family issues

Posted on March 11, 2011 by Kathy

The biggie is that my mom took a bad fall a week ago today which resulted in two broken vertebrae in her neck and a skull fracture, a deep cut above her left eye and bruising. Worst though is that a CT scan showed a massive brain bleed, her third.

This is sad, but she has effectively been on “borrowed time” for a while now and she had made her peace with mortality.

Never underestimate the ability to compound a tragedy though. The nurses asked if we thought she needed something for pain and then administered morphine at around 8 PM Friday night right after they got her settled in a room. I stayed a while and left with three close family members in the room.

When I came back Saturday morning I found her alone and in severe pain. When I asked, the nurses said that she hadn’t had any morphine since the dose the night before. They couldn’t administer more because with mother unable to speak, the request had to come from a family member.

I still don’t know if the three other family members left knowing this or if they just didn’t think to ask.

I found out Saturday evening that another family member had arrived from out of state, but that again no one was going to stay with mother over night, and that they had encouraged my father to drive home alone. The main entrance was locked by then so I went through security and resolved to make sure she wasn’t left alone again.

So, we had our nights together until mother got to go home with support from hospice on Wednesday. Now that she is at home I am hoping that tending to her diminishing needs is more convenient and that family members are taking commitments seriously rather than vying to be the center of attention and substituting arguing for meaningful communication.

Getting attacked for “wanting to get my way” when trying to provide some comfort to my fragile mother has been very hurtful. There are issues that should have been addressed ages ago. It is very sad but after considering the situation I have concluded that staying away to avoid petty squabbles is the best I can do at this point.

Posted in Rants | 2 Comments

some WordPress tips

Posted on February 23, 2011 by Kathy

More WordPress stuff, inspired by discussions with Carl and Chris.

Categories

When I click on one of my blog category links, for instance Photos, this is the URL that appears (I am not using permalinks):

http://www.kgraff.net/blog/?cat=7

Putting that link into a blog post sends you to a page of blog post excerpts from that category:

My posts with photos

If I don’t want to display the Categories widget in the right column, I can put that link in a custom menu entry to appear elsewhere — Appearance > Menus

Although, as my dad often says, “There is more than one way to skin a cat,” I choose to use the methods that utilize the built-in features of WordPress rather than custom solutions. (Perhaps it is because I did enough CGI scripting before the web 2 stuff became popular to satisfy the programming urges.)

If you do opt for a lot of customization, be sure to look into using WordPress Child Themes – Codex entry. That way you don’t need to do major recovery every time you upgrade WordPress itself, or even your plugins.

Tip 2

This has come up several times in the past week. That is, if you are a serious “code warrior” ditch the Visual Editor. Unfortunately it seems to be the default in the install.

If you are given HTML code to copy and paste (like to embed a YouTube video) the Visual Editor will trash it. If you want to see what your post looks like, use the “Preview” button instead. That works a lot better anyway because it actually applies your WordPress theme.

Tip 3

Not all web hosting companies are equal when it comes to running WordPress. I use Dreamhost for most of my WordPress installations. Although they have a control panel installer and updater, once you get the initial install you can do all your upgrades and updates from within the WordPress Dashboard. It will even remind you when you go into the Dashboard to make a post.

I have managed a number of web sites on a “big name” provider that charges a lot more than Dreamhost. There is only one site left there now. Their installer for WordPress had the 2005 version. (Hel-lo-o-o! this is 2011).

I went around that and did a manual install of the current version which worked, but I found that updating plugins from the Dashboard failed. Had to use an FTP client to remove the old plugin folder and upload the new one, then activate it in the Dashboard.

What was actually most distressing was that when I attempted to update WordPress itself through the Dashboard, it looked like the update took, but I had to contact their help desk to get the ability to edit and publish both posts and pages back.

So, if you are having difficulties, it may not be WordPress but your web hosting.

Posted in Technical | 2 Comments

January’s end

Posted on January 31, 2011 by Kathy

Here it is the last day of January and 10°F (-12°C) outside this morning, freezing rain expected to come tonight. This is a big week though, Groundhog day on Tuesday, February 2, and Chinese New Years on Wednesday, February 3. We are also coming up on the anniversary of snowmageddon.

Need to make a serious grocery run today and it is time to run the car again too. Think that can wait until later in the day when it is warmer.

Web Stuff

I am looking for some beta testers for what we hope will become two popular Armstrong County PA web sites. You don’t have to be a geek, just willing to register and use the sites — save your good content on your local machine until we set up the permanent sites. If you can use Facebook, you probably are well qualified.

The Kittanning Online demo is for people interested in Kittanning PA in general but focusing on history. This site is a combination of WordPress, BuddyPress, and bbPress — a combination of blog and forum. Register to participate and supply feedback.

In addition we are looking to set up a site for people interested in Armstrong County PA genealogy. Please do register on the Kittanning Online demo because that includes some candidate CMS (Content Management System) software. You may also participate in demos for ACGC.

Posted in General, Technical | Tagged , , , | 1 Comment

assorted computer things

Posted on December 29, 2010 by Kathy

I have added a new Contact Page here in the blog. It replaces the form I previously used on my original static site and needlework subdomain.

The story is that I have a domain email address which I use heavily but which I don’t publicize. A couple weeks ago I started getting email messages returned as undeliverable, supposedly which I sent from that account. By judicious use of whois and examining the email headers, it appears that a dating service web site (owner listed as residing in Moskow, Russia) with a domain from a Chinese registrar has been spoofing the From: header with my email address in spam messages directing people to visit their site. Apparently the low life from which they bought their list of addresses to spam included a lot of duds, which is why I was getting all the returns.

I have to admit that using an email address from a domain that is actually owned and run by a woman (even one who is over 60 and celibate) is an improvement over some of the really bungled stuff you see. What I don’t appreciate at all is that this seems to have gotten me blacklisted on several mail services, including AOL where several of my regular correspondents have accounts.

I tried contacting the owner of the domain and the registrar, but email messages to both were returned as undeliverable — even though I was careful to use an alternate email address which should not have been blacklisted — and the contact forms on their web sites didn’t work. Yesterday I registered a complaint with the FTC using their online form here http://www.ftc.gov/spam/.

I had the spoofed email address with “friends of friends” privacy set on Facebook. I also used it in both of the static site forms because using an address from your own domain was one of their security requirements. Not sure exactly how it got out.

Advice from momma Kathy

Fellows, if you are settled in a good relationship, skip this part. If however you still feel that a Russian floozie finds you desirable based on a cleverly worded, unsolicited email message, here is some friendly advice. What your mom, sisters, teachers, and other women in your life have told you will probably work a lot better than sending bunches of money to one of these sites. Attention to personal hygiene really helps. Try talking things through sincerely instead of guessing wrong and then getting huffy. Listen. Listen. Listen. Use your head. For instance, urging your new woman to change her hair style so that she looks more like your ex is NOT COOL. Had you paid more attention to the ex you might still be with her. If you find you need to have an extra chair at meetings to accommodate your “male ego” then work on that. Finally, the people who run these schemes on the internet are often very skilled. Experts have been fooled by supposedly live video. If you are still tempted (and heterosexual) visualize the male geek at the other end of your conversations.

Rant over…

Best wishes for 2011!

Posted in Rants, Technical | 2 Comments

owning up

Posted on December 15, 2010 by Kathy

I am hearing a lot being said about how compromise is good. It is, but you need to be careful, some things are non-negotiable. In the techie world it is often the goal to find what is “necessary and sufficient” for a procedure — no extras. In that case, negotiating a compromise is futile or even tragic. Example: some members of the family want a pet, others don’t, so they compromise — they will get a pup and give it water but no food…

I could see keeping the Bush tax cuts BUT it would be for only one year with that year dedicated to very serious reform of the tax system. Given that the tax cuts shouldn’t have been passed to begin with, that is a very generous compromise.

Sometimes you just have to admit things have gone the wrong way and start over. A couple days ago I picked up a top-down cardigan sweater that I last worked on in May 2009. The sleeves were done to below the elbows and the body down to the waist. I knit a couple rows back and forth on the body, then marked and put the stitches for the openings of a pair of pockets on the front on some waste yarn to pick out later.

The previous cardigan I loaned to my mom when she felt cold while visiting. It was made of natural black (dark brown) handspun wool and was very soft and light. It looked nice on her and went well with one of her favorite blouses. I had the idea that a cardigan would be easier to put on than a pullover when she has limited use of her left arm. That is when I started a second cardigan in dark blue heather yarn. The brown cardigan was returned though because it wouldn’t hang on a wire coat hanger. I ended up sewing the fronts together and have been wearing it as a V-neck pullover.

I decided that I might use a similar strategy to recover the work already done on the blue sweater — sew the front edges together then knit in a facing for a V-neck pullover. While counting the stitches for the pockets, I discovered that there were considerably fewer stitches on the front side than the back. I had forgotten that I had planned to knit a fairly wide band up the front, across the neck, and down the other front edge.

I pulled out the needle and markers and unraveled the sweater up to where the increases for front edge stopped, thinking that I could continue increasing until the front matched the back, then join the stitches to knit in the round.

Another snag, the increases that I had started at the neck edge ended above the armholes. So, I unraveled the arms and part of the yoke and started picking up and counting stitches. Then I went back to my notes and discovered that I had forgotten an increase or dropped a stitch on knitting the raglans. I unraveled further, and still there was a discrepancy in the stitch count. I ended up unraveling the entire thing and wound the yarn into skeins and tied them. They are stacked waiting to be washed now — ready for a clean start.

I can’t complain about the knitting season so far though. I made a new pair of socks and have redone the feet in two older pairs. Also discovered that the Ford City Library has an informal knitting group that meets Wednesday afternoons.

Posted in General, Knitting, Rants | Comments Off on owning up