Remember, if you can’t say anything nice…
Month: August 2009
School Costs How Much?!
Ooops. I screwed up the paperwork. The financial aid office has explained that we have to pay 100% out of pocket for my son’s Fall college…on Tuesday.
I’ve explained it to the younger children like this: "Since your brother is going to college, we are going to be eating Ramen…lots of Ramen!"
Taking Google Adwords Advice
Today I am becoming an expert on Google Adwords campaigns. I am welcome your advice and input.
Update: Les Jones offers some sage advice and Google has an excellent Adwords Learning Center. Google even offers the ability to become a Google Advertising Professional complete with a certification exam.
WordPress 2.8.3 upgrade bizarreness
I decided to take some time to make sure that all of our blogs and websites relying on WordPress were brought up to version 2.8.3. Everything seemed to be going well until we started testing Cathy’s blog Domestic Psychology. She can post but cannot add tags. Categories work find but clicking in the "Add new tag" tag box acts like it is disabled. She can type words in the box but the Add button does not function. Tags do not get saved to the post.
So I jump over to Reality Me to see if it exhibits the same behavior. On Reality Me, I can create a post with tags with no problem. But on the dashboard under Incoming Links, Plugins, and WordPress Development Blog, I get a fatal error:
Fatal error: Please call SimplePie_Cache::create() instead of the constructor in /home/www/htdocs/realityme_net/wp-includes/class-feed.php on line 13
I have not tested the other blogs and sites yet. For both Reality Me and Domestic Psychology, I went back and deleted almost all files with the exception of the wp-content directory, the robots.txt, and the .htaccess. I rebuilt the WordPress installation and yes cache directories were removed. WP-Cache is not used. I also repaired and optimized all database tables. Active plugins on Reality Me: Audio Player, Seesmic, ShareThis, SimpleLife, Spam Karma 2, Subscribe to Comments, WordPress.com Stats, and WordPress XHTML Validator. Active plugins on Domestic Psychology: Audio player, Get Recent Comments, Lifestream, ShareThis, Spam Karma 2, Subscribe to Comments, and WordPress.com Stats.
In typing this, I realize that the SimpleLife plugin uses SimplePie and is likely to be the root cause for the Reality Me problem.
Update: Deactivating SimpleLife fixed the Reality Me problem.
Update: Disabling all plugins on Domestic Psychology did not change the fact that Post Tags could not be added to to the post.
Update: I’ve narrowed it down to Cathy’s theme. None of the active plugins on Domesticp Psychology are causing the problem. She is using a Woo theme called irresistible. Disabling this theme fixes lets her use tags with posts again. Time to see if Woo Themes has posted a fix. Yes. irrestible 2.0.0 fixes the post tag problem.
Hitler Response to the FriendFeed Sale
Dave Winer Hits One Home
From the beginning I’ve described social media (mostly under the guise of Twitter) as a large party. You enter the scene. You hear a lot of noise. You focus on some conversations and it gets exciting. You still hear a lot of noise. You make some friends. You bond. You make some people angry with flippant remarks. You lose some friends. You shout at the crowd. Everyone talks about you. You step off your soapbox and rejoin the conversation. Everyone forgets you. You step out of the room to go to the bathroom. When you return, you find the conversation continued without you. You try to get people to tell you what you missed. Eventually you figure out you just have to pickup where you left off. You learn that you cannot follow everyone in the room. You realize that even though you aren’t following everyone in the room some of those people are still listening to you. Some people get to stand on the stage and everyone follows them. You think it is unfair that you aren’t on the stage. You meet some of the right people but still aren’t lucky enough to get on the stage. You don’t understand. You resent the people on the stage. You decide to ignore them. The conversation goes on. Eventually you follow the people on the stage again because everyone else is talking about what they said. The conversation goes on. Eventually we all return home.
Dave Winer, you know, the guy who brought us RSS, explains here.
So what is, what was, FriendFeed? Let’s say FriendFeed was that room at the party were the people who started the party hung out and other party goers would look in the room and see that it was different but couldn’t really grasp if it was different good or different bad and most would never really enter that room. In the words of Eric Rice, "the punk rock indie era is over." Facebook bought FriendFeed today. I won’t comment further but to say I agree with Think Jose that Facebook bought the staff, not the software. But this was about Dave Winer’s post to Robert Scoble.
Btw, you should follow me on Twitter here.
ps. Not great words of assurance:
What does this mean for my FriendFeed account?
FriendFeed.com will continue to operate normally for the time being. [Source, FriendFeed Blog, FriendFeed accepts Facebook friend request]
From the mouths of babes
I hugged the wife then Evan, the 4 year old, ran to us with arms stretched wide and exclaimed, "group hug!" Where’s he get this stuff?
Hiding in a Thunderstorm
Be advised. I am drowning everyone out with Simply Noise’s thunderstorm. Phone calls, tweets, emails, instant messages, washers, dryers, fire alarms, and fighting children will not be heard until this proposal is finished.
Bat Kill no. 4
The soil 3 feet from my stoop
An hour ago, stepping out my front door included having your ankles swarmed by 100 mosquitoes, a dead bird, and enough landmines to give a Vietnam vet flashbacks. I relented. Determined to rid myself of the mosquitoes I pondered ripping out the entire front porch. Instead I looked under it. A dog toy in the shape of a tire..holding water. 5 planters holding dirt and water..no plants. Some plastic cups..lazy children. Toys and trash.
One can of back yard fogger later, the mosquitoes have cleared out enough for me to work. Under the porch is now clear. And the bird is buried with enough dog and cat manure that I’m sure we’ll grow a new one quickly. I’m know it will grow. The ground seems fertile. My 7 year old girl found the remains of a potato filled with airsoft pellets hanging from the branch of a tree. It had a couple of sprouts so she took the target and buried it 3 feet from the stoop. We now have a healthy looking potato garden standing about a foot high. Imagine the convenience! Two steps to dinner!
School Days School Days Good Ol’ Golden Rule Days
The count is 7. Yes, seven days until school starts. That means early mornings, school fees and bedtimes. This week is practice. The children will find themselves with much earlier sleeping schedules starting tonight. Sure would help if it was actually dark outside.
Who quit following you on Twitter? (followup)
Ever wish there was an easy way to see who quit following you on Twitter? Twitterless (see @tless) and Qwitter were two early services to alert when someone quit following you. Both ran into problems when Twitter increased limits on the API. Fortunately Twitterless has rebounded and seems to be working great! Sometimes I contact the people who quit following and have found they did so by accident. It’s a fantastic way to stay in touch with your community. Unfortunately, Qwitter isn’t working for me. I do not know why.
Today I learned @followermonitor has joined the unfollower alert services. I will compare its results to Twitterless and followup later.
Follow me on Twitter @djuggler by clicking here.
Spirirtually Cleansing and Renewing
I participated in a fantastic sweat lodge last night. It’s a great experience I’d recommend to anyone.
Dear Lifestyles
I’d really like to review your product but right now my 4 year old child makes a better contraceptive than your Skyn condoms. Help me figure out how to get him to sleep in his own bed and your product sales might go up.
Win my business
If i say i’ve been with your competition for over a decade, try to be a little compelling!
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