Category: Just Saying …

Just a few louds in the blue sky this morning with a light wind. Current temp is about 42F. Weather forecasters say that cold air is coming. High/lows are forecast at 43/25F over the next couple of days, with clear skies. Then some rain and perhaps low-elevation snow over the weekend, with temps 32-44F. We are close to the Puget Sound (only 1/2 mile away), so the warmer water usually prevents any snow lower than 500’ elevation (our elevation is 190’), although we did get about an inch in December that stuck around for a day.

I spend most of my day in the living room, facing the wall of windows overlooking the little harbor here and out to Puget Sound. So I see lots of cargo ships, and the occasional submarine heading to Bangor WA.

Bremerton WA is also home to a big naval base, and there are always a few aircraft carriers in the harbor there. Today, I saw an aircraft carrier transiting Puget Sound outside my window. That was fun to see. Not sure which one it was; I use the http://www.MarineTraffic.com web site, which shows commercial and private ship locations. Today it is showing a line of big (huge) container ships heading to the ports in Portland. But it never shows the Navy vessels on the map, although sometimes you see the support vessels (tenders and US Coast Guard). So don’t know which aircraft carrier went by. But was nifty to view through my binoculars for a few minutes while it transited my view of the Puget Sound.

Cloudy today, slight breeze, temps in mid-40’s, no sprinkles. Watching a few cargo ships transit the Puget Sound from my living room window.

I did some writing on my book project. It’s still a first draft, right now sitting at about 110K words. Heading towards the climax, although I am not sure what the climax is, or how it will turn out.

It’s been a project I have been working on intermittently for over a year. It’s been interesting to write, but not sure how it will conclude yet. It’s like driving down a road you have never been on before. There is something at the end of the road, but you are not sure what it will look like when you get there. Sometimes I am not even sure what the road looks like on the way to the destination.

But it does keep me somewhat busy.

When I left for church this morning, it was a bit windy. I could see some whitecaps on the Puget Sound from my living room window. Now that I am home this afternoon, the wind have mostly stopped (a few light breeze are making the tops of the pine trees move), with gray clouds but no rain around here. Clouds are moving SW to NE, I think; from my window (which faces east, they are moving from right to left, so could be S to N. But the pattern around here is usually SW to NE, so I am sticking with that. Temps at about 48F, which is probably as warm as it will get.

Some light surfing the interwebs this afternoon. Maybe a few new screenshots for one of the WP plugins. I need to figure out a new programming project to keep me busy this week.

Nice day outside. Might get up to 50F. Mostly blue skies, a few thin clouds to the east. Don’t know what’s out west; the windows where I site are east-facing.

Some goofing around with the WordPress plugins today. Some more stretching exercises and heat to stretch out the pififormis muscle (look it up) that is causing a bit of numbness in various spots on my left left and foot. Related to a bout of sciatica that happened late November. Heat and stretching are about all you can do for it.

Partly cloudy today, light breeze, currently mid-40’s F. Clouds wandering northeasterly as I look out my big window.

A WordPress update, so I need to test my plugins and ensure all is well with them, then update the ‘tested to’ value to the latest version. The updates happen automatically on all sites, although I could force them a bit. But it is a minor update, so I will let the automatic process work.

Not sure that I will continue work on one of my new plugins. Need to investigate some different techniques to store multiple settings. Geeky stuff, but I enjoy the programming part. Not that my plugins will ever have thousands of installations. I write them for my own needs, then share in case others happen to stumble upon a need that they will fulfill.

Today’s weather is brought to you by cloudy skies and temps around 42F, maybe a few short sprinkles.

Yesterday, I fixed and updated one of my WordPress plugins to add features that were helpful to me. And the Postie plugin people fixed the problem with posts being scheduled to publish 8 hours after posting. And I thought of a few new useful features for one of my plugins, so will work on that.

Visit to the doctor’s this morning. Problem with sciatica nerve early last month have not fully gone away; having some slight numbness in one leg and foot due to the Piriformus nerve. So need to get started on some stretching exercises for that, along with the usual heat/cool pads. It’s not painful, so that is good; just slight numbness of a few areas in that leg and foot.

So, a bit of programming work to keep me occupied. Then a trip to ‘town’ for groceries, and an early dinner at The Habit, which has just opened near our area (about 25 minutes away). One of our favorite places in CA and UT; great burgers and grilled tri-tip sandwiches, and some other things.

Sad to hear about Mary Tyler Moore’s passing today. The “Dick Van Dyke” show has been one of my favorites; he and MTM were great in that series. Started watching it on Netflix the other day. Still makes me laugh.

Catching up, but first – today’s weather: mostly cloudy, but no rain, temps currently 40F, no wind.

Sunday was church day, made longer with participation in a bi-annual (twice a year, right?) financial audit. Pretty comprehensive, took about 3 hours, so didn’t get home until 6pm after arriving at 8am for leadership meetings.

Monday was the usual. One of the WP plugins I use on the MissionaryLetters (and other) sites (called ‘Postie’) lets you send an email that gets turned into a post. Has been working quite well, but the weekend update of the plugin is now causing all posts to be ‘scheduled’ 8 hours in the future, rather than visible immediately. Causing some consternation with clients of those sites, since they expect their email to be posted within about 30 minutes – one of the features of the site.

So spent some time documenting that problem with the plugin support area. Did some more of that this morning, as I looked at their code and think that I found the part of their code that delays things. Not sure why that code is not working any more, since I have minimal knowledge of their code process.

So this morning, looked at that process a bit more, and added additional info to my support ticket. Waiting to hear back from the developers.

In the meantime, one of the plugins that I have written will show all posts on a multisite installation. I modified that code to provide an option to show all posts, not just the published ones. This will help me monitor new posts on the MissionaryLetters site, so I can force publication of new letters, bypassing the delay that the Postie plugin is now putting on there. That’s today’s project.