Author: Mark

Mark works as a [REDACTED] for [REDACTED], currently residing in Iowa. CoffeeBear.net is a place for him to blather on about whatever strikes his fancy. He currently spends his "free" time working on a photography project, playing with his cat and attempting to keep his wife happy (not necessarily in that order).

While working on my changes to the VectorLover theme I happened to look at CoffeeBear’s stats; where I noticed somethng odd.  An ancient post (all the way back to ’04!) was receiving a couple of hits from Twitter of all places. Now I’ll admit the post was not my best piece of writing — in fact it was mudune and rather dull — so I was curious as to why it got somebody’s attention.

I checked out the tweet but that didn’t make any sense.  It didn’t help me to figure out what was going on that the tweet used is.gd to shorten the URLs. Eventually I realized that the person who tweeted my post just made a typo.  Yup, they used a lower-case “k” in the shortened URL when they should have used an upper-case “K”.  That’s all it took to send their traffic my way vs. their intended destination.  Oh well, I guess nobody really is listening to me reading my posts.  *sigh*

I recently added a couple of plugins to this site (and a friend’s that I maintain) to try making administrating them easier.  Both sites also happen to use a plugin to crosspost to LiveJournal and now things are acting flaky.

I’ve disabled the most likely culprit and now am writing this post to see if I’m right about which plugin is causing the problem.  Wish me luck.

Side note: Our snowblower stopped working during the last snow-storm.  The engine runs, but the auger stopped turning.  This weekend we got a bunch more snow, so I opened up the snowblower, figured out what the problem was and fixed it.  I fought the snowblower and I won!  🙂  Unfortunately while troubleshooting it, I also fought my vice-grips and the vice-grips won (I’ve got the blood blister and cuts to prove it).

UPDATE: My first guess was wrong but I’ve figured out which plugin is causing the problem and deactivated it. For the record, Referrer Detector & LiveJournal Crossposter do not play nice together.

I’ve been posting notes about this under New Look, but figured all the changes deserved their own post. Since I’m going to keep updating this post with new information until I decide not to, I’m marking this as a sticky post and hiding the real changes below the fold. Additional note: I’m doing the vast majority of this work over at my devblog, so it may be some time until the changes show up here.

UPDATE: I’ve removed the sticky setting from this post, as I’ve completed all the work I intend to do for now on this theme. Lastly, I’ve setup a page where any new information on VectorLover2 will be released and I will be posting a zip file of VL2 there for people interested in my version of the theme.

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As mentioned before, I’ve been going to the dentist getting my teeth fixed up after slightly more than a few years of neglect1. Monday started the next round of pain2. A couple more fillings on one side of my mouth and a sealer to try preventing a cavity from forming on a back-tooth. The dentist did a good job of numbing the area she’s worked on but even with the numbness it was still highly unpleasant.

I mean seriously the numbness only goes down so far but the vibration from their tools penetrates much further. Plus there’s the distinctly nasty scent of burning tooth from when they drill. *shudder* And if that wasn’t bad enough, my sinuses have been acting up. Which lead to me feeling like I was choking a couple of times while the dentist was working inside my mouth. See they’ve got this mouth-spreader/suction device they shove in first but if you don’t keep your tongue in just the right place the suction doesn’t work. And keeping your tongue in that exact spot gets tiring, so you move around a bit; mere moments later you’re choking.

On the bright side, I think I only have 2 more punishments visits left to fill in cavities.  Also the dentist office appears to have over-charged me on a previous visit, so I after all the fun I got to leave without whipping out the wallet.  Yeah, I’m just skipping with joy and happiness.  *sigh*

1 What can I say, I hate going to the dentist.
2 When my dental insurance says they won’t pay anymore for the year, I have to start scheduling my suffering for the next year. My pocketbook and I can only stand so much misery before calling it quits.

  • Celebrating Obama’s election.
  • Trying to work my way through 100 push-ups, but having to restart a couple of weeks.  Especially week 4 which I’m currently on restart #3 due to holiday & snow-shovelling madness.
  • Panicking over the economy.
  • Beating my head against wxPython & Py2EXE.
  • Twittering
  • Enjoying a very Horrible Christmas1.
  • Reading a lot.
  • Pining for a new camera.
  • Buying new shoes as the sole of my old shoes had worn away enough to leak water in under the ball of my foot.
  • Attending holiday festivities with friends.

Update: Forgot to mention I was also participating in DrawMo, which is like NaNoWrMo but for artists. Well, I was sort of participating. In that I tried to draw something new every day but didn’t quite make it every day (but I did catch up on later days) and I’ve yet to scan/post my sketches for it. *shrug* Oh well.

1 Highly recommend both the soundtrack and the DVD, 5 stars, 2 thumbs up, etc, etc…