Virginia Breeze

Good morning to you and a good morning it is except that Beth is outside raking the leaves from the infernal tree that has a backward internal clock and drops them all summer long.

Her presence in the front yard means that I have only a few moments before I must go out in the heat and start up the lawn mower.

But I am imbued with strength this morning after the nice comments that have found their way here. I am generally not worthy of these but feel it necessary to try and understand them. Wait. I hear a lawnmower. Never mind. It’s two doors down. That could have been real trouble.

A gentleman by the name of Robert R. Marsh who has developed the really cool similar posts plugin you see around here and many other places has been helping me with something this week. Go look at the photos over at Photolinklove.com and see if you see any difference!

These photo shadows have always put a twinkle in my eye since I saw them in Michael Brown’s blog. They are just so cool and Robert just figured out how to do it and put them here! You can’t just get these anywhere as far as I know. Sadish uses them in some of his themes. But hopefully now they will be available if Robert decides to make it so. Thanks, guy!

But that is not all! Things have progressed rapidly in an upward direction since a squirrel took his own life Thursday night and blew out the transformer out back leaving us without electricity all night long. It was like living in a cave only a very hot one.

But last night was much better as I conversed briefly but nevertheless in a very positive way with Jordin. Yes my dear readers. Just one year after she became the reigning American Idol (plus a few days but who is counting) your blogging buddy said something to Ms. Jordin that made her laugh.

I told Beth about it this morning and she was almost elated! But then she decided we needed to cut the grass. So I must leave you now.

Have a great, great day. And let me leave you with this.

Remember to follow your dreams. But also try to keep your grass from getting too long. And if possible set up some sort of outreach program for your neighborhood squirrels.

Mine need to understand that the metal tubes that are affixed to poles among their branches and homes are not rest stops. They are gateways to squirrel heaven. And it hurts me deeply when they go through that door.

Stay here and gather nuts my friends. And have a good laugh as you look down and watch the sweaty refections on the chrome dome going back and forth, back and forth, back and forth while you are bouncing and flying through the air.

Count your blessings but don’t try to make them all come true in one brief moment.

While you are destroying your mind watching the worthless, brain-rotting drivel on TV, we on the Internet are exchanging, freely and openly, the most uninhibited, intimate and, yes, shocking details about our config.sys settings. ~Dave Barry

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There are really not enough simple explanations happening in cyberspace for someone who wants to blog but has no background that would be helpful in this regard.

In other words “I’M AN IDIOT !!” (and this is why “Idiots guides” proliferate).

Perhaps it would be helpful if I broke down some of the knowledge I have gained in this area. Because it is easy for me to explain things in simple language and not leave out any important little details. I need those details too!

THIS is what sinks ships. Those tiny little bits of information that are just so OBVIOUS to the knowledgeable may sometimes be left out. And that can leave us floating on a raft. Lost, lost, lost and waving good-bye to our new love as he sinks out of sight. Sorry Leonardo but you should have climbed up there with your true love. Being a gentleman will only get you so far.

But perhaps you were too tired after your adventure in the car.

So here is how I installed NextGen Gallery into my Wordpress blog from the word GO!

First we are going to upload some files.

I have a couple of tools for doing this. And the first one will allow us to bring the second one on board. So let’s begin with the first one. It is called Total Commander 7.03

Here is a download location

http://www.totalcmd.net/plugring/totalcmd.html

Follow the directions and open the software package.

This is shareware and in order to use it you have to play a little game. It will give you a number and you will have to click on the same number in order to get in. It’s very simple. It’s a confidence booster really.

Each time you want to use this program all you have to do is hit Control-F and it will spring into action.

A window opens. It says Connect to ftp server on top. And on the right is a button to click that says Connect. But before you can connect you have to set up a New Connection. New Connection is the second box.

So click on New connection. This brings up another window called FTP:connection details. We only need to worry about a few of the boxes here (repeat this exercise for each of your blogs).

The first box is entitled Session. Put the name of your blog in here.

The second box is entitled Host Name (Port). Put ftp.davidnotes.com in there. LOL. Actually you need to put the name of Your Domain in there. Sometimes it is written ftp.yourdomain.com but I used to find that to be slightly confusing. If you do too then we are maybe from the same planet.

The next box should have Anonymous login etc in it already.

Next is User name. Do you know your user name? Do you have as many of these per chance as I do? Well this one is the one you use to get into your Cpanel. It’s the one that came with your domain. If you didn’t write it down I can’t help you. Try looking in your admin panel/settings/writing. Look down there under Post via e-mail. There is a Login Name. That could be it! Or you may need to email your hosting company and have them help you.

And then we have the inevitable Password. You have many of these floating around too no doubt. This one is also associated with your cpanel. Same deal as the username. It could be down there with the Login Name.

In any case it pays to write things down.

But even more important than this it pays to write them all down in the same small notebook and then.. . . . .

DON’T LOSE THE NOTEBOOK! Always know where it is so you can find it at a moment’s notice.

And that concludes our first lesson boys and girls. We will move on in a day or two. But we don’t want to overtax ourselves with this stuff. It’s “Keep It Simple Sweetheart” all the way! And for now. . .

As Paul Harvey used to say

Bye Bye!

Recently I posted something about Men And Crying. Because men really do need to catch a break somewhere in this subject. You can only grit your teeth so long before they tell you that dentures might be the way to go. Anyway I did post it and sent it out with Christmas Greetings! to all my StumbleUpon friends. And at the end of this post I attached several music videos done by the great Andrea Bocelli. Why? Because when he sings I often become tearful. It’s just too beautiful for words. So I thought this would be a good way to demonstrate the point of the post. Others would have the same reaction. Merry Christmas.

And I was having a great time constructing this post. Beth brought home a large bottle of Rumski and I was mixing this with Vault because we didn’t have any fresh Coke A COLA. And there is nothing worse than a Rum And Coke without the sharp fizz. It’s a waste of so many things including human brain cells. If they are going out we want to send them out in a joyful moment. Joy and fizz are forever locked together in my mind. Coca Cola has done their marketing job well over the years.

So having organized all of that I was playing Andrea and writing the post and putting the links in the post. And after awhile it was not going so well. Technically speaking it was going downhill. But in terms of the Joyful Spirit it was going better and better. I ended up eventually with this long post and then many links to Andrea and the best renditions of his genius I could find on the web.

And then all of this went out to everybody and it sank like a stone. I realized it was a disaster after completing the drinking portion of the exercise. So I chopped it in half and tried to salvage the situation by sending up the Men And Crying post alone. But I had no hope for it. Andrea went out the other door and I just knew he would be singing in every town across the nation before too long.

But as usual things went just the opposite from my prediction. Readers are responding to Men And Crying. Guys are sending comments about it that are very amazing. They are describing some of their experiences. It is very gratifying to me and I want to say Thank You to everyone. The post has been reviewed a number of times as well.

Meanwhile Andrea is nowhere to be found. All I can do is once again recommend that you find time in you busy schedule to listen to him. And drinking while you are listening to him is wonderful as well. I realize that some of you don’t want to drink and this is not for you. One gentleman wrote and told me that if he followed my suggestion he would find himself in the back seat of a police car before too long.

We should all try to stay out of there. Last night Beth and I headed out to spend the evening with my daughter and her wonderful family. My daughter is fearful of the internet just as Beth is fearful of it. So you won’t find many photos of them here.

Beth and I had an adventure on the way down there. You go over the river and through the woods for about 45 minutes to get there and it was dark. So I made a wrong turn and we ended up in a lot of traffic. Then I saw a police car with his Christmas Lights blazing coming towards us at a great rate of speed in the rear view mirror. I am always reminded of the movie Close Encounters Of The Third Kind when this happens. Fortunately he had other business on this mind and went on down the road in about two seconds.

An hour later we arrived at our destination and had a nice meal. The children look forward to this night because I always bring a Christmas movie and leave it with them so they can watch it fifty more times in the following months. Last night we watched Santa Claus Three/ The Escape Clause. It has gotten terrible reviews but I smiled through most of it. Mostly because my two lovely little granddaughters snuggled up next to me on the couch. Their brilliant brother was absorbed in the movie not too far away. And my wonderful daughter and her husband were also with us. And Beth was sitting in front of me on the rug with their big, playful Labrador pup studying her right ear from very close range.

In some ways I enjoy this evening more than Christmas Day. Except for the narrow roads through the woods and headlights. I am starting to understand why so many folks buy vehicles that put you way up in the air. You don’t have to try and figure out where the road went as you do when headlights are right there at eye level. So I just slow down. Incredibly the speed limit is often 45 miles per hour in this area! I was feeling more comfortable at about 30 miles per hour. And thanks to all the folks who sat back behind us and didn’t get impatient. Once again you begin to see how things are a little different this time of year. Wouldn’t it be nice if we all just decided to be this way all year round?

One more adventure awaited us as a kitty decided to run across the road just about where my front wheels would have been if I had not slammed on the brakes. Beth let out a short scream and the little guy bolted in the second all of this took to be over. The driver in back of us was taking his time so all was well. But if he had been tailgating we would have been visiting with him in the back seat of our car.

So we returned home without a scratch. No tears were shed. There is more Rum, Coke and Vault in the Frig. And I have several Andrea Bocelli CD’s lying around.

What do you enjoy doing in the days before Christmas? Isn’t it just a wonderful time of year!

http://www.thelivesandtimes.blogspot.com/

Go here and you will find a nice gentleman by the name of Anthony who is ninety years old. He has a very interesting weblog and still gets out and shoots his own photos.

I plan to go back and spend some time there. It’s a lovely place. Put our ages together and he and I have been alive since before the Civil War.

Isn’t this a lovely photo Anthony took recently

You can find so many interesting people on the web. It can be a delightful place to learn about life and other people.