So I have a new project coming soon, and I’m excited about it. I’m still in the proposal writing stage, but the project is going to include a full fledged content management system. The client has an existing site that has PHP installed, but they are paying WAY too much for their hosting, and I am going to propose moving them to a .NET platform for less than half of what they pay annually right now. The tools available to me on the .NET platform are so powerful, and since that’s what I write in at work, it makes sense to push myself in ASP.NET. Read the rest of this entry »

So I downloaded and installed Drupal because I want to develop a good comfort level with a CMS so that I may one day use it to my full advantage with clients. Creatively, I installed in a subdirectory of my site, it’s at drupal.gabe-harris.com. Lovely looking, right? I have obviously not done much with it yet, and I can understand why they might say it has a steep learning curve. I can’t even find a good place to get started.
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If you steal the title of this post for your domain name, I will hunt you down and… be very disappointed with you.

This is the decision I’m faced with every week night. I’ve worked all day, consumed enough caffeine to make a small woman or child have convulsions, picked up the kids, and it’s about 7pm. If I want a meal, I have to cook it, and clean up after myself (novel idea), but I’m already cooking for the kids, so maybe a little extra work would be worth it? Or maybe I’ve got plenty of reserves (yes, I mean fat) stored up in my body already to tide me over until the next time I eat?

Usually, I decide to just make food for the kids. I try to drink some water to fool myself into feeling more full. And if I’ve just gotten back from the gym? Forget it, I’m definitely not eating. So here is the $64,000 question- is this helpful or hurtful for my “diet”?

I’ve heard that skipping meals has a negative impact because it teaches your body to go unexectedly without food, making the body try to store up energy (yes, in the form of fat.) That logically makes a lot of sense to me. But it’s a little bit counter intuitive because how could I gain weight by not eating? Maybe I’m just gaining fat, not necessarily weight. That sounds right - in the long run, skipping meals makes my body less healthy, but it doesn’t necessarily cause weight gain.

So here we are - meal or no meal? I can tell you that what I’m doing (skipping the meal most of the time) is not really working. I’m not losing any weight compared to when I was eating dinner everyday. So, I believe it is better to bite the bullet and make at least something half-way nutritional to eat, whether it’s a full-on meal or not.

So I go to the gym to pick up my kids from the nursery, and I see the youngest one sleeping. There are two rooms for the kids, one for younger kids, one for the older ones. As I try to make my way into the room with A., the youngest, the employees tell me I need to go into the other room. I start to protest that I’ll just get A. first, and I hear my wife’s voice coming from the other room, where our oldest son is. She’s calling my name, semi-frantically. Read the rest of this entry »

We have heat now. Of course, it’s going to be a high of 60 and a low of 50 for the next few days, but should it dip below 66 degrees in the house, that furnace will be firing. Thanks to my dad for fixing it! He explained to me that there is a roll out or something that acts as a safety device in case the flames shoot out from where they belong, and it needed to be reset or something. I don’t really get it, but I tried to pay close enough attention that I could fix it if it came up again. I’m glad to have that working anyway, one less thing to worry about!

I didn’t really go anywhere. Well, I went out of town for business for a week. I got trained on a product - we’re using ektron for a client and I am now certified to develop sites using their software. I really enjoyed the class, and I can’t wait to start using the product. It’s a CMS for the .NET platform.

Then it was Thanksgiving week. No, I have not lost any more weight. Yes, in fact I probably have gained weight. The whole premise of this blog has gone to shit with me not really being on a diet anymore, but I’m still kinda fat so “Fatblog” still works for me. If you came here to read about how to lose weight, here’s my tip: consume fewer calories than you burn.

The big news-worthy event, drum roll: Read the rest of this entry »

I was thrilled to see Design Melt Down’s post yesterday about brown websites (can you guess whether or not I like those?), and I came across HappilyCreate.com. I recognized the site from an earlier visit, but I’m not sure how I had happened upon it (StumbleUpon is my guess.) So I was perusing, checking stuff out, really enjoying the whole feel of the site. Then I decide to click the “email” link. I was half expecting to go to a contact page (this is what I was looking for when I clicked it, I like to see how people design these pages), but there was a slight pause. Then the typical launching of a new email in my email client. “Huh? What just happened?” I thought. Read the rest of this entry »