maybe things haven't changed that much.

I have though. I lost interest in sharing my personal blatherings when, in summer 2000, I had to go work at the first in a series of evil call center jobs while Cody went back to school to finish his degree.

Oddly enough I hated the jobs but I liked working. But hooray for economic downturns and hypothyroidism not being covered under the ADA I was in the second wave of layoffs at the insurance company for which I'd been doing customer support. Right after their worst tax season ever. Thanks guys! When he finished school Cody got a great job - where he works now actually – and it suits him perfectly even though the company policies don't always do so.

While looking for the perfect next job I got sucked into various gaming voids - the completely insane (I'm not kidding blog drama has got nothing on these guys they are NUTS) Sims community which I've been sneaking in and out of since 99 – including a brief stint as a creator for a pay site, Anarchy Online for a while where I became a high-level moneymaking metaphysicist, Star Wars Galaxies for about six months where I had a variety of characters and essentially started a multipurpose business conglomerate with my characters. Damn if I had the guts to auction those characters off. But I just couldn't stand to do it – too controlling, too vain. Couldn't stand to think what people who would buy a character for 1200 dollars would do with my people.

Every once in a while I would find myself writing these epic posts about different topics on these gaming message boards. Posts I would never be able to find again and would really like to save somewhere. That's when I started thinking about starting a weblog again.

With some fairly strict rules.

- I wouldn't worry too much about posting for audience appeal. If I re-read what I'm writing and think it might offend people in a big way I try to clarify what I'm saying or reconsider posting it. But this site isn't a friggin focus group it's a personal site, my personal site. I pay the hosting and domain registration fees therefore I'll pretty much post what I wanna post. And if I sit around and think about what I'm going to write I find that I'll never get around to actually posting anything.

- I wouldn't obsess about the tracking on my site. In fact, I had originally planned not to track incoming links to my site at all then I started getting notes about how people got here, started to wonder and curiosity got the best of me. I don't check errors, ips, or locations unless someone is seriously comment spamming or for general accessibility issues.

- I wouldn't link to people just because they link to me. Or stop linking to them when they stopped linking to me. Odds are if they link to me they have similar opinions or would like the same kinds of things. So I visit sites that link to me. If I like them (which I probably will) I reciprocate. I don't really keep track of who has stopped linking to me though. It's a miracle when I get through all my blogline subscriptions so I've learned to stop worrying about the reciprolinking so much, link to sites I like and stop linking to them if don't like them anymore. Have to say I'm totally happy and flattered (and usually surprised) when anyone links to me. No I really am.

- I wouldn't get involved in blog dramas. Been there. Done that. Linked it, pinged it, blogged it to death. I'll speak my mind as honestly as I want and people are totally free to do the same but I'll be damned if I'll take the shit people blog or comment about me or my site personally. When and if I do, I back way off until I have time to get a proper sense of perspective on it. Because it's just not worth it to get upset about what random online strangers say I have many other things in real life to worry and upset me they get first priority in the What upsets Noelle queue.

- I wouldn't post anything too personal. It can be argued that stomach issues, what I buy, and day-to-day doings and thoughts can be considered personal. Not to me. Anything I'd tell a cashier at the grocery store goes on here. But I won't discuss beyond the minutiae of personal relationships with my husband, parents, sister, or friends. To me, that's personal. I don't write anything about them that they wouldn't mind reading because..they do read this and even if they don't yet they might. Unless it's praise. I feel free to praise and brag about them but I keep the complaints to general bitching about my in-laws because there's always something bothering me about them. That's just assumed.

I also consider finances a personal subject. I don't consider religion and politics all that personal unless someone is trying to tell me what they think I should believe. Then it's fucking personal.

- I won't sacrifice other parts of my life in order to use blog as a verb. That means I won't sit in a situation and say I'm going to blog this to myself. If I have stuff going on or I just don't remember to post one day it's not a big deal. I blog about things that happen in my life I won't live simply to blog.

These rules might seem stupid or obvious but they're things I like to keep reminding myself so I won't forget that this site wasn't built to impress people. It's really just for my own weird entertainment and a space to get my online toy yayas out. No guarantees when or what I'll be posting.

And if you like it, that's great! If not, happy trails bucko.

Geez I'm so belligerent these days. Must be the nausea and not getting to eat anything fun. Damn I miss pizza.

Futzed around with the sidebar includes today. Removed some extraneous stuff added other (equally extraneous) stuff. Most notably I added a new sidebar - sort of an extension to the about me bar called like you care where I moved the meme, wish list, ok cupid, simmized house, and flickr links as well as the quitting smoking countup script. Also added things you may or may not care to know like who my current celebrity(ish) secret boyfriend is (keep an eye on them, I've spotted many future academy award winners although I've spotted many future vh1 "I love -insert decade here-'s" participants as well), what I'm listening to, which netflix movie is currently in the dvd player, what I'm reading, drinking, etc. Basically a chance to pimp new shit.

Since everything on this entire site could probably fall into the like you care category I might as well add more stuff you may or may not care to know. Products I like and if you find you like them too that's cool. And if I get a few cents for you buying it, hey, that's pretty cool too. If not, well, no animals were harmed in the making of this site in any case.

I have a few caveats to the blatant sellout thing though. I've been approached by advertisers recently and have been arguing with myself over whether or not I was comfortable with selling space here to companies I know I don't use. As you can tell I have no problem with having ads on my site but so far I have not advertised anything that I don't use myself, or, at the very least, haven't used before at some point.

I'm comfortable with this policy right now and I think I'm going to not only stick with it but take it further and remove the google and marketbanner ads for now. I have had zero kickback on those and don't really like the lack of control over what's pulled up. Anyone who's used the cherry bomb / punk rock fairy skin knows I have no problem with adult-related stuff. Cody is a member of suicidegirls.com with my full blessing and encouragement. As a matter of fact, I was the one who ordered their 2005 Rion Vernon pinup calendar. But there are many porn (as well as home equity loan, real estate investment scam, pyramid scheme) sites out there that I think are quite yucky and I don't want them associated with my site, even by accident.

If you utterly hate the blatant commercialism or are on a dialup connection and have trouble with picture ads you can use the Cotton Candy skin. I work really hard to keep images and scripts to a minimum there and right now there are no ads on that skin. Although there might be a few text ads in the future.

I like the idea that while I may be a big fat sellout at least I'm selling stuff I use too. And if you have a problem with that you can fuck off because it's my site. :)

PS God save the Queen King

Remember my little hedgesanta game? Well, I saved the names I didn't draw in December in a little box and have been planning to do one drawing a month this year. Let's hope I can remember (and afford it) every month.

This month's lucky winner is Fiona! I'll be picking out a little bauble from her wishlist and sending it off today.

Oh, if you signed up before and would rather have a donation made to a charity in your name instead just let me know and I'll update it in my notes. Then if I draw your name I'll just post which charity you wanted and a link to your site. k?

More prezzies:

I could kick myself over and over for this, I missed my favorite Bad Kitty's birthday! Gaaah! So please go wish her many happy returns and convince her I'm not an oblivious forgetful ass, even if I kinda am. I'm working on a present for her that I promised a long time ago so hopefully that will make up for it! (And hopefully I can finish it tonight because I've got a job to work on tomorrow.)

The famous punk rock fairy skin has been updated for the new year. Also, I've moved the suicide girls banner which only shows up on this skin to the sidebar where there are now thirty-eight photos in rotation. (coughSomeAreFromTheMembersOnlySection ButAreForAdvertisingPurposesOnlycough) So keep your eyes to the left as you scroll down. Refresh and you'll get a new one. Don't worry there aren't any that are too explicit.

I could say that I've had so many compliments on Joelle's cool hedgehog reindeer design that's the reason I've been keeping it up after the holidays but I'd be full of crap.

I'm still pretty ill. And still quite cranky about it. It's pretty much the same sinus coughing nonsense I've been fighting since the 18th of December I'm just having trouble beating it once and for all. And yes, Mom, I've been propping up my pillows like you showed me. Steambaths seem to help as do the yummy orange julius shakes Cody's been making for me since I'm getting tired of drinking plain juice. And fruit popsicles.

Just a slower healer than most people I guess. Thanks again Ms Thyroid! Or maybe this is a competely different virus I caught on the return flight to Albuquerque rather than one I had before Christmas which is entirely possible since the symptoms are different now.

Regardless I don't want to get into all the gory details. Just wanted to explain why I've been too lazy to say anything of much interest or expend enough energy to come up with a new design. So hope you aren't too sick of it yet.

There are several others if you want to see something new. I think this one looks nice and wintery but I hadn't really planned on changing the default skin because..I donwanna so I'm going to switch it to the default skin for a while. Don't question the nyquil woman.

The good news is I've managed to watch all the movies I got for christmas and even started reading a few of the books.

So thanks to this book soon I'll be hosting a streaming station of my music just like I've been wanting to do. (coughI was also able to upload all the music from my ipod onto my dad's computer but it's actually legal because I've authorized his computer as one of the 5 that are allowed to play my itunes music coughcoughcoughhackgag) And if I can ever figure out how to knit I can make my very own Joey Ramone doll. I'm sort of half-assed teaching myself to knit I'm so jealous of all the crafty knitters out there.

I've even listened to most of this year's kick ass box set present from Mr Man. He gets me a nice box set of music I like every year for Christmas/Yule and this is probably the best one yet.

Ok back to bed now. Behave yourselves and please, for all the various gods' sakes and everyone's general well-being, cover your mouth when you cough and wash your hands frequently!

So the cold I thought I'd beaten is trying to come back and I'm pissed. Of course I tried to save a square inch of packing space by leaving my nyquil at my parents' house so we had to go buy more. The good part is this time I can smell and taste I just keep coughing. It's almost like the cold is continuing where it left off and now I'm to the post sinus infection scratchy throat coughing up a lung stage.

Cody's back at work tonight and Winter and I have been sitting around eating Cheetos flipping between a really bad made-for-tv movie about Prince William and biographies about serial killers on the biography channel. And Celebrity Poker Showdown which I don't really care about but I keep stopping there anyway.

Now I'm backing up all files on the server before trying to upgrade to mt 3.14159265. I might also install and play Pirates while I try to videotape all the Dead Like Me and Huff episodes (both excellent shows btw) to clear them from the Tivo so I can record the 24 hours of Monk that starts tomorrow even though the second season is coming out on DVD January eleventh.

Then I'm going to take some Nyquil and hallucinate while I watch Velvet Goldmine (thank you Jess the secret santa!) in bed and drink blueberry tea.

I sincerely hope I don't have any more creepy assasin superhero shopping challenge dreams because I find them to be quite disturbing.

Is this a good or bad way to start the year?

So junkeater's been giving error messages that I'm not a registered user when people try to post comments today. That sucks. My new project will be figuring out how to implement my own capcha now. I'm really starting to feel that I've fucked around with this spam crap long enough. I'm tired of actual people from whom I'd really like to hear getting rejected by MT blacklist or error messages while the spam still gets through! I'm seriously considering asking for Expression Engine for xmas.

And on that note.. This is interesting news for people who have thought about upgrading from xanga, typepad, bloghosts (who is closing this month), livejournal, Blogger, or similar group-hosted weblog to having a little more control of their look and design: My site's host, Dreamhost, has implemented a very very simple way of installing the open source blogging software, WordPress, onto any of their hosted sites - by clicking one link in your dreamhost control panel - very handy!

I can honestly say that I recommend Dreamhost without reservation. They're affordable, fairly user-friendly for those new to the technical aspects of having a website, a lot of fun doohickies come standard with the account, changes to the account and site settings are usually implemented within two hours, and they're just all-around nice people. Go check out their price packages.

Did I mention that if you sign up with them during the month of December your allotted bandwidth is tripled for as long as you stay with them? Damn.

Now I've heard some good things about WordPress. And some of my favorite webloggers use it - Beth, Kestrel, Pamela, and Mel, to name a few. I don't know much about it. But I thought that people dangling on the cliff over wanting to host their own weblog might be interested in jumping off if they knew.

So there's that.

Also, I've set up all skins to have a popup blogrolling surf page based on how I did it with the dialup scarf skin. Because it looks neater and I like it but I might change it so the button is an option and still list all the blogrolls. I dunno there are just so many now it makes my sidebar awfully long.

And each shameless ad section is being changed to have links and ads that are specifically chosen to "match" the skin. Like the punk rock skin has a nifty php-based rotating banner for suicide girls and will have ads to hot topic and punk music stores (once I'm approved) while the Holiday Hedgehog Reindeer skin has ads for itunes holiday lists and stocking stuffers at overstock. I thought that would be kind of fun.

It's been really amusing to see who has an hasn't approved my site though. And who automatically approves you.

So yes, I'm selling out, but in a cool dynamic way.

Ok so sorry if most skins are looking a bit twitchy right now. Suffice to say that this is very much the fault of my learning skinning / php / and css by the seat of my pants method which can be admirable for its independent spirit but a big mess to work with when you're a seasoned professional used to actual organization and things making sense.

Rest assured I'm fixing my skins as you read this and am not going to go take a nap or eat nachos or anything. Yes I'm lying but I've been working for a good while and need a rest before I wear out another monitor tonight. Am I the only one who can't wait for this year of fucking doom to end?

In the meantime why don't you reset the skin to the new default hedgehog holiday skin by Ms Joelle hmm? Isn't it sweet? Doncha just want to tweak that little snowball hedgehog reindeer's nose?

Since there are getting to be a lot of skins I created a Gallery page with screenshots and some details on the various skin designs for the page. I'm thinking about making another skin using that design because it was kind of fun. If you look very closely there's a hedgehog in the gallery design one too.

I also converted the About Me so it's skinned to match whichever design you've chosen (or the default if you haven't chosen one). I still need to write a better bio though.

Oh, and in my continuing effort to stem the flow of comment spam I've installed the Conversation Killer MT plugin so now any posts over 31 days old will no longer accept comments. This involved editing in shell access and creating a cronjob in perl which I'd never done before so I'm very proud.

I also installed the junkeater number captcha thingie the other night which seems to be helping too. I hope everyone who wants to comment is getting through without too much annoyance. I really am trying to make it as easy as possible to comment while assuring that I get as few spam comments as I can. I've asked the junkeater guys if there's a way to not require the junkeater capcha after logging in on typekey but haven't gotten an answer yet.

I had forgotten about another photo album I was hosting for my sister so the good news is I was able to retrieve the original Quixotic Pixels templates from it and have restored the Photo Journal. Now I just need to re-upload the photos in order to recreate the archives. This time I've chosen to put in the actual date of the photos (or a very good guess of the date) so there will be a very wide range of dates in the archives now.

Whee!

in trying to find an outlet for my anger (aside from posting bilious rants on my weblog) I decided to add a few notes to my comment template to let people know that no matter what I try to do comments keep getting forced into moderation and have to wait for my approval to show up. In doing so I managed to fix whatever was making the comment box drop to the bottom of the page in the mocha and grape skins.

:shrug: Whatever works.

I've got a new skin for people on dialup connections. I've removed a lot of external scripts and most images so this should be a significant increase in load time for the slowpokes.

It's primarily css with two very small gif images. And miracle of miracles the comment box went in the correct place on the first try!

The design is a seriously bastardized version of a great Eris free layout with new colors based on my new scarf. Thus the name: Cotton Candy. The scarf is actually a knit alpaca from a works project in Peru but that doesn't sound very tasty.

And yes it's quite pink. So there.

Indeed. The mt templates for my photo album kind of...disappeared. Yeah.

Let me sum up: While removing permission to edit photos.egeltje.org from an author who really shouldn't have had it in the first place somehow every single author lost access to it including me the main admin. Which also meant no one could give anyone else any permission to access it at all.

I used trusty mt medic to get access to it again. Only to find everything empty. No templates. No index pages. I've backed up all my files but not the templates. And of course the tutorial I used to make it doesn't offer the tut anymore. So I have the archives and the photos and everything. Just no templates to make any more. Which ya know doesn't matter anyway because our cheapo digital camera died last week anyway.

So things on the main index page for the photos site will be a big mess but the archives should be fine.

Which puts a delay in making the portal I was planning on playing around with today :(

And my itunes randomizer is somehow managing to choose the most grating fucking songs today too. grr

I never participated in free for all friday because, well, mostly because I'm a control freak. The thought of someone putting something icky on my site scared me or, and this was my huge fear, no one posting anything at all. :shudder:

Lemme tell you, nothing is more depressing than being forced to do stupid call-in giveaways at a tiny college radio station and having no one call in. I have been that deejay. Oh have I been that deejay. "You mean the FCC says I must stay in the building even if I see a funnel cloud coming my way just to report severe weather to these bastards??" Makes you want to just play Blondie's "The Tide is High" on repeat, lock the doors, throw away the key, and leave. There's actually an urban legend about a deejay doing this in Birmingham in the seventies.

So have you ever wondered what that Egeltje Group link is on my sidebar? Originally I created it for a group of small friends so we could share stupid links with each other. And to practice skinning and mt stuff without messing up my own site. And an excuse to use the dueling hedgehogs image. Yes that's a photo of two hedgehogs with their heads in the same toilet paper tube.

Anyway, these so-called friends (and spouse) seemed to have actual lives and stuff and never posted all that often. (just teasing friends and spouse ;) ) Indeed the last post is from August. So there this cute little dueling hedgehog weblog sits without any real use whatsoever except as a spam comment bot receptacle.

Then I had a thought tonight. Open it up for a free-for-all-every-day!

Here's what I have in mind. Find a random-ass link you want to share and don't have a site of your own? Have a site of your own but just didn't get enough satisfaction posting it once? Post away! Post long silly op-ed pieces about the innate stupidity of limited edition food products! Talk about that time that guy was totally hitting on your female EQ character then what he did when you told him you were actually a man! Review your favorite dvd commentary tracks! Go crazy!

No need to feel insecure or pressured to be the first person to link to so-and-so like on the big group weblogs! This is just a silly insectivore weblog subdomain!

So go log in here

username: guest
password: nerdsrule

and post away!! I've even given you permission to edit categories oooh! And upload images aaaah!

There's also a bonus! group! blogroll! group@egeltje.org / password - one1two6

Just a few teenincey requests:

Don't fret. Even though I've set the default skin back to mocha I'm keeping my punk rock fairy girl too. Complete with a new header graphic.

A few new skins are in the works though - one by me, two by Joelle, and one by one of the ciao my bella gals (not sure who yet). So lots of nice eye candy coming up for the holidays.

With that said I'm going to shower then go find out what this bubble tea stuff is.

for you random Dutch word memory impaired people: this site is now mirrored on hedgeblog.net

note: it might not be working everywhere for a few days.

Had fun venting my general frustrations by making a punk rock fairy halloween skin.

Sorry about the lack o posts. I've been in this weird watching Upstairs Downstairs playing Kingdom of Loathing mild chest wall injury universe.

Yes, within days of boobiethon I've pulled a muscle or something over my right boob. And you just have no idea how often you use that muscle until you've injured it. Please pity me.

Also, I've decided that I don't want a separate meme journal anymore so I'll be integrating it back into this main mt journal over the weekend. Because I can :) The way I have it planned you might not have noticed it but if something is wonky we'll just blame it on that for now. I'll come up with something else to blame it on when that's done.

but here's a picture I took of a lizard today. I've seen him on the south side of the house a lot. I've decided to name him Eddie.

- my hair didn't turn blue and seems to be less tangly now
- Cody's grandfather is having a bad time again so we've been at the hospital - he fell out of his bed and broke his hip on monday which wouldn't be quite as bad if he wasn't due for dialysis the same day and has almost died on the table in surgery about four times this year. It looked kind of bad for a while but he seems to be doing ok now. This particular genetic string is just too damn stubborn to give up without a serious fight, it seems. Which explains where mr man gets this tendency. The Gibson Lovelace is considering setting up a separate waiting room for all the aunts, their spouses and kids, and whomever is trailing any of them at the moment. There are some interesting crafts being made there as well.
- I turned on comment moderation and ip banning until I got mt blacklist upgraded, which I have now so I've turned those off again so hopefully they won't be neccessary now. Jay Allen totally rocks with the new blacklist layout and the way he integrated it with mt 3
- I'm working on a cool surprise for the site. Actually, two particularly cool surprises are coming but I'm only working on one of them.
- The dog needs to go outside now.

I've been getting this error when I go to the mt plugin manager page-

Is this a dreamhost xml issue, a mt plugin issue or, a "my fault" issue? Should I contact Dreamhost about this?

This wasn't happening until Saturday when I was trying to use the mt amazon plugin before I installed mt 3.

I've tried removing and installing mt plugin manager, upgrading mt, all kinds of stuff.

Help!!

Margaret Cho was fucking hilarious. I highly recommend going to see her if she's coming to a town near you.

I'm upgrading to MT 3 and futzing around with things on the site today so tread carefully and leave a trail of breadcrumbs just in case.

Added a bunch of photos from that strange bellydancing / punk show we went to up in Santa Fe. Lots of photos of Agate bellydancing, Justin and Jocelyn, and me.

Our cable is back yaay! Yes ladies and gentlemen we were offline for a week. It was a very long week. But hey I got my butt in gear and burned and labelled all my burn it cds - and mailed them out with some small fun surprises in it that I hope my group enjoys. And I went to the gym a lot. And didn't do a lick of housework. Go me! hehe.

Cody's vacation got pushed up yesterday so now he's on vacation until next monday which is cool. And one of his bosses called today to tell him about a supervisor position at this office that's being posted. We're going to assume they called him because they want him to apply? So he's excited about that. And that he's on vacation just when Doom 3 comes out tomorrow. We're gathering up some old games we don't like anymore to trade in at electronics boutique.

When I was at the gym last night Cody went to the store for some things and bought something really funny for me. These "Bertie Bott's Every Flavor Beans" candies based on the Harry Potter franchise. They're made by the jelly belly people and there was a 'menu' which lists sardine, ear wax, spaghetti, booger, dirt, and other icky flavors among the usual good ones like buttered popcorn and green apple. So I figured they weren't actual gross flavors they were just being funny. Well guesss what?? That spaghetti jelly bean has a distinct garlicky flavor. The sardine does, in fact, taste like fish. Dirt is just like a mouthful of dirt. Spinach is kind of good. Booger is NASTY salty. I couldn't find the black pepper or ear wax and just didn't have the heart to try the vomit flavor. You should've heard the awful sounds Cody made when I got him to try the sardines flavor!

So yaaaay we're back online wooo!

I finally got around to publishing the separate meme log. Still playing around with the skinning ability there so hopefully there won't be too many problems.

I'm going to be rearranging the sidebar a bit today so don't freak out if things look a bit weird over there today.

Created a new skin today called mocha hedgehog. This is my first attempt at creating a new default skin since Luka converted the site to php a few months back so I hope it's not too wonky. Let me know if it is and I'll fix it when I wake up.

I've been playing with a few things on the site. Namely I created a group weblog for some of my close friends. Not much there atm but I'm very proud of the design.

the egeltje group

I'm also working on a meme-only log but I still need to finish the design.

what is a meme?

added photos of winter when she was a baby to the photo collection

How cool is this new design? Like I've said it's been roughly four years since I designed a page so I'm WAY out of the loop here. While I wanted to take advantage of all the advances in dynamic content and design ideas and codes I really wanted to go ahead and start journalling too. So I just used a template and started typin...

While looking around for templates I've found a lot of weblogs with all kinds of fun designs and ideas that are totally new to me. Blogs that I bookmarked to visit again. Later on one particularly talented lady (whose site I'd really enjoyed one day but lost the address and had to trace my way back the next day because I loved all her smilies) mentioned that she needed some help getting a pet deposit I figured it would be the perfect time to get some help with a cool design and I can take my sweet time acclimating myself to this newfangled php stuff. I've always learned from picking apart others' codes to see what happens so I'm really looking forward to learning a lot.

And if I don't want to worry about coding I can just concentrate on the content and have this COOL design!

So a BIG BIG thank you to the blog chameleon for all her great work! She not only did a bunch of work converting my blog to php, making it skinnable, and creating this great design she also created a custom 404 and about me page. She even threw in the ubercute hedgie favicon! I'm very happy with it all :) She's having a half-price sale right now but even when that sale is finished she charges extremely reasonable prices!

I'm so glad I've started blogging again :D

Wow. Playing with the wayback machine. Webdreaming was my old site. Before that it was Webgoddess Graphics. I also had a site that offered free graphics here. Before that it was Noelle's Noodle - which started as a geocities page in July 1997. This was the last webpage I had in 2000 until I started again this year.

Ok so enough futzing around with figuring out movable type templates. Time to bite the bullet and post already. Not trying to make a big deal with this site. Just want to get some thoughts written down someplace because I think I rely way too much on other people to remember the random crap I say. And it was kind of fun making Nicole's website. Clearly I'm out of practice but at least I'm getting the css/dynamic content thing this time around. Been so long since I've made a website. Four years? Five? I'd given up on the site creation. At the time I don't think I had much else to say. Felt like I was talking in the wind. I guess what's changed is I don't really care if no one reads this.

I've definitely got some rules in mind for myself. I won't get involved in the blog wars bullshit. I won't check my referrer logs. Maybe I'll link to weblogs I like to read but I don't want to get involved in cliques, personality cults, that kind of thing. This is the big one: I won't consider my audience when writing. If people like what I have to say, great. If not there are about ten trillion other sites out there to play with. A few 'real life' friends or family may be made aware of the site but I will not worry about it. Of course these are my rules so I suppose I can break them anytime.

Kind of in a bad depression the last two nights. Generalized anxiety, tense jaw, tight feeling where my neck meets my skull. Feels kind of like a nic fit but it's been 1y 1m 3w 1d since I smoked. A few fleeting bad thoughts. Overwhelmed with the neverending list of shit to do. Might be pms. Last month was like a nightmare pms meltdown that caused me to gain ten of my beloved 40 lost pounds. Still haven't lost it back yet. Damn. I really need to get an appointment with my doctor and get back on the wellbutrin. I was on a blissful zoloft/wellbutrin cocktail - it took a whole lot to make me upset and I didn't want to eat or smoke to feel better. Cody made cheeseburger macaroni hamburger helper with ground turkey for me last night. I can't eat high fat foods even if I want to now - makes me really sick afterwards. Never thought I'd be that kind of gal.

Set up a play area for the hedgehog on the new desks and turned off the light. She's been running on the wheel a bit, eating, and napping.