Licquia Blog (old)

Well, more time has passed, and I've done some research. It's time to move on.

This will be the last Blosxom-based post. In its place, I'm implementing WordPress, a nice blog system that's been favorably compared to Movable Type.

Why switch? In the end, Blosxom is good for techie-types who appreciate maximum flexibility and elegance. That's me. It's not good, however, for the rest of us, like Tami. In the end, I was finding myself doing my own content management hacks around Blosxom, which was taking more time than I have.

In addition, free blog software has come a long way in a year. WordPress is very nice, and is GPL. It's also extensible via plugins, and its use of standards (XHTML Transitional and CSS) make it easy to change the look. The current look of the new site isn't exactly perfect, but I'm sure I'll be able to improve it easily.

The old Blosxom permalinks will remain for the foreseeable future. Comments will be shut off immediately to prevent spam from collecting; only one post has usable comments anyway. If anyone wants to comment, go to the new page; there will be a matching post there that will be open for comments.

UPDATE: The corresponding story for the new site is here.

If anyone's still reading, I'm surprised, given the long lag. Basically, after fighting with weblogs.com over the silly updates, I decided it was time to give up. Soon afterwards, a long period of busyness sucked my time from the site. So, finally, I've decided to relaunch. There have been quite a few changes. Most notably, I'm giving up on the "separate yet not separate" weblog organization I tried with separate "Jeff" and "Tami" logs. Everything has been lumped into one, and apart from the "News" items showing up on the front page, everything will now be all one blog. It appears that comment spam has become a major problem in my absence; nearly all the entries had some of the most disgusting and vile spam attached to them. Lacking the time to go through them and separate the wheat from the chaff, I decided to nuke them all. I'm sorry if this upsets anyone, but it was really the best decision. More later, on the main blog.

Before the big storms, we went to the Independence Day celebration in Carmel, the town west of us. Carmel has a government center with an elaborate City Hall and a large fountain and sitting area in front. For CarmelFest, the city blocks off the whole area, sets up a stage for live music, has fair-style vendors and local groups set up shop, sets up games and activities behind City Hall, and opens the fountain to swimming.

We don't know if there will be fireworks tonight, but if so, we'll probably go downtown to see them, just like we did last year. As family traditions go, our Fourth routine is pretty good.

We hope you have a happy Fourth as well. Post some comments if you did anything interesting.

We've got a new layout. It's very close to the old layout, but you can see it if you look closely. The main difference: no tables, which is a lot easier to work with on the backend.

There are quite a few changes behind the scenes, too. Let us know in the comments if you have any problems.

Today, Tami and Jeff celebrate eleven years of marriage.

Some of you are sure to chuckle about that ("only eleven years! still practically newlyweds!"), but we are thrilled. And, of course, we're looking forward to many more.

Jeff's Aunt Judy and Uncle Dave sent me (Jeff) a note the other day, reporting that all is well with them. In particular, Judy just got through eye surgery, having learned through a "divine coincidence" about an implant she could receive. She is now able to do nearly anything without glasses or contacts.

On Tuesday, we went to the last Cub Scout meeting of the year, where Jon received his Bear badge and two arrow points, and where his den moved on to become Webelos Scouts. We're very proud of the effort he put into achieving this goal.

The panic summary: no one was seriously hurt, my van is driveable but damaged, it was the other guy's fault.

I (Jeff) was driving home from work on I-69, approaching exit 5. Traffic was backed up and stop-and-go in the right lane for people taking that exit. I stopped with the flow and happened to glance in the rear view mirror to see a red Oldsmobile bearing down on me. It was fortunate that I saw him coming, as I was able to turn the wheel and hit the accelerator, which blunted the force of the blow and caused me to miss the car in front of me.

Right now, I'm kind of shaken up, but uninjured, at least as far as I can tell. The other guy, a 40-ish guy with a Department of Defense ID clipped to his shirt and a COBOL programming book in his seat, didn't seem to be hurt either. His car had to be towed, as the radiator didn't survive the impact.

More later, on my personal log. I think I'm going to rest now.

The Oklahoma City tornados yesterday haven't been fatal so far. No word yet on whether any of the family down there had anything bad happen.

OKC had a bad decade in the '90s, between the bombing and the 1999 tornado. Here's hoping this isn't a trend.

If anyone from the family has news from there, let us all know in the comments.

Just so everyone's aware, I had nothing to do with a spam from some Korean outfit. They just decided to use one of their harvested addresses as the Return-Path for the mail, and I was the unlucky sap to get the honor.

This isn't hard to do, actually; if you want a demo, let me know, and I'll send you some mail from yourself.

Mike (Jeff's brother) called last night. He's gotten started at his new job at WDAY TV in Fargo, North Dakota. He reports that he's already been on the air with stories. Even better, WDAY has links to video streams of their broadcasts on the home page. There don't seem to be video archives, so you'll have to be lucky. The Personalities page hasn't been updated yet, though it's not surprising after only a few days on the job.

My home-grown comments and TrackBack system has been replaced with Blosxom's writeback plugin. All old comments have been migrated to the new system.

A month ago (yeah, I know, breaking news), the Meinders Community Library and a new school building were dedicated in Pipestone, Minnesota. The former was named in honor of my (Jeff's) maternal grandparents, Harold and Frances Meinders.

Uncle Bob, who was at the dedication, sent pictures on to Mom, who promises to forward them to put on the site. There's a good picture of my uncles and aunts, and a nice picture of the library plaque, complete with a picture of Grandma and Grandpa that has been on Mom's picture shelf for decades.

We now have comments and TrackBack posting. I got tired of waiting for Rael to get comments into Blosxom, so the comment system is home-grown. As always, let me know if you see any problems with the new stuff.

If you look at the comments for this item, you'll see how they work. Feel free to play with them and test them out here.

The poor server forced to serve this site has been upgraded, so access to the site should be a lot faster. If you see anything missing, please let me know.

Yup, yet another new site layout. This one I like; apart from some different ideas for the top logo, I think this one might be a keeper.

Also, picture updates work now. So we can post new pictures and new stories to the site. Everything seems to work now!

E-mail posting now works, as evidenced by this very post. This will make it easier to keep this site up to date. Picture posting isn't there yet.

Upgraded Blosxom to the latest version. It can do partial static page generation, which make some of my and Tami's wishes for this page possible. So, expect a site redesign. Like you weren't anyway.

Well, after several years of having this nice domain but nothing nice to show on it, I've finally got something better than the "congratulations, you've installed the web server correctly" message.

We'll see how well this turns out. We're going at this gradually; just stories at first, plus a few pictures at the bottom of the page. If you have any suggestions, please drop me a line and let me know.