Saturday, November 18, 2006
I've been further distracting myself...
...over at the Mom & Me One Archive. I transferred that journal over to Blogger Beta and have discovered that its template, which is a completely different amendation than the other previously transferred journals of a long defunct Blogger template, works much better in Blogger Beta than the previous templates for the sites I've switched. I continue to have minor publishing hitches, especially when adding labels to the Labels index directly on the template, but nothing like the others. And, a bit later tonight, I'll try attaching labels to posts in Safari, as per Granny J's suggestion.
It's a good thing I have something with which to distract myself, as, over the last week or so, I've realized that my "sadness" and "quiet" have a much deeper, sharper cause: Anger. I am so angry at my extended family that I cannot remember being this angry since I was in the fourth grade and became murderously angry at my father for his drinking. I use the word "murderously" because the way I worked through it was to sketch, on paper, scenarios in which I devised ways to lure him into some sort of murderous trap out of which there would be no escape.
I am not quite that angry at my extended family. I am not having fantasies in which they disappear, either literally or figuratively, so that I no longer have to deal with them as realities, thus do not have to deal with my present choking on a sense of Mom and me having been betrayed by them.
It took me awhile to realize that my profound disappointment and frustration over not being able to rely on them had morphed into rage at them. I don't think I was completely aware of it when I mentioned my "sadness" and "quiet". I am now.
I am not one who is generally afraid of anger or rage. I am, though, prone to put off recognizing it and dealing with it for a little (always only a little) while because, of course, fully acknowledged, it gets in the way of my productivity. While I've been "sad" and "quiet", though, I've found it impossible to post on several topics that I've been meaning to address. It was this problem that cased me to notice that it is anger that has been continually distracting me from getting those posts "right". Now that I've acknowledged it, welcomed it, as, what else can I do at the beginning but welcome it, it is simmering through everything. I seem not to be able to deal with other concerns regarding those posts in a civilized manner. About all I'm capable of doing, while swaying to the song of this anger, is busy work, technical stuff, habitual, fairly mindless tasks that create a moated island where I can rest while the bulk of my mind works with this anger, and only this anger. Anything else, though, is fair game for the enormous energy created by this anger.
Although I do not remember exactly how, or exactly how long it took, I managed to work through my anger with my father long, long, long before I left home. I know it took diligence. I know it took the courage to walk through the hell of, for instance, imagining causing my father's death and considering, with horror, the relationship between thoughts and reality. I know it took time. I know that a fair amount of the process took place just below my awareness, aided by the strategies I used to slog through the part of my anger of which I was fully aware. I know, too, that I finally made it through and discovered a much deeper understanding of and love for my father than I was, most of the time while struggling with the anger, able to imagine was possible. So, I know, I'll make it through this. I'm at the point, now, though, where I have absolutely no idea how I'm going to do it. Over the last thirteen years I've taken the paths of understanding, realization, acceptance, ready forgiveness, faith in everyone's fundamental good intentions, tried making it all easier on each of them by being the willow...finally, less than a year ago, when my disappointment and frustration began to develop, I voiced these, too, thinking, well, they're there, mustn't shy away from them, and, one by one, little by little, all of these paths, the high and the low, have lead me here, to this incendiary anger. It's supposed to go the other way. All of my efforts, including the last, most frustrating, least controlled efforts, have been sincere and have preceded the anger. I'm satisified that I became aware of the anger as it began to develop; and have acknowledged it when other members of my family have mentioned their fear that I "might get angry." It has not been a subterranean taint in my dealings with my extended family. It is, rather, the fruit of these endeavors. What do you do with anger when it develops after, rather than before, generosity of spirit, and you are not Jesus? Throwing the money changers out of the temple seems, in this case, inappropriate.
So, it shouldn't be hard to understand that I am flummoxed, here, now, by this anger. This is different. It's coming after the dealing strategies, rather than leading to them. A good example is the reaction to a much appreciated comment I received on the immediately previous post about the parameters of my decision to decline the Thanksgiving invitation from relatives. A couple of years ago I would have nodded in benign, amused, expansive agreement at the commenter's pronouncement that, in a similar circumstance in their family, the commenter believed that the "distant siblings" "meant well". When I read the comment today, though, I found myself unable to agree that my siblings "mean well". Ignorance, when the information exists and is easy to access, is never well meant, I found myself thinking. This is why, my mind continued, that, before the law, ignorance is rarely an effective defense.
That's anger talking, folks.
I don't know what to do with this type of anger. I'm working on it. I expect it will give way to something. I expect I will somehow become more refined by being tempered in its forge and hammered against its anvil. In the meantime, though, I'm discombobulated.
You'll notice that I have disallowed comments to this post. This is a strictly personal post. I am posting it as a form of prayer, I guess, the only form I recognize, the type of "prayer" that an injured limb screeches into the awareness of the person owning the limb. I'm not interested in sympathy. I'm not interested in recognition. I'm not interested in "support". I believe I need a miracle, I need in-spira-tion, which is especially tricky, since I don't believe in the kinds of entities whom people normally approach for miracles. So, I'm throwing the request out "there", into the void, counting on the supposition that we are mostly void, we are created out of the void and, thus, the void must be responsive to us.
It's a good thing I have something with which to distract myself, as, over the last week or so, I've realized that my "sadness" and "quiet" have a much deeper, sharper cause: Anger. I am so angry at my extended family that I cannot remember being this angry since I was in the fourth grade and became murderously angry at my father for his drinking. I use the word "murderously" because the way I worked through it was to sketch, on paper, scenarios in which I devised ways to lure him into some sort of murderous trap out of which there would be no escape.
I am not quite that angry at my extended family. I am not having fantasies in which they disappear, either literally or figuratively, so that I no longer have to deal with them as realities, thus do not have to deal with my present choking on a sense of Mom and me having been betrayed by them.
It took me awhile to realize that my profound disappointment and frustration over not being able to rely on them had morphed into rage at them. I don't think I was completely aware of it when I mentioned my "sadness" and "quiet". I am now.
I am not one who is generally afraid of anger or rage. I am, though, prone to put off recognizing it and dealing with it for a little (always only a little) while because, of course, fully acknowledged, it gets in the way of my productivity. While I've been "sad" and "quiet", though, I've found it impossible to post on several topics that I've been meaning to address. It was this problem that cased me to notice that it is anger that has been continually distracting me from getting those posts "right". Now that I've acknowledged it, welcomed it, as, what else can I do at the beginning but welcome it, it is simmering through everything. I seem not to be able to deal with other concerns regarding those posts in a civilized manner. About all I'm capable of doing, while swaying to the song of this anger, is busy work, technical stuff, habitual, fairly mindless tasks that create a moated island where I can rest while the bulk of my mind works with this anger, and only this anger. Anything else, though, is fair game for the enormous energy created by this anger.
Although I do not remember exactly how, or exactly how long it took, I managed to work through my anger with my father long, long, long before I left home. I know it took diligence. I know it took the courage to walk through the hell of, for instance, imagining causing my father's death and considering, with horror, the relationship between thoughts and reality. I know it took time. I know that a fair amount of the process took place just below my awareness, aided by the strategies I used to slog through the part of my anger of which I was fully aware. I know, too, that I finally made it through and discovered a much deeper understanding of and love for my father than I was, most of the time while struggling with the anger, able to imagine was possible. So, I know, I'll make it through this. I'm at the point, now, though, where I have absolutely no idea how I'm going to do it. Over the last thirteen years I've taken the paths of understanding, realization, acceptance, ready forgiveness, faith in everyone's fundamental good intentions, tried making it all easier on each of them by being the willow...finally, less than a year ago, when my disappointment and frustration began to develop, I voiced these, too, thinking, well, they're there, mustn't shy away from them, and, one by one, little by little, all of these paths, the high and the low, have lead me here, to this incendiary anger. It's supposed to go the other way. All of my efforts, including the last, most frustrating, least controlled efforts, have been sincere and have preceded the anger. I'm satisified that I became aware of the anger as it began to develop; and have acknowledged it when other members of my family have mentioned their fear that I "might get angry." It has not been a subterranean taint in my dealings with my extended family. It is, rather, the fruit of these endeavors. What do you do with anger when it develops after, rather than before, generosity of spirit, and you are not Jesus? Throwing the money changers out of the temple seems, in this case, inappropriate.
So, it shouldn't be hard to understand that I am flummoxed, here, now, by this anger. This is different. It's coming after the dealing strategies, rather than leading to them. A good example is the reaction to a much appreciated comment I received on the immediately previous post about the parameters of my decision to decline the Thanksgiving invitation from relatives. A couple of years ago I would have nodded in benign, amused, expansive agreement at the commenter's pronouncement that, in a similar circumstance in their family, the commenter believed that the "distant siblings" "meant well". When I read the comment today, though, I found myself unable to agree that my siblings "mean well". Ignorance, when the information exists and is easy to access, is never well meant, I found myself thinking. This is why, my mind continued, that, before the law, ignorance is rarely an effective defense.
That's anger talking, folks.
I don't know what to do with this type of anger. I'm working on it. I expect it will give way to something. I expect I will somehow become more refined by being tempered in its forge and hammered against its anvil. In the meantime, though, I'm discombobulated.
You'll notice that I have disallowed comments to this post. This is a strictly personal post. I am posting it as a form of prayer, I guess, the only form I recognize, the type of "prayer" that an injured limb screeches into the awareness of the person owning the limb. I'm not interested in sympathy. I'm not interested in recognition. I'm not interested in "support". I believe I need a miracle, I need in-spira-tion, which is especially tricky, since I don't believe in the kinds of entities whom people normally approach for miracles. So, I'm throwing the request out "there", into the void, counting on the supposition that we are mostly void, we are created out of the void and, thus, the void must be responsive to us.
Thursday, November 16, 2006
No Thanksgiving trip this year.
I've been doing some background-brooding about this for several days. I finally talked to Mom about it last night. I asked her if she would be "terribly disappointed" if we didn't trip down to Chandler for a family Thanksgiving.
Mom: "I wouldn't be disappointed, but I wonder if they [MPS and family] would be disappointed, since they asked us."
Me: "Well, that's possible. Do you want to know why I don't want to do this?"
Mom: "That would help."
I explained all the preparation detail:
"It hasn't been that long," she said. "I'm not missing anyone."
"Well, Mom, even though your memory is pulling out visits as though they're fresh, it has been awhile, and, certainly, it's been well over a year since we've done a family visit on a holiday."
"I think you're mistaken about that."
Hmmm...well, I suppose I could say that this is in my favor, anyway. "Okay. Well, what do you want to do?" At this point I'm thinking, you know, I probably shouldn't leave it up to her, I should probably have just made my decision and lived with whatever flack it caused.
"Traveling is hard on me, too, you know," Mom said.
I was surprised. This is the first time she's acknowledged that travel is hard on her, even though I know it is. Usually, I consider that she gets caught up in the excitement and any difficulties she may have disappear in the change of scenery, the visiting and her dementia. "I didn't know that," I said.
"I don't think it's necessary, this time. Maybe we can go out to eat, or have a dinner here at home."
"Which would you prefer?" I asked.
"You know, I always prefer ham," she said.
"Well, I can't get ahold of anyone there until the weekend, so you've got a few days to change your mind (so do I, I noted). But, I definitely need to call them on the weekend, so they can change the reservations. I'll remind you a couple of times before then, so we can revisit the decision."
"No need to do that."
I will, anyway. Frankly, I'm surprised. I think I may have been counting on Mom's disappointment to jump start me into some sort of Holiday Trip Hurrah. Didn't happen. I'm also not feeling guilty, I notice, which is different from years past; relieved is more like it.
Maybe this year will be a reverse of last year, which was: Thanksgiving trip but no Christmas trip. Then, again, maybe our closest family has other plans for Christmas. The one aspect of all this of which I'm sure is that, despite MPS's decision a few years ago to handle the holidays, thinking (and, I thought this, too) that this would be a relief for me, it isn't. In fact, the holidays, toward which I have a natural aversion, have become even more detestable for me because of these frantic trip days.
Mom: "I wouldn't be disappointed, but I wonder if they [MPS and family] would be disappointed, since they asked us."
Me: "Well, that's possible. Do you want to know why I don't want to do this?"
Mom: "That would help."
I explained all the preparation detail:
- The hour or so Thanksgiving Eve getting the car, gathering everything for the trip and packing the car; laying out everything we'd need for morning;
- Me getting to bed no earlier than midnight (since it is likely that I wouldn't be able to get Mom in bed before midnight);
- Me getting up at 0400 the following morning in order to shower early enough so the hot water would replenish itself for Mom's bath (although I could shower the night before, I find I need the stimulation of a wake-up shower especially on travel days);
- Drinking lots of coffee and getting a little alone time so that I'm not completely monstrous throughout the day;
- Awakening Mom no earlier and no later than 0600, so that we'd have plenty of time to spiff her up holiday style;
- Feeding both of us a hearty breakfast, since it will be awhile before she encounters food, again;
- Putting last minute stuff in the car;
- Securing the cats for the day (making sure they have enough to eat and drink and that all windows through which they could possibly leave are secured);
- Me taking a "cold pill" so that I do not become so tired that I'm a hazardous driver on the way back [which, I've noticed, also involves one night of easily distracted sleep, gritting my teeth, as well, while the pill wears off, which is the down-side of taking a cold pill for alertness and is why I take them rarely, even though I appreciate their facility];
- Getting in the car and heading down for a 2.5 hour drive;
- Arriving at around 1000;
- Everyone else visits;
- I visit, too, but through the entire visit I am distracted by keeping a close eye on Mom, since she's in a "new" environment and, although my relatives will be "seeing" her, they won't be aware of things like:
- Making sure she gets to the bathroom on time and negotiating a bowel movement, if one should occur;
- Keeping an eye on her when she moves around so she doesn't fall;
- Keeping an eye on her around the dog;
- Special vigilance if she decides to venture into their back yard, which is likely, since the weather there will be what Mom considers glorious;
- Enduring Mom's constant ironic awareness and public acknowledgement of my vigilance, including her jokes at my expense, and everyone's laughter and agreement with her, including mine, just to keep the peace;
- Making sure pills are taken on an effective schedule so that they work as they should, with and without food;
- If the restaurant is the waiter-at-table version I'll need to mediate briefly between Mom's slow choosing and everyone else's readiness to order;
- If it is buffet driven I'll need to take her through the buffet separately from me, it will be a slow process, she'll be the last to the table, then, I'll gather my food, which means I'll arrive at the table ready to eat about halfway through everyone else's dinner;
- Keeping my eye on her during dinner so that she doesn't become so distracted that she doesn't recognize which food is hers and doesn't eat (this actually happened during a family restaurant celebration some years ago and is even more likely to happen, now);
- Doing a repeat of the visiting scenario after dinner back at MPS's house.
- Finally, in the evening sometime, packing Mom and our stuff up and driving 2.5 hours back up the mountain;
- Arriving home fairly late, possibly even as late at 2300
- Spending yet another hour unpacking the car and putting everything away while keeping an eye on Mom;
- Getting her to bed at her leisure;
- Winding myself down for about a half hour;
- Putting myself to bed and awakening up the following day a bit disoriented.
"It hasn't been that long," she said. "I'm not missing anyone."
"Well, Mom, even though your memory is pulling out visits as though they're fresh, it has been awhile, and, certainly, it's been well over a year since we've done a family visit on a holiday."
"I think you're mistaken about that."
Hmmm...well, I suppose I could say that this is in my favor, anyway. "Okay. Well, what do you want to do?" At this point I'm thinking, you know, I probably shouldn't leave it up to her, I should probably have just made my decision and lived with whatever flack it caused.
"Traveling is hard on me, too, you know," Mom said.
I was surprised. This is the first time she's acknowledged that travel is hard on her, even though I know it is. Usually, I consider that she gets caught up in the excitement and any difficulties she may have disappear in the change of scenery, the visiting and her dementia. "I didn't know that," I said.
"I don't think it's necessary, this time. Maybe we can go out to eat, or have a dinner here at home."
"Which would you prefer?" I asked.
"You know, I always prefer ham," she said.
"Well, I can't get ahold of anyone there until the weekend, so you've got a few days to change your mind (so do I, I noted). But, I definitely need to call them on the weekend, so they can change the reservations. I'll remind you a couple of times before then, so we can revisit the decision."
"No need to do that."
I will, anyway. Frankly, I'm surprised. I think I may have been counting on Mom's disappointment to jump start me into some sort of Holiday Trip Hurrah. Didn't happen. I'm also not feeling guilty, I notice, which is different from years past; relieved is more like it.
Maybe this year will be a reverse of last year, which was: Thanksgiving trip but no Christmas trip. Then, again, maybe our closest family has other plans for Christmas. The one aspect of all this of which I'm sure is that, despite MPS's decision a few years ago to handle the holidays, thinking (and, I thought this, too) that this would be a relief for me, it isn't. In fact, the holidays, toward which I have a natural aversion, have become even more detestable for me because of these frantic trip days.
Tuesday, November 14, 2006
A watched Blogger Beta never boils...
...especially when on an ftp burner.
So, I'm done over at the movie site. I like the labels facility. Each of the movies now has it's own post. I've set up a nice little Label Index. Some of the labels are specific to Mom & Me: "Dream", for instance, "mom-favorite", "me-favorite", "dad-favorite" (only one, there, but it's worth its own label). Some of the labels appear to be understandable but are idiosyncratic: "Haunting", for instance, which isn't applied typically.
I've become aware that my CSS templates could use some tweaking in order to allow Blogger Beta to work more smoothly. I've known they could use some tweaking for some time, but Old Blogger has been so forgiving I haven't bothered. Now, it might be advantageous to cut out some of the miscellaneous fat. I'm not sure how smooth the process will become, though. Publishing continues to take forever (especially, it seems, if I'm sitting right at the computer). I've discovered some work arounds that are handy to know if you're using an "old" template that you've modified:
Well, shit, it's late/early. I'm going to bed. Want to remind myself, though, of a curious conversation Mom and I had tonight while watching Heroes on TV. And, I guess, I've got some other stuff to "make up", as well. And, some visiting to do...and other things...all of which will happen...as soon as I figure out how to stretch days from 24 to 36 hours...
...later...
So, I'm done over at the movie site. I like the labels facility. Each of the movies now has it's own post. I've set up a nice little Label Index. Some of the labels are specific to Mom & Me: "Dream", for instance, "mom-favorite", "me-favorite", "dad-favorite" (only one, there, but it's worth its own label). Some of the labels appear to be understandable but are idiosyncratic: "Haunting", for instance, which isn't applied typically.
I've become aware that my CSS templates could use some tweaking in order to allow Blogger Beta to work more smoothly. I've known they could use some tweaking for some time, but Old Blogger has been so forgiving I haven't bothered. Now, it might be advantageous to cut out some of the miscellaneous fat. I'm not sure how smooth the process will become, though. Publishing continues to take forever (especially, it seems, if I'm sitting right at the computer). I've discovered some work arounds that are handy to know if you're using an "old" template that you've modified:
- I finally wandered over to the Firefox site to see if they'd upgraded the Mac OSX version. They had, so I downloaded it, and it works much, much better than the old version; just as well as the PC version. So, I've been using that on my Mac.
- If you get the message "...published with errors", view your blog to see if what you were trying to publish made it. If it did, 99 out of 100 times you can ignore the message, as, the next time you publish the errors will correct themselves.
- The same technique works when you get the "...taking longer to publish than expected..." message. Because Blogger Beta republishes the entire template every time, whatever it missed the one time it'll usually catch the next.
- Clearing your cache and history seems to help speed things up and redirect Blogger Beta, as well, but it's not a reliable technique.
- Deleting Blogger and Google cookies, a technique Blogger suggests, works only under very limited circumstances.
- If the problem involves getting the previously mentioned "image-ined letters" message, then you can be sure that the post or direction you just published is corrupted. The corruption may not be obvious, even upon looking at the post on your ISP server or editing the post. The only work around for this is, copy all the text in the post, including timing and dating, if retiming and redating the post is going to make a difference you don't want made, delete the post within Blogger Beta, then ftp your server to make sure the post has disappeared from there. If it hasn't, delete it there. Then, recreate the post.
- Blogger Beta continues to have a character limit on titles. It's more inclusive than Old Blogger, but I ran up against it once.
Well, shit, it's late/early. I'm going to bed. Want to remind myself, though, of a curious conversation Mom and I had tonight while watching Heroes on TV. And, I guess, I've got some other stuff to "make up", as well. And, some visiting to do...and other things...all of which will happen...as soon as I figure out how to stretch days from 24 to 36 hours...
...later...
Sunday, November 12, 2006
Well, no, I guess the post below isn't a test post...
...meant to be deleted. I want to keep it as a record of the successes and problems I'm having with Blogger Beta.
Initially I had such surprising success with transferring the =>Moving =>Mom and the Movies, Mom & Me journals that I decided to transfer The Dailies.
Beethoven, Piano Sonata No. 14 in C-sharp Minor, "Moonlight", Opus 27, 3rd Movement, Artur Rubenstein playing...I'm leaning against my living room picture window in Seattle, listening to Barenboim play it while I follow along in the sheet music (illuminated by the angle of the lone back light at the rear of the apartment complex, since I'm in the dark in my living room) during certain passages to increase the thrill (I've got my CD player set to repeat), then looking out my window to watch the Christmas boat parade traversing "my" section of Lake Washington...
That's when I noticed problems. I encountered the first when I attempted to access my archives at The Dailies. I got "Not on this server" error messages. So, thinking Blogger Beta must have dumped them during the transition, I ftped and realized, Yes, they are, goddamnit! I started prowling through Blogger's settings and realized that during the transfer Blogger deletes the archive path. I filled that in, sighed and assumed everything was fine. I ran a few test posts on all three journals. No problem, except the post publishing process seemed to be a little slow; it is almost instantaneous on the old version. I tested my domain ISP server, tested my cable connection, everything seemed fine, so, I figured, okay, well, it's just going to be slow. Then, I modified a template on the shortest of the journals and realized that the entire publication process for ftped blogs is quite slow. I scavenged Blogger and some blogger hack blogs for help or mention about this. Not much, not anything helpful, anyway. Considering their suggestion that Firefox browser was best to use, I switched from my Mac to my PC, which gets excellent response with Firefox. If anything, the publishing process was slower, because I couldn't stop it mid-stream, as I could on my Mac, and be sure that I wasn't publishing corrupted files.
Also, over at that site I use a personalized post template for the stats. It initially confused Blogger Beta, which, for a couple of publishings, deleted the necessary break tags. It stopped that, though. I'm not sure why, and I'm not going to try to figure it out unless it happens again.
"Upstairs by a Chinese Lamp" by Laura Nyro, off the "Christmas and the Beads of Sweat" album is playing. Whoa. They've got the wrong album listed. I'm at the barre in my bedroom-behind-the-garage on Guam, practicing leg stretches, bourees, plies, I'm thinking from inside my body, taking direction from the music, so loud that, my eyes closed, it has become my room...
Oh well, I decided, I can't go back, so I'll make the best of it and explore. I am pleased to report that Blogger Beta left my "old style" templates unharmed. It even works when I modify the templates and republish them. Thank the gods for that. This was the main reason I hadn't switched. Although I've been familiarizing myself with the skin, variable and widget concepts and they aren't that difficult to understand, I'd been putting off designing a template using the new rules; and I can't stand their standard templates (one of which I use at The Dailies). They haven't changed them, just modified the most innocuous and deleted several. There aren't yet any promising hacked templates out there that I would consider trying, either. And, anyway, I like my own.
The main reason I switched was that I discovered that even those people who ftp their journals to remote servers, thus, will not be able to use the widget templating concept (thank the gods for that, too, frankly), will be able to attach labels. I was delirious! This, I decided, would be the answer to my continued messy attempts to create a dynamic Table of Contents. Of course, none of the literature bothered to mention that the generating of a Label Index is dependent on widget technology and would be unavailable to those who couldn't avail themselves of this. So, I spent yesterday figuring out how to generate a Label Index on my templates, experimenting over at Movies, Mom & Me. It's a manual solution that involves noticing the naming of the label pages on the server and building the index within the template, but it's pretty easy. Once a label's in the index, it's there for the duration; and, since it's dynamic-page centered, each category will continually update as more posts are labeled. I suppose there's a piece of dynamic code I could place to do this. I just haven't gotten that far, yet. I've been having to go back, break apart my multiple movie posts and republish each movie as a separate post in order to label it, but the only part of the exercise that's laborious is waiting for each post to publish. Otherwise, the process is progressing nicely. Click over there and take a peak. I posted a "new" movie, The Man Who Would Be King, today, of which I've been wanting a copy for years; the first one up when you hit the site. Try out the labels on it, then check out the Labels Index to the left below the archives...which reminds me...
Dr John, "It's Such a Night", off the "Essentials" collection...I'm driving home from a friend's in North Scottsdale who just listened to me until I'd exhausted my anxiety about tough times managing my ill mother and her affairs, he pierced my ears for the 13th and 14th times, I've got the windows open, I'm feeling cool, sauntering, jaunty, I can do this, I'm thinking, with style, I can do this with my ears gleaming and my hips sashaying, I can do this...
...that's another thing. When an ftped blog is transferred, the archives are screwed up. The weekly archive, for instance, which used to be labeled "1/23/05 - 1/29/05" is now "1/23/05 - 1/30/05" and contains posts for 1/30/05 - 2/5/05. Go figure. There is a piece of dynamic code specific to archives that was inserted into my templates during the transfer, I notice. I guess I'll have to figure out how to fool around with that code. Bizarre. And, I suppose, notify Blogger Beta, as well.
So, needless to say, it's going to be awhile before I transfer this journal over; not until I absolutely have to. I can just guess how long it would take to publish these posts. I shudder at the template publishing possibilities. At the moment, as well, my template here is only half published because Blogger's regular service is screwing up, which continues to be an "unresolved issue" and will, hopefully, be solved Monday during a planned outtage.
Finally, I discovered that it's very easy to accidentally publish corrupted files on this version. I did it by accidentally dating a post "2015" rather than "2005". It was just luck that I noticed this, yet again ftping the server to see what was going on, when I was trying to publish a post and repeatedly received an "Error: Please type letters as they appear in image" message, but there was no image of letters and no field in which to type the image-ined letters.
Mmmm...I'm listening to "Living it Up" by Ricki Lee Jones off the "Pirates" album...I'm driving my yellow Super Beetle through an underpass tunnel in Sacramento, CA, headed out of town, north for Redding to look at a dead cow (I was an insurance adjuster there, among other jobs). I'm unconcerned about that, though; the humidity, the rain, the sleek, shimmery tunnel, the tape in my cassette player...I'm in a very good mood, I'm driving at a speed that's synchronized to my metabolism...ahhh...and I'm meeting Gary "for lunch" up there...I'm cruising, literally and figuratively, today, dead cow and all...
Why am I talking about all this technical journaling stuff here, with no mention of my mother? What does this have to do with taking care of my mother? I'll write about that tomorrow. In the meantime, Arlo Guthrie's "City of New Orleans" is rocking me like a Morpheus made of melody...time for sleeping, time for dreaming...
Later.
Initially I had such surprising success with transferring the =>Moving =>Mom and the Movies, Mom & Me journals that I decided to transfer The Dailies.
Beethoven, Piano Sonata No. 14 in C-sharp Minor, "Moonlight", Opus 27, 3rd Movement, Artur Rubenstein playing...I'm leaning against my living room picture window in Seattle, listening to Barenboim play it while I follow along in the sheet music (illuminated by the angle of the lone back light at the rear of the apartment complex, since I'm in the dark in my living room) during certain passages to increase the thrill (I've got my CD player set to repeat), then looking out my window to watch the Christmas boat parade traversing "my" section of Lake Washington...
That's when I noticed problems. I encountered the first when I attempted to access my archives at The Dailies. I got "Not on this server" error messages. So, thinking Blogger Beta must have dumped them during the transition, I ftped and realized, Yes, they are, goddamnit! I started prowling through Blogger's settings and realized that during the transfer Blogger deletes the archive path. I filled that in, sighed and assumed everything was fine. I ran a few test posts on all three journals. No problem, except the post publishing process seemed to be a little slow; it is almost instantaneous on the old version. I tested my domain ISP server, tested my cable connection, everything seemed fine, so, I figured, okay, well, it's just going to be slow. Then, I modified a template on the shortest of the journals and realized that the entire publication process for ftped blogs is quite slow. I scavenged Blogger and some blogger hack blogs for help or mention about this. Not much, not anything helpful, anyway. Considering their suggestion that Firefox browser was best to use, I switched from my Mac to my PC, which gets excellent response with Firefox. If anything, the publishing process was slower, because I couldn't stop it mid-stream, as I could on my Mac, and be sure that I wasn't publishing corrupted files.
Also, over at that site I use a personalized post template for the stats. It initially confused Blogger Beta, which, for a couple of publishings, deleted the necessary break tags. It stopped that, though. I'm not sure why, and I'm not going to try to figure it out unless it happens again.
"Upstairs by a Chinese Lamp" by Laura Nyro, off the "Christmas and the Beads of Sweat" album is playing. Whoa. They've got the wrong album listed. I'm at the barre in my bedroom-behind-the-garage on Guam, practicing leg stretches, bourees, plies, I'm thinking from inside my body, taking direction from the music, so loud that, my eyes closed, it has become my room...
Oh well, I decided, I can't go back, so I'll make the best of it and explore. I am pleased to report that Blogger Beta left my "old style" templates unharmed. It even works when I modify the templates and republish them. Thank the gods for that. This was the main reason I hadn't switched. Although I've been familiarizing myself with the skin, variable and widget concepts and they aren't that difficult to understand, I'd been putting off designing a template using the new rules; and I can't stand their standard templates (one of which I use at The Dailies). They haven't changed them, just modified the most innocuous and deleted several. There aren't yet any promising hacked templates out there that I would consider trying, either. And, anyway, I like my own.
The main reason I switched was that I discovered that even those people who ftp their journals to remote servers, thus, will not be able to use the widget templating concept (thank the gods for that, too, frankly), will be able to attach labels. I was delirious! This, I decided, would be the answer to my continued messy attempts to create a dynamic Table of Contents. Of course, none of the literature bothered to mention that the generating of a Label Index is dependent on widget technology and would be unavailable to those who couldn't avail themselves of this. So, I spent yesterday figuring out how to generate a Label Index on my templates, experimenting over at Movies, Mom & Me. It's a manual solution that involves noticing the naming of the label pages on the server and building the index within the template, but it's pretty easy. Once a label's in the index, it's there for the duration; and, since it's dynamic-page centered, each category will continually update as more posts are labeled. I suppose there's a piece of dynamic code I could place to do this. I just haven't gotten that far, yet. I've been having to go back, break apart my multiple movie posts and republish each movie as a separate post in order to label it, but the only part of the exercise that's laborious is waiting for each post to publish. Otherwise, the process is progressing nicely. Click over there and take a peak. I posted a "new" movie, The Man Who Would Be King, today, of which I've been wanting a copy for years; the first one up when you hit the site. Try out the labels on it, then check out the Labels Index to the left below the archives...which reminds me...
Dr John, "It's Such a Night", off the "Essentials" collection...I'm driving home from a friend's in North Scottsdale who just listened to me until I'd exhausted my anxiety about tough times managing my ill mother and her affairs, he pierced my ears for the 13th and 14th times, I've got the windows open, I'm feeling cool, sauntering, jaunty, I can do this, I'm thinking, with style, I can do this with my ears gleaming and my hips sashaying, I can do this...
...that's another thing. When an ftped blog is transferred, the archives are screwed up. The weekly archive, for instance, which used to be labeled "1/23/05 - 1/29/05" is now "1/23/05 - 1/30/05" and contains posts for 1/30/05 - 2/5/05. Go figure. There is a piece of dynamic code specific to archives that was inserted into my templates during the transfer, I notice. I guess I'll have to figure out how to fool around with that code. Bizarre. And, I suppose, notify Blogger Beta, as well.
So, needless to say, it's going to be awhile before I transfer this journal over; not until I absolutely have to. I can just guess how long it would take to publish these posts. I shudder at the template publishing possibilities. At the moment, as well, my template here is only half published because Blogger's regular service is screwing up, which continues to be an "unresolved issue" and will, hopefully, be solved Monday during a planned outtage.
Finally, I discovered that it's very easy to accidentally publish corrupted files on this version. I did it by accidentally dating a post "2015" rather than "2005". It was just luck that I noticed this, yet again ftping the server to see what was going on, when I was trying to publish a post and repeatedly received an "Error: Please type letters as they appear in image" message, but there was no image of letters and no field in which to type the image-ined letters.
Mmmm...I'm listening to "Living it Up" by Ricki Lee Jones off the "Pirates" album...I'm driving my yellow Super Beetle through an underpass tunnel in Sacramento, CA, headed out of town, north for Redding to look at a dead cow (I was an insurance adjuster there, among other jobs). I'm unconcerned about that, though; the humidity, the rain, the sleek, shimmery tunnel, the tape in my cassette player...I'm in a very good mood, I'm driving at a speed that's synchronized to my metabolism...ahhh...and I'm meeting Gary "for lunch" up there...I'm cruising, literally and figuratively, today, dead cow and all...
Why am I talking about all this technical journaling stuff here, with no mention of my mother? What does this have to do with taking care of my mother? I'll write about that tomorrow. In the meantime, Arlo Guthrie's "City of New Orleans" is rocking me like a Morpheus made of melody...time for sleeping, time for dreaming...
Later.
