Blogging
Some folks have asked about the photos in the header of the Bettnet.com page. Starting from the left: A photo of Blessed Pier Giorgio Frassati (standing, right, holding a cigar and in a 3-piece suit) to whom I’ve had a spiritual devotion for many years; A photo of my dad soon after my parents were married, taken in either 1959 or 1960; A photo of my mom in the kitchen of my parents’ first apartment, again soon after they were married; Melanie and me on our honeymoon in Nova Scotia in 2005; Our kids, Isabella, Benedict, and Sophia, in Feb. 2010 at my in-laws’ home in Texas. Obviously that last photo will change as the kids grow up (and new ones join the fold).
After a week or so of beta testing, I’ve decided to go live with the new look of Bettnet.com, the first re-design in many years. I’ve been learning more about CSS and HTML and designing sites at work so I decided I should make my perosnal site look as good as my more current work.
First, a note: If you are using Internet Explorer, version 6.0 or earlier, this blog will not look good. It may still be legible but there will be big problems in how it looks in your browser. I’m sorry, but that’s the way it has to be. IE6 is just a bad piece of software in addition to being way out of date. If Google feels comfortable ending support for IE6, so do I.
If you use Internet Explorer 7 or 8, the site should look fine. IE8 will look better than IE7. But if you really want to see all the bells and whistles and CSS goodness, you will need Firefox 3 or newer (including Mozilla and Flock and other Firefox derivatives) or Safari or Chrome (including other Webkit derivatives, too). The site is optimized for Safari/chrome/Webkit.
You will find that there is no Adobe Flash in use in the design of the page, although you find the occasional third-party embedded content in individual blogposts. Everything, including transitions and animations is done using the latest CSS3 specifications. I’ve also tried to avoid using image files when styled text would do, as in the blog entry dates and post titles.
So, please, let me know what you think and if you find anything is broken, please let me know ASAP. And thanks for being loyal readers for however much time you’ve been reading Bettnet, whether you started with my most recent post or you’ve been reading since 2001.
For some people, vacation is a time to sit back, relax, and do nothing. But for me, on our current vacation, it’s a time to catch up on stuff I’ve been wanting to do for ages. In this case, it’s a long overdue update of this blog, Bettnet.com. Yeah, it might seem like overkill since I’ve been posting lately about once in each phase of the moon. However, I’m hoping that a fresh virtual coat of paint will give me an impetus to pick up the pace again.
The result, so far, is what I’m calling Bettnet 2.0 Beta. It’s a 90-percent functional site (a few links here and there will break if you go deep enough into dark corners and closets), but the big stuff that most people use should work. Now, I’m not ready to go live with the new design yet—there’s a few things I’m still working on—but I encourage you all to check it out and give me your feedback.
(Among the bits I still want to improve is the “mobile” version that will look nice on iPhones and other smartphones.)
Last week, Melanie started coming down with something. This was a sure sign of trouble for the whole family for when mom gets sick, everyone does. She probably picked up when she was at the hospital visiting her sister, Theresa, who lives with us. Theresa had gone to the emergency room 10 days ago with sharp pains in her side. Long story, short: she had an emergency appendectomy. And since we’re all the family she has in the area, Melanie went to the effort to pack up all the kids and bring them to visit her. Which was a very nice thing to do, don’t get me wrong. It was the right thing to do.
But hospitals being full of, you know, sick people, it was probably inevitable that my usually sheltered family would latch on to something untoward and drag it home. By Saturday Melanie in the midst of it and Isabella, Sophia, and Benedict were all showing signs of the flu, as did Theresa, who had just come home from the hospital. As Melanie had been unable to do the regular food shopping on Friday, I bustled out on a dark Saturday night to do the food run. (Incidentally, while I did not have kids in tow as Melanie always does, I still think my trip illuminated how even in shopping men are naturally hunters and women are grazers. I stalked every item on the list, killed, bagged it, and mounted it to the wall. Metaphorically. If Melanie passes something on her list, she doesn’t go back for it. She’ll get it next time. Maybe. Not saying one’s better than other. Just different.)
Anyway, by the time I got home, I was feeling a little peaked too, which I laid down to fatigue and hunger. But a Saturday night of interrupted sleep, vomiting children, and feverish, well, everyone, Sunday morning saw a household too far under the weather to chance spreading our special kind of infection at Mass. What follows are some disconnected thoughts that occurred to me over the succeeding feverish days.
- Twitter can be a useful tool for tracking temperatures you’ve taken and when. Also for dosages of medicine and the time taken.
- Nothing prepares you for a two-year-old standing in her crib in the middle of the night crying as vomit spills over her and bed.
- The older I get, the harder flus and colds knock me down. The longer it takes me to get back up again.
- When I’m feverish, congested, and coughing, sleeping in my bed isn’t an option as it would wake Melanie and Benedict. So in the past week, I’ve spent the nights wandering around the house trying out various chairs and couches and even Bella’s favorite corner of the office floor where she piles blankets and naps. Desparate times, my friends.
- The flu ruined our Thanksgiving plans as I’m sure it’s set back many others’. We were supposed to go to my brother’s house as we do every year so Melanie had only bought a frozen turkey and none of the usual side-fixings. By Monday we knew that we didn’t want to the Typhoid Tommies at the tryptophan turkey fest. Unfortunately, it means no Thanksgiving Day dinner. Which could be a blessing in disguise as it means no gorging on too much, albeit yummy, food, especially desserts.
- When I worked from home, the flu or cold would knock me out for a day or two, at the most, and then I’d be back at it. I wouldn’t be 100%, but I could work. Working in an office, there’s not just the personal energy required to get myself to work after only one or two days, but also the added concern of infecting others. I’m much more likely to take more time off when I’m sick now. If I’d had a way to telecommute, I would have been back to at least some level of productivity a lot sooner this week.
- Almost the worst part of being sick, more even than the fevers and chills and nausea is the weeks of hacking coughs caused by post-nasal drip that rack my body and leave me with a headache and raspy throat.
- Sick time is apparently a good time for me to read. I prefer to use my computer sitting up at a desk or table, so when I’m laying down or sitting in an easy chair, a book is better. So this week, I made a serious dent in a large book. I hope I can keep my momentum going.
- There’s no better appetite suppressant than having everything taste like metallic ashes in your mouth. I lost all interest in food for three days because everything tasted awful. The kids had the same problem I think. Bella spit out a banana and reiterated her demand for a banana. Try explaining to a feverish and cranky three-year-old that this is her banana and it tastes awful because of … her mouth?
That’s it for now. If I have any more crazy thoughts from my sick bed, you’ll be the first to know.
Can. 211 All the Christian faithful have the duty and right to work so that the divine message of salvation more and more reaches all people in every age and in every land.
Can. 212 §3. According to the knowledge, competence, and prestige which they possess, they have the right and even at times the duty to manifest to the sacred pastors their opinion on matters which pertain to the good of the Church and to make their opinion known to the rest of the Christian faithful, without prejudice to the integrity of faith and morals, with reverence toward their pastors, and attentive to common advantage and the dignity of persons. [Code of Canon Law]
