Okay! I figured out all that business with the redirects so the new design is up and the URL for the website has changed slightly. Please update your bookmarks, especially if you are subscribed to the RSS feed. I think I fixed everything I broke in the process, but please let me know if something isn't working.

OK! I finally finished hacking the new design into Movable Type. I'm still tweaking it and making changes, but I think I'll have it up as soon as I figure out the best way to move all the pages into the proper directory. The next project is to redesign that aging old front page, but that will come in due time. (Which of course means, "maybe by the end of the year? Mmh?")

From the file of things I've been meaning to share: I'm not usually about the puns, but not too long ago Sporky posted a little Food Network bit that made me chuckle. I give you Sioux Chef.

It's been a while again, but I have been thinking of you, dear friends!

Last night I got some inspiration on how to redesign things (finally) thanks to some anime blog I found while looking up some comedy about Japanese schoolgirls that my roommate has been obsessing over. The show leave quite as much of an impression as that site's design did, and when I found the layout was open-source I quickly appropriated it for my own purposes.

The redesign will be up here as soon as I finish hacking in the Movable Type codes, but you can see the mock-up I've been working on over at the temporary test site. Check it out and let me know what you think!

Doing some more work on the more mundane parts of the site. I think I have a solution to our comment spam problems up and running, and I should have done it much sooner. Viagra robots are accounting for about a fifth of our bandwidth usage right now--which doesn't take much, admittedly, but it is a bit unsettling. Most popular for some reason was this entry about flan.

Anyway, among other things, I integrated more of my old writing in with the Movable Type 'blog here. Some of it is pretty telling as it concerns my current situation, and I'm kind of surprised. I had thought things were going pretty well before last year. But now I'm starting to remember that even in my first couple of semesters at Iowa State--around the time I wrote this, in fact--I was seriously considering transferring to the University of Minnesota. If only I had gone through with it; probably it would have saved me a lot of misery. Shucks, if nothing else it would have totally saved Jesse's last Minneapolis trip.

But I suppose that's all in the past.

Here, let me change the subject very quickly: I saw a strange bumper sticker while driving for work the other day. "NO PAIN, NO JANE," with white letters over red background on an otherwise unadorned black Nissan pickup truck. I wondered what it could possibly mean. Was it a euphemism for wifebeating? The pickup truck of a weekend dominatrix? The mark of some kind of sadomasochist drug dealing cartel?

I made a note of it, and when I looked it up later it turned out to be the slogan of some yuppie ski resort in Colorado. Disappointing, but not a big surprise. While riding out to New York in April, I saw a much more impressive bumper sticker near Iowa City that read only "Osama Yo Mama," without even a copyright mark to explain why. Ever since then I've been checking out the rear ends of passing cars, waiting for something better than "Osama Yo Mama." I don't know that it will ever come.

BONUS SOMETHING-OR-OTHER: An intar-web friend--I think on a dare from noted collage master Chris L. Seebe'oh--created a collage of bassoonists. Also bassoons. What. It is five in the morning and this is all I have for you. Please DO NOT QUESTION.

Are you sure you want to delete the 45 comments?

Writing from South Dakota now, sitting up at 2 am on Christmas Eve (technically) clearing out the spam on This Old Web Site. It’s a big hassle. I'm thinking that once I get back to Iowa, I'll start testing out the new version of Movable Type over on the test site. (Note to self: this plug-in might work too.) Hopefully I can have something better figured out by the end of the year so that our site can actually be usable again--for us, anyway. But that's where that stands.

~

Otherwise: the last couple of months have been quite eventful, haven't they? I've been working like a bastard and not had time to comment on Current Events, but I've been reading the newspaper pretty closely and keeping track of things. My only observation that I don't think has been covered thoroughly is that in my home district, none of the twenty or thirty incumbents up for re-election--from the President of the United States all the way down to the county commissioners--was defeated. Despite all the fire and vitriol spewing forth from all angles about What is Wrong With This Country, it seems like we're pretty happy with things, at least around Iowa. I would hope that it is different elsewhere.

~

I'm going to try to keep it short for now but for the record, I stopped by the Ropeadope New Music Seminar when it stopped by Des Moines last month. I didn't catch all of it, but I did get to see Matt Haimovitz, Charlie Hunter, Bobby Previte, DJ Olive, Lyrics Born, the ever-charismatic Sex Mob the lethargic Benvento/Russo Duo and the main attraction: an extremely obese, middle-aged man in a tie-dyed Grateful Dead T-shirt bouncing around the joint like a giddy schoolgirl. Quality.

OK. I'll be in Rapid City through Monday; give me a call if you will too.

Went to a "technology night" at school tonight and learned how to use Macromedia Flash:

I was expecting it to be harder to use. Maybe I just haven't gotten deep enough in yet, I dunno. At any rate, it was a good reminder to install my "copy" of Flash (and hope it doesn't give me teh virus.)