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Gotta hand it to the Buddhists

So I was doing this chanting thing that Jason Jarrett turned me onto. For the first time in 30 years, I was truly starting to feel contentment, happiness even, perhaps I’d go so far as to say joy, in all things. But the chanting felt a bit odd. I think my wife found it hokey and I believe it is important in marriage that the couple be eye to eye on religious and spiritual stuff. Plus as I looked into the practice of Buddhism more and read more about stuff revolving around the alter it began to feel a little like some of those things that I find distasteful about particular organized religions. I guess the biggest killer for me was not finding support for the Buddhism of Nichiren Daishonin in Knoxville. There’s a Buddhist temple on Dutchtown Road but they don’t speak English. The language barrier didn’t stop me from going as much as it being a different practice than what Jason Jarrett introduced me to. I dropped in on another place in Knoxville near Homberg Place which was a different practice than either Nichiren or the one on Dutchtown and they just looked at me like, "who’s the old guy?" Despite the sign that read "All welcome" I did not feel welcome. Apparently there is a Nichiren youth organization in Knoxville but I don’t really want the old guy experience again.

So I quit chanting. Then everything went to shit. Coincidence? Probably. There’s some karma crap to be considered too. I was working very hard at removing negativity in my life so the response karmicly speaking was an abundance of negativity was drawn to me. The happier I felt, the greater the onslaught of crap that seemed to be directed at me. There was some Murph stuff too. If you don’t know Murph, you’ll have to buy me a beer and I’ll tell you about him sometime. The flat tire yesterday was a Murph moment. I produced a deluge of negativity and in response I was punished with a flat tire. A wake up call of sorts.

So, I’ll continue listening to A Buddhist Podcast because it is truly one of the best produced podcasts I regularly enjoy. I may even keep chanting if for any reason, for my children. It is so nice when Evan or Amy spontaneously erupt in chant. I believe it is very good for them. But I think my experiment in Buddhism is a bust.

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jquery challenge of the day

And now for something completely different…

Let’s say you have a table that could have infinite rows. The table has an id but none of the other elements (ie. we won’t be traversing by id). The column to the furthest right of the row has an anchor tag in the for of an <a href> There are no other anchors on that row. What I want to do is when the anchor tag is clicked, have the <a href> text in the row above the clicked on turn bold and only that <a href>. Sample table:

<table id="tbl">
   <thead>
      <tr>
         <th>col 1 label</th>
         <th>col 2 label</th>
      </tr>
   </thead>
   <tbody>
      <tr>
         <td>one</td>
         <td>sometext <a class="tt" href="#">link</a></td>
      </tr>
      <tr>
         <td>two</td>
         <td>moretext <a class="tt" href="#">link</a></td>
      </tr>
      <tr>
         <td>three</td>
         <td>differenttext <a class="tt" href="#">link</a></td>
      </tr>
      <tr>
         <td>four</td>
         <td>othertext <a class="tt" href="#">link</a></td>
      </tr>
   </tbody>
</table>

So, if I click the link in row three, I want the text "link" in row two to become bold. This is using jquery and traversing this is kicking me hard.

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Let’s talk SEO and domain names

Say for more than half a decade (really its been a decade) Cathy has blogged as DomesticPsychology.com and she has. Let’s say on a whim she decides she would rather be blogging as CathyMcCaughan.com (in reality she hasn’t..this is simply a working example). Currently http://CathyMcCaughan.com forwards to http://domesticpsychology.com/. To complicate things, let’s say they are registered at 2 different registrars so DNS is handled by two different organizations.

Many options exist for moving a domain name. What is the best way to make http://cathymccaughan.com/ the primary url for Cathy’s website instead of http://domesticpsychology.com/ without losing the search engine rankings or readership and without creating broken links?