This weekend is going to be all about football. It will start on Friday. The local high school, Muscatine, has its homecoming game this week. Friday night, Muscatine (currently ranked #9 in Iowa class 4A) hosts Bettendorf (currently ranked #1 in Iowa class 4A). Ought to be a good game. At this point, I am not sure if I’m just going to listen to the game or if I’m actually going to the high school to watch it. I’m leaning toward watching it, but who knows?

Saturday afternoon, we are going to Pella, Iowa to watch Central College (currently ranked #15 in AFCA Division III poll) host Wartburg (currently ranked #22 in AFCA Division III). This has been a game that decides the Iowa Conference representative to the Division III football playoffs in the past several years. Central’s team is built around quickness, but they have good size to go with it. Central’s Vance Shuring is averaging just over 80 yards pre game while Central as a team is averaging about 170 yards a game. Cental QB Tim Connell is averaging 192 passing yards and 55 rushing yards per game. Wartburg’s Dan Hammes is averaging just under 100 rushing yards per game and Josh Van Rees is averaging 83 per game. Last year Hammes ran all over the Central Dutch for 199 yards. Wartburg QB Dan Bauder is averaging 127 yards per game in the air. This game has all the makings of excellent Division III football.

And then, Saturday night is the BIG one. That’s right. The #13 ranked Iowa Hawkeyes host the #1 ranked Ohio State Buckeyes in a key Big 10 matchup. Lots of hype around this one - ESPN Game Day will be in Iowa City all day on Saturday. Two years ago when Ohio State was ranked #23 and Iowa was unranked, Ohio State was heavily favored to come in and beat Iowa because Iowa had lost it’s four top running backs to knee injuries. I believe the Hawks averaged something less than 50 rushing yards per game that year. As it turned out, Ohio State was beaten 33-7 pretty much single-handedly by Drew Tate’s passing and scrambling.

This year is an entirely different scenario. Ohio State looks very strong. I’ve always thought a lot of the Ohio State coach Jim Tressel based on the way he handled the Maurice Clarett fiasco; he runs a clean and classy program. The Buckeyes have an excellent running game and Troy Smith, their quarterback and Heisman hopeful, is doing a great job of guiding the team. Their defense looks less formidable than it has in the past couple of years, but it was among the best two or three in the nation the last couple of years. They have a LOT of team speed, especially in their receiving corps (and Iowa has inexperience at the defensive cornerbacks).

Iowa will have to play a near-perfect game much like they did two years ago if they want to beat the Buckeyes. Fortunately the team is in good shape and no major players are injured at this time. The Hawkeyes are a balanced team this year. While Albert Young hasn’t regained last year’s rushing form yet, they Hawks are still averaging about 150 yards a game on the ground. Drew Tate is looking well this year also. While he missed the Syracuse game with an undisclosed abdominal injury, the team is averaging about 230 yards a game passing. The Hawks have a strong defensive front four and even though they lost two linebackers in the first two rounds of the NFL draft (Chad Greenway and Abdul Hodge) they have a very good linebacking corps.

Like I said, it ought to be a great game!

So I heard there was this rumor that there was a weekend the last couple of days. I guess that it’s true, looking at the calendar. But you won’t convince me of that.

So you like fonts, you say? So does the Lockergnome! Chris put out this cool article describing a number of font related sites. My personal favorite of them is Better Fonts. Better Fonts has over 10,000 free fonts just waiting for you to download. The feature that sets this site apart is that it has a preview engine set up with buttons on the left displaying the font name in that font; when you click the button a small amount of text (which you can customize) shows in that font.

So what are you waiting for? You KNOW you want more fonts! Go on over to the Lockergnome site and check out the sites or just take my word for it and go to Better Fonts!

I just finished this WordPress theme. Here’s a screenshot:

This theme started as my own theme from scratch for WordPress 1.2. It worked in WordPress 1.5, but it was kinda lame there - not all things worked as they should have. I completely reworked the style sheet, changed the body a background image, reworked all the sidebar items (especially with the sidebar items that I like to use) and reworked a whole lot of the code. I modified it to be more like the Kubrick theme that is released as the default theme for WordPress 2.0.4. Kubrick is a great basis for theme development.

Also, I’ve made the theme widget-aware. Widgets are an easy way to format your sidebar in WordPress. By writing your functions in a certain way and by adding code in a certain way to your WordPress theme, you can use the WordPress Widgets plugin by Automattic to easily set up and modify your sidebar. To use this to its full extent, your theme has to be aware that the WW plugin is installed. The Iowa Autumn 1 theme is widgetized and takes full advantage of widgets. I’ve thrown in a few widgets of my own but they are dependent upon other plugins; I’ve taken that into consideration and only the usable widgets are offered for the user.

You can download the theme by clicking here. Or you can go to the My Mods page and download any of my themes or plugins.

Here are some great quotes, all said by the same person. See if you can guess who the person is before opening up the post:

• “Here’s my strategy on the Cold War: We win, they lose.”
• “The most terrifying words in the English language are: I’m from the government and I’m here to help.”
• “The trouble with our liberal friends is not that they’re ignorant: It’s just that they know so much that isn’t so.”
• “Of the four wars in my lifetime none came about because the U.S. was too strong.”
• “I have wondered at times about what the Ten Commandments would have looked like if Moses had run them through the U.S. Congress.”
• “The taxpayer: That’s someone who works for the federal government but doesn’t have to take the civil service examination.”
• “Government is like a baby: An alimentary canal with a big appetite at one end and no sense of responsibility at the other.”
• “If we ever forget that we’re one nation under God, then we will be a nation gone under.”
• “The nearest thing to eternal life we will ever see on this earth is a government program.”
• “I’ve laid down the law, though, to everyone from now on about anything that happens: no matter what time it is, wake me, even if it’s in the middle of a Cabinet meeting.”
• “It has been said that politics is the second oldest profession. I have learned that it bears a striking resemblance to the first.”
• “Government’s view of the economy could be summed up in a few short phrases: If it moves, tax it. If it keeps moving, regulate it. And if it stops moving, subsidize it.”
• “Politics is not a bad profession. If you succeed there are many rewards, if you disgrace yourself you can always write a book.”
• “No arsenal, or no weapon in the arsenals of the world, is so formidable as the will and moral courage of free men and women.”

Who was the pundit who uttered these words?

Today is the official Talk Like A Pirate Day. I don’t know who started it but I did see it at Dougal’s site; Dougal is one of the main developers of WordPress. Anyway, every chance you get today is a chance to talk like a pirate! I’ve even got Dougal’s plugin installed. I’m typing this as I normally would but today it should be transformed to “pirate-speak” so I’m blogging like a pirate!

It seems that almost every night now, we struggle to make a decision for dinner. When KC goes to Jazzercise (usually three nights a week), she gets home around 6:45pm. It isn’t that we don’t want to eat or that we are limited in what we can eat. It’s just…. well, here’s a typical conversation before dinner:

KC: So what do you want for dinner tonight?
BillH: I don’t know, what do YOU want for dinner tonight?
KC: I don’t know. I just want something quick because I just got back from Jazzercize and it’s been a long time since lunch.
BillH: I hear ya. Lunch was forever ago. So…. what do you want?
KC: I don’t know, what do YOU want?
BillH: I agree with you - something quick.
KC: So…. what do you want for dinner?
BillH: I don’t know - I guess something quick like a sandwich or a canned soup.
KC: OK; maybe I’ll have a salad.
BillH: Salad sounds good; maybe I’ll have that.
KC: Well, a soup sounds good. I’m kinda cold after the workout.
BillH: OK, I’ll microwave us some soups.
KC: Well, I think I’ll have a salad instead.
BillH: OK. I think I’ll have one, too.

I think this conversation that we have many nights is the very definition of FRUSTRATION!!!!

I just finished this WordPress theme. Here’s a screenshot:

This theme started as the Maple Leaf, a theme adapted by Kaushal Sheth and originally developed by Jennifer at Geeks Make Me Hot. While I started with their theme, I heavily modified it. Completely reworked the style sheet, changed colors (just slightly!) all over the place, gave the body a background image (something I really like), reworked all the sidebar items (especially with the sidebar items that I like to use) and reworked a whole lot of the code. Jennifer’s code was originally written as a theme for WordPress 1.2. Kaushal modified some of the code, but it still wasn’t completely rewritten. I’ve gone through a lot of the code and modified it to be more like the Kubrick theme that is released as the default theme for WordPress 2.0.4.

Also, I’ve made the theme widget-aware. Widgets are an easy way to format your sidebar in WordPress. By writing your functions in a certain way and by adding code in a certain way to your WordPress theme, you can use the WordPress Widgets plugin by Automattic to easily set up and modify your sidebar. To use this to its full extent, your theme has to be aware that the WW plugin is installed. The Iowa Autumn 1 theme is widgetized and takes full advantage of widgets. I’ve thrown in a few widgets of my own but they are dependent upon other plugins; I’ve taken that into consideration and only the usable widgets are offered for the user.

You can download the theme by clicking here. And after I get the page created, you will be able to go to the My Mods page and download any of my themes or plugins.

So I installed the WordPress Widgets plugin and have been playing around with it for a bit. For those of you who don’t know, the Widgets plugin make each item on the sidebar modular and create an admin interface that allows you to drage and drop each sidebar item. So the “Archives” or “Links” or “Meta” all are objects that get manipulated by moving around items on the screen instead of cutting and pasting code. It makes changing the design of your sidebar very easy, as long as your theme is widget-aware. The really cool thing about this plugin is that you can modify or create any theme to be widget-aware; there are included instructions to do just that.

It’s pretty easy to make your non-widget sidebar items into widgetized sidebar items. The instructions also tell you how to do that. You can see from my sidebar (which visibly hasn’t changed) that I’ve widgetized the theme and all of the sidebar items I use. Now whenever I want to change the order, I simply go to the Admin Panel’s “Presentation” area. If the theme I select is widgetized, I then click on “Sidebar Widgets” and lay out the sidebar. Pretty cool! The coolest part is that by adding like four lines of code to any theme’s sidebar file, the theme becomes widgetized. VERY cool!

I say “Welcome, widgets!”. Now I gotta gets me some widget-aware themes!

Had a nice surprise today! When I got home, I thought - what are the black dirt spots doing on the driveway? It turned out that the gutter replacement company came by today and installed our new seamless gutters!!

That pretty much rounds out all of our “summer” home improvements. This fall, I’ll be checking in to the cost of blowing in insulation versus adding new fiberglass batts. Either way, I’m going to run extra supports for the electrical junction boxes that our cieling fans are mounted on. All of them need a good cleaning and remounting. Also this fall, I’ll be checking in to the hot tub pump unit. The water is not being pumped through the pipes. It’s either a broken pump or a broken impeller (whatever that is). I can’t hurt it any more than it already is hurt, so I’m going to play Mr. Fixit and try my hand at hot tub pump repair.

That’s where I spent most of my day on Saturday. Sponsored by John’s Grocery (known to most in the area as Dirty John’s), the Iowa City Brew Fest is now it its eleventh year. All profits are donated to the American Heart Association, so it’s not just a bunch of drunks getting together for no reason!! The cost was $10; for that admission you got an eight ounce glass and eight taster’s tickets.

Now, before all you so-called beer aficionados start asking how the Miller Lite or Bud Lite was, let me tell you this: most of the stuff there was not the popular watered-down stuff that you can buy just anywhere. Most of the “booths” had their ales, porters and stouts on display. This was definitely NOT for the Saturday-night-let’s-get-drunk beer crowd. I tried a number of different ales (more to my tastes than the porters and stouts) and found some I’ll have to get more of. My favorite of the day was called Sawtooth Ale, brewed by the Left Hand Brewing Company. There were a number of other really good candidates as well: Sam Adams (of course), Boulevard (naturally!), Sprecher (always an excellent choice), Herold Bronze Ale, Ragin’ Red from the Fort Collins Brewing Co, Flying Dog’s Pumpkin Ale, and a few others. I only remember the ones I took the paper coasters for.

Went up there with Rick, Corey, Brad and Galen; we met Mike and Marc there. And a good time was had by all!

A young couple got married and went on their honeymoon. When they got back, the bride immediately called her mother. “Well,” said her mother,”so how was the honeymoon?”

“Oh, mama,” she replied, “the honeymoon was wonderful! So romantic…” Suddenly she burst out crying. “But, mama, as soon as we returned, Sam started using the most horrible language — things I’d never heard before! I mean, all these awful 4-letter words! You’ve got to take me home…, PLEASE MAMA!”

“Sarah, Sarah,” her mother said, “calm down! You need to stay with your husband and work this out. Now, tell me, what could be so awful? WHAT 4-letter words?”

“Please don’t make me tell you, mama,” wept the daughter, “I’m so embarrassed, they’re just too awful! COME GET ME, PLEASE!!”

“Darling, baby, you must! tell me what has you so upset. Tell your mother these horrible 4-letter words!”

Sobbing, the bride said,