Augie Bytes

After being really pumped at the beginning of the season, I’m completely deflated after this past weekend. The season started for me to be the first season in which I was actually rooting for 2 teams. I’ve been a life-long Packers fan and will continue to be regardless of the direction they take in the coming years. I also became a huge Brett Favre fan over the years he played, so I was really rooting for him and the Jets as well. The Pack seemed to be pretty sturdy at the beginning of the season even without Brett, but after the defeat by Dallas they just fell apart. They were still a good team, but they seemed to lose the swagger after that loss and didn’t have the confidence to finish games. The Jets didn’t start out great but started looking great in the middle of the season. Their wins over the Titans and the Pats made them look like serious contenders, but after that it was like a completely different coaching staff was calling the games. They didn’t do anything right. They didn’t run, they didn’t rush the passer, they didn’t stop the run…

The end of the regular season brought it’s misery with the Jets just missing out and the Pack being set for watching from home for weeks now. But I still had some teams I was at least interested in watching. I think the fact that the Dolphins were actually acting like men playing a GAME and having fun with it was exciting. Since the Jets weren’t going, I figured I’d root for Miami. There was also the Colts, who I’m no huge fan of, but my wife really likes them so we were kind of pulling for them too. Especially if it could mean watching Peyton beating down his stuck-up little brother…

So yeah, the first week of the playoffs has come and gone. Fish got killed, Colts forgot to show up against an inferior team, and here’s what we have…

Baltimore Ravens at Tennessee Titans
Yawn… I can’t think of a game better suited to put me to sleep…

Arizona Cardinals at Carolina Panthers
This will likely be good game and I’ll root for the Cardinals. I like Fitzgerald and I’d like to see James get one more crack at it after the Colts did him SO wrong a few years back…

Philadelphia Eagles at New York Giants
Hmmm…. Two teams I can’t stand at all. Hope they beat the living snot out of each other…

San Diego Chargers at Pittsburgh Steelers
Did I say I couldn’t stand the last two? Well I HATE the bolts and their cocky QB Phillip Rivers, so I guess I’m pulling for the Steelers in this one.

So as little interest as I have in any of these, that’s where I stand on those games. I’ll likely skip the games this coming weekend and read a good book. We’ll see what we end up with whether I actually watch the SuperBowl…

I think all the galleries are updated correctly now and the gallery pages are back. The audio files now work as well.

I’m still working on getting all the old comments back in place and then I think the site repairs will all be done. Whew…

Just love all this work. Stupid hacks…

Well, the site is mostly back to normal now. I still have some image gallery issues I’m working through because they are numbered differently than they were the last time due to me not re-creating the Invader Zim galleries. In some ways, I’m kind of glad that this happened because it forced me to update my WordPress sites to the latest software. As Cory had commented a few posts before, this is a pretty nice new version (2.7) and now that they’ve got the auto update feature in place, I should be able to keep up without fretting that I’m going to break the site every time they release an update.

As stated in the last two posts, this blog was horribly behind the curve with software updates and I got hacked. Hidden porn links galore… barf…

I’ve upgraded to the latest and greatest version of WordPress now and hopefully the new “auto-updates” feature will keep me in line this time.

So while I was able to save some of the old posts via an export file, many of them I’m having to re-create by hand from an old snap-shot back-up I have of the site. Pages and Galleries are being re-created too, so it’s going to be a bit “broken for a little while.

The Invader Zim Gallery will be last, and I’m thinking of dropping it completely. It was a huge project to build, but the original version I built can still be found at the old badbadrubberpiggy.com website.

Got the look and feel back.  Still have to recreate a TON of posts from 2008 and decide whether or not to recreate all the image galleries…

This stinks…

OK, here’s the deal.  Some moron hacked my old blog and messed it up good.  Serves me right for not upgrading, but WordPress just LOVES releasing new update all the stinkin’ time and I just don’t have time to  keep up.  Ever heard of auto updates guys?  It’s neat and most other software has been doing it for YEARS!!!

OK, I feel a tad better.  Wait, no I don’t.   Grrr…   I’ll have to try to reclaim the rest of the posts I couldn’t save…

Later…

So here I sit at work wondering if I’m about to fall backwards in to a pit of burnt building debris. Here, I’ve scribbled a little picture for you…

As some of you know (yes I know I completely failed to post about it) the building next to us was completely gutted by a nasty fire this past summer and now they’re finally clearing the plot. But as I sit here in my office I keep hearing the rumble of bricks and timbers and whatever else they are digging up over there. The building shakes every time they dig in and when I took a walk, I saw that they are literally scraping the old building off of ours!

You see, the buildings are in an old downtown setting and the walls are connected, which also explains why we were so worried our building would burn down too! But now my fear is that the big crane/arm/digging thingy is going to break right through the wall and take me out! And if doesn’t get me, I fear many of my office toys will perish…

Yeah, I know… I really stink at this “blogging” thing. Thousands of ideas, no time to post them. Oh well, I guess you have to enjoy what little I do post…

So we chose not to pay the ridiculous prices for school pictures this year and opted to take our own pictures. I think Sheila did a great job with it, and those of you who normally get pictures of the kids should be getting copies in the mail in the near future. We’ll be getting them printed soon. But for now (and for those of you not worthy of printed copies) here are some digital shots to enjoy…

But really, that whole “not worthy” thing was a joke! If you want copies, let me know…

A lot of people here in Michigan crack me up. With the first snowfall of each year, they start grumbling about the snow. They wake up to a beautiful white blanket of snow out the window and immediately become grumpy. They drop their kids off at school and they’re grumpy. They come in to work all grumpy. Many also seem to forget each and every year that the stuff makes the roads slick and they run in to things (and each other). I just don’t get it.

We are in MICHIGAN for crying out loud. If you really dislike the snow, why on Earth do you live here? It’s not Minnesota or Colorado and certainly not Alaska, but one thing you can count on here in Michigan is that it will (a) get cold and (b) snow. A lot. The specific area we’re in, we also get additional lake-effect snow from the lake.

I for one am not a fan of the summer sun for any length of time. I despise being hot. Therefore, I do not live down south where it is notoriously hot all the time. I actually like the colder weather up here. A perfect day to me is in the mid-60’s and sunny. Fall preferably so that I can enjoy the colors and the smells such as burning leaves. But I haven’t forgotten how to have fun in the snow. So once it falls and sticks around, I’m out with the kids throwing snowballs, making forts, and (although I completely missed out on it last year) going sledding!

Well anyway, I need to get to my work. Just had to rant a little since I just got the first wave of “I live in Michigan and I hate the snow” conversation for the year…

So we hit the big 15 year anniversary mark late last month! Yeah for us!!!

We didn’t really have the fundage to do anything spectacular like we had hoped to, but spending the weekend with the kids was great time for us…

Here’s a pic of two of my crazy gals. I’ll post more later!