News & Updates in August 2007

I changed the adult content check from the pop-up JavaScript box to a simple form displayed in the browser using PHP. This is only for standard pages, though. The JavaScript verification is still used for when viewing like the directory and file list.

Posted the anime profiles of Zombie Loan, Gilgamesh. Posted the character profile of Nyakko (from Cat Soup).

It might seem to some of you that I have been neglecting my website recently, as the month is already half over and aside from a few DVD reviews I haven't really posted anything. No, I'm not giving up, I've just been busy with on other things in life. First up, my wife is sick with pneumonia. As I mentioned previously, we went to a walk-in clinic at the beginning of the month and after waiting for several hours we got no help at all. That was on a Thursday, so on Sunday we decided to try our luck again, but this time at a different clinic, one called Crossroads. From the moment we pulled up in the parking center we had a good feeling about the place. Unlike the other one which looked like a run-down center for people who want to get sick and die, this looked clean and professional. I know you can't always judge a book by it's cover, but it gave us hope.

We didn't have to wait very long, only like 30 minutes or so, and we were headed into one of the rooms, which also looked pristine. One of the nurses there knew one of Treese's friends from RABA, so that chatted while he did all the standard tests and took all the standard measurements. Shortly thereafter, Dr. Lui entered. He was a very nice man who listened to everything we said. He ordered some chest x-rays and various blood tests, saying that he did believe it was pneumonia and that he wanted to figure out WHY she gets it every year. Yeah, wouldn't that be nice to know! So after a shot of antibiotics, a quick breathing treatment, and a prescription for antibiotic pills and an inhaler, we headed home.

She noticed improvement by the next day, and a couple days later we went back for a follow up. Although she was better than she was on Sunday, she still wasn't feeling too well. This time we got Dr. Reinhart (sp?), who was also very pleasant to deal with. Not all of the tests were in yet, but the ones that were showed she didn't have anything else they were looking for. Well, it's now just over a week-and-a-half later and she still feels like crap. We don't know if she still has the pneumonia or if it's just because of the strong antibiotics she's taking. She's supposed to have another followup this week, so we'll see what the remaining tests will show.

In addition to all that, I've been working hard on getting a new look for my site. I wanted the layout to be pretty much the same, but with a smoother style using rounded corners, softer colors, and smoother JavaScript actions. It wanted to get away from the hard rectangular edges, dark borders, and rough background textures of my current design. I had been working on since last year, but now that phpBB3 is getting close to its final release date, I figured I needed to step it up and get a new design locked down. Why? Because making all the templates for the forum is time consuming, and I didn't want to make a bunch of new forum templates with the current style and then do it all again a few months later when I finally finished the redesign.

Strangely enough, the new style for phpBB3 looked strikingly similar to the redesign I was working on. I liked some of their design choices, such as the circular icons (I was using rectangular icons with rounded corners), so I ended up borrowing some from their design. Hopefully you all will like the new look. I recoded pretty much all the JavaScript from scratch, creating such features a new side navigation bar that can be slid open or closed, and new pop-up information bubbles that can contain HTML and links and lets you select the text with your cursor. If you want, you can check out the test page and tell me what you think. I've tried in with Internet Explorer 6 & 7, Firefox 2, and Opera 9, all on Windows XP. I tried to download the WebTV Viewer but I couldn't find it. Everyone has links pointing to the same page, which was down.

But that's not all I've been up to! I've also been writing MODs for the new phpBB3 message board. Since it's so new, most of the MODs I installed for the current message board don't exist yet, and phpBB2 MODs are completely incompatible. So I've taken it upon myself to write the MODs that I wanted for my board. Here's a quick rundown of the ones I've written so far.

Of course, writing the MODs is only a part of the whole process. I want to make the available for others to use, so I have to provide installation instructions and package them according to specs. I then when I add features, fix bugs, or make other changes, I have to keep track of the changes so I can write instructions for updating. Yeah, it's a pain, but it helps out other people running phpBB3 boards so its worth it.

Posted my review of Avatar: The Last Airbender - Book 2: Earth, Volume 4.

Posted my review of The Muppet Show - The Complete Season Season.

Posted my review of The Tick Vs. Season Two.

Posted my review of Darkwing Duck Volume 2.

Man, whatta week. Treese hadn't been feeling all that hot since Monday, and by Thursday she was positive that what she had wasn't just the flu... it was pneumonia! And she should know, as she's basically gotten it every year since she had her hip replacement. The first time she was even hospitalized for over a week, and her doc thought that she wasn't going to pull through it. Weird thing is, her body doesn't display the typical symptoms of pneumonia; her lungs usually sound pretty clear and she doesn't get a constant fever. Often her temperature will be normal for the most part, with only a few hot flashes that come and go.

When Thursday came, she was hurtin' enough that we decided to head into a walk-in clinic and kick this thing in the butt before it hospitalized her again. After waiting for several hours listing to a TV blaring the whole collapsed bridge story, we finally got in to see a nurse. He was a nice guy, and Treese told him all about her symptoms and medical history as he did his tests. He seemed to understand what she was going through, and told her to make sure she told the doc all about it and the non-typical pneumonia symptoms.

So when the doc, Usha R. Reddy, entered, Treese explained everything to her... even about how one time she was admitted to the hospital for pneumonia the day after she was told by a clinic doc that she definitely didn't have pneumonia because she didn't have the typical symptoms. But, and here's the good part, because she had no fever, heard very little crackling in her lungs, and because it hurt when she pushed on an area of her back, the doc said it was definitely not pneumonia. WTF?!

She tried to explain the inflammation and pain that Treese felt whenever she took a breath as pulling a muscle. She asked if Treese worked at a physical job or did any heavy lifting... uh, nope! She tried to explain the blood in the spit as when you cough a lot a vessel can rupture and cause it... but she hasn't been coughing that much yet! A few fits now and then, but it's really not bad... yet. She said Treese should get some chest X-rays, but since the X-ray tech guy just left they couldn't do them there. So the doc sent us home with no antibiotics, saying take some Tylenol.

Oh yeah, and as we were on our way to the clinic, we got rear ended by some lady in an SUV. We were on Cypress turning right onto Churn Creek, and were stopped part way in the turn waiting for all the cars to go by when BAM! When it was clear to go, we both pulled over into the nearby bus stop area. Amazingly enough, there didn't seem to be any damage to our vehicle. We were all surprised, because it wasn't like she just tapped us. We were definitely jarred, and yet we couldn't even find a single scratch on the bumper.

We exchanged info anyway, and she seemed like a nice lady. The reason she gave was that she thought the guy behind her was going too fast and wasn't going to stop, so she slammed on her brakes and skidded into us. Not sure how that makes sense, but whatever. We were just happy there was no visible damage, and were more concerned with getting to the doc for some so-called help. Yeah, take our $25, make us wait for several hours, ignore what we say and tell us to go home. Some help. Maybe we should move to Canada, they seem to have some pretty good health care.

Oh, and I apologize for not having very many updates recently. I've been trying to get a test version of the new phpbb3 message board up and running, and of course it couldn't go smoothly. For some reason, the server seems to time out 98% of the time when trying to access the test board. I've found that the issue has something to do with the caching, as if I make the cache directory NOT writable, then the board works fine... except that whenever I go to the admin panel and change a setting, I wind up on a blank page with the setting unchanged.

To help in figuring out exactly what's going on, Gary set up a separate test server for me where I could install the board and adjust various Apache and PHP settings. So I uploaded a clean copy of phpbb3 there and... the install page wouldn't show up all the way! Yeah, the bottom of Installation Compatibility Requirements page gets cut off! Which means no buttons to push to continue the installation! After experimenting, I discovered that there is some kind of character limit, as when I added debug statements, the page wouldn't get as far, and when I removed text (such as some of the explanation paragraphs) then the page would get all the way to the bottom. It's just too weird.