Dale Miller

I spent yesterday at the LRKA kickball tournament. Between the sunscreen, dunk tank, and too much sun, I managed to get my eyes so irritated that I couldn’t keep them open for more than a few seconds at a time. That made driving home rather unpleasant. Squinting for 20 seconds and then closing ones eyes for 5 seconds is not the mark of a safe driver. I made it home in one piece, however, thoroughly washed my face and closed my eyes (and slept) for the next five hours. When I woke I was some better. As of this morning I can keep my eyes mostly open, but they still hurt. I think I’m going to spend today inside where it’s quiet, cool, and dark.

At least I could mostly see for the Hooters vs. Buzz Babes game.

I am known occasionally to go out and read portions of the Arkansas Code. Almost anytime I do this I find something amusing. Last night’s find was

3-5-307. Prohibited practices.No holder of a license authorizing the sale of beer for consumption on the premises where sold or any servant, agent, or employee of the licensee shall do any of the following upon the licensed premises:
[...]
(3) Sell beer or wine upon the licensed premises or permit beer to be consumed thereon, on any day or at any time when the sale or consumption is prohibited by law;

So, it’s illegal to break the law. Brilliant, I tell you, brilliant.

This morning’s oddball dream involved trips to a mental hospital (as a visitor, not a patient), witnessing a gangland shootout, and helping to evacuate a planet using a Star-Trek-like transporter. Oh, and antique malls figured in there for a bit as well.

[Phone rings]

Dale: Hello
Mark: Quick, how does that famous song from the “Nutcracker Suite” go?
Dale: [whistles first few measures of the "Dance of the Sugar Plum Fairy"]
Mark: Thanks, that’s it.

[hangup]

My Motorola Razr is acting worse all the time.?? It’s about time to replace it.?? So…. I took a close look at the iPhone.?? Despite my doubts, I’m quite impressed with the interface.?? I was not, however, impressed with the staff at the AT&T store.?? The person dedicated to demonstrating the iPhone and answering questions told me a falsehood (more on that later), and the salesfolk were unable to correctly answer a question about the rate plan.?? I was told that I could not just add the iPhone data to my existing plan, and that to get an iPhone would cost me $40/month more than I’m currently paying.?? The reality is that it would only be $20 more.?? It’s a good thing they were wrong, because I would have bought one.???? The reason I’m glad I didn’t was that the iPhone “expert” told me that it could be used as an Internet connection via Bluetooth from my laptop.?? In fact, the iPhone can’t do that.?? In my opinion, without that feature, it’s not worth the additional monthly cost not the initial high price.

Fortunately my phone isn’t quite dead yet, and maybe Apple will add that (very useful) feature in the next release.

I have spent several hours over the past few weeks trying to make wordpress look the way I want. I was sure I was just missing some simple CSS element that would make everything work properly.

What I want seemed easy — a three-column layout, with a full-width fixed header and a full-width footer. I wanted the left and right colums to be fixed-width and the center column to be variable-width (with a minimum) so it would fill the viewport. The “gotcha” is that the center and right columns (and possibly even the left) are variable-length, depending on the content. Apparently it’s impossible to make a full-width footer end up below all those columns using only CSS. I can force it below the center column, which would work most of the time, but in the case that the right column is longer would cause the footer to overlap the right. There are some moderately nasty hacks to force the footer into the proper place, but I don’t think I want to go that route. I don’t suppose I have to have a footer, but I want one.
I’m not sure why I care so much. There aren’t that many people who visit my website. I was reading about a man who receives several thousand dollars a month from ads on his site. He apparently has a large number of people who read his entries (and I suppose visit the links). I’m not sufficiently in touch with any portion of culture to write about it, I’m neither sufficiently artistic nor sufficiently witty to start a webcomic (at least one of those is required), and writing anything technical has almost certainly been done already (and probably better).

I need a muse.

Sonic restaurants have, for years, had what I believe to be the best possible model for in-car eating. I can pull my car up, shut off the engine, look at the menu as long as I wish, order when I’m ready, and relax (and often read) while waiting for my food to be delivered. A couple of years ago they even added the ability to pay by credit card at the stall. Compare this to the typical drive-through: Pull up and wait in line, running the engine and hearing other cars running, pull up to the order window (finally) and have to know what you want, since the menu is rarely visible earlier, shout the order to the distant speaker (even more fun in the rain), and plod along to the window, usually behind someone whose order is taking too long. When you finally get the order, you then have to drive off (typically without verifying the order) and find a place to eat.

So what has the Sonic near me done? Taken out 1/3 of their stalls and added a drive-through. Why would I possibly want that? It’s no faster, it requires the engine to be running and the driver to be paying at least minimal attention.

I don’t understand.

I have a really bad case of don’t-want-to-do-anything. For me this means that I have spent the past several nights plopped on the couch watching “Charmed”. It’s only a fair show, but I’ve started it now, so I want to see what happens. I’ve also been messing around with Wordpress and PHP.

Okay, maybe I should say that I don’t want to do anything useful. I need to clean the house, and build a bookshelf. It would also be really good for me to take a vacation. I haven’t really had one in several years now. I just can’t get myself motivated to go somewhere alone.

After spending far more time on it than I should (thanks to not paying attention), I now have a Perl script that will post a note to Facebook.?? Now I can re-write it in PHP to integrate with Wordpress.?? I did my prototype in Perl since I am far more familiar with both writing and debugging.?? I figured I should work out the interface in a language I know before trying to write it in a similar-but-not-identical language.?? Now I’m going to veer off and try to find a good Wordpress desktop client before tackling the PHP code.

If this works properly, this will crosspost to both LiveJournal and MySpace without my external script having to do the work. I haven’t found an equivalent for Facebook, and since I don’t like the RSS feed, I may just have to write one.