November 28th, 2007
We celebrated Thanksgiving in our apartment in San Francisco this year. My parents came out to San Francisco to join Emily and I for the big day. The food turned out surprisingly well, given our small-ish, galley-style kitchen. The turkey was cooked perfectly, Emily’s homemade stuffing was a big hit, and everything else was good too – mashed potatoes, gravy, green beans, cranberry sauce, and wine (of course!).
Happy Thanksgiving!
November 26th, 2007
Last night I submitted my entry for the “Big Trip” essay contest from A Map for Saturday. The winner gets a free around-the-world ticket as well as some other travel goodies. The rules are pretty basic – just write a 400 word essay on why you want to travel/win. I realize my chances of winning this kind of thing are very slim, but I am excited none the less. I tried to do something a little different to try to distinguish my entry. I enjoyed the opportunity to do some creative writing again (been a long time). So without further ado, here is my essay:
“Now boarding flight #837″
So it’s really happening. The months of planning. The endless agonizing over the itinerary. Guidebooks. Budgeting. Passport. Visas. The hours on the phone with the reservations agents. The packing. The re-packing. Counting down the days. It’s all over now. And it has all led up to this moment.
Can it possibly live up to my lofty expectations? How could it? This trip has come to symbolize so much to me. It is my chance to break out. To escape. To explore. It is my opportunity to do something extraordinary. To live my dreams.
And yet, somehow, I know that this experience will exceed all of my expectations. I know that I will see things that most people never see. I will do things that most people never do.
The truth is no matter how much I prepare, I still do not know what to expect. While I can plan out where to go, I can not plan what will happen. That is the beauty of travel: the unknown. It makes me nervous. It makes me excited. It is the reason I travel.
My friends are all rather jealous, of course. Although I suspect that many are less jealous of the trip itself and more jealous of the risk that I have taken. To leave the safety and stability of a good, steady job for the exotic adventure of world travel is something that many dream of but few ever do. Only those who dare to take great risks can ever achieve great things. Perhaps I have been too cautious.
Stepping onto this plane is the first step in a new direction. The first step down a different path in life. One that is less concerned with paychecks and promotions and more focused on enjoying life. On making the most of my time here. On pursuing my dreams. It is the first step down the road less traveled. And that will make all the difference in the world…or so they say.
I board the plane and settle into seat 10A. Window seat. There are butterflies in my stomach. It’s really happening.
As the wheels lift off the ground, I stare out the window and smile, giddy with anticipation.
November 25th, 2007
I’ve been working on designing a new layout for my website for the past couple weeks months. What began as a custom Blogger template has turned into a complete custom Wordpress theme. It was an overly drawn out process, but I finally achieved the look I was going for. Web design is not exactly my forte, but it is fun to play around with. I was basically just going for a simple, basic layout for the site, nothing too fancy.
Hope you like it!
November 20th, 2007
WordPress has a nice import feature for moving an existing Blogger blog. However, I ran into a problem getting WordPress to log into my Blogger account. Every time I would enter in my Blogger login info, I would get an error message “Trouble Signing In” that told me to try again. The problem was a bad reference in the blogger.php file.
Simply replace all references to www2.blogger.com with www.blogger.com in /wp-admin/import/blogger.php and it should work properly.
November 20th, 2007
I am currently using Powweb hosting for this blog. I tried to install Wordpress via Powweb’s InstallCentral, but it didn’t quite work. It did not give me any errors, but no user accounts were created in the Wordpress database. In fact, both wp_users and wp_posts tables were completely missing. I searched and searched for a solution for this, but could not find any advice other than installing Wordpress manually (which I probably should have done anyway). However, I finally did manage to get it working. Here is what I did:
- Install Wordpress through InstallCentral
- Open the database in phpMyAdmin (Ops Control Panel -> Services -> MySQL -> Administer -> Databases)
- Delete each of the existing table
- Then go to your Wordpress install admin url: www.yourdomain.com/wp-admin/install.php
- Follow the quick install process (only a couple steps) and you are all set
Hope this helps someone that is going crazy like I was when this happened to me!
November 20th, 2007
I’m sorry, Blogger. I have to break up with you. I know we haven’t been together very long, but it’s over. I just wanted an easy solution, but you had to go and make things complicated. You had to punish me because I wanted to publish the blog on my own domain. Why do you hate the FTP users that don’t want a blogspot.com domain?? Why can’t we publish a list of our tags (or “labels” as you insist on calling them)? Why can’t we have “Next” and “Previous” links? It just doesn’t make sense. And the documentation for your templates is practically impossible to find. Oh, I could go on, but what’s the use.
There is something I should tell you, there’s someone else. Yes, you’ve been replaced. WordPress is much more powerful and configurable than you ever were, and surprisingly, even easier to use. So now it is time for me to say goodbye to you, Blogger. Goodbye.
November 14th, 2007
This weekend I had the privilege to attend my first ever Wurstfest in New Braunfels, Texas. I had heard many tales of the legendary gorge-fest, but I wasn’t sure it could live up to my lofty expectations. Oh, but it did! Wurstfest was the best sausage festival I have EVER been to (of course, it is also my first…).
Wurstfest is basically a glorified fair with a German theme. Complete with food, beer, polka dancing, and scary carnival rides (scary in that they might fall apart at any moment). The food is obviously the best part of Wurstfest. They have every kind of sausage imaginable, which is to be expected. They also will put anything on a stick including entire sirloin steaks, and they will also deep fry anything from awesome blossoms to oreos – you name it, they’ll fry it.
Highlight of the weekend – Emily eating taking a bite of her first sausage…..ever. We are so proud of you, Frogg!
More pictures on Flickr
No Comments »
