MichaelandChrissy.com

For some odd reason, I decided to photograph all of the tow trucks out of my Transformers collection, apparently to show that there aren’t too many.  But maybe I was too hasty?  It turns out that there were some Micromaster tow trucks towards the tail end of the G1 line.  I just started collecting Micromasters recently, so I didn’t realize that these existed.  But who doesn’t want new tow trucks?

Excavator, from the Constructor Squad, was half of a Micromaster combiner tow truck.  The front end of the truck, Stonecrusher, also has a towing hook.  So they can drag people around both coming and going.  Slow Poke, from the Monster Truck Patrol, also has a towing hook.  I’m not sure why a monster truck would need to tow somebody, but maybe other monster trucks are prone to breakdowns?

And then the movie series added a repaint of Longarm, this time decorated like the truck that Mikaela drove in the movie (complete with paraplegic Bumblebee).  The inside of the package is painted up like the scene from the movie, so it’s a decent representation all by itself.  This set is pretty nice, considering that we get half a Mikaela in the driver’s seat.  Look, she’s acting!

This is the weekend for Chrissy’s three-day scrapbooking retreat, so I’m at home alone with Aiden until Sunday.  This shouldn’t be a big deal, since we’ve done this before.  Aiden is now seventeen months old (last time he was only five months old), so this weekend should be much more enjoyable (last time it was nerve-racking and overwhelming).  It’s relatively easy to spend the entire day with Aiden now, reading his counting books to him or playing with his blocks.  I’m a good dad (last time I was a new dad), so I’m actually looking forward to the next few days.

The unfortunate part is that I will need to leave as soon as Chrissy gets back on Sunday afternoon.  Leave and not come home for a week.  It’s not like I want to stay away from home, but I’ve got a five-day training class up in Schaumburg.  It’s easily a three-hour drive during a snowy rush-hour, so I’m just going to stay in a hotel for the five days.  Sadly, that means that I won’t see Chrissy or Aiden for nearly a week.  At least I’ll get to hang out with the boy for a few days before I go.

There have been a lot of custom Transformers accessories coming out recently, like the coronation armor for Hasbro’s MP Starscream and the scale-model figures of Spike and Sparkplug.  As cool as they are, they tend to be overpriced, the type of thing that I may buy at a Botcon (where money is drained like water) but not during any other day of the year.  The new custom Sharkticon tail falls under this category.

Don’t get me wrong, this is a terribly cool idea.  Sharkticon tails are notoriously difficult to come by.  I searched forever to find mine.  Even better, the custom tail marketing is awesome.  “Does your Gnaw suffer from Short Tail Syndrome?  Now your Gnaw can feel like a REAL Sharkticon!  Size matters to this fembot!”  You almost want to name him Bob and put oak panels behind him.

The problem is the price.  At a buy-it-now price of $19.99, it’s more costly than a vintage Sharkticon tail, and that’s before the shipping price is tacked on.  I’d like to see these mass-produced and sold for $9.99 at Botcon, perhaps packaged with a custom Sharkticon sticker set.  I would definitely pick one up.  Actually, I might pick one up at full price if I spot them at Botcon (in a moment of weakness). 

Today I finally got around to editting the video from Christmas morning.  Aiden emptied out his Transformers stocking and found three “rumble” cars and a pretend phone shaped like a cow.  Aiden loved the cow phone, and didn’t pay much attention to anything else coming out of the stocking.  Unfortunately, the video from the first attempt was filmed sideways, so we had to do it again.  The second try was sort of forced at first, and it shows a little in the video. 

The next video was from shortly after Christmas.  Aiden loves to play on the keyboard while we’re at the computer, and we had wanted to catch this on film.  He usually begs to be picked up, and then plays with the mouse when you put him in your lap.  Sometimes it’s scary because we’ll be working on something, and we’re afraid that he’ll hit a key that will break whatever we’re working on.  No catastrophes yet though.  Eventually, Aiden will end up being a techie just like Daddy. 

Our web site has finally made the move to WordPress.  Doing so was no easy task, since it meant having to move to a new internet hosting provider.  The worst part of it was transfering all of the blog entries and photo gallery items.  The photo gallery was a total pain because it required so many steps; it was literally a project all by itself.  I also had to make some changes to the WordPress pages, but luckily the learning curve wasn’t too high. 

I had to take a quick crash course in WordPress functionality.  The system is really rather robust.  I’m very impressed with it, and it’s relatively easy to use.  I was able to bend an existing theme to my iron will in a matter of days, including separate templates for the blog and photo gallery.  And the best part is that I can very easily switch themes whenever I want for a change of pace.  I really like the one that I have though.  I’ve also installed a number of helpful plugins, including a CAPTCHA anti-spam plugin and a Twitter output plugin.

The downside is that all of my old blog posts are still on Google.  Although I was able to transfer the blog content to WordPress, all of the links out there still point to pLog.  I’m going to try to set up a redirect that will send all pLog links to my new blog.  At least people won’t end up with a 404 error.  In the meantime, I should probably queue up Google to spider the new site. 

I’m still in the process of moving our web site to a new hosting provider.  I wanted to keep my photo gallery pages intact, but to do so I need to migrate the database and all of the image files to their new home.  Getting the Gallery2 software updated on the old site was like pulling teeth, however, thanks to the world’s least supportive technical support team. 

For some reason, it took them a whole week to run a single “chmod -r” command.  A whole week to do something that should have taken five minutes!  The Gallery practically updates itself, all you have to do is ensure that the data directory is writable by the update script.  Well, mine wasn’t.  All permissions were 644 — safe and secure, but the script wanted 777 across the board.  The technical support people first refused to do it, then escalated the task to their admins, then ran the code non-recursively, and finally got it right on the fourth try.

The fun part came once the permissions issue was resolved: I had to update the version of Gallery2 on both sites, clear out the caches on both sites, then back up the MySQL database in the old instance and reload it into the new instance.  Several bits of trial and error later, the new site had a working database that properly linked all of the files.  Once it was running, I was amazed with myself.  I was afraid that I would have to go back and reload each photo gallery manually, which would have messed up all of the image ID numbers.  

To finish things up, I then set up a redirect on the new server that would send all of the old gallery links to the new gallery instead.  This would keep me from having to update every image link that I’ve ever set.  Now that the photo galleries are done, I just need to add some photos to the static web pages and then we’ll be done.

My first official act of 2008 was to trudge outside to clear the driveway of the snow that had come down hard all night. The snow proved too difficult for my single-stage Craftsman snow thrower, however. It has plenty of power, a 5 HP Briggs and Stratton engine, but the green plastic body wasn’t up to the task. The ice scraper on the bottom of the auger cowling snapped right off. Without the ice scraper, snow was being shot out behind the snowblower, and it left a half-inch deep layer of snow in its wake.

I thought that it was pretty sad that I had to shovel even after snowblowing, but it was only half an inch deep (preferable to two feet). That covered my exercise for the day. Three years ago, we chose a 5 HP Craftsman single-stage snowblower when we moved into our house because we hadn’t gotten more than a foot and a half of snowfall in the previous few years. After all, we only needed to clear the driveway and sidewalk, and both of them were paved flat. This year, however, we’ve already had two snowfalls of over two feet. The single stage was a good choice at the time, but now it was time to upgrade.

Chrissy looked up snow thrower reviews on the Consumer Reports web site while I was outside shoveling. Consumer Reports voted the Craftsman 9 HP snowblower into second place for two-stage gas snow throwers. After the plastic tore free from our smaller model, we decided to try the two-stage with a steel body instead. It’s a huge monster, probably more machine than we need, but it was on sale for only $100 more than the smallest two-stage model. I nearly threw my back out getting it into and out of the CR-V. It didn’t help that it turned out to be broken when we got it home. We exchanged it with no problem, but I had to lift it four more times before the end of the day. I’m hoping for better luck this time.