03/24/2009 - A new way to post

The new blog is live. It would seem that the hours and days of fuss over the Web hosting paid off. After many years of crafting each and every blog page by hand, I grew weary of the tediousness of the task. Each new post meant at least three other pages needed manual updating if I wanted the previous entry archived properly. This, coupled with the fact that I could never establish a reliable comment or tracking service, pushed me over the edge. What I found on the other side was WordPress, which is powering the very page you see before you now.

It feels alien to me, typing a new blog on this busy looking admin page. I suppose I'll get used to it in time. It really was dead simple to install and start using, after all. I have more options than I know what to do with. But I like options. The best part about it? I can finally allow comments on each blog that I create, and each entry will be automatically archived. No more manual creation of pages for the blog. It's both sad and breath-taking at the same time.

What scares me stupid is that I have no idea how it all works in the background. Yes, I got it installed, configured, and customized to my tastes, but the whole program uses programming languages that I am not inclined to learn at this point in my life. And it uses a MySQL database. My best guess is that if my database ever dies, so do my entries. Ho, hum.

The other project in my life is the yard. After nearly 2 1/2 years, the wife and I have decided to do something with the small plot of land we were granted with our house. Up until now, it's simply been a grand (not so grand?) swath of rock and dirt, with a single, lonely navel orange tree occupying the north portion. We've made honorable attempts in the past to make it livable. We've raked the rock, planted the previously mentioned tree, and allowed Sumner to go nuts with the shovels and rakes. But we're on the cusp of something big, I think. We've decided to go with the blank slate approach; that is, we are having concrete poured over most of it. Pavers would have looked finer, but the financial impact was lessened with the concrete.

To better visualize how it stands now, here are a few pictures. I'm very impressed that I figured out how to post these in here already. Either that points to one of two things: the ease of use of this program, or my utter brilliance at figuring things out. I tend toward the former.

This should all go down on Wednesday morning. All in the household are quite glad that we're getting it done this early in the spring season. When this is completed, we should still have at least two months of cool evening weather in which in to enjoy the newly christened patio. Even better is the fact that this will be done before Sumner's 5th birthday, which undoubtedly means his party will be hosted in the yard.

The funniest part about this entry is that it probably won't be seen for a few days. I've not yet decided how I want to reintroduce Outsidetheworld to friends and family, but I do know I am having some sort of launch event. Since writing this post bored me to tears, I can only imagine the effect reading it must have on people, so no...this won't be the inaugural post, I'm afraid. But that statement implies further posts will be full of action and intrigue! We'll see.

But if you found your way down the blog to read this fine entry, good on you. Leave a comment, if you would be so kind, so I know you stopped by. There's more to come where this came from.