word!

Been fiddling around with the website again. Couple updates various parts. Updated Genealogy portion of site, with some more current information and information from the few emails I’ve received about incorrect information. Also tweaked the layout of main page to include genealogy photos on Flickr and information on PHPGedview viewing of my genealogy data. I suppose I should update the gedcom behind that one too! Along with that, changed linkage to Extra Genealogy stuff I had. I don’t know, but maybe I’d like to post somethings to a Blogger hosted Blogspot address, but Flickr kinda does that for me, but doesn’t have all the convergence with blogs that Google seems to enjoy with Blogger and Picasa’s Hello. Hm… I’ll just maintain the status quo I suppose.

The other change of mild interest may be the use of Movabletype to convert/make a website based solely on that software as a cms. It’s interesting that it actually works fairly decent. I’m not sure I’m gonna convert whole site to that though. It’s fairly labor intensive to get everythign to look/act just right and then if it all turned out, who would really be interested in the changes I’d make to the site?

I think it’s neat that you could see the whole site changes in a feedreader like say Bloglines, but then again would anyone other than myself really notice? I think I’d be willing to do it a new totally new website though, as it is kinda cool and whatnot.

So yeah. This site ain’t as stale as it used to be, which is good.

Oh what a raging blizzard it is out there right now. And I’m almost happy. Well it being January 20th and all and this being the first measurable snow of the season, which is a record in my book. Welcome to Minnesota and all that goes with that! I’m excited now to get out snowmobiling in actual powder and drifts and all. Maybe I’ll even make a snow angel, that’s how thrilled I am!

I suppose it’s nothing new that people lose their heads when the weather gets bad, but it’s extremely frustrating. It seems that whenever road conditions warrant speeds near or below the “double nickel”, I get behind someone that is convinced that all traffic should grind to a slow crawl to make up for it. It’s extremely hard to stay behind someone that insists on driving slow and usually in the same direction and distance as you intend. And being blessed with largely north-south or east-west roads, it’s next to impossible to ever catch a shortcut to wherever. Darn drivers!

Funny how the change in the new year only brought a problem to this website, or namely my secretive plan to monitor all those who view any pages on michaelpiotter.com. My log file analyzer AWSTATS kicked out before the new year. I finally tracked down the problem to the way dates/weeks are recognized (See help).

Had an inkling it had something to do with the calendar year ending, but wasn’t quite sure. After firing an email to 1and1 (anything but excellent support) they said they couldn’t find the missing file that AWSTATS said it was missing when I tried updating it. Well DUH, anyone that can ftp can do that thank you very much! So I decided someone else on the ‘Net had had this experience and lo and behold I found the answer.

Lesson learned? Maybe. But now I’m happy to track all the unsuspecting viewers of this site. Oh and while searching for answers to my problem, I was suprised I actually got a mention from Michael, whom I had contacted about getting AWSTATS installed correctly on 1and1 in the first place. Networking rules!