Did a lake walk with Libbie today after getting Daffodils at Lowes. We got all the varieties Southern Living said were good. I like how the photo gallery is shaping up. I finally got the hang of views and fields such that Views will put out a grid. Dinner was Bok Choy which was delicious. I talked with Lara today about the hotel. She couldn't do anything but mention that she would speak to her boss about it. I let the group know then posted our site visit photos on Picasa.

More rain today. When the garbage man came to do his pickup you could hardly see the street it was raining so hard. I'm making progress understanding how to display photos in the Views module. It's not too bad because the View has a grid view. You just specify the number of elements and the number of columns and it works. Dinner was bean lentil curry soup with jalapeno. Yum.

This was a rainy day. Did the click and ship thing then went back to learning how to do photo galleries. While Libbie went to exercise this afternoon I put the garbage cans out then the sky opened up and dumped a lot of rain. Dinner was BBQ sandwiches. The macro extension tube arrived. I tried it out but then back to work on the website.

Watched the morning programs while working on finding how to implement a photo gallery in Drupal. Spent a lot of time figuring different ways of trying to properly display a grid of photos. I don't like making each photo a separate content type but I may not have a choice. Libbie made her yummy pizza from scratch today. She had to run out at the last minute to get pizza cheese because we were out. I kept working on photo galleries.

Another whole day working at the AVSA website. I finished the FAQ section after reading about the Drupal Book module. This looks like it will fit the bill for me. Skipped the walk today because I wanted to work the website and we were leaving early this evening. Ed Lyons came over to get violets, we dug some Irises out of the garden for his yard. Spoke with Richard about the website, he is putting together the list of concerns from the committee to make sure we capture everything in the current design. We had a bowl of the leftover Lentil soup for dinner at 6 PM then left the house at 7 for our 8 PM Symphony performance. I thoroughly enjoyed the performance, even from Row C. We could see the faces of the orchestra and we were up close and personal with Gabriela, the improve piano soloist.

I got a good handle on how to work with Drupal today. I started putting together the store with individual categories listed as sub menus. Dinner was baked sweet potato and beets with chicken. This was quite good. After dinner I watched Siegfried on PBS. This is part 3 of the Ring series. I stayed with it till the end, love every minute of it. Late in the evening I purchased $35 leftover tickets for the Symphony via an eMail I received with the offer. I procrastinated all day over the offer because the seats were in row C even though they were in the middle. At the last minute I went for it and bought the tickets, then printed them at home.

I played with MySQL most of today. Nancy came over and she and Libbie worked the violets then went into the backyard to look at the flower garden. The garden is going great and looks beautiful. The avsa website is coming along slowly but good. I got the store dropdown to finally go over the slide show instead of behind it. Did my walk today - two young woman in bikinis at the pool this afternoon which was nice. Dinner was squash lentil soup which was incredibly spicy with curry and jalapeno pepper. Wow. Hard to believe Libbie can stand this, it's almost too hot for me. After dinner I watched the second of the Met's ring series, Walkure. I hate the production but love the music.

Finally got out for my walk today after missing for 2 days. It's noticeably cooler today, only in the 70s. Looked at how to cut coconuts for the MAAVS centerpieces, dumped that idea when Barb Ogers suggested sea shells with violets in them. Everybody liked this idea. Dinner was leftover tuna salad and macaroni salad from the Violet club meeting. I'm OK with this.

We scrambled around this morning to get ready for TAVS. I put a temporary threshold down over the crack between the foyer and kitchen then went out to the grocery store for our normal groceries as well as food for the club lunch. Bought tuna salad, chicken salad, rolls and macaroni salad. The meeting went well, they discussed table favors for MAAVS and others made arrangements to attend MAAVS on a day trip. Dinner today was leftovers from the meeting. I discovered that Dishnetwork channel 36 will be carrying the Great Performances Met Ring cycle starting with Wagners Dream which we watched tonight. This is called UNC Ex which I didn't even know existed.

Went to Home Depot today for pond liner, a window pole and LED lightbulb for the back hallway. Did the click n Ship but did not walk today because I was too busy. In the evening I washed the outside windows using the pole. It really went well using this thing. I really need a second pole for the squeegee. Dinner was leftover Bok Choy stir fry. Libbie started a weight reduction program this evening at Rex.

Got a lot of the website working today. Took some time off and washed the window on the back porch which wore me out. We used the Consumer Reports homebrew mix. Called the Nicholas's in the evening and told them about the site. They will look at it later since their laptop was busy doing a repair during bootup. Anne also said the DVD's arrived at the office. Libbie was able to make her homemade pizza tonight despite being super busy.

Got up early today and started over with the website. I re-installed UniServer & Drupal and then started over again but this time with the Blue Jems theme which was in the Drupal sandbox. I was able to costumize this theme as my own and got the background to print like I wanted as well as the fonts and colors. this is working better for me. Dinner tonight was Bok Choy stir fry with chicken and the rest of the Merlot. Desert was Blue Bell Mint Chip.

This is a frustrating day. I can't get the background to print in Drupal. Spent the whole day reading and trying things. Wow is this so frustrating and the clock is counting down. Don't know what I'm going to do. Stayed up until past midnight stuggling with this. Dinner was pork chops with apple sauce, broccoli and Merlot.

I spent all of today trying to learn the nuances of Drupal, constantly switching themes and getting this this thing displaying a web page mockup from Scott. Dinner was scallops over rice.

Reading quite a bit about Drupal. I have it installed on my laptop now after an abortive attempt at getting it working on my old Dell laptop. That thing needs a re-install of Windows to make it run. Dinner was broccoli salad.

This was click n ship day. Worked on figuring out how to put content into Drupal then switched over to click n ship. No walk today because I was too busy on all fronts. I had a 1 PM appointment at the Clarion for a site visit, these folks were hard to get hold of. I think the facility will do for a convention. Dinner was curried chicken over spaghetti.

I couldn't walk yesterday but I did get out today. Surprisingly the crew was putting the roof sheathing on the house next to the pond. It was pretty humid today and warm, I came back dripping wet.
Spent some time hooking up the rest of our TV but for some reason the antenna off the air won't work. The TV may be defective. I found a pretty good Drupal module called flexible panels but it still lacks what I'm looking for which is a pininterest like module. I will keep trying. Dinner was stuffed flounder with Basmati rice and broccoli. We had a bottle of Chardonnay with dinner to celebrate the end of Labor Day weekend. Desert was Moolineum Ice Cream.

The whole day was devoted to learning Drupal and trying a few things for the AVSA web site. Libbie made a really thin pizza crust and the topping was like a deep dish pizza - lots of good stuff.

This morning I continued with Drupal slide shows. Went outside and tied the new tomatoes then went for my walk. It's surprisingly warm today, in the 90s for Sept 1. This is also the start of the labor day holiday weekend. Spent quite a bit of the day getting on board with Drupal, looking for a way to put content in panels or blocks on a page. Dinner was ribs that Lib found at the samples counter in Kroger. She liked them so much she bought a package for 9.99 which isn't bad. We had that with broccoli and sweet potato and Shiraz.

Purchased 12 months of web hosting this morning on Netfirms using their $1 promo. Had a little trouble installing Drupal but with the help of support disabling a registers_global setting in php.ini I was able to successfully install Drupal. Set up an FTP account for myself and Scott at TWU as well as admin access for both of us. Now I'm trying to learn th Drupal slide show module so I can place a rotating banner slide show on LSAVC and also to give me some knowledge of how to do this. It's been difficult learning this because of all the interruptions from Libbie. It's not her fault but I wish she could get a life and let me spend a few hours in peace and quiet learning this. dinner was Bok cho in a wok which was supposed to be over basmati rice but the rice got burned. This was accompanied by a bottle of shiraz. I need to cut back on the wine for weight and sleep purposes.

Chatted with Scott today about starting over with the AVSA website using Drupal. Spoke with Richard tonight and he tentatively gave me the go ahead. I will open up a web hosting account tomorrow. Tried several more phone calls to the Raleigh Clarion, left messages on all the numbers I could find and also sent an email. The auction guy never showed up although he said he was going to come over in the morning. Dinner was Briyani which was pretty good. I smoked the outdoors with the fogger to zap mosquitoes. Gave shots of smoke under the house and also under the porch. Let's see how that works. We picked up a new TV at HH Gregg today, a 50 inch plasma after going to the store and debating between plasma and LED. The deal was 0% interest for 24 months and 5% off with the HH Gregg card that I applied for online.

Spent the whole day working on software on and off. I also hooked up the old Dell machine and transferred more files off of it onto my backup drive. Couldn't find the Dell power supply so i used Libbie's until she wanted it back. Tried synching some files from Gandhi to the server. The synch program i found hangs because there are too many files in one of the directories I think. Talked to an auction guy who may be coming to the greenhouse tomorrow. This hasn't been easy. Dinner was lobster ravioli.

Did the grocery run, included Trader joes as well. Had much trouble printing labels. I got distracted and didn't print and lost all the labels. Took my walk and entered them again when I got back. Now there are two charges on my credit card for the labels. Will see if they go away. At 7 PM tonight Social Security called to verify my info. They also talked to Libbie and said her spousal benefit will start the same time as mine, in Dec. We hope she is eligible for 50% of mine. Dinner was trader joes pulled pork bbq on a bun. Managed to sign up for HH Gregg credit today. It's effective immediateley.

Talked to the lady at Dover Downs. Their prices are out of our league. They want 4,000 for ballroom rental plus 159 a night for rooms. I also found our home telephones had a problem - instantly going to voicemail. Rebooted the Vonage device and that went away. Next I called Scott at TWU and chatted about the AVSA website. He wondered if we needed Plone or will anything do. After thinking about this all day, I sent him an eMail suggesting it may be OK to scrap it. I did quite a bit more work on the click n ship scraping module I am developing in VB2010 NET. I had to do 20 click n ships which is a good incentive to get the scraper program working. I also started looking again at slideshows in Drupal for the LSAVC website. I need to dress that site up so it looks a little better. Dinner was whole wheat spaghetti with cheese over it. The last of the Milk chocolate ice cream was desert for the evening.

Spent the day reading tech stuff and dusting off the VB 2010.net skills. I will use XML to store the scrapings from the order forms. I need to automate this further besides copy and pasting from the order into the VB app. Did my traditional walk - it's a beautiful day out for a change after the rain and cloudy weather. The temps were cooler as well. The pool at the condos was enjoyable - several bikini clad sun worshipers which was a delight. Libbie outdid herself with the pizza this time. The crust was thin and crispy and there was an abundance of tomato topping with fresh tomato and basil. Really good.