All Narfed Up photography and words by Bryan Villarin

Yesterday, I had a problem with editing posts. I’d click “edit”, then the next page would load blank.

Solution: Disable Clutter Free (by Mark Jaquith), which “is a plugin that lets you hide portions of the WordPress posting interface that you rarely (or never) use. Instead of being minimized (and still taking up room), they’ll be completely invisible.” Mark Jaquith will be gone until May 11^th, so until then, I’ll have do without it.

I haven’t changed any core WordPress files, and this was working fine for awhile. Maybe my host updated something that broke this.

Note: For future reference, this post was written in WordPress 2.1.3.

In Bloglines, I currently have the following folders:

• Comics
• Hot Deals
• Miscellaneous
• Music - mainly CD releases
• Personal - friends, blogs that cover scattered topics
• Productivity
• Scrutinizing - feeds I’ve recently subscribed to; in a few weeks, I’ll either move them to another folder or unsubscribe entirely
• Software
• Tech

Questions

• How do you organize your feeds?
• How do you read them efficiently?
• How can you improve this system?
• Are there any articles you’ve read that offer insight?

I installed Automattic Stats last night. It seems to work just fine. Upload, activate, enter your WordPress.com API key, and you’re done!

What’s odd about it is that I don’t see the smiley its supposed to place at the bottom of each page. It works, so I’m not complaining!

Update 4:26pm 5/7/07: Duh! If you’re logged in, it’s not going to track you!

I just uploaded my photos from yesterday, May 5th. It’s significant because it was “24 hours of Flickr.” I don’t think it was the greatest photo-taking day I’ve ever had. I slept in, had a afternoon meeting, then our band played that night.

Help me choose from all the photos I took that day. Here’s some of them:

I mentioned earlier this week that my six-week-old AeroBed got a tear in one of its seams. See “Review: AeroBed Premier Classic (Queen).” Fortunately, it’s fixed! I’ll tell you how to do it in 48 hours!

Note: The following assumes you found the leak(s). This doesn’t require the repair patch.

1. Buy Marine Goop. Home Depot didn’t have Marine Goop, but All Purpose seemed to work fine for me. It costs about $3.
2. Get the cheapest piece of sandpaper. Borrow, if possible, because you won’t use it too long. I just bought a small reusable block. Oh well.
3. Roughen the area of the tear.
4. Apply a generous amount of the goop. I’d say 1 cm thick, and ensure the surface area covers a few centimeters wider than the tear.
5. Let it sit and cure for 48 hours.

Okay, I tricked you — it actually took a minute or two to apply the goop. I’m not sure how long this will hold up, but I’ll let you know. For now, it looks promising! Also, if I have to do this again, I’ve got a lot of goop left, it’s not even funny.

Source: DoItYourself.com Forums

Earlier this week, Chris Marsden Twittered and wrote a blog post about his coming to Pasadena for a few days. So, we had a brief dialog through Twitter, and decided to meet for dinner (at Ichima Sushi) on Wednesday night. I figured he hasn’t had that too often, so it sounded fun. I was right, so he was at my mercy. Fortunately for him, the majority of sushi I order isn’t raw.

We talked about a lot of stuff in the duration of the evening, and didn’t call it quits until 3 AM. Chris is awesome!

The topics included:

• Christianity, church, ministry, community
• money, work
• politics
• cell phones, computers, Windows Vista, Macs
• blogs, RSS, SEO
• music (Christian vs. Secular)

Did I mention that it was a lot of stuff?

So what’s significant about this?

First, we didn’t know each other. I subscribed to his blog since January because of his “Kinkless and my Hipster PDA” post. He hasn’t really been writing much lately about productivity, but I’ve kept subscribed to him anyway. At some point, he got a Twitter account, so I added him.

I don’t think we ever talked or sent e-mails. I had an idea of what he looked like, as opposed to him, because he had no clue what I looked like. (I’m not too shy. I’ve been on Flickr for awhile!) He wasn’t subscribed to my blog for awhile because he switched news readers, and never re-subscribed, so he didn’t see any of my posts or photos for awhile. Yet, he Twittered that he was in Pasadena, and we ended up meeting.

I’ve never done this before, but it was cool how we spontaneously met up. I wish I would’ve told my friend, Bill, to come. He loves talking about most of the things I listed above. I simply didn’t realize that’s what we had in store.

I know we could all interact through our blogs and e-mail. Twitter — or any of the other similar services — is meant for cell phones, and it seems to help bring us together that much more. I wish I could’ve recorded a podcast, but I couldn’t prepare any questions ahead of time.

What do I suggest to you? Get out of your comfort zone! Subscribe to people that share similar interests, and talk to them; you never know what will happen! In the future, I hope I get more chances to do this kind of stuff, especially if it doesn’t heavily rely on money.

Chris, it was great talking and listening to you! I learned so much, and you’ve helped me realize that some of the things that are on my mind aren’t exclusive to me. I’m sure there’s great things ahead for you — I hope you find time to write a bit more so we know what to pray for.

One of my co-workers, Greg, sent this email to all the staff here at Public Counsel. I should have posted this right after I received it 12 days ago:

As some of you know, when I am not working in HPLP I do quite a lot of running. I am the captain of a team that is running in a very long relay race the first weekend in May.

The race is a 199 mile, 12-member team run from Calistoga in Napa Valley to the beach in Santa Cruz, promoting donation through Organs ‘R’ Us (”ORU”). This is a great organization that raises money for the 90,000 Americans (including 2,500 children) waiting for organs, 18 of which die each day before a donor is found. Information on the race and the organization can be found at www.therelay.com.

Your change from lunch one day or change from under the couch is fantastic and greatly appreciated.

I’m sure you’ve heard this before, but how do you get what you want? Just ask! The worst someone can say is “no.” Well, they could add a terrible expletive, then verbally abuse you. Technically, it’s still “no” — an elaborate “no.”

Think about it this way: they could say “yes!”

Other than professional poker players and women, nobody can read your mind! You need to voice what you want.

Story

I have Custom Checking with Wells Fargo. Months ago, I wanted to try their Bill Pay service. It was free for a month or something, then $6.95 after that. If I had direct deposit, then it’d be free. I thought their system would automatically figure it out, but I was naive to think that. Bryan, you’re a moron!

Today, I finally took action and called to cancel Bill Pay. Fortunately, the banker told me that if I switched to Custom Management Checking:

• Bill Pay is free
• the account fee is waived if either of the following are true: direct deposit is setup for over $100/month, or I have a $1000 minimum daily balance

Without hesitation, I accepted the account changes. That’s awesome!

Since I’ve had direct deposit through work for awhile, I also asked if he could credit the Bill Pay fees from the last few months. I was expecting only one month, but he said he could credit the last three months. High five! Yes!

Like this? See other “Money” articles I’ve bookmarked at del.icio.us…