Weiners!

It's been a tough day. I had a number of decisions to make. I'm not going to go into all of them right now, but suffice to say that this blog will be a-changing! Soon. Changes for the better. The downside is that you'll all have to update your blogrolls because a new address is part of the package.

Part of the changes coming to my "Batty" blog are due in part to the fact that I have weiners, er winners for you! Yes, the tagline search has come to an end. An unexpected end. Here's the deal: I loved everything that was offered up. I couldn't make up my mind. David from BellaDaddyBlog sent me "Fangs For the Memories", but that's the name of a Kathy Love book. (A really good book too!) I liked the Absurdist's "Sunlight Is Overrated". I liked it a lot. But it reminded me of Britt's tagline. I'll come back to this tagline in a minute.

So, I was still pondering the taglines while Jester helped me out with the new Wordpress theme. I mentioned to him how I changed the verbiage on the Comment Luv to say that it's trying to sink its fangs into your last post, please wait while it finds a vein. Jester laughs and replies, "I vant to suck your blog!" BINGO. My kid and I both went, "THAT'S IT!" In one fell swoop, without even meaning to, Jester won.

Now, going back to the Absurdist's tagline, I kept mulling it over in my head because I really did like it a lot. However, to move the idea away from Britt's tagline, I kept thinking of it as "Sunlight Sucks". Last night, while letting WP kick my ass and make me cry, I got the idea of just moving the whole kit and kaboodle. I mean, wouldn't it make it a little harder for the hunter from my office to find me? Not that I'm hiding. I'd just like to make it harder for them on principle. So the Absurdist also wins. I registered sunlightsucks.com tonight.

And there we have it. Two weiners, er winners! Congratulations to Jester and the Absurdist. I am going to try to make a t-shirt with the bat logo on it now. If that doesn't work out, they can still have the Bar t-shirt. A t-shirt with fangs. Yummo. Thanks to everyone who participated. I appreciate the effort you all put into my need for a tagline.

One last thing, thanks to everyone for visiting Socially Dead. My kid has now pasted her underwear clad ass on her new blog for Half Naked Thursday. She even offered a crotch shot for next week. OY. How did I know she would fit in this well? Happy Friday to all! MUAH!

Nothing

I have nothing for you today. You see, my daughter's new blog has left me envious. I like the way it looks. I like the way it works. It's not ME, but I like it. I've been wracking my brains for weeks on how to take my bats to Wordpress. Not that I've defeated the WP demons. I haven't. I've just garnered a little help from Fab and Jester. And I'm anal and tenacious.

If I had money, I would just hire someone to make me a new city skyline with bats and a full moon. Instead, I tried to find a Wordpress theme I could tweak. It's not 100% me/mine like a custom design would be, but I figure if I can get the bulk done, maybe I could afford to pay someone to make the small stuff work for me.

So I found a couple of possible themes. I found one in blue and white with yellow that does go okay with my header. I was leaning toward this one because so many bloggers hate the white text on the black background. Tweaking my graphic to make it work with this theme was a mother though. So I moved on to the black background theme. This one was much easier to work with. Looks like I'm stuck with the black background, white text though. (Sorry folks!) I guess the only thing I can say is that it's a damned vampire theme! Sunlight ain't their thing.

It all looks good. I've been testing it on my other domain rottnroll.com. I couldn't get the subdomain thing to work at all on rottnroll. Not sure what I did wrong and too tired to figure it out for a site that's not staying there. It's a 3 column theme. In the widgets, I can't figure out how to tweak the sidebars. Only one sidebar shows up on the widget page and in the drop down menu. *sigh* One more thing I don't know how to do.

I guess if I can make the theme work, and get all the pages set, I can turn off the forwarding on my subdomain and try to take this live on winterheart.com. Which got me thinking. Maybe I should just make this blog the domain name with a page that goes to the actual site stuff (Winter's Coffeehouse). It doesn't exactly sit well with me though. I've had Winter's Coffeehouse a very long time. A dozen years. Look at it. It's pretty. Nice and clean. Great template. I never finished converting over the poetry pages though. I'm a bum like that. I get tired and move on. I should really just do a page a week and eventually the whole thing will be done.

So, here's what's in my head: Finish tweaking the WP theme. Figure out the sidebar from hell. Decide whether to go with winterheart.com or winterblog.winterheart.com or whether to buy sunlightsucks.com. (I hate telling people to change their link for me in their blog rolls.) Or should I skip eating for a few weeks and just hire someone to do this for me, because I'm freaking exhausted and have no answers and forgot about my TT? Tell me what you think I should do, because I'm all out of answers.

It sucks to be an IT person. Everyone expects you to be able to do this shit. This is not my application server. This is CODE. CSS. PHP. I'm logical for the most part, so I can figure out some of it, but my personal cheering section is gone. He always tells me, "You can do it. You like logic puzzles." I keep expecting him to show up at my shoulder, but when I turn around, there's no one there and the room is silent. I guess this is why I have nothing for you today. WP kicked my ass. I'm such a wuss.

Whine over. Have a great Thursday. Hopefully, I'll have a TT or a Half Nekkid Thursday or something next week.

PS: Here is a screenshot. As you can see, I've done okay so far. My problem is the far right sidebar which does not show up in the drop down menu for widgets in WP. And the meta for that sidebar has no login. I'm clueless how to make that sidebar show up in widgets so I can add or remove things from it. I hate whining and crying like a girl. And stupid WP has brought me to that pass. I guess I'm gonna have to email or IM Jester for some professional assistance...

Yes! I Suck Too!

I am depressed. Really depressed. You know how I said I hate it when I can't figure things out? That it gnaws at me until I do figure it out? Well, I spoke too soon re taming the beast that is Wordpress. I'm stuck. Fucking really stuck.

Here's the deal, everything looks good. It looks right. But there are things behind the scenes that stink... meaning they don't freaking work right. And it's killing me. Not because they don't work right, but because I SUCK and can't figure out how to fix it.

I've gotten to the point where I'm about to post everywhere for someone to come mentor me. I don't want someone to just fix all this shit for me. I just need someone who knows HOW to fix it to show me, help me fix it. It's all about ME, of course. I want to do this myself. But I'm stuck. And I suck. And I have bad luck. So I'm saying FUCK.

Excuse me while I go shed some angry angsty tears. I HATE it when I can't figure shit out.

Oh, and BTW, my new coffeepot peed all over the counter. $9 in Wally World (Walmart for the uninitiated, which BTW is a freaking 3rd world country all on it's own. No one speaks English in Wally World!) for some generic brand drip coffeepot. I only wanted it because it will keep the coffee hot. I really prefer a french press pot, but they don't keep the coffee hot for hours.

So I pour water in the water tank and turn away to fill the basket with Sumatra. When I come back, I stick the basket in and discover a puddle under the new coffeepot. I pick it up. It's leaking like a sieve. All the water in the water tank is draining out the bottom of the unit. It literally peed all over my counter and took a half a roll of paper towels to mop up.

Okay. I'm done ranting. I'm gonna go make maple bacon and ingest massive quantities of cholesterol to make myself feel better. I don't wanna look at the new blog today. I will cry for sure if I do. I wonder if I can dig the the cracked press pot out of the trash and clean it up good enough to make a cup of coffee...

Yes! I Am A Lagger!

I know, I know. I've been neglecting everyone from the ever luscious Matt to the always edible Fabulous. But I had a reason. My brain was stewing. That whole Wordpress thing just got to me. I hate coming up against something I can't do or figure out. So, I figured it out. Wordpress is a very devious thing. No matter. I'm on my way to taming the beast.

This all has to do with how I got started blogging in the first place, cause you all know that I only just started doing this shit in January, right? Fourteen years on the internet, multiple domain names, websites, forums, and message boards later... I become a blogger. Number 267 or something on the humor-blogs.com list of almost 700. It's Friday, I can pimp myself, can't I?

So, I was commenting on a hot model's blog one day and got an idea for a story. The story made me realize how little I knew about this phenomena called blogging. So I figured I better start a blog and see how it felt. Well, it feels almost better than eating creme brulee! I almost said sex, but it's been awhile, so I can't really speak to the S word at the moment.

I made this pretty blog. Love the bats. I've been having fun with all of you. I luvs yas! MUAH! But, I keep hearing Kaige at the back of my head reminding me that all the fun and talking about porn stars on Kyra's Blog Talk Radio show, is not gonna get the blogosphere love story written. So, I decided to write my rough drafts on a blog. Not this one, where biters (vamps) reign supreme, but the love story's own blog. Which brings me back to my determination to figure out the Wordpress thingy.

Tonight, I got a toehold. I had a breakthrough. Therefore, without further ado (or bullshit from me) I give you my new blog: Winter Writes - http://winterwrites.winterheart.com


There's nothing there yet, but a quick babble and the pretty graphic. Soon, however, you'll be able to find out what the hot model really thought of the comment the writer left on his blog.

Now, for a quick pimp for my pal Nicholas over at A Gentleman's Domain. Nicholas is a very cool dude. He has one of those British accents that drives all the women and Anglophiles nuts. He also has great taste in books and movies. Nosferatu scared the beejeebus out of him as a teen. Awesome! That is the freakiest movie ever! I like Nicholas because I can totally see myself hanging out with him, getting blitzed on margys, while making snarky comments about the people walking by. Oh, and the fluffy people. Make the time to stop by Nicholas' blog and say Hi!

I'll stop by all your blogs this weekend and give you all some tongue! Happy weekend!

Tuesday Tune with Rune the Rock Star

I got his idea last night that I wanted to check out Wordpress, thinking I'd be better off there than here at Blogger. Like most not well thought out ideas, I got all gung ho thinking of all the stuff that would look better on my blog if I moved. Of course, when it gets right to the nuts and bolts, I don't have what it takes to make Wordpress work for me in the way I'd want it to.

I like my freaking template for one. At Wordpress's forum, they pretty much shot me down over importing the "look" of my Blogger blog. I knew I'd have to repoint my subdomain so that wasn't a worry, but hell, some stuff costs real money over there at Wordpress. (Can you hear me whining?) And my widgets? How the hell do I make my widgets work there? I refuse to give up my Imeem!

There are not enough hours in the day for me to learn CSS. I know enough now to make me dangerous. You should see what I've managed to do at my company's website without knowing what the fuck I'm doing in CSS. Once, I did something on the site and made the President happy which gave me a smirky ass grin on my face all day, but seriously, I coulda fucked the site up. Luckily for me, most programming is logical. Whew!

So the upshot is that I am staying with Blogger... cause I have to. LiveJournal does NOT ring any bells for me. And while Wordpress does ring some bells, I just don't have the skills to take this site there and still keep some of the things that are must haves for me. So unless someone with the lovely skills that I am lacking, is willing to assist, here I shall stay. Fucking 24 hour bullshit. Why couldn't the day be longer so I could learn more programming crap?


So my Tuesday tune is from the movie August Rush. Last week I was getting my manicure, and I saw the first half of the movie. I was tweaked when it was time to go. I wanted to see the second half! I needed more of that hottie with the Irish accent! On Saturday I went in to get a pedicure because I chipped a toenail. When I came in, the owner turned on August Rush, almost where I'd left off! WOOT! So now, I've pretty much seen the whole flick. I have to say, I really liked it. Hearing Jonathan Rhys Meyers singing has given me a serious hard on for him. I'm really glad I used him at the Bar as the physical representation of my petulant Welsh rock star Rune.

Speaking of the Bar and Rune, his intro to the story is as Lex's ex. He's never gotten over her, has this deathless love for her, and would do anything to get her back. The guy is practically stalking her! Of course, by the time Rune appears, Lex is breaking up with Johann and already dreaming of Alaric. The rock star stands no chance. My poor girl with fangs just isn't in love with him. These next few pdfs will take you right up the point where Rune is introduced. He'll show up in the next posting of pdfs. Some of the pdfs have multiple posts because the posts were very short. Hope you enjoy this next peek into Lex's story.

Tension

Sweet Little Lies, Alexandria's Dream Man, Can A Drunk Ass Dream?, Pain & Disappointment

Time To Go, Double Vision, Working Off the Mad, Gotta Stop Drinking

I'm off to do some experimenting at the Bar. We're working on new terminology and I want to put up a post that shows us what the story would be like with those new terms. No longer piggybacking off of other things we've read is the smart way to go. This is our World and we need to create our own names and way of explaining things. If I don't post anything but a hottie tomorrow, you'll know I'm too busy with the sim and the Bar to blog. Happy Tuesday!