Man, I love my kids, I really do, but today has not been a good day with them! LOL It didn't help that Lee had to work today, which sucks for him too.
They slept in this morning since they were up a good 2-3 hours past their normal bed time, so I thought church would go pretty smoothly this morning. Well, it started off that way, but then Jaden decided he wanted to go for a walk in the narthex and that was it. Of course when I grab him, he starts screaming, so I had no choice but to take him out of the church. But then all he wanted to do was run around, and part of me couldn't blame him. He woke up this morning, I got him up, and then he sat in his high chair and ate a pancake before we left. Then he was in the carseat, and then right into church, so he couldn't blow off any steam.
So long story short, he tried to hit me because he got mad at me, so I told him if he stopped throwing a fit, quieted down, and went back to sit down in church, we'd go to the mall so he could play at the playground. He understood and quieted down, I love bribery!!! Church wasn't too bad for the rest of the time.
Then we had some running around to do. For the most part the kids were good, but the few times they got unruly, it just stresses me out. Especially when it has to do with whining and crying in my ear!
Jaden ended up falling asleep in the car, and then he usally doesn't take a nap in his crib, so he was running on about 20 minutes of sleep, and Haleigh wasn't so much bad, just wasn't listening and talks too much LOL
I'm now enjoying the peace and quiet since they are sleeping in bed. This is why I enjoy working! Even though it means I'm away and miss a lot of them growing up.
Sunday, December 07, 2008
Wednesday, December 03, 2008
Return to Blogging... Kind of
Ok, so everyone is into blogging these days. I honestly don't know where they find time to do it, but I suppose if I didn't work so much and then go to dance classes in the evening, I'd have more time myself.
This isn't a promise that I'm going to start blogging more. I, quite frankly, don't think my life is interesting enough to blog about, but for what it's worth, I'm going to try to log in here and find some things to talk about.
Bear with me as I try to figure out how to put up a blog roll, etc. I'm slowly getting there! LOL
So with that, comes a new chapter. If you decide to read my previous blogs, they are from a class I took while I was getting my master's degree. I haven't gone back to reread them all yet, but I'm sure they are amusing!
So feel free to come back often and check it out... no promises though!!!!
This isn't a promise that I'm going to start blogging more. I, quite frankly, don't think my life is interesting enough to blog about, but for what it's worth, I'm going to try to log in here and find some things to talk about.
Bear with me as I try to figure out how to put up a blog roll, etc. I'm slowly getting there! LOL
So with that, comes a new chapter. If you decide to read my previous blogs, they are from a class I took while I was getting my master's degree. I haven't gone back to reread them all yet, but I'm sure they are amusing!
So feel free to come back often and check it out... no promises though!!!!
Thursday, August 03, 2006
Apache/MySQL/PHP
Well, it's been a while, but here I am, in my last class required for my Master's degree, and I chose to do my culminating project in technology. So, again, I'm working with Alvin on this. I was pretty open to a lot of possibilities for this project, and steered towards Content Management Systems (CMS). But alas, it's not that simple. To run a CMS, you have to have a server. So it began. I tried configuring Apache, MySQL and PHP to work together, but I failed somewhere. So Alvin suggested I try Apache2Triad (http://apache2triad.net/). It's a WAMP, or all-in-one download. And what do ya know, after about 20 minutes of downloading, installing, and configuring (which there wasn't much configuring to do) it's up and running. A lot further than I was before. The biggest problem I had was that all of the php files were trying to be opened by Microsoft Picture It! I have no idea how that happened, but it's kinda impossible for a picture viewer to open scripts LOL
So now I'm trying to install the CMS I chose to use, e107 (http://www.e107.org). Hopefully this will go a little more smoothly now that the PHP is working correctly. A CMS allows you to easily control and publish content to the web, eliminating the time and energy spent in writing HTML code. It provides an easy way for people with access to the CMS to input and/or edit information for a webpage without having to know much about HTML. As I learn more about it, I'll post more.
So now I'm trying to install the CMS I chose to use, e107 (http://www.e107.org). Hopefully this will go a little more smoothly now that the PHP is working correctly. A CMS allows you to easily control and publish content to the web, eliminating the time and energy spent in writing HTML code. It provides an easy way for people with access to the CMS to input and/or edit information for a webpage without having to know much about HTML. As I learn more about it, I'll post more.
Tuesday, November 16, 2004
Scripting
I'm about ready to scream! In another class we have to create a quiz using forms. Okay, fine, I've done forms before. But it's different this time. Each question has to be on a different page, then we need to carry the variables from the first page to the last page. This requires scripting. Well, I've never used scripting other than HTML before. Well, I think I have the majority of it done. Well, make that the required parts of the assignment are done (as long as it all works when I upload everything!!!) But we're offered an extra 10 bonus points if we can figure out how to calculate the total percentage of correct answers. Me being the overachiever I am, has been searching for days to figure this part out. I've googled my brains out, surfed the web to the best of my ability and I'm coming up empty-handed. I have this HUGE FrontPage 2003 Inside Out book that isn't very helpful, but then again, I guess I'm dealing with scripting (like VisualBasic) rather than FrontPage itself. But I've looked in Programming in Visual Basic 6.0 without much luck as well. I'm the type of person who needs to see an example of what I need to type and I get it; I have a hard time teaching myself just exactly how to do anything. Oh well... I suppose I should quit blogging and get back to scripting! If anyone can offer advice I'd very much appreciate it!
Friday, November 05, 2004
Booklets
Ok, so I feel I'm pretty proficient in Microsoft Word. I know the basics, plus a little beyond. But Wednesday I taught myself something new, using Help (and I wish I would've known this way back in May...). My boss wanted me to make a booklet of all the assistive technologies we have in the office, and a lot of the assistive technologies that are "out there". So I went and gathered the information and put it in Word. When I was finished I thought to myself there's gotta be an easier way to put this in a booklet form than when I did the program for my wedding (back in May).
A long, long time ago... sometime around the middle of May, I was working on typing up the program for my wedding, which included all of what the Priest said, and our responses, plus the readings, congregation responses and whatever else that is part of a Catholic Mass wedding. Well, this program ended up being 8 - 8 1/2" x 11" sheets of paper, or 16 pages when folded in booklet form. I looked around Word but I couldn't find anything that would do that automatically (unfortunately for me then, I didn't use help, or I tried but it didn't work...I don't remember which). So, if I wanted it to be nice, and in order (especially when I made copies) I figured I had to copy and paste the text where I would need it. Long story short, I don't remember how many hours I spent working on it. I finally had the layout right, so when it printed, and I put the pages back to back (since my printer would only print on one side) and folded it, the text flowed and was in the correct order!!! YAY!! That part was done! Making copies was yet another deal, keeping the order straight when putting the booklets together, but I regress.
So anyway, back to this booklet thing. If you click on File, Page Setup, around the middle of the box that pops up is a drop down menu where it says Multiple Pages. If you select Book fold, Word automatically makes the orientation Landscape, and sizes each "page" down to about 5 inches. When you play around with the Inside and Outside margins you can get your text where you want it. Word shows you the document in order. And when you print, Word is smart enough to change the pages around, so when you do put it in a booklet form and fold it, all the pages are in order. I was so happy to find this out, I shared it with some people in my office, and I taught them a new thing! Now, if I had only known how to do this six months ago, I may have been even less stressed with my wedding!
A long, long time ago... sometime around the middle of May, I was working on typing up the program for my wedding, which included all of what the Priest said, and our responses, plus the readings, congregation responses and whatever else that is part of a Catholic Mass wedding. Well, this program ended up being 8 - 8 1/2" x 11" sheets of paper, or 16 pages when folded in booklet form. I looked around Word but I couldn't find anything that would do that automatically (unfortunately for me then, I didn't use help, or I tried but it didn't work...I don't remember which). So, if I wanted it to be nice, and in order (especially when I made copies) I figured I had to copy and paste the text where I would need it. Long story short, I don't remember how many hours I spent working on it. I finally had the layout right, so when it printed, and I put the pages back to back (since my printer would only print on one side) and folded it, the text flowed and was in the correct order!!! YAY!! That part was done! Making copies was yet another deal, keeping the order straight when putting the booklets together, but I regress.
So anyway, back to this booklet thing. If you click on File, Page Setup, around the middle of the box that pops up is a drop down menu where it says Multiple Pages. If you select Book fold, Word automatically makes the orientation Landscape, and sizes each "page" down to about 5 inches. When you play around with the Inside and Outside margins you can get your text where you want it. Word shows you the document in order. And when you print, Word is smart enough to change the pages around, so when you do put it in a booklet form and fold it, all the pages are in order. I was so happy to find this out, I shared it with some people in my office, and I taught them a new thing! Now, if I had only known how to do this six months ago, I may have been even less stressed with my wedding!
Tuesday, November 02, 2004
FrontPage 2003
Microsoft FrontPage 2003 is considered a WYSIWYG web page editor (stands for What You See Is What You Get). It was fairly new to me because the web pages i have created in the past were by a site's (like Angelfire) editor, or by writing out the HTML codes myself. I learned the HTML language in high school, and as tedious as it is, I enjoy writing the coding for web pages. But FrontPage makes things easier. (There are also other WYSIWYG editors out there, but I have never used them before).
FrontPage 2003 allows you to create your web page by formatting it like you would, say a Word document. If you wanted to increase the font, or change the font, it basically only requires a click of the mouse. FrontPage works in a similar way. If you want a graphic as your heading, you import the graphic as a picture and you place it where you want to (left justified, center, or right justified). If you want a background color, pattern, or picture you tell FrontPage what you want and you see it. Unlike if you were to type out the codes, you would see a tag such as *BODY BGCOLOR="#000000"* which tells the browser to load the color black as the background color. Now, since standard font color is black, you'll also need a font color tag to change the color of the font. You can see how complicated something like this can get, if you don't know the color codes or miss a tag here or there. FrontPages elimates this hassle and makes it easy for you to select the text that you want to change colors. Another example is say you want to put a table on your page. If you were to write out the codes, you would need your table tag, then inside the table tag you need the table row tag, then for the number of columns you want you need a table data tag for each column within each table row. It would look something like this (but substitute <> for the *):
*TABLE*
*TR*
*TD*First column of first row*/TD*
*TD*Second column of first row*/TD*
*TD*Third column of first row*/TD*
*/TR*
*TR*
*TD*First column of second row*/TD*
*TD*Second column of second row*/TD*
*TD*Third column of second row*/TD*
*/TR*
*/TABLE*
(The * were used because Blogger wanted to read my HTML tags and put them in place... and I wanted to show the coding so I had to improvise.)
In the above example, I would have two rows with three columns each. And if I wanted to add color to those, I would have to have additional tags in each of thetags. So you can see how time consuming writing out HTML can be, and why having a program like Microsoft FrontPage 2003 is a good thing.
FrontPage also offers pre-made buttons that can be used on web pages. This is one feature that comes with the program that allows a novice user to create a professional looking web page without much effort.
FrontPage 2003 allows you to create your web page by formatting it like you would, say a Word document. If you wanted to increase the font, or change the font, it basically only requires a click of the mouse. FrontPage works in a similar way. If you want a graphic as your heading, you import the graphic as a picture and you place it where you want to (left justified, center, or right justified). If you want a background color, pattern, or picture you tell FrontPage what you want and you see it. Unlike if you were to type out the codes, you would see a tag such as *BODY BGCOLOR="#000000"* which tells the browser to load the color black as the background color. Now, since standard font color is black, you'll also need a font color tag to change the color of the font. You can see how complicated something like this can get, if you don't know the color codes or miss a tag here or there. FrontPages elimates this hassle and makes it easy for you to select the text that you want to change colors. Another example is say you want to put a table on your page. If you were to write out the codes, you would need your table tag, then inside the table tag you need the table row tag, then for the number of columns you want you need a table data tag for each column within each table row. It would look something like this (but substitute <> for the *):
*TABLE*
*TR*
*TD*First column of first row*/TD*
*TD*Second column of first row*/TD*
*TD*Third column of first row*/TD*
*/TR*
*TR*
*TD*First column of second row*/TD*
*TD*Second column of second row*/TD*
*TD*Third column of second row*/TD*
*/TR*
*/TABLE*
(The * were used because Blogger wanted to read my HTML tags and put them in place... and I wanted to show the coding so I had to improvise.)
In the above example, I would have two rows with three columns each. And if I wanted to add color to those, I would have to have additional tags in each of the
FrontPage also offers pre-made buttons that can be used on web pages. This is one feature that comes with the program that allows a novice user to create a professional looking web page without much effort.
Monday, November 01, 2004
PhotoFiltre
PhotoFiltre is a free download that I found using Alvin's links. I've used it a few times, and for freeware, it's not a bad program. It has many features, more than some free trials provide. It was easy to use, nothing too hard that would require a thousand page manual to figure out. For the average person looking for a cheap or free program to create graphic art, I would recommend it. It is up there with Adobe Photoshop and Paint Shop Pro.
You can read the review for PhotoFiltre http://www.webattack.com/get/photofiltre.html of course, as I said before, I used Alvin's resources to find that.
You can read the review for PhotoFiltre http://www.webattack.com/get/photofiltre.html of course, as I said before, I used Alvin's resources to find that.
Tuesday, October 19, 2004
Animation Shop 3
In another one of Alvin's classes we had to make some graphics and one had to be an animation. Well, I don't have any programs that do animation so I had to download something. Jasc has a program called Animation Shop 3 which has a free trial. So I tried it. Amazingly enough it is very simple to use. It doesn't create the graphics, I had to use another program to do that, but once you have the slides you want to animate it is real easy. Animation Shop asks you which files you want to import, so you find the slides you want, put them in the correct order, and continue and it's put together. Then you can go in and add transitions between slides or text/image effects within each slide. This program was very simple to use and it had many features. I would recommend it to anyone who needs to animate graphics.
Jasc's website is at http://www.jasc.com/ and Animation Shop 3 is at http://www.jasc.com/products/animationshop/
Jasc's website is at http://www.jasc.com/ and Animation Shop 3 is at http://www.jasc.com/products/animationshop/
Wednesday, October 13, 2004
Paint Shop Pro 9
Well, I wasn't having much luck with Adobe Photoshop, not to mention, the computer it is installed on is in the spare room and not hooked to the internet, so I decided to download the trial version of Paint Shop Pro 9. With my high speed connection, the 98MB file didn't take very long to download. And once installed, I was left to fend for myself on how to use it, since I didn't have a manual in my lap (and I can't stand to read long documents on computer screens, makes my eyes bug out). I figured it out, similar to Adobe Photoshop, and I created the graphics for my Assignment 5 using it. I really haven't had the time to go in and explore all of the options it has, but it looks like a really great program. Unfortunately, I don't have the $130 to buy it, so I told my mother-in-law about it as a Christmas gift. So hopefully, by the end of the year, I'll have the full version.
Sunday, October 03, 2004
Pen Drives
There's a new thing called a pen drive and it's not much bigger than a keychain but it can hold upwards of 256 MB and 512 MB and I'm sure there are (or will be) some that will hold over one gigabyte of information. So instead of carting around thousands of 3.5" floppy disks you can wear these pen drives around your neck (the one I purchased actually came with a laynard) and they just plug into an empty USB port on your computer or notebook. Now, of course these aren't cheap. The 256 MB pen drive I purchased cost about $60, but there was a mail-in rebate, so I got the pen drive for about what an external 3.5" floppy drive would have cost me!!!
Now that I think about it, I think someone else has blogged about pen drives. These are definitely a new wave that is very practical.
Now that I think about it, I think someone else has blogged about pen drives. These are definitely a new wave that is very practical.
New Notebook
Well, I had been talking about it for quite a while, never really had the money, but I finally broke down and bought myself a notebook... ie laptop computer. I asked my husband instead of him trying to figure out what to buy me for Christmas, my Christmas present would be that he makes a few payments for the notebook and he agreed. So after doing homework on the web, we went to BestBuy and got a notebook. I was dead set on an HP... that is until we got there and talked with a rep. He said he could not sell me a HP with a clear conscience. Supposedly HP has the highest breakage rates. Who knows; my husband has a HP desktop and we haven't had any problems, and he knows other people who own HP's and have never had any problems.
I knew which HP notebook I wanted, so I asked the rep what other brands they had that were equivalent to what I wanted. He suggested Toshiba and eMachine, and explained that eMachine bought out Gateway. He showed me an eMachine comparable to the HP for a few hundred dollars cheaper, and it also had a better processor. That's when I learned a 2 gig AMD 64 Athlon was better than an Intel Pentium 4 - 3 gig processor. Okay, so with a cheaper price and more speed (flashbacks of Fast and Furious come to mind) the eMachine was looking better and better. I asked if they had any Toshibas comparable, and he found a couple, but they were a lot more. So after I finished asking my questions, and listening to the rep's (might I say rehearsed) bit about the $300 extended warranty, I moved on to my other questions. I knew I wanted a mouse, originally I wanted a 3.5" floppy so I could easily transfer files from work, to desktop to notebook (I changed my mind when I found out about the new "pen drives"), I needed a carrier, and I also got a surge protector.
So in the end, I spent over two grand on the notebook and accessories... and all I can say is hoorray to UF for providing cheap Microsoft products!!! I've only had the notebook about three days now and I am in love with it! I like the portability, I have can do all of my work on here whether I'm at home or at work so I don't have to transport disks or put stuff in the digital drop boxes. I just love it!!!
I knew which HP notebook I wanted, so I asked the rep what other brands they had that were equivalent to what I wanted. He suggested Toshiba and eMachine, and explained that eMachine bought out Gateway. He showed me an eMachine comparable to the HP for a few hundred dollars cheaper, and it also had a better processor. That's when I learned a 2 gig AMD 64 Athlon was better than an Intel Pentium 4 - 3 gig processor. Okay, so with a cheaper price and more speed (flashbacks of Fast and Furious come to mind) the eMachine was looking better and better. I asked if they had any Toshibas comparable, and he found a couple, but they were a lot more. So after I finished asking my questions, and listening to the rep's (might I say rehearsed) bit about the $300 extended warranty, I moved on to my other questions. I knew I wanted a mouse, originally I wanted a 3.5" floppy so I could easily transfer files from work, to desktop to notebook (I changed my mind when I found out about the new "pen drives"), I needed a carrier, and I also got a surge protector.
So in the end, I spent over two grand on the notebook and accessories... and all I can say is hoorray to UF for providing cheap Microsoft products!!! I've only had the notebook about three days now and I am in love with it! I like the portability, I have can do all of my work on here whether I'm at home or at work so I don't have to transport disks or put stuff in the digital drop boxes. I just love it!!!
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