When I was living in San Francisco I studied Chinese herbal medicine as well as Native American herbal medicine. I actually took herbal medicine classes at the house of a Native American while I was working at a Chinese import company and learning about their methodology. The details of those courses of study are for another day. The point is, the Native American herbalist had several cats in her house and none of them were very social.

There were 25 students at the Native American herbalism class. When the single cat appeared in the classroom and began sniffing people and investigating the scene, most of the people in the room were grasping for the cat’s attention and trying to pet him. He evaded everyone’s advances until he got to me. I didn’t try to pet him. But when he made it to my side of the room he looked me over, gave me a sniff, jumped into my lap and went to sleep. And he stayed there for the next hour.

But being a cat person does not mean I choose to live with them. I am a dog person too and I have two dogs. And having dogs is not the reason I don’t have cats in my house, even though my vet insists that I will eventually cave in to the persistent requests of my wife and daughter. Living with a cat is not much different than living with a good friend. It sounds good at first but good friends seldom make good roommates.

I used to have cats several years ago (ok, 17 years ago). They came with the apartment. I lived very well with my German Shepard and two cats until I started dating someone who had a puppy. The cats had “trained” my Shepard. But the puppy had zero respect for the cats and wasn’t bothered by hissing and a little claw scratching. And that drove one of the cats mad.

And by “mad”, I mean insane and vengeful. I remember coming home from work and walking into my bedroom to find my cat looking at me while peeing on the bed. Coincidence? Maybe. Then she did it again the next day. And that was it. I found a new home for her and when I moved out of the apartment (the new tenants kept the other cat, as was tradition) I never lived with a cat again.

I’ll feed a stray if I see one and will still visit them at the local pet store. But my plan for now is to keep living without cats in my house.

When I went into the dashboard, there was the persistent warning from WordPress “Upgrade Now!”. Ok, ok, enough already. I knew it was a bad idea to push the “automatic upgrade” button so I backed up my database and THEN pushed the automatic upgrade button. 10 seconds later, I got the all clear and everything seemed ok. That is, until I tried to login again.

When I tried a login I got the following error, “Fatal error: Call to undefined function is_site_admin() in /xxxx/xxxxx/public_html/wp-content/plugins/sem-google-analytics/sem-google-analytics-admin.php on line 20″. Well, crap. So I went back and used my backup database to restore. Nada. So I looked on the internets and found this great solution but I did have to make some adjustments.

Basically, go into the control panel on your host, go to the plugin section and modify the folder name for the google analytics plugin. When you change the folder name, it automatically deactivates the plugin and the problem is solved. I didn’t have a folder so renamed all of the associated .php files (2 of them) and it did the trick. That was 10 minutes ago and here I am writing a post.

Good luck!

At fist glance, I thought the search box was using the March of Dimes’ website search box since they have a site search box at the top left position of their home page. It looked like Google just pulled down that piece of functionality. But that’s not the case. It turns out that search box in the Google search results listing performs the following query: [search term site:sitename.com] which is using a Google search to look for a specific search term within a given domain.

I don’t think this is going to send shock waves around the world but it is an interesting way for Google to allow for the exposing of more advanced search techniques to users who would not otherwise have the savvy to execute such searches. Apparently Google is expanding their sitelinks to include more ways to get to specific parts of a website. Here is a link to the blog post about their expanded sitelinks program.

Hopefully the WordPress update will fix that issue. In the meantime, I want to get this auto broker site crawled as I’m doing a little bartering with this guy and I need Google take note of the site without image text. And this is a good test to follow the path of scraper bot because this particular site has zero inbound links or link associations. So, here ya go, scraping software, let’s see if I can track your steps…

However, this month my water bill was $754.00! Say what!? How could this be? I checked and rechecked the water bill and I noticed that this month’s bill was an “estimate”. An estimate based on what, exactly? And why an estimation? I looked further.

There was a small note on my bill that said that the meter could not be read because it was “covered with landscape”. If I’m going to suffer a 1500% increase in my water bill because of a landscape malfunction, I had better fix this problem quickly.

The image below shows the state of my water meter and the “landscape” problem. A dusting of pine needles? Give me a break, Dekalb County! Get out of the truck, lift the metal plate, and read the freakin’ meter. Being lazy and/or incompetent is no excuse to gouge customers.

My dad is one of the smartest people I have ever met and he doesn’t have a degree of any kind. But he listens. (He is also a natural math genius, but that’s a different story.) Like many successful people, he learns by doing and he has done plenty. Two of the smartest programmers I have ever met do not have college degrees. Yet somehow, the basics escape so many who have the advanced Pedigree.

If you don’t succeed the first time, try and try again. But for heaven’s sake TRY A DIFFERENT APPROACH!

After hearing the story, it appears that Kid Rock ended up in jail essentially because he is Kid Rock (well, that and the violence). And it’s not like he acted like Ray Lewis, he was really just trying to eat in peace. While Bob (Kid Rock) and his entourage were munching out at the Waffle House they were, of course, recognized. But that wasn’t necessarily a bad thing. Conversations were nice and acquaintances were catching up when a drunk, out of control rap wannabe started barking profanities at a woman who had been talking with the Kid. After many rounds of this degrading name calling, and requests for Waffle House management to call the cops, the drunk was eventually escorted outside.

That’s when things got crazy. The drunk man didn’t leave. Instead, he pulled down his pants, gestured, yelled, ranted and carried on just outside the window where Kid Rock was trying to eat, a mere 1/2″ inch away on the other side of a glass window. The drunk man ultimately punched the window and shattered it, further ruining everyone’s already disrupted meal. No one likes shattered glass with their scrambled eggs. It was this event, this attack, that gave rise to the altercation.

How should one respond to this level of violence in light of non-existent Waffle House security? In lieu of any timely intervention by the authorities, apparently an ass-whipping was warranted, and justified (ok, maybe not justified, but certainly earned).

It is a shame that the ATL proved to be a crappy experience for Kid Rock. Even worse, it is insane that no cops would come arrest a drunken maniac in a timely fashion. But they would show up and chase down Kid Rock’s giant tour bus once the violence was over.

Waffle House will probably make tons of money selling their security video. The drunken man will likely be forgotten. But Kid Rock and his group will end up with mug shot memories of Atlanta, all because a madman decided to attack them.

Luckily my wife has a cold and can’t smell very well. But after a couple of days of not showering, I had to find a solution for getting clean. Hanging my leg out of the tub sucked and duct-taping a plastic bag over my knee was not entirely successful. Plus the duct tape did a great job of extracting leg hair upon removal. So, I decided to try the ever-so-helpful roll of shrink wrap that the movers unintentionally gifted me back in July.

Shrink wrap rocks! I put a paper towel over my knee and wrapped it up like a cold sandwich. I took a regular shower and had zero water leaks! What’s even better is that I used the shrink wrap again to ice my knee. Ever had to ice something only to freeze your hands and get water everywhere? I shrink wrapped an ice pack to my knee and it not only stayed in place, I could actually walk around without disturbing the pack. Sweet sweetness!