I sold a few things on eBay recently and was just plain AMAZED at the ebay/paypal/ups/usps partnerships that have grown over the past years.  I’m new to this “online postage” thing and “back in my day” (hehe) when we sold something online, gosh-darned-it we had to box it up and go to the post office and stand in line.

<Potter voice ON> And we didn’t even have a fancy computer drawing program to paint us a picture! <Potter voice OFF>

This time, however, I just accepted my paypal payment and from there saw the “print shipping label” link and figured, what the hey.  5 minutes later I was able to print a shipping label for USPS for $2.20, boxed up the item and could just stick the sucker in my mailbox at home.

That was convenience in a cup.

The second item I did?  Same deal, but even faster because now I knew what I was doing.  

Call me Shipmael.

Then I needed to ship a box NOT related to an auction, Paypal, or anything online.  Jaden (our 6yr old son) received a pair of Heely’s skate shoes for Christmas and was hella excited about them.  

And why wouldn’t he be?  I can’t recall how many times I dreamed of going through school halls or down the street with shoes that had wheels in them.  I knew I’d invent it when I got older and make a million dollars.  

Ooops.

Anyway, problem is, they’re a size too small.  So I go to the retailer’s website, and lo-and-behold, they have a great return policy for wrong size.  You just ship them the shoes with a note, and they’ll ship a replacement pair FREE.  They’ll do this only once, but that’s more than fair.  Did I mention they’ll ship us the replacement pair for free?

I box up the shoes and weigh the box - comes in at 3.8 lbs.  I go over to my trusty paypal account thinking I could just whip me up a neat shipping label and…. 

nope.  Paypal won’t do a shipping label unless it’s specific to a transaction.

Oh well.  So I go to USPS.GOV thinking I can just print me up another one of those fancy labels.  And sure enough, I can.

But only for PRIORITY MAIL.

What kind of crap is that?  For one, why is it more than eight bucks to ship a 3 lb box, even if it is just Parcel Post?

UPS Ground was about the same price, but I expected UPS to cost more - they’d get it there in 4 days vs 6 days.  Another issue is that I remember seeing a sign at the post office that said something like “packages over 13 ounces cannot have stamps on them” or some such, so it’s not like I was comfortable buying $8.62 of online postage and taping it to the box either.

A driving force in play here is that Jaden is without his Christmas present until the Heely’s can get to NY and back.  So the 4-day delta is a big factor, especially since I’m the one who picked out the original size and messed everything up in the first place.  Guilt creeps in, makes a bed in my soul and promptly starts snoring.

So I go with the $12.14 2-day Priority Mail option.

While I wait, I peruse the “features and benefits” of this shoe.  No-lie, these are ACTUAL PRODUCT QUOTES FROM THE SHOE.

• Slice through the skate park - ninja style. 
  um, you have to be a pretty imaginative person to equate a 6yr old learning how to skate on just one wheel per foot, flailing about through the park, hugging on every stranger, pet or porta-potty they can get their hands on to not fall down… with a ninja.  Especially a slicing ninja.  
• Synthetic suede and perforated leather upper with text-filled graphic. 
  mmmm, sythetic suede!  And what’s that you say?  The graphic is, hold me down from the excitement… TEXT-FILLED??!!?!! OMG!  I didn’t know graphics could be filled with text!
• Padded tongue and collar add extra comfort and support. 
  I wish all the asylums had that.
• Soft textile lining. 
  Hmm.  a lining made of textile.  You might as well say “this shoe is very shoe-like.” 
• PU midsole. 
  So does this mean the feet come pre-filled with stink? 
• Textured EVA outsole. 
  Best. Outsole texture. EVA. 
• MEGA graffiti wheel. 
  Not just a graffiti wheel, but a MEGA graffiti wheel.
• ABEC 5 608 bearings. 
  I have no idea what this means. 

Many Many MANY thanx go to Dave2 who wisely suggested that I do a LOLcat treatise for my 1001st post on whall.org.  I mean, what says “I have run out of things to say after saying a thousand OTHER things” better than LOLcats?

More specifically -  a LOLcat video.   But not just any video.  An animoto video.  But not just any animoto video.  An animoto video of LOLcats set to Steely Dan’s Donald Fagen’s Tomorrow’s Girls.  (I wanted to use maximum apostrophes).

I had something else in mind for today’s post (specifically, complaining about postage prices and the difficulty of using usps.gov for online postage) but I think you’ll agree this is WAY better.  

Also, as a side note, I’ve decided to give a gift to ALL of you.  I have updated my blog’s theme to support threaded comments.  This means you can reply to the post in general like you always have, or you can reply to a specific comment by clicking the “reply” button under said comment.  Comments with replies will display in a nested fashion.   I’m still testing, but give it a go and let me know what you think.

Skillz.  I has dem.

So, here you go.  LOLimotocats.

Sometimes things are more complicated than they need to be.  Like Macbook Pros running OSx Leopard.  You’d think that the “common man’s” laptop that’s supposedly for the “artist-driven” and “creative” folk would make some sense.  But everywhere I turn, things are just plain confusing.  

More on that later.

This post marks my 1000th post.  I just upgraded to Wordpress 2.7 a few moments ago after writing up the following.  After fixing some plugin issues (a few caused my admin page to give server errors), I came back to edit my post and noticed I had 999 posts.

1000 posts is pretty big.  I wonder if I should give something away.  Then again, I’ve given some things away on past entries that I still haven’t finished delivering (but I will, I promise!).  So maybe the upgrade to 2.7 is my own gift to myself.

This post is about my convoluted Wordpress upgrade.  Wordpress is what I use to run my blog.  I’ve been on Wordpress for a while now (3.5 years) and have been through a fair share of upgrades.  I’m also pretty geeky - I can do lots of stuff from the command line and know Wordpress well enough.  I’ve upgraded other blogs to the latest Wordpress 2.7 without a problem, and usually in less than 5 minutes.

But I have a little problem, as I’ve mentioned before.  With all these upgrades I’ve done over the years, there’s something amiss with the blog.  Specifically, the database has issues.  Anytime I try to do a backup of my blog with the tried-and-true WP-DB-Backup plugin, it fails (stuck at wp_options, and the page doesn’t refresh itself).  

Here’s how stupid it is - this backup hasn’t worked for over a year now.  So, what happens when I go and re-try it again just now, just so I can get a screenshot?

Go ahead, guess.  YUP.  The stupid thing actually WORKS.  So now I have a good backup.  SHEESH.

The other problem I constantly had was when I try to use the built-in Export function of Wordpress, it fails as well (server error 500).  Maybe I’ll be lucky and it’ll work this time.

Nope.  Well at least half of my complaints are still valid.

Anyway.  Where was I?  Oh yeah, failures.  Ok, so now I have a backup.  I like having more than one backup, so I also want to do a MySQL backup *and* a filesystem backup.  I’m putting those in the extended entry below for those of you who’d like to know how to do that.

Now that those two things are done (see the extended entry for additional info), I need to download the latest 2.7 upgrade.  I keep all my plugins, themes, and code in my ~/src directory.

(uiserver):whall:~/src/wordpress > wget http://wordpress.org/latest.zip
--14:20:41--  http://wordpress.org/latest.zip
          => `latest.zip'
Resolving wordpress.org... 72.233.56.139, 72.233.56.138
Connecting to wordpress.org|72.233.56.139|:80... connected.
HTTP request sent, awaiting response... 200 OK
Length: unspecified [application/zip]
    [  <=>        ] 1,849,558      4.80M/s
14:20:42 (4.79 MB/s) - `latest.zip' saved [1849558]
(uiserver):whall:~/src/wordpress > mv latest.zip latest-27.zip

I also like having the multiple versions around, so I move latest.zip to latest-27.zip.

The next thing to do is double-check and triple-check the Upgrading Wordpress guide.  Here’s what I did with this upgrade:

1. Verified my backups
2. Did more backups
3. Said a little prayer for my backups
4. Downloaded the latest wordpress files (above)
5. Deactivated plugins

(uiserver):whall:~ > unzip ~/src/wordpress/latest-27.zip

(uiserver):whall:~ > cd blog
(uiserver):whall:~/blog > \rm -rf wp-includes/ wp-admin/

(uiserver):whall:~/blog > cd ../wordpress
(uiserver):whall:~/wordpress > tar cvf - . | (cd ../blog; tar xfBp -)

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Note: This blog post is also available via audio.  It is read by the author on Utterli.

My 14yr-old daughter is a little spoiled.  She got an iPhone for Christmas.

Let me explain.  The iPhone was not given to her, as you might justifiably think after that first paragraph, and that’s not why she’s spoiled.

In order to get most of her gadgets or relatively expensive things, she saves up and buys them herself.   And she doesn’t get an allowance.  So how does she get these things?

Well, she babysits, for one.  She also does pet sitting.   But that’s not why she’s spoiled.

She also earns money for grades.  You might think she “gets money for grades” but it’s more complicated than that. 

I probably should explain that one also - it’s a “grade earning agreement” we have.  She earns a set dollar amount for A’s and has to pay a set dollar amount (1/2 of the amt for A’s) for B’s and below.  She gets a bonus (50%) for 100’s.  Now that’s incentive, right?  And she always makes money every report card.  She has 6 grades per grading period, so that means she has to make 2 A’s and 4 B’s and below just to break even.

We as parents provide necessary clothing, household items and things a kid “need” to be a kid.  However, anything extra she wants beyond that, like designer clothing/shoes, going to the movies with her friends, going to the mall and buying stuff from top*kopi or whatever it is, comes out of her money.  I got this idea from my parents (kudos to them).

The iPhone definately falls into the “extra” category.  This 16GB iPhone 3G was $299.  She was able to contribute $212 towards the purchase, but she really really really really really wanted it.  She already agreed to sell us her 8GB video iPod nano for $60 (part of the $212) because I wanted a good MP3 for my wife, and she was already familiar enough with the iPod.   That still left $70+ to pay.   I offered to pay for the difference if she gave me her existing phone, the Palm Centro, and then I’d take the risk of selling it on eBay but I get whatever money I make from it.   (btw, she also paid for the Centro herself when she got it earlier in the year)

She agreed, and she got the phone.

She loves that phone.

We all love that phone.

We have a win-win situation here.  Mom gets a like-new ipod nano for way under market value, daughter gets her new iPhone, and dad makes some money selling off a Centro.  There’s still 4hrs left in the auction and it’s already selling for $40 more than I “paid” for it.

And that’s why she’s spoiled. 

Wait, maybe *I’m* the one who’s spoiled.

A coupla weeks ago, the family went down to one of our timeshares on “Bonus Time” which is free-if-it’s-available time anywhere from 2-6 days at any one of 14 timeshares.  We had planned to be in South Padre but Hurricane Dolly had really messed up the island pretty bad and our reserved vacation there had been cancelled due to, well, the timeshare had nearly been totalled.  Our backup plans were Galveston but Hurricane Ike made a mess of that place as well.

Since I still had time off of work, we ended up requesting the Bonus Time at a place not too far away (an hour’s drive or so).  They have a 2-bedroom place w/kitchen and stuff, so it’s easy to while away the time with a few groceries and such.   The place has minigolf, a big game room, a mini-theatre, horseshoes,  playscapes and lots of stuff for the kids to do.

On one of the days, they had Alvin and the Chipmonks playing in the mini-theatre.  Jaden LOVES this movie so much.  So we went ahead and got in the Durango instead of walking, and drove the 1000 feet to the activity center.  He had wanted to play some word games in the car or something, so we did that.  Then we played some more in and around the car since we still had 20 mins before the movie.  He pretended to drive; I pretended to be in the back seat needing to go to the hospital; he pretended to be Darth Vader.  We had us some fun.

We then went into the Activity Center and found the mini-theatre.  We sat in the back and loved the movie together.  We laughed, he needed to go use the restroom, we came back and laughed some more.  When the movie was over, we got our stuff and went to the game room for a little basketball.  We thought about checking out a Connect Four game from the center and playing it but decided we were a lot hungrier than we though so we started back.

As we walked to the Durango I started checking my pockets for the key and I could not find it.  It was not in either front pocket (I usually keep keys in my right front pocket, and money in right left).  It wasn’t in my jacket pocket, either.

Jaden and I went back to the theatre, thinking the key had come out of my pants pocket while we sat back and relaxed in the seats.  We searched everywhere, feeling with our hands along the floor (ick!) and using my blackberry to light up whatever sections we could.  Fortunately the place was cleaner than it should be, so our hands weren’t treated to the muck and guck you’d think would be on the floors of a public free kids mini-theatre.

I started to get a little frantic.  We only have one Durango key because we had lost the 2nd key we had about a year ago.  We never replaced it because of the cost - it’s about $110 nowadays to get these new fangled security fob-key combos.

We retraced our steps in the activity center, looking around the basketball game, looking everywhere we’d walked.  Went back into the theatre and found the light switch, which helped quite a bit.  Still, no key.

At this point I’m thinking about the call I’m going to have to make to my wife to explain we don’t have a car key anymore.  I’m thinking about how much it’s going to cost to replace.  I’m thinking about how we’re out of town with a car without a car key.  I’m thinking about the awesome blog entry I’m going to have complaining about it.  I’m thinking how much I wish I had the remote just so I could push the panic button on it.

Then I get a thought.  I figure, with all that thinking, it was bound to happen.

Maybe I left the key in the car?

Heck, I’ve left my keys in the car before.  It’s not common, but it happens.  Our previous SUV was a 1998 Ford Explorer, and it has a keypad on the outside.  So it was common for me to leave the keys in the car because I could lock and unlock the car from the outside with my code.  When we first got the Durango, I left my keys in with the car locked out of habit one or twice, but it had been a whole year since that happened.

So we started walking out to the car and I was also thinking something else - maybe I left the car UNLOCKED with the keys in it, and someone stole our car!  That would really really suck - being out of town without a key AND a car.

Fortunately a few steps later, my nerves were eased quite a bit when I saw the hood of the durango over the bushes as we walked down the stairs.  I told Jaden “hey, maybe I left the keys in the car” and he said “yeah, maybe we did!”  He’s so cute.  ”I hope it’s not locked!”  I laughed with him.  Nervously.

As we approached the car, I heard something unfamiliar.  It sounded like… hmm, like…. like…. the engine. was. running.

Well, I found my key.

So.  Now I have a locked running durango with the key in it.  Fantastic.  (sarcasm was used for this sentence). 

Oh, and you know what else I realized?  My car had been running… for how long?  yes.  THE ENTIRE MOVIE.  PLUS THE SEARCHING TIME.  That’s almost 2 hours.  Fortunately I had just filled up the night before and the tank still had 7/8 worth of gas.

Good thing for me, *I* knew what to do in this situation.  Instead of calling for help to some locksmith like a wimp asking for them to fix my stupidity, I calmly went inside and asked for a coat hanger.  Surely I can unlock my own car with a coat hanger - I’ve seen this done before (specifically, I saw my Uncle Wes do it when I called him for help like a wimp asking him to fix my stupidity).

The Activity Center girl smirked a little as I walked up to ask for some supplies.  Her smile was a little unnerving, like she knew a secret or something, but still I explained my situation.  She got one of the maintenance guys on the CB and said he’d be right there.  Sure enough, the guy showed up pretty quick with a coat hanger

Oops, wrong wire hanger image.  Anyway, I professed my undying gratitude and said I’ll be back in a bit, hopefully with an open Durango.

Maintenance Guy offered to help, so I accepted.

As we walked to the Durango, he said “oh, by the way, your barn door’s open.”

This did not immediately register. I expressed my best befuddled look and said “Say again?”

He explained.  ”Your barn door.  It’s wide open.”

Having not heard this expression in a looooong time, I finally realized what he meant, fixed my zipper and then realized the source of the Activity Girl’s smirk.  Sheesh.

Maintenance Guy helped a lot.  He had pointed out that he and his buds had noticed the running Durango and joked “hey, free Durango!“.  Hahahahaha.  Real Funneh.  :)  

Never to pass up the chance to use the word “fortunately”, I will point out that fortunately, I had my favorite tool with me - the SwissTool.  With it, I was able to fashion the near-perfect loop and edges so I could grab the top of the lock mechanism.   I was feeling quite the manly man.

Because it was near-perfect and not actually perfect, it didn’t work.  Nope, not at all.  Just got more and more frustrated and my hand muscles got cramped.

Fortunately, I have the stubborn will of an activist judge.  I made some more adjustments and about 25 minutes later, I was able to finagle my way into the locked door.  My fingers were sore, as were just about all the muscles in my hand from twisting and turning the coat hanger through the upper corner of the door/window seam.  Maintenance Guy helped quite a bit by pulling on the door so I had a crevice into which I could navigate the metal rod of capability towards the lock-pull, and giving advice and encouragement here and there.

After we were in the car and properly thanked Maintennace Guy, Jaden wisely remarked “we probably shouldn’t do that again.”  Then he added “it took you a long time to open it, so we should keep the keys when we leave the car next time.”

You, son, are brilliant.  In fact, I think you’re an angel.

Ok, a butterfly angel.

I think I’ll be buying a 2nd key remote this week.

(DITL = Day In The Life)

Merry Christmas to all you awesome people!  I know it’s been 2 months since my last DITL, so I put in a little extra boredom and geek stuff at the end.  However, the DITL is still just 3 minutes.  It’s the bonus time that makes seem long and boring.

I thought about skipping #13 in the counting order like buildings and Presidents do, but what can I say? I’m a rebel that likes to live dangerously.

(Direct Youtube link)

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Note: This blog post is also available via audio.  It is read by the author on Utterli.

My blog is powered by WordPress.  You know, that open source, free-is-all-you-pay, all the OTHER kids are doing it blog software.  Me like it long time.  I host several blogs on my account since I have about as much bandwidth allowance per month as a Congressional Bailout and approximately 17 gobs of disk space available.  I have 100+ domains (some of which were just domain speculation and run nothing but domain parking) and host several blogs for other bloggers, too.

Recently, Wordpress released 2.7 - probably the biggest, coolest, awesomest WordPress upgrade that I can remember.

I’ve upgraded a few folks to WordPress 2.7 for them.  I’ve installed 2.7 and like it a lot.  I’ve even set up a fake blog that anyone can register with and play with 2.7 if they want to try it out before they upgrade themselves.  Yes, that offer’s still open.  I also created a “mu” blog if anyone wants to play with the multi-user version of WordPress and actually create their own entire blog and not just blog with others.

But I have this problem with my blog.  [insert sappy violins playing sad emotionally carrying music].  You see, it was born a long long time ago when WordPress births were still a little difficult.  [pause to compose myself] It’s been upgraded and upgraded and upgraded so many times I’ve lost count. [sniff]  And now, sadly, I can no longer do [sniff] an export of the data.  [sob] I can’t even do a WP-DB-Backup any more! [cry].  All I can muster [sniffle] is a MySQL backup [sob] every now and again just in case something blows up! [uncontrollable crying].

[re-compose myself]

So, I don’t feel adventurous enough to complete a 2.7 upgrade for myself without good backups.  I’m worried that if exports don’t work and the wp-db-backup plugin fails, that the 2.7 upgrade will also fail, and then that’ll mean doing a restore process I haven’t tested.

Maybe I’ll try it over this Christmas break when fewer people are reading blogs.  Maybe now that I’ve slowed down my own blogging over the last few weeks (and thusly, the commenting), I might have the respite I need because business is slow, so to speak.  

Maybe I should try staples like Scrooge, played by Bill Murray, suggests.

I have all these great ideas for blog posts but often don’t act on the impulse to write them down.  Sometimes it’s like I’m thinking about this blog thing like a job and it feels like a chore to go to the blog and write.

Like right there - inspiration.  ”go to the blog and write,” to me, is said Freddy Murcury-style from Fat-Bottomed Girls… “get to your blogs and WRITE!” and now I want to do a whole song about “whall-authored blogs, you make the rockin’ world go ’round”

Sigh.  I just don’t have time to make that kind of quality stuff.

Ooh, there was another idea I had, about petitioning Mike Myers to come back to SNL just so he could parody Rod Blagojevich.   Tell me he wouldn’t be perfect for that job…

And then there’s the MITL - Mac In The Life - that in my head would be so perfect but I just don’t take the time to make it happen.  I even have people pushing my buttons to do it!  So what do I do?  I just call in an utter or two - one impromptu song dedicated to Marty Mankins, Blogography and Poppycede and one soundless dancing video to test the recording and upload capabilities of the MacBook Pro.  Not quite what you’d call quality, right?

So maybe I’ll take the time sometime soon to actually make a blog post.  But for today, you just get these ramblings.  

Well, I’ll give you one piece of advice.  Make sure you back up your computer before the end of the week.  You’ll know why soon enough.  Just get a backup done, ok?

I’m on vacation this week.  

I didn’t originally think I’d be on vacation from the blog, too, but now that I realize the resort’s wifi is only available near the main activities center, and my AT&T Internet card is only 2G (which means “better than dialup, but still slow”), blogging might make too much of an impact on the vacation.  So while my twitter and utterz will probably stay on par as far as publishing pattern goes, it might get a little stale around here.

Then again, sometimes I don’t handle my blogging addiction as well as I *say* I will, so who knows.  I might write 3 more blog entries later today!  

Fortunately, I do a lot of blog READING and COMMENTING from my blackberry, which is not impaired in any way.  So, if I don’t comment on your blog, it’s probably because you’re too boring for me to bother during my vacation.

Haha, Ahm so funneh.

OH HEY!?  Have you tried MAD GAB game yet?  It’s AWESOME.  Look for it.  We got it as an early XMAS gift from a relative and it’s perfect for me.

Just so you’re not left empty-handed today, however, I’m leaving you the dog and cat diaries.

DOG DIARY

8:00 am - Dog food! My favorite thing!
9:30 am - A car ride! My favorite thing!
9:40 am - A walk in the park! My favorite thing!
10:30 am - Got rubbed and petted! My favorite thing!
12:00 PM - Lunch! My favorite thing!
1:00 PM - Played in the yard! My favorite thing!
3:00 PM - Wagged my tail! My favorite thing!
5:00 PM - Milk bones! My favorite thing!
7:00 PM - Got to play ball! My favorite thing!
8:00 PM - Wow! Watched TV with the people! My favorite thing!
11:00 PM - Sleeping on the bed! My favorite thing!

CAT DIARY

Day 983 of my captivity. My captors continue to taunt me with bizarre little dangling objects. They dine lavishly on fresh meat, while the other inmates and I are fed hash or some sort of dry nuggets.

Although I make my contempt for the rations perfectly clear, I nevertheless must eat something in order to keep up my strength. The only thing that keeps me going is my dream of escape.

In an attempt to disgust them, I once again vomit on the carpet.

Today I decapitated a mouse and dropped its headless body at their feet. I had hoped this would strike fear into their hearts, since it clearly demonstrates what I am capable of.

However, they merely made condescending comments about what a ‘good little hunter’ I am.

Bastards! There was some sort of assembly of their accomplices tonight. I was placed in solitary confinement for the duration of the event. However, I could hear the noises and smell the food. I overheard that my confinement was due to the power of ‘allergies.

I must learn what this means, and how to use it to my advantage.

Today I was almost successful in an around his feet as he was walking. I must try this again tomorrow — but at the top of the stairs. I am convinced that the other prisoners here are flunkies and snitches. The dog receives special privileges. He is regularly released — and seems to be more than willing to return. He is obviously retarded.

Whew!  It is a lot of work to host a contest on an external polling site, then have issues with the external polling site, then give people three ways to guess (predictify, comments on two different blog posts and direct email), and then come up with a decent way to display the guesses that make you go “hmm, that’s kind of sexy and interesting… that whall - he’s such a great blogger.”  This is almost as difficult as, oh, let me think, hmmm, maybe…. casting a horary chart to determine a winner?

This time around, there were 26 guesses ranging from 435 to 14368.  This was after I removed and adjusted the guesses that were over 20,000.

The correct answer was 13,551.  That makes the winner…. BEKAH from Eurekablyth!  She wins a $10 gift certificate to pretty much wherever she wants, or I’ll paypal her the money directly if she accepts that.  

Congrats Bekah!

Here’s how everyone fared:

Yes, that’s right.  My daugher had 13,551 text messages in one month.  That’s an average of about 450 a day, or almost 40 per waking hour.  If you take into account that she’s not supposed to have her phone during school, that equates to more like 75 per hour, or more than one a minute.

Fortunately, not only did we elect to have the unlimited txt messaging plan on our cell account, we also purchased “PDA addiction insurance” so that we could enroll our daughter into a 12-step program to eliminate her dependency on constant communication with her friends.