Yes, I moved the weblog from [http://weblog.janella.com] to the main site [janella.com]  And the layout has also changed.  The photo header above rotates photos Farrah and I have taken.  Photos included in the header right now are:

A new photo may not load if you’re browser caches the photo, but know that it does work.  I’m not sure how many I’ll put up for the header, but a new image should load here or there.  If you really want to force an image to load, hold down the shift key on your keyboard, then press the Reload button on your web browser.  Your  web browser will do a ‘hard reload’,  asking for new information from the server.

I’ve given up on the whole [geeklog.net] layout.  Just wasn’t happy with the way it was looking and how entries are made into the blog.  I am going forward with using [Gallery] as the photo engine, the same one used on [nothingcouldbefina] .  What I like about Gallery is the way it displays images.  What I like about 4images is the information it can store information in a database.  So right now: style over handling of information.

Merry Christmas to all!!!

[project.janella.com] has now been changed to [beta.janella.com] What exactly does that mean?

Well, I started going back toward a CMS (Content Management System) solution for this website. See the website is basically made of two components: a weblog (or blog) and a photo gallery. Currently if you access [weblog.janella.com] what you see is Wordpress, a great blog program. When you access [photos.janella.com] you see 4images, a photo gallery program. Both are created by different groups of developers and function great. I just don’t have the time to make them look similar, so navigating between the two can be difficult.

I’ve tried a CMS solution before but it was slow. I think the new one I’m trying, called Geeklog, is decent in speed and works fairly well. For the time being I’ll be posting any new pictures in both the [photos.janella.com] section as well as the [beta.janella.com] If all goes well the site will switch from the beta site to the primary site.

Bobby Fisher? Mr. Goodbar? Videos with Bjork in it?

There’s a new beta search engine by Yahoo! that allows you to search for video clips. Go to [video.search.yahoo.com] to try it out. You can play with the preferences so you’re searches aren’t restricted.

Also available in beta by Yahoo! is [My Yahoo! Search] This one is a little more personal. Sign in with your Yahoo! name and start searching. You can save results, share results, search within saved pages you searched on, and a whole bunch of other stuff.

Remember, both of these are in beta so it’s still growing. Changes are afoot in search-land.

A Christmastime. Farrah, my mom and I went to see Kayla’s play a Christmas in Egypt. Kayla played the part of Delta, an Egyptian with a southern accent. She was one of three southern belle types. The other two were named Cleopatty and … oh, the name escapes me now. In any event, Kayla’s performance was fantastic.

Afterward we went to the Traber’s residence for birthday cake to celebrate Farrah’s upcoming birthday.

Farrah told me about [this ad] with Asian actors stating the importance of voting. I never saw it on television, but I did vote nonetheless. If you missed the ad, watch it for gee whiz.

Disposable cell phones that turn into sunflowers??? With the inventors being from Amsterdam I thought the plant/flower type would be different. Interesting idea nonetheless. [Read the story at CNN.com]

Oh its been a short weekend for me. I had to work yesterday because a co-worker needed to take one of their floating holidays before the end of the year. He has one more to take this year so looks like I’ll be working another Saturday soon.

Last night Farrah and I also went to my company’s year end party (called YEP) in San Francisco. It was held at 7th and Brannen in the City as it has been for the last several years. It was pretty cool: food, drinks, fake gambling, and great music. The main music was provided by [Ozomotli who rocked the house! Too bad they came on later in the evening when our feet were already killing us because of walking!!!

Anyway, there are so many things to write about, especially some things from Thanksgiving weekend. I’ll need to find some time to write about more later. Right now I should get to bed. Work tomorrow, y' know.

(as dictated by tessie)

• *regular baking potatoes (5 lbs)
• *gravy (e.g. turkey - can or jar)
• *beef gravy (no mad cow in it)
• *stuffy (e.g. stuffing)
• *corn, green giant (either frozen canned; nibblits)
• *green bean, green giants (can; kitchen cut - no french cut)
• *two cans cream of chicken, campbells
• *dried french onion
• *block of velveta cheese
• *roll, e.g. dinner rolls - heat and serve or pilsbury (freezer)
• *cranberries - canned
• *apple and pumpkin
• *vanilla ice cream
• *chocolate whip cream

The last of the Hawaii trip photos are posted.  The photos are located under Trips | Hawaii 2004 Part II for both the [photos] and [project] pages.  Again, there is no difference in the amount of photos displayed on either page.  The photos are just displayed in two different methods.

For this album (Hawaii 2004 Part II) most of the photos were taken with a digital camera.  I have yet to upload the raw photos to a linked [Shutterfly] page, but will do so when I get the chance.  You can then order pictures and/or see what wasn’t posted on the web site.  Any questions?  Let me know.

New albums posted are:

• Tiana's Birthday 2004 - Tiana's first birthday party celebrated at Ko'olau. Currently only the photos taken with the Nikon cameras are posted. Digital images to follow - when I get a chance.
• Grandma's Birthday 2004 - Grandma's 86th birthday celebration at Auntie's home. Again, only the film images are posted right now.

From the description provided within the album, you can click on a link that will take you to a like album on [Shutterfly], an online photo service. You can access the raw photo album for the specific album you accessed. What is the raw photo album? It is all the pictures I took in the album on Janella.com, plus photos that I did not post. Also some of the photos on Janella.com have been edited (e.g. cropped, resized, etc.) so as to make them more presentable. The photos located on [Shutterly] are the full photo size, sometimes taking up to 3 MB of space. This can take some time to load if presented on a web site, but might be ideal if you want to order photos. If you have any question on this let me know.

Farrah and I found this huge spider on our wall after coming home from Toys R Us:

We tried to corral the spider but, unfortunately, ended up killing it.  We are still trying to determine what kind of spider it is.  Anyone know?

Yeah, we’re back from Hawaii!!! I’m working on getting the pictures posted. Right now I’m a little tired but managed to get the pictures from Grandma’s 86th birthday posted. It’s available through [http://photos.janella.com/] as well as [http://project.janella.com/]

What is the latter site you ask? Just trying to determine if I want to use the [Gallery] engine to post photos or not. I’m still thinking about it, so not all albums are available on the project subdomain. If you don’t have a username/password to the site, just write to me at my email address.

The final release version of Firefox is now available at [mozilla.org]. The site is really busy since it is the first day of release, so you may want to try later on in the week.

We’re getting ready for our trip to Hawaii (yes again). One of the things we wanted to do before going was to get a new phone plan. Our current plan is geared toward local use. If we travel outside of the state we are charge for making calls. I know I didn’t want to stay with our current carrier, AT & T, so we should look elsewhere for a national plan. Since Farrah’s phone contract was up we decided to try Verizon. Verizon has received good ratings nationally and [locally too].

When we walked into the Verizon store we were able to get a new phone within 45 minutes, with the number transferred over and working!!! The salesperson said the secret was in bringing the billing statement as it had all the information needed to easily “port over” the phone number. Well, we’ll let you know how the phone works during the 15 day trial.

Today would have been my father’s 95th birthday. I know if he lived this long it would have been quite a feat. Nonetheless I do miss him still.

I saw these images below posted on some messageboard regarding the new [Fantastic Four] movie being made.  From the looks of the these images I’m not too impressed.  Then again I wasn’t too impressed with the Thing’s costume or Jessica Alba as Sue Storm.  I’m thinking their going to have to CGI the Thing or he’ll just look like a ‘guy in a costume’.

I’m watching tv right now, seeing how the Presidential race is going. It’s interesting to see the color coded map on the screen, and how divided the country is on who should be PODUS (President of the United States - something I learned from watching [The West Wing]) I’m not sure how the country comes out of being so divided on a leader, especially with a war going on and the economy the way it is. Only time will tell if the Country is going to be moving in the right direction.

Yeah, it took me an hour in line to cast my vote, but GO VOTE!

Today we went up to the City to Lotte’s place to (1) celebrate Matthew’s birthday - which was last week, (2) a house-warming for Lotte, and (3) celebrate Halloween.  Now that’s a lot of celebrating!  Photos are posted on the website.  I had to head back early to hand out candy at the house.  Right now I’m typing this weblog entry from the laptop near the front door.  The kid flow is somewhat steady.  I’d say about 40+ kids at this point.  There are still those older kids who don’t dress up and expect candy.  Ugh.

Well, it looks like its dying dying down.  Of course as I wrote that three kids came up to both greet with a “trick or treat” and a “Merry Christmas”.  Nice.  Oh well, closing shop at 8pm no matter what.  Better go man the door.

I get worried about my computer. Actually, the data stored on the computer, such as email and the family digital photos. Computing, as some of you may have experienced, can be frustrating. Errors in Windows seem to happen daily if your system is askew. The Internet is not a safe place as well. Viruses are everywhere, even in images viewed on websites! Also, hard drives can crash - even though only one has crashed on me ever. In an effort to avoid total disaster should my computer go haywire, I decided to back everything up. I was going to back everything up to another internal hard drive - but what if my computer overheated blowing up both hard drives? I needed an external solution. I decided on finally getting a DVD burner.

Why a DVD burner? Well, if I stayed with my trusty old CD burner to back up the information I desired, it would probably take 10-15 discs. If I backed it up to DVD it might only take 2 or 3 disks. This is because CDs hold about 650MB of information. Compare this to 4.3 GB of information a DVD can hold and you see why DVD is the answer for now. Also, the price of DVD media (the blank stuff) is coming down. I think CDs are about .20 to .25 cents per disc while DVDs are about .50 to .80 cents per (at least the stuff I get). Dual-layer DVDs (the ones movies come on) are still a bit pricey, but that doesn’t matter for now.

I did some quick research on [cnet.com], [tom’s hardware guide] and [videohelp.com]. I then chose my burner: the Pioneer DVD A08XL - in black to match my system. I chose this particular burner because (1) it could burn at a high speed, (2) it had a rebate offer, and (3) it was black to match my computer.

Installation of the drive was straightforward. I was able to burn a DVD once I installed the included software. I was also able to burn DVDs using Nero, which I find better than the included software. I like this drive, and burning with DVDs. The only downside I see with this specific drive so far: it seems slower at burning CDs than my old CD burner.

Are you registered to vote? Hope so because it’s too late to register for this year’s election - at least in California. For a comedic look (or a comedian’s pov of politics) check out the following:

• [the borowitz report] I heard him on the KGO radio. Pretty funny guy.
• [Jon Stewart's appearance on Crossfire] steaming video on someone's blog. Enjoyable.

Wow, today was a busy day.  I helped celebrate my sister and friend’s birthdays.

First off was Susana’s birthday in Santa Cruz.  My mom and I drove up to Riva’s on the wharf to meet Susana, Kayla and Rex for lunch.  I had my ususal Fisherman’s Platter (calamari, fish, and chips).  There was some slight detour-ing going and leaving the pier as a marching band competition was occurring by the Boardwalk.  Luckily Kayla was able to guide us back to her house for cake.  We even beat Susana and Rex back to the house! (pics posted on the photos page)

Later on that night I was invited to my friend David’s 40th birthday celebration at El Burro’s.  There must have been a lot of people celebrating their 40th birthday there as I almost ended up with the wrong party for dinner!  It was the first time i met most of David’s family (mom, dad, and his sisters).  It was a large celebration that lasted several hours.  Good food, good cake, and good conversation.  Oh, and afterward we went to go catch a showing of [Team America] at Century 21.  My review on that later.

"So you wanna breakdance instead?
-- Purported mumbled word by me.

Ok, I know I talk in my sleep. But I can’t imagine any situation where I might mumble the above phrase. Farrah said I did and she’s not one to make this up. I don’t think I can even make this up!