Working on the site AGAIN.
February 11, 2003
Good afternoon, all. I promise not to have as much of a stream of consciousness as last time, as I don’t really have much to write about this time. Been kind of a quiet week, which has been much appreciated. I haven’t had as much work to do as I thought I would in the last week, though I have work that I could do that I’ve pushed back until a later date. I have a 6-8 page paper due in my African International Relations class next week that I haven’t started on yet, but I’m going to collaborate with someone in my group on the research. We’re doing our first case study right now, specifically the Eritrea-Ethiopia war that lasted for so long. Our class is going to do a roleplay exercise for one specific part of it, the border dispute between the two states in 1998-2000, with class members playing different roles. Some volunteered to be the mediators (the OAU–Organization of African Unity–and the U.S.), some volunteered to play Ethiopia, and some Eritrea. I chose to be on the Ethiopia side because frankly, it’s different. Most people signed up for Eritrea because our case study focuses mostly on their independence struggle, and it’s much easier that way. I didn’t want to be a mediator because I didn’t think I’d get to do as much, and really, debating a position you don’t believe in can typically make you learn and say more. In any case, I have to write a paper for next week stating my side of the dispute, why the dispute started, what can be done to resolve it, etc. Not too much to it, really, but that’s 6-8 pages I still have to write.
Speaking of writing, I have to get together with Ann Davies at some point this week and meet with her about my research project. Time keeps on slippin’ into the future, if I may quote the great Steve Miller, and things are creeping up faster than I figured. It’s not the middle of February and the first draft of my independent paper is due in about four or five weeks. Yup, time to get cracking.
The other thing I’ve been working on is this website. I’ve made a lot of the changes that I promised were coming, but I still about two or three things on the main page alone I need to change. It’s not exactly a full redesign like last time, but it’s significantly different. I kept the color scheme that I decided on (mmmm…I like blues and greens, but I added some black and white, too), I kept the webcam image, although it will no longer automatically refresh. To see the image update, you’ll have to click on it, which will bring up a smaller window that will refresh itself. I like that idea better so you don’t have to have a full browser window open if you’re watching what I’m doing. I’ve asked a few people what they think of the new design for my site, and I’ve gotten mostly positive comments, so we’ll see how it fleshes out. Not ready for primetime yet, but soon. I’ve spent literally at least 10 hours in the last week working on it, mostly learning the techniques I needed to use as I went along. I think a basic HTML class would serve me very well, but I don’t have access to that right now, so I have to pretty much make it up as I go along and see how other places have done their coding. To make a long story short, it looks good right now, but it’s not quite as practical as I’d like it.
Plus I have to apply the design to every page on my site. How bogus and time-consuming is that? The thing I like about the design I have now is that I don’t have to do any design to each page that I create, I can just have it appear in the main frame. However, the problem I run into and the reason I’m doing the redesign is that I can’t link to specific pages, like my pictures page, and have the side, top, and bottom content come up. If I want someone to see my pictures page, I have to have them got to the main page, click Pictures, then navigate from there. I can’t just send them the direct link to the pictures page because the navigation links on the side aren’t attached to it. Pretty poor foresight on my part. I think this new way will solve that problem. Until I get bored of it and shift things around again.
So yeah. It’s pretty cold here right now. My temperature gauge in my chat program says that it’s 32F outside right now, but it “feels” like it’s 13F. I believe that. It’s actually warmer because it’s been snowing off and on, which makes for better conditions walking to and from class. Other than that, I spend most of my time indoors. Not really outside weather right now, no matter what nuts may try and go swimming in the frozen rivers of the world. I actually turned my heater on for the first time this whole winter the other night. It wasn’t particularly cold out (as in, it has been colder on other days), but I was sitting in front of the window while watching a movie, and man, that cold comes right in. No wonder everyone always bundles up when they come into my room.
Speaking of movie, I took advantage of a deal recently that I’m particularly proud of. I’m a member of the Columbia House DVD club (though I wish I could fulfill my membership obligation so I can cancel it), but I found a deal that they were offering which was 5 DVDs, $24.95, free shipping, nothing more to buy, ever. They allow two memberships going to the same name/address, so I took a chance and used the code I found to activate that promotion, and yesterday, sure enough, my DVDs arrived and I was able to cancel my membership. So for the price of one new DVD at MSRP, I got 5 movies shipped to me for free. Not a bad deal at all. I read that CH has three more codes floating about the Internet that would allow the same deal to be used, but I’m not going to do it again–yet. I don’t have the money to spend on that again and again, not to mention I’m running out of space in my DVD holder. That and I don’t know what else I’d buy from them. If I did the deal again, I’d really be reaching for movies to get. They don’t allow you to choose from their complete collection of movies just a hundred or so new releases and popular movies. I’m happy to say that their collection has gotten much better in the last few years, though, so I found some great titles. For this deal, I picked up “Monty Python and the Holy Grail”, “Seven”, “Pulp Fiction”, “Brotherhood of the Wolf”, and “Tomorrow Never Dies”. I partially attribute myself to being able to buy the last movie in that set since when I was last a member of the CH DVD club two years ago (excluding my membership now which I reopened in September or so), they had a LOUSY selection of movies. I got called by a customer service person at one point after I canceled my membership and quizzed as to what movies I’d like to get in a special deal to come back, but none of the titles I wanted they had. Not just in stock, but not offered at all. I asked them if they had “Goldfinger”–widely regarded to be the best of both the Sean Connery James Bond movies and James Bond movies on the whole–but the person I spoke to wasn’t even familiar with that movie. I told them that since they didn’t have any of the James Bond movies and that as a fan of the series, I was disappointed at that, so maybe, just maybe, my opinion helped their decision to start stocking them recently.
Anyway, so I’ve been a good little consumer recently. Well, actually, that’s all I’ve bought for myself. I guess if you want to call me a good consumer, you could say that I got the best deal possible, even though it was something I probably could have done without. That’s about it for now. I’m going to make some stir fry for dinner tonight, I think. I was going to make it last night, but I wasn’t terribly hungry so I went to Commons and just had a bowl of cereal and a sandwich. I definitely have to make it tonight, though, because I bought the chicken for it on Sunday evening, and it’s been sitting in my refrigerator since then–not the freezer. Time to cook it up so I don’t put it to waste. I also have a small white onion, some bean sprouts, snow peas, green beans, and baby red potatoes that I can fry up for it, and then I’ll use my steamer to make a some rice to act as a bed. Yum. Sounds good to me.
Have a good week, everyone, and I’ll let you know when my new design goes live. Or maybe I’ll just surprise you all. Either way would be fun. See you later.
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