It was long overdue, at least for me. It’s my brand-new theme “Basketball from the Bench”. It’s a fluid width; that is, it fills the screen with content instead of only being so many pixels wide. It also is optimally run on Firefox. Although it works just fine in Internet Explorer and Opera, it has some “mozilla-only” code in the CSS to make nice looking rounded corners on the boxes and the tabs.

If you click on the “WPMods” tab at the top, you will then go to my wiki for WordPress modifications. From there you can see a complete screen shot and/or download this theme if you want it. It is also available on WPThemes on this page.

If you like it, try it out. Let me know what you think of it.

I received an email from a buddy (thanks, Ron) pertaining to Thanksgiving. It really hits you, so here goes:

I Am Thankful…..

• …for the taxes that I pay because it means that I am employed.
• …for the mess to clean after a party because it means I have been surrounded by friends.
• …for the clothes that fit a little too snug because it means I have enough to eat.
• …for my shadow who watches me work because it means I am out in the sunshine.
• …for a lawn that needs mowing, windows that need cleaning and gutters that need fixing because it means I have a home.
• …for all the complaining I hear about the government because it means we have freedom of speech.
• …for the spot I find at the far end of the parking lot because it means I am capable of walking.
• …for the lady behind me in church who sings off key because it means that I can hear.
• …for the piles of laundry and ironing because it means I have clothes to wear.
• …for weariness and aching muscles at the end of the day because it means I have been productive.
• …for the alarm that goes off in the early morning hours because it means that I am alive.
• …for getting too much email because it lets me know I have friends who are thinking of me.

KC and I are over at ZDog and J’s house for Thanksgiving. We are hosting KC’s family for Thanksgiving dinner. It ought to be a lot of fun. Thanksgiving is always best when spent with family and friends, and if you’re really lucky both family and friends are in the same group! Ours are.

To all of you and yours, Happy Thanskgiving.

I’ve got it up and running. The wiki, that is. I finally settled on MediaWiki after some debate. MediaWiki is the wiki software that powers Wikipedia, the internet encyclopedia; in fact I’m using the Monobook theme for MediaWiki which is the same theme that Wikipedia uses. I was looking at PHPWiki, Wikka and MediaWiki before making the decision. So I transferred all of my plugins and themes documentation over to the wiki, as well as download links. Now when you click on the “WPMods” button on the tool bar at the top of the page, it will direct you to the wiki with all the documentation and screen shots of all of my themes and plugins. Now that I have that done I’ll probably be blogging a bit more regularly. (Well, maybe not!!)

I’ve also finished a new theme, Basketball from the Bench. The first original theme I created was quite similar to this one in its appearance. This theme, however, has rounded edges (if you use the Firefox or Mozilla browser), quick links that appear as tabs, and has a fluid width. Check it out on the wiki.

Happy Anniversary, Howie and Vickie!

This one makes you wonder what’s wrong with US as a society!

That’s right, I’ve been a little lax at posting lately. Work has me going full tilt – I’ve got to really concentrate if I’m going to meet my second major goal for work. Doesn’t give me much time to do anything else there; not that I post from work or anything but I normally can do other things that I now have to do after work.

I’m also working on choosing a wiki for my plugins and themes. For those of you who don’t know what a “wiki” is, it is a software that is typically used for storing information. It is easily retrieved, edited and appended. Good wiki software includes versioning of the pages as well as the ability to “revert” to an older version in case something goes wrong. The most visible wiki software is Wikipedia, a community driven encyclopedia.

Right now I’m just using a page in WordPress. The problem with that is eventually it will grow to be too large and will take “forever” to open because of screen shots and such. It will also be so large that maintenance on the page will be a nightmare. I’m leaning toward PHPWiki right now; it seems to do what I want and has skins and such. However, I haven’t yet counted out MediaWiki, which is the software that Wikipedia runs on.

Happy Birthday, Grant! (Now he is “terrible 2″!)

If you are born again, do you get a second belly button?

So I went out to lunch today in a group of fellow IT folks. We went to a local restaurant called China Buffet. Hey, you really can’t beat a buffet lunch and soft drink for under $6! Anyway, I stuff myself (as usual) and the waitress brings out our fortune cookies as “dessert”. I pick one of the six (that’s how many of us there were) and pop it open and couldn’t believe my eyes. I thought the fortunes were supposed to be uplifting!?! So, here’s my fortune:

You know what the sweetest thing is about the election being over with? The fact that we won’t be receiving all those phone calls telling us why we shouldn’t vote for this candidate or should vote for that candidate. Also, we won’t have to listen to the media, well at least the mainstream media (CNN, CBS, NBC, ABC) tell us what this candidate is doing and what that candidate should be doing. No more “expert” analysis. Now maybe these folks can go sort out some of the mess at Washington. (Yeah…. right…. like THAT’S going to happen!)

In our local race here, longtime Representative Jim Leach was defeated by Cornell College professor Dave Loebsack. Great. That’s just what we need. Jim Leach, who knew clues existed but didn’t have one: he had been in government entirely too long. Now Dave Loebsack, who doesn’t even know clues exist: he’s been in college academia which is about as far removed from real life as you can get. Worse yet, he’s a professor of political science; I guess now he’ll find out that the real political world is nothing like what he’s been teaching. And it goes without saying that the real world is nothing like the political world or academia.

Take some time and vote today. For those of you in Illinois, please only vote once. But please, everyone, go exercise your right and vote.