Thursday 1st July 2004
I guess we're calling this Version Sixteen. If only because it's the second half of Season Eight of gremlin.net now. And, I suppose, the version this is replacing was kinda different than the one before that.
Technically, based on the actual convention of version numbers, this is probably closer to Version Six. But I don't really care. What counts, to me, is that, whatever version this would be called, it seems to work so far, and it looks okay...at least until I get tired of it and make a bunch of changes in about six months.
So. New Version Stuff.
The site's in ActiveServer now. That's a largish change. If only because the formatting is different than it was in hypertext. It's probably not evident to the End User, but the coding for the site is now pretty modular. Which is a good thing, from my end.
For the moment, the older What's News are unlinked. Not actually offline, but still stuck in hypertext and therefore not really compatible with the new system. Something to go back and play with when I have nothing better to do: reformat the old stuff into ASP and, probably, get round to spellchecking it.
Which is one of the final tests here. I'm writing this right now in Word2003, which is underlining all the typos for me. Which helps a bit. I probably coulda done that with the hypertext versions; I just never did. Mostly because Word naturally opens .html files as websites, not as text; so far, it has no idea what to make of .asp files, and has to ask me what they are. For Word's purposes, they're .txt files; I don't want these things opening up as hypertext and getting a bunch of DIV tags added to them. I hate that.
A couple of new subsites have been added [so far] to the menu at the top. JestBuy.com is finally linked from a logical place, so it'll be easier for people to learn of the suck. Similarly, the ongoing story of the suction of the idiotic criminals who own this deathtrap of a building is linked under WORST PACIFIC up there...not so much to warn people against dealing with them, as to attempt to turn a really upsetting [read: mental anguish] situation into something somewhat entertaining. Which, of course, isn't easy to do.
Especially now. Last night, I discovered that Hunter had hidden something--intentionally or not--from me: a book I've had since 1976. Which is to say that, for the last twenty-eight years, it's gone everywhere I have. Most recently, it wound up here, on a shelf, where it would be safe. Now, it's on a different shelf, as a sort of fractal impersonation of what it had been for nearly thirty years. Its photoplate pages, which is to say all of them, are curled and fused. Basically, it's a sort of palaeontological tome, with each page being a glossy, fullcolour print.
I'm not personally aware of any means of restoring the thing. Though I can think of a way to do it which involves nanotechnology and a time machine. So, I'm loguing this at US$500million on FirstPacific's bill. Dumb fucking criminals.
Of course, I'm not overlooking the irony in the fact that this book I got and read when I was six is well above the educational levels of the plebeians whose Criminal Negligence led to its destruction. Contrarily, I'm simply regarding them as atavisms who shouldn't have any bipedal rights at all.
Which leads us naturally to Kristen Taylor, the behemoth upstairs. In spite of the assertions of the landlords and the cops who assured me that there was no legal recourse, I looked a few things up in Colorado Law on the matter. Which, since I was online at the time, led to a few related laws and precedents which I happen to find excruciatingly interesting.
First, on the actual subject, it's very much terribly illegal to litter biohazard into a neighbour's yard. It's equally illegal to molest a neighbour's tree. So: by Taylor's own confession, she's a known criminal, at large...double entendre though that might be.
Then I happened across a couple of interesting little factoids. For example: a tenant with a mental or neurological disorder cannot be evicted by a landlord, even if the landlord is unaware of the condition. Although, at this point, the landlords are aware that my neurological condition of chronic migraine very much exists. So I find that kinda curious, given that Colorado Law also happens to prohibit the withholding of rent in order to force landlords into, say, operating within the laws. However ironic that all ends up, all things considered. So I'm bearing that in mind.
Anyway: that's more for the subsite than for this. I'll come up with a better way to word it all and add it in when I have time.
At the moment, I haven't got time. Hunter, with her known mental disorder, has to get to the VA for her weekly Rap with the Shrink meeting. Which regrettably involves me and my car. So...that's probably about it for today. If there's anything else of importance to add, I'll post it to the new messageboard.
More later....
--Gremlin