Author: DmentD

Best Foot Forward.

DmentD5 Comments

Soooo, I did a stupid thing on Friday.  At GonzO’s hurricane party I hopped down from a height of about 3′ and rolled my right foot under me, effectively spraining it mildly.

I was standing on the head of DeJockamo’s cousin (currently “on loan” and living happily in GonzO’s yard) and peering over his fence and into the empty lot next door to see what Cleo and Puck were barking at.  Cleo, a pug/Jack Russell terrier mix, had succumbed to her instincts and efficiently dispatched a rat to its heavenly host earlier in the day.  I was attempting to see if there was another one — or several for that matter — wandering around and making the dogs go batshit loco.

Finding nothing of interest, I hopped off the concrete idol.  Whilst in mid-fall I noticed that where I once had a clear landing zone, I now had a fuzzy face with an adorable under-bite, and a pair of soft brown eyes staring up at me.  Cleo had maneuvered herself directly under me, finding me suddenly more interesting than the non-existent rats.  I shifted my weight and adjusted my feet so I wouldn’t squish her, and I came down hard with most of my weight on my right foot.

I felt it roll on the uneven grass, followed by a sharp pain in my ankle — but no pop or crack sound.  I immediately made my way to somewhere I could stand and support myself, and evaluated what damage I had done.  My ankle hurt like hell, but I could bear putting my weight on it, and the initial pain was starting to dull (thank you endorphins!).  After ten minutes there was no noticeable swelling and I could walk, albeit favoring my non-injured foot.  Ten minutes later I had a small egg of swelling on my outside ankle, and a tiny bit on the front of the foot.  I was reasonably sure I hadn’t broken anything as I could support my weight, and my foot/ankle didn’t swell up like a ham attached to the end of my leg.  I attribute this to the fact that I was wearing my tactical boots when it happened, and the tight lacing and high sides are designed to minimize foot and ankle trauma.

I iced the foot for an hour afterward, and was able to hobble around with my weight partially on it.  I was even able to drive with surprisingly little difficulty, to pick up Sweets from class and to get us home.  Walking was much easier and less painful after driving… using the foot to operate the pedals seemed to have warmed the ankle up a bit and loosened up the stiffness.  When I lay down for bed, there was only minor swelling and no bruises to be seen.  I had a nice little elastic ankle brace of Sweet’s to use to keep compression on it.

Waking up Saturday, I had shockingly little pain in the ankle — just tenderness and stiffness.  My range of motion had increased, and lo and behold, the bruise had finally decided to show.  It spread, over the course of the weekend, from my heel all along the side of my foot to the arch, and a lovely bruise also formed under the outside of my foot as well.  I kept it elevated and iced on-and-off all weekend, and have been able to walk normally for the most part.  The bruises are starting to fade, but here they are for what it’s worth:

After a day of work yesterday, and a little shopping afterward, I’m finding my ankle to be a little sore — it’s the most walking I’ve done since banging it up on Friday.  Also, the swelling is going down, so that’s contributing to it a bit too.  Ibuprofen is my friend!

So, it was a damned stupid thing to do, but it could have been worse.  I now have a reminder for the next month or so of my own idiocy… like I don’t have enough reminders already.

Growing Pains.

DmentD

The new site makes me very happy.  I’ve been tinkering with it nonstop since I decided to make the changeover, and especially now that the changeover is official.  There is one issue that will affect only a small portion of my readership, and that is because they are still using Internet Explorer to browse the web.

Now, I can’t tell you what browser to use (but shame on you if you’re still sailing the Intarwebs on that leaky tub IE), but I can tell you that at this point DmentD.com may never be optimized to work perfectly in IE… and here’s why: Microsoft has deemed it unnecessary to bother conforming to the ever changing world of web design standards and conventions.  MS picks and chooses what it feels is optimal to them, makes up a fair amount of their own shit, and discards the rest.

The case in question here has to do with integrating my gallery into the WordPress front end here.  The gallery is optimally viewed in an environment that favors a landscape page design, whereas I utilize a portrait page design that employs tightly controlled design elements.  In FireFox, and indeed on the other non-IE browsers I’ve tested the site on (including, I would like to add, an iPhone), the gallery merely extends gracefully past the confines of the right border of the page design as needed because that content is”floating” above the page design itself.  IE, however, triggers a “float drop” (a phrase coined specifically for this little anomaly), causing the gallery to appear below the navigation bar because it is wider — by narrow and wide degrees — than the space allotted for it.

There are workarounds (not solutions, mind you, but the equivalent of using a coat hanger to keep your muffler from dragging the ground as you drive), but none of  them are readily applicable to this situation.  I s’pose I could find or build another theme that is laid out better for these circumstances, but I like the one I’m using, I’ve spent a considerable amount of time making it pleasing to me, and to selectively quote GonzO:

“I found out that I don’t really care, on a personal-site level, about standards, language validation, or other such nonsense.  I care about people reading what they came to read, not using excessive amounts of bandwidth, and being able to use the entire site. This should happen across any platform, and on any browser, you can think of, though I no longer test in IE or even in Windows for that matter. The site will not fit if you’re using anything less than 1024×768, so sorry to all the dudes out there still using a 4mb video card, but COME ON and get with the program, already.”

So, I apologize to the IE users, you’re just gonna have to scroll down a bit more than everyone else.  I’ve got more important site tasks to work out than fixing the gallery display in one browser, only to have it broken in another, and so on, and so on, ad infinitum.  If you’re particularly upset about this, you can always just bookmark the direct link to the gallery and use that.

And having blathered on about all that, I also want to point out that I am still working on the backlog of fixing broken links and images in the remaining posts, and assigning them to appropriate categories.

Bim, Bam, Alacazam!

DmentD

Welcome one, welcome all to v3.0 of DmentD.com!

The last major overhaul of this site was about five and a half years ago (January 2003), and it opened to thunderous fanfare — the crickets were a nice touch.  It was a growth step that took me away from obnoxious, poorly cobbled together page design to a more conservative, blog-based concept.  With the (at the time) expert and ground breaking programming assistance of Mensa, we managed a scratch built posting/display system that was flexible enough for a programmer to expand upon in any direction he chose.

Five and a half years later, the programmer has shed his diapers and is flying at light speed in directions nobody could have expected.  He has, more than once over the last few years, looked at the code for DmentD.com and said “who wrote this pile of crap?”, only to remember it was him.  I have done my best to reverse engineer his work and add features of my own, and when spam started becoming an issue, Mensa did his best to graft sophisticated engineering onto a cinder block.  Dr. Frankenstein would shake his head in embarrassment.

With a pile of behind-the-scenes features left to do, and a programmer with ever increasing demands on his time that didn’t include having to bang his head repeatedly on his desk in frustration trying to do me the favor of making the ‘old girl’ watertight again, I was quietly disheartened.  I decided to just let things be for a while.

I recently, however, set up a new domain and site for Sweets.  I used WordPress, and Gallery2 (which I was successfully using on my site… the only large-chunk brand-spanking new code I’ve had in ages, and from an outside repository no less), and was shocked at how quick it was to install, how very simple it is to configure, and how modular it is.  There are plugins aplenty, the styling is easy to tweak, and best of all, it requires very little programming skill to make some surprisingly major changes.  I know, I’m late to the WordPress party.  Shut up.

Hmm.

So, I quietly worked on this revamp.  Utilizing the mad-genius skills of GonzO (and numerous bribes of alcohol), all my old blog and other data has been migrated over, and I just need to  go back through all the posts and fix broken links and pictures.  My old familiar friends are still in place — the random quote, the gallery image, the blogs — along with a few new faces.  I’ve signed up for, and added a Twitter feed to the navigation bar so I can keep everyone up to date with the progress of my bowels in 140 characters or less.  There are the native WordPress options to jump to a category, view posts by month, search the entire site, and subscribe to RSS feeds for everything.  The gallery is now integrated into the blog itself, making image posting a downright treat to do.  Behind the scenes is a really dynamic spam filtration system, and an administration control panel that is slicker than whale shit.

For those of you who like to comment on my shenanigans, your first comment will require moderation, and as long as you don’t wipe your cookies out in your browser, you should be able to comment without impediment.

There is still a lot of mopping up to do from the data migration, and I’m sure I’ll be tweaking and fiddling a considerable amount in the weeks to come, but basically this is the dealio.  Just be sure to take your shoes off when you come in, the carpet is new.

Kitchen Sink.

DmentD

So, the right side of my double sink in the kitchen was leaking a bit from round the drain flange where the drain met the sink.  No problem.  That’s just a matter of replacing the crusty plumber’s putty that’s dried out and lost it’s elasticity, causing a little leak.

Removed the giant nut that holds it on and pulled the drain out.  Pulled the nut out from under the sink, looked at what I had, and cursed every landlord that ever just “made do” with a rental property (this house was a rental before I bought it).  Have a look.

Broken Sink

The nut was cracked (and not from me removing it), and the jackasses just packed the area around the nut with plumber’s putty to stop any leaks that sprung up.  Had to schlep my way to Home Depot at eight o’clock at night and buy a whole new sink drain and nut assembly, because they don’t sell just the nut.

*mumblegrumblecurse*

Stupid fucking sink.

Broken Sink

Canadian Animal.

DmentD2 Comments

Ok, I’m seeing double right now.

My favorite shows on the idiot box are mostly composed of cooking shows (Good Eats, Ace of Cakes, Iron Chef America, and an outside contender that skirts the line between food and travel show… No Reservations), Discovery Channel fun/danger shows (MythBusters, Dirty Jobs, Deadliest Catch), BBC America imports (Top Gear, The Graham Norton Show… and hoping like hell that QI makes its way across eventually), and a number of one-offs that aren’t defined by a genre.

I just picked up a new one, basically a “contractors fucked up my home, I’d like you to make it right” type show.  The host comes in and soberly, with minimal sensationalism, tears out as much of the original poor construction as necessary — pointing out where the original contractor screwed the pooch with relation to safety and code — and redoes it properly, explaining what and why he’s doing.  The show is Holmes on Homes, and the host, Mike Holmes is a sturdily built dude, with a no nonsense attitude, and a Boy Scout complex a mile wide.  He looks, sounds and behaves almost exactly like my brother, Animal, if he would have gone into construction.  It amuses me to no end.

Sweets, Celebrity And Grilling.

DmentD

Hello loyal readership (and by loyal readership, I mean my near countless minions numbering in the single digits).  So, while I do not have a trip journal to entertain you with yet, I do feel like blabbering.  So, why not?

First and foremost, the HMS Sweets has docked on our shores.  Her flights — in complete defiance of common practice — were all not only on time and effortless, but even had the audacity to arrive early in some cases.  I don’t know what we did to deserve this cosmic/karmic boon, but I sure as hell won’t be forgetting to toast DeJockamo any time soon.  I threw a “Belated Happy Birthday & Welcome Home” party in her honor the day after her arrival, complete with lots of grilled animal flesh, and a cake in the shape of a sheep.  Good food, good company, and puppies galore running around and being cute as can be.  Capped off by some homemade tiramisu ice cream (my own recipe, thankyouverymuch), the day was a success.

We then spent the following week getting her settled in: opening a US bank account, a cell phone, getting a dresser, unpacking, hanging pictures (I left them down so she could help me hang them, and contribute to decorating the house and feel like it’s her place too, not just my house that she is staying at), going to her orientation at the culinary academy, birthday present clothes shopping (for Texas-heat appropriate apparel), and other such things.

It’s spooky how well and easily we’ve settled into the house together, and have established a happy routine.  Mind you, this is only the second week, but so far it’s gone well.  As different as we both are, we see eye to eye on a lot of things, especially when it comes to keeping house.  She’s spent so long trying to keep her head above water — cleaning wise — in a house with three to four other housemates, that she’s developed basically the same housekeeping philosophy it took me thirty four years to evolve.  Neither of us are OC neat freaks, but we like a tidy house… and a clean and orderly kitchen especially.  Things get put away in a timely fashion, but we shun dusting unless absolutely necessary.  We keep house in such a manner that we would never be embarrassed if company stopped by unexpectedly.  So, we seem to be domestically very compatible at this point.  Check back, gentle readers, in a year.

Sweets’ first week of school is going well for her, all three days of it so far.  They’ve covered sanitary practices and health codes, temperatures and other things.  She’s covered all this in her UK courses already, but just needs to learn the Fahrenheit temps instead of the Celsius temps.  Day one, in the first few minutes alone, she charmed the pants off of her instructor for this first three week course, simply by opening her mouth and talking — her accent made the instructor nearly swoon, and now she’s telling the other instructors to just listen to Sweets talk.  I told her before she got here, that her accent is going to be key in charming and winning people over, well before her culinary talent is called to action.  Americans are predisposed to accept a smooth, posh English accent as a sign of culture, refinement and intelligence — and I’m not saying “ha, she’s going to have everyone fooled“, because she is wickedly intelligent and charming too, but that she should use our genetic weakness to make friends and contacts in the industry as it is a fantastic foot in the door.

And I must say, I have discovered a hitherto unknown fetish for cute, bespectacled women wearing a crisp, white, double-breasted chef’s jacket.

And on to thoughts that do not involve domestic bliss.

Been reading a lot of Kevin Smith’s blog My Boring Ass Life, as well as Wil Wheaton’s blog WWdN: In Exile.  It’s oddly quite comforting to know that two pop-culture icons of my generation, two moderately successful guys who occupy the limelight, are just a coupla’ normal schmoes like me.  If you remove their fame, money and notoriety — hell, in spite of their fame, money and notoriety — they lead relatively normal human lives.  They’re geeks, have everyday insecurities, do their best to hustle up work and provide a decent life for themselves and their families, get pissed off at the drive thru when their order is wrong, and basically are human to their very core.  They’re warm, decent guys, and I have an overwhelming desire to spend a few hours just sitting around and bullshitting over a few drinks with them (and Wil, I recommend PranQster Belgian Style Golden Ale).

They make my list of “celebrities” I’d like to drink with, which is composed of people who are earthy and interesting.  As a result they don’t trigger that idol-worship reflex that causes one — when in the presence of someone famous — to sweat profusely, stammer uncontrollably, say inane things and give limp, damp handshakes.  Others on that list include Fred LeBlanc of Cowboy Mouth, Douglas Adams (now a long gone chance), Chris Elliot and Bruce Campbell.  All hard working, intelligent stiffs, and not infected with a prima donna complex.

Been grilling a lot.  I’ve always liked grilling, but have had a near three year hiatus due to some blowhard bitch that killed my home in NOLA.  The staples of grilling live in my freezer — boneless skinless chicken breasts and sirloin burgers from Sam’s — but I’ve started a meat-affair with my local semi-fa-fa grocery, Central Market (think Whole Foods with only half a stick up their ass).  They offer pre-marinated fresh animal flesh of all types that walk, fly or swim.  Their chicken is divine, especially the pesto garlic marinated variety, and dear Jeebus their dry-rub seasoned fajita beef rocked my world.

Have also grilled my fair share of veggies, too, most notably corn-on-the-cob.  And while I’m a sentimental, aesthetic fool and like the notion of grilling corn in the husk, I think the best method yet is to de-husk it, brush it lightly with butter, sprinkle a bit of salt and pepper, wrap in foil and throw that on the grill over medium heat, turning it two times at five minute intervals (15 minutes total).  You still get some color on the kernels, but you preserve most all of the moisture, and the butter can seep between the kernels nicely.  Even with soaking in cold water, the husks still dry out quickly, char and catch fire.

Aaaand, that’s what I gots for now.

Insert Distraction Here.

DmentD5 Comments

Ok, some videos and such to distract you from the fact that I haven’t posted anything about my recent trip to Wales.

First Where The Hell Is Matt (2008).  The back story of the video is this:

“Matthew Harding spent 14 months visiting 42 countries in order to produce “Where the Hell is Matt?”, a four-and-a-half minute video featuring Harding (and anyone else he could rope into it) doing an incredibly silly, high-energy dance in some of the most breathtaking scenery around the world. This may be the best four minutes and twenty-eight seconds of your week.“

I happen to agree. The video made me grin like a fool for no reason — and for every reason, it just made my heart feel light, and made me happy.  I liked the song enough to actually pay for it (conceal your shocked expressions, please).  If you wanna know more about Matt and his 15 minutes of fame, you can read all about it on HIS SITE.

Second, a video that I’m sure everyone has seen, but just hit my radar today, courtesy of an email.  I present to you, the heartbreak of COOTIES.

Lastly… sometimes it’s worth watching the ORIGINAL, sincere, but unintentionally silly video, just so you can really enjoy the PARODIES, as most of the time they are FUNNIER, and more LUDICROUS.  And then someone comes along and does THIS (ignore the video, listen to the music).