Melinda Musil dot Com

Archive for July, 2008

Today’s post will be short.

I spent most of the day finding and playing with themes.  I’m still not totally happy with this theme but it will serve well for the time being.

We had carpet installed in the master bedroom today.  Looks good and the pad feels really nice.  But it rained again (third day in a row!), so our new roof will have to wait until next week.

I will be going to the genealogy library tomorrow, so I have tons of work to do tonight organizing all my information.  That’s mostly why this is so short.  I’m just out of time!

I wish, oh I wish, that I knew more about wordpress than I do.

I know quite a bit about it.  Obviously, I’m posting on this blog, and that’s pretty good in itself.  I can modify a theme *some*, which is pretty good.  But I’m not where I would like to be.  It’s like they say – “the more I know, the more I know I don’t know”.

In the past few weeks, I’ve been researching into my genealogy more and more, and having tons of fun with it.  I would LOVE to create a site, maybe a sub-domain off this site, where I can store all the information I’m finding.

But I’m hesitant about taking on any more than I already have, without knowing at least a little bit more than I do about wordpress.

A home in Atlanta, Georgia, rebuilt by the designers on Extreme MakeOver: Home Edition, has become the latest victim of the foreclosure crisis.  It’s really maddening.  All this time and money was given to the family to give them a large, sparkling new house, the Harper family used the home as collateral for a $450,000 loan.  It’s hard to be nice to people who refuse to “pay it forward”.

Online shopping is an easy and convenient way to purchase things.  However, in this era of identity theft, it’s also risky, to a degree.  No one wants to have their identity stolen.  Identity theft can, at best, cause major headaches, and at worst, destroy a life.

People have been shopping from home since long before the internet.  Catalogs have brought a store into the home.  In those times, a company would send a bill by postal mail.  When the customer receives the bill, they pay it with a check or credit card.

Today, eBillme is bring that concept to the internet.  When you shop at websites like TigerDirect.com or Buy.com, you can choose to pay through eBillme.  eBillme will send you a bill via email.  Through eBillme, you won’t have to release sensitive information like credit card numbers or home addresses to websites that may or may not be trustworthy.  Next time you are shopping online, look for an eBillme option. Not only is it a secure way to pay, it’s easy and hassle free!

I’ve read plenty of news out on the internet lately about Cuil, a new search engine that wants to compete with the big guys like Google, Yahoo, or MSN.  I have mixed feelings about this.

Cuil was developed by several “Google refugees” – ex-Google employees.  I think it’s fantastic that other internet start-ups are attempting to compete with Google.  Google is a company that has gained so much influence that they are very nearly “getting too big for their britches”.  As a self-employed website owner, I am often annoyed by Google PR and how they influence advertisers.

On the other hand, Cuil is just not yet producing the results that Google does.  Nearly all the time, a google search returns relevent results.  Cuil is just not there yet.

A few days ago, we got a card from a relative on my dad’s side of the family – a second or third double cousin, something like that.  My dad’s family has been close over the years.  They are from Nebraska, and all return to Nebraska every few years for a family reunion.  I’ve always said, our (extended) family is not wealthy by traditional standards, but we are rich in love.

Anyway, the card got my mom and I talking about the reunions over the years.  For as long as I can remember, my great-aunt Leona and great-uncle Carroll hosted reunions every five years, coinciding with their wedding anniversaries.  In 2005, their kids hosted the celebration for their 65th wedding anniversary.  It was an amazing experience.  Leona and Carroll are amazing people, and I count myself incredibly blessed to be related to them.  Every year, I look forward to visiting them.

Mom told me, though, that Leona is now having trouble with a fast-developing form of Alzheimer’s disease.  That scares me.  I love Leona, and I know she values all her memories of growing up in the Nebraska farmland.  That’s why I’m so in favor of all the Alzheimer’s research and events like the Alzheimer’s Memory Walk that raise awareness for Alzheimer’s disease.  I hope that we will soon find a cure for Alzheimer’s.  Alzheimer’s just causes too much pain.

I have many, many photos to show you.  But, given that I have so many photos, I’m convinced that there must be an easy(er) way to watermark them.  Previously, I used GIMP to watermark my photos, which works, but it can sometimes be slow – especially if that is all I’m doing to the photo.  If I’m already modifying the photo in other ways, it’s not so bad.  But I have not found a way to “batch” watermark my photos using GIMP.

So I found this plugin called NextGen gallery.  I have not used it enough to have a real opinion about it.  If anyone out there has used it, I would appreciate your thoughts.  In the meantime, I am attempting to insert a photo below.  It’s not a fantastic photo, and I know it.  Just a jpg that I can use to test this plugin.

Computers have changed our world so much.  I could probably name a thousand ways that computers have changed society, and you probably could too.  But for now I am just going to look at one: education.

Fifty years ago, the path to success was very cut-and-dried.  Graduate high school, go to college, get your degree and then a job.  Computers have changed that.  Without a doubt, I still think that graduating high school and getting a college degree is important.  It shows future employers that you have the ability to stick with a task for a long time.  However, technology changes so quickly and so often that a college degree is less helpful than it used to be.  Many programmers either dropped out or never attended college, and have become millionaires in spite of it.  At the very least, many IT professionals without college degrees are supporting themselves and, often, receiving a good salary.

Employers still want to see some kind of verification that you know what you are supposed to know for given job.  Often, the easiest way to demonstrate this is by achieving certifications in a given field.  I have a good friend who has several Cisco certifications, and I have considered getting a few of these myself.  Cisco is a well respected company, and their certifications will show employers that you know what you need to know.  With Cisco certification, the sky’s the limit as far as your career paths.  New careers are constantly being developed in the technology and IT fields, and certifications can set you ahead of other employees.

Here’s two blog posts that I found today, quite by accident.

The first, from The Greasy Spoon Cafe, is really quite a funny story.

The second, from Art Is My Sunshine, is just… well, cute.  It contains a cute cute photo of a cat.  Be warned, though, it’s LONG!

I still haven’t gotten to the bottom of what has been causing all my theme problems.

I changed it to this theme, “come my lady”, and it seems to be okay on this theme.  But the problem on my other themes is not yet solved.  Plus, now the problem seems to be extending to the default theme as well as the theme I created based on the ambient glo theme.

Oh well.  At least it’s working now.