MAGGI PICAYUNE

Finally! Picayune has made the move to a more efficient solution for posting 1200, WordPress. It’s rather obvious since it’s advertised at the bottom and many of you may recognize its rather “blah” default Theme.

For a couple years I’ve been told the old site was pokey which probably discouraged others from checking it out and/or commenting. However, I got by because what I had was affordable plus manageable through the Mac Mini (G4 woo hoo!) in my house. Then the Java element driving it began to go through fits and starts of spinning out of control resulting in outages until I killed the process.

The solution was to either get a faster connection (unrealistic) or replace the software (inconvenient). The latter took some time from my more-skilled friends because WordPress is rather sophisticated, compared to Blojsom. I think I got Adam to solve the SQL problem preventing this sooner by (indirectly) challenging his code prowess. Personally, I wish I could’ve figured it out but I know my limits so I sought assistance.

Now will come the tedious process modifying this rather vanilla Theme or installing a more appropriate one, preferably something closer to what Picayune used to have. Then there’s the other 1199+ posts I want to bring over (you can see I did preemptively converted July 2005, some of August 2005 and the last 10), Comments included. Eventually, I will flip the switch to turn off the old one completely.

For the interim, here’s the link to what I’ll dub The Old Picayune, classic is overused. (It will remain in the sidebar too under the section linking to my friends’ sites.)

I had been testing this earlier with a couple friends, mainly to see how quickly it loaded. The ultimate test was during my lunch hour, how long it took to appear on my iPhone through the EDGE network. I was impressed enough to make the change today despite the Theme being lame. Again, I will be adjusting this to something more unique.

Enjoy the revised Picayune! Please Comment more and set up an RSS feed. I’m open to design suggestions or a Theme you think works.

Think I should have this minor Adam Ant hit memorized? Go ahead, at least click it for the title.

Today my VW decided to leak oil profusely. According to Somara, it had started trickling a little yesterday when she saw the trail my car left…three hours after I went to work [her shift is around 11 AM]. I figured it would hold at least a couple more days, long enough to take it to Underground on Monday. No dice. The alarm went off a few blocks from my job which meant the oil was practically gone. As a comedian I once saw said [paraphrased], why is the oil indicator shaped like Aladdin’s lamp? To me, it doesn’t mean my oil is low. It says I have a wish coming and the genie must be arriving due to all the smoke coming out from under the hood. Thankfully, there was only a little burning smell and smoke.

I didn’t want to be stranded at work so I had to juggle my schedule, probably lose some vacation hours and cajole my wife into following, should the car die on the way. Somara bought a couple quarts of oil for the trip to assist. It leaked out of the vehicle in two miles! So this process had to be repeated several more times as I scored oil at a gas station and an HEB on Lamar. When it was over and done, alarm blaring in the home stretch from Airport to Underground, my poor ol’ Golf leaked three gallons of motor oil to hobble there [11.3 litres for my Metric-using friends]. What started as a trickle on Monday was now a gushing wound, I could even see it already working its way out at the HEB while I was refilling it.

There is a [relative] silver lining to this tale of car trouble. The mechanic on it called me at work pretty quickly. Due to all the mess covering the front of the engine by then, he found the source…the oil cooler’s seal, a three-dollar part. What a relief since I know how much labor is at an hour and then I just need five quarts to put it all back to normal. There was some coolant mixed in but he said it wasn’t serious.

Now I must wait for the part to come in, the repair and then coordinate a lift to retrieve the ol’ money pit on wheels which remains cheaper than a new or “new” used car.

Nov. 21, 2008 Update: I picked up my car last night thanks to a life from Jeremy to get it. Did I luck out. The mechanic found the leak pretty quickly since he said the stream of oil was the diameter of a ball-point pen which is about a fifth of an inch [or a half centimeter]. Not everything is perfect yet. The temperature LED started blinking half a mile from the house this morning. I managed to get to work without incident but it seems the coolant tank is close to empty despite the assurances of the mechanic. If all I need to do is refill it, I’ll be very happy because the Golf is running above its annual average to maintain. Trust me, while Somara was driving us back to our jobs yesterday, I was already putting my brain “on the hunt” [as my head doctor calls it] to figure out how we’ll finance a new car.

Nov. 22, 2008 Update: The mechanic [John, not Toby] theorized it was an air bubble in the coolant area. I have my doubts because I put water and coolant in there, it’s fine. Then I drove it around work a few blocks, worked out. I remained nervous driving it home last night and to my job this morning. It remains going with little to no leaking…I choose “little” since I’m not absolutely sure on it. I fear Somara and I will need to have a financial meeting about buying a new car in 2009.

…or more likely, you may see prototypes, experiments and anything else of what may be its future.

My friend Jeremy has had little to no success getting the successor site to work due to problems with 10.4’s implementation of SQL [or MySQL] via WordPress. I was more biased toward Drupul from all the other sites I’d seen but I have to get my assistance where I can get it since I cannot dedicate much technical time to it.

So Picayune’s server will have an external FireWire drive running it while it’s booted up in 10.5 Server allowing Jeremy to make the alterations.

If all goes according to plan, checking out my site won’t be pokey from the Java nonsense carrying out the functions HTML, PHP and SQL do. Plus no more Java processes exploding and taking up all the CPU power, forcing me to kill it. Lastly, I may be able to incorporate movies, fancier HTML layouts and more. Jeremy has even entertained a Wiki which I’m still trying to figure out what exactly it is and if it really solves anything outside the context of Wikipedia.

Details are still in transition plus it cannot all be disclosed due to confidentiality matters.

What I can tell you is that it involves Somara. She was allowed to tell me and I was thrilled. When we receive clearance, I will either amend this post or make a new one.

Certainly makes up for Quantum of Solace being sold out last night; how I was really looking forward to seeing it too.

Another big [financial] pat on the back for us because today is the final payment of Somara’s second-smallest student loan! Not bad work. This one took only a year to kill off despite the set-back of her surgery, a smaller escrow refund and the IRS dragging ass on our Economic Hail Mary. The bigger boost was refinancing the house to re-allocate a substantial amount.

This now puts us over the 20 percent mark on paying off Somara’s education. Even I’m amazed how well we’ve managed this in less than two and a half years. I only wish the remaining pair of loans were equally as small but sadly, they’re not but don’t fret for us, we’re still way to ahead of most Americans. I’m not terribly worried due to the strategy I mapped out. My friend Bryant probably would give the credit to Dave Ramsey yet I recall my parents giving me the same advice back in 1992, too bad I didn’t take it until 1996.

All the money allocated to loan number two [code name John Glenn] will be put into loan number three [code name James Lovell] after our puny Citibank balance is killed. Then, according to my calculations, we may be left with nothing but the monstrous loan [code name Neil Armstrong] in 17 months; sooner should there be a decent financial windfall in our favor.

My favorite part about this final payment mainly deals with Sallie Mae’s horrible customer service. When I worked with them in the Nineties on my student-loan debt, they were great. Now they’re a stressful chore. Firstly, their web site cannot separate the payments correctly for our strategy. I used to be able to get this corrected via e-mail until April. Secondly, should you need to call them on the phone, you get this Bangalore-based call center where you’re talking to “Jenny” or “Bob,” yeah right. Not only are their accents very thick, half of them lecture you about something they know nothing about since Somara’s account is in great standing.