Third of July

So far I’ve spent two days of the three day weekend futzing around with websites and contracts. A client and I have been trying to put together a contract for a deal he’s working on in Honduras. And the web host for chappells.biz decided to move our files to a different server and they didn’t know what they were doing, apparently, and rendered the Steve and Kathie Wedding Website inoperable. I managed to get things technically cobbled together so people will hopefully get the websites they expect. It was amazing to get responses from tech support that even I could tell were simply incompetent and incorrect. How are you supposed to deal with that? It’s like Average Citizen trying to tell a police officer how to do his job, or trying to tell the auto mechanic how to fix a car. They just are not receptive.

The contract is coming along pretty well. Now at 10:30 p.m. on a Saturday night here comes by email another version with more changes. Think it’ll have to wait until tomorrow, when I was going to work on a different client file, now that I think about it. What do normal people do on the 4th of July?

Quite a fireworks show outside, courtesy of Mother Nature. Been having a major thunderstorm since around 6:00. Hasn’t stopped people all over the neighborhood from shooting firecrackers, bombs and such, though.

We did get outdoors this morning — Becky pulling weeds in the garden and me mowing the yard. Woo-hoo!

Well, partly this article is to see if the blog’s going to actually work, what with all the server issues going on. G’nite!

A Fine Wedding and More

|Had a terrific few days in San Diego (Encinitas, actually) last weekend for Jessica and Eric’s wedding. We celebrated Kimberly’s birthday a couple days after the wedding. We were forewarned about San Diego’s “June Gloom”, but the weather was perfect the entire time. Chronologically, we arrived Friday and had a late lunch and some ocean viewing at La Jolla before checking in at the motel. Saturday was wedding rehearsal, an afternoon at the San Diego County Fair, and rehearsal dinner. Sunday was the wedding. Monday was lunch with my high school buddy, Mel Morris and his wife at a fine beach front restaurant called the Poseidon. Tuesday was Kim’s birthday, spent the afternoon at a major park in San Diego, and evening with birthday dinner at Pacific Beach. Wednesday back to Kansas (boo!).||

|A fantastic experience Monday night was the bioluminescent plankton in the surf at Swami Beach behind the Self-Realization Fellowship Ashram Center in Encinitas. As if a full moon and clear sky with surf noise wasn’t enough, the breaking waves were lit up from the inside by streaks of blue light. I did a lot of googling but only found one little image of the phenomenon, shown to the right, which I took from a web page here.||

I uploaded some wedding photos and others pics from the trip at my Flickr Account.

Some Kinda Webmaster

I recently had occasion to list all the websites I’ve done or am working on and it was kind of a surprise: John Chappell, Attorney, Jeffrey Chappell, Pianist, Chappell Family, Steve & Kathie Wedding, Bob & Martha Hanrott, Authors, Douglas County Bar Association, Pryor Oil Company, HarpShot, and Rinky-Dink, Inc..

About half of those involve some work every month, some every week. Since webmastering is supposed to be a spare time hobby, the chore of just maintaining these doesn’t really leave much, if any, time to continue the learning curve, acquiring new skills or even just keeping abreast of the few I’ve picked up along the way.

Good thing I enjoy this stuff. Trouble is, I think I’m developing variations of carpal tunnel syndrome in my back, shoulders and neck. The other night, I realized I’d been sitting in the easy chair with the laptop on my knees for four straight hours without getting up. I’ve also been noticing the neck and back problems getting worse. On the other hand, things like that get worse with age, anyway. Oh, hey! I got my first acupuncture yesterday. He also tossed in a little chiropracty. I think I’ll have to write about that experience in another article, though. Hmm, been sitting here for two hours now. Just got done upgrading the blog program, WordPress, to latest version for both blogs. Becky’s been in bed two hours, which is where I should be. G’nite! :tired: