Life on the Road

I’m really enjoying all the new “toys” that are out there…  The blog itself being the first and most basic one.

My newest discovery is Flickr, an online “photo album” with some really nice photo sharing tools.  Check out the animated “badge” over on the right sidebar - a collection of cute (if I do say so myself) photos of our kids.  It’s currently WAAAY down there at the bottom, though…  I think I need to rethink how to order things on the sidebar.  Maybe it’s even time to move to a template that has sidebar space on both sides?

I’m still getting to know all the things that are built right into the WordPress software that I use for the blog itself.  It has so many things that I haven’t had the chance to experiment with — I don’t even know what I don’t know! 

The biggest thing I need to find out right at the moment is how to get the darn photos to stay put!  The editor has an html view, so I can look at the post that way and add in a couple of paragraph tags or line breaks… But somehow the software, which obviously thinks it is a far better judge of such things than I, removes them during its “validation”!  And sometimes it will look fine in the “preview,” but not when posted.  But typically the text and photos all flow together and create a very sloppy looking and disorganized mess.  I have found a few ways to cheat it into leaving a blank line to space things out - but that kind of “hard coding” only works for viewers using the same screen resolution I’m using when I set it up.  The technical writer in me is horrified every time I look at the blog — but so far I haven’t found the answer.  If you know, PLEASE share!!

Another thing I will definately be doing in the fairly immediate future is putting up a separate “blog” for our Team training site.  My vision is that I can use the blog itself to send out announcements and such, while posting information that remains useful over time (training, important links, sample flyers, etc.) on the static “Pages”.

Right now?  Time to leave this all for another day (will that day EVER come?) and try to get my fussy girl to sleep.  I can hardly blame her, since it’s hot and humid and generally unpleasant here, even at almost 11 pm.  I think “the State of Misery” is a fairly apt slander… 

We’re definately having mixed results with out latest tech endeavours.

The blog move went swimmingly.  Got the database configured, imported the posts from the free blog site, configured the display, and we’re off and running.

The other project we are (okay, Wolf is) working on is getting a network set up.  Right now, the Verizon wireless broadband card is plugged into the “old” laptop, and the “new” latop (which can’t take the card) is only able to get online if we’re at a WiFi “hot spot.”

Out technical advisor (and next-door campsite neighbor!) is Rich, who wrote The Digital RV.  (We also enjoy keeping up with his blog).

So we purchased a router, which takes the Verizon card and broadcasts a wireless signal - so both laptops could (theoretically) be happily online together.  But it’s not working well.  Everything seems to check out fine, but the laptops won’t stay connected to the wireless network.  Hmmmm…

Well, we’re settled at our campsite in Prescott, AZ, where we’ll be until Tuesday.

The moving that’s going to happen now is all in cyberspace.  We started out with the free blog offered at wordpress.com, but we’ve decided to take control of our own destiny. 

I downloaded the free software from wordpress.org and installed it on our server.  Since we already have our Work at Home - Daily Pay website up, we are going to post the blog as a sub-domain there.  It looks like we may even be able to use the software to finally get our team training website in gear - also as a sub-domain.

I appreciated their simple online instructions, and it really was a 5-minute installation.  Our web host uses cPanel, so it was easy to create a database, then just ftp upload the software and it installs from an online command screen.  From then on, it can be manipulated from the same “Dashboard” interface that I’m used to from the free blog site!

Well, enough for now… our big push for the time we’re here is to consolodate our two storage units into one.  I’m tired just thinking about it!