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Welcome to my site. Here you can find a variety of interesting things and a bunch of boring stuff too! Make a comment, sign the guestbook, join the party! Most of the background image can be seen by scrolling your browser down or right-clicking it and viewing it through the menu.

Any views and opinions displayed on this page are not necessarily held by the webmaster or his associates! Any comments that cause offense might have been intended to do so, then again, they might not! If your views contradict those expressed here, feel free to vent forth and pontificate to your heart's desire, even though you are probably completely wrong! You are welcome to play the Devil's Advocate, I plan to! That said, if I deem any language used to be inappropriate, I'll send you a rude email and also remove said words and replace them with others designed to make you look daft at the very least!


Saturday, July 12, 2003

I have now installed Movable type and am busy experimenting with it prior to making it the default blog script. You can see the progress by checking The test blog.

Thursday, July 10, 2003

Technical Problems
Sorry for the lack of updates in the last few weeks. I have been experiencing a problem with the script that runs this blog. Every time that I tried to add another entry it totally screwed up my finely crafted layout! I think that the trouble might be solved now but will not find out until I submit this for inclusion.
well, here I go yet again!
Well, as you can see, that didn't work! Methinks it might be time for another facelift!
posted @ 07:28 PM CST [link] [No Comments]

Wednesday, June 18, 2003

Local Web Designers or Cowboys?
Out of interest I thought it might be a fun exercise to check out the homepages of all the web designers listed in the phone book. Luckily Wausau is relatively small but it took me a while to track them all down. Once I had found a site, I had its source code validated to see if these people were giving their clients the service they deserve. Guess what? Of twelve companies/individuals listed, only one had valid code for their own page so I also validated the CSS and it failed miserably!
If you employ somebody to design and maitain your website, it might be a good idea to see what kind of value you are getting. Of course you might want to bare in mind that they are probably using one of the better graphical editors to do the hard work for them, giving them the excuse that it is out of their hands! Bullshit! HTML is a very laid back language and the browsers do a fairly good job of ignoring mistakes and showing the pages as designed (at least with the older standards!). However, there can be no excuse for a webpage to be missing its doctype declaration or the 'alt' being absent from an image tag!
You Cowboys need to shape up or ship out! I think that a lean, mean, coding machine might be joining the fray sooner than expected! Y'all might need to call for the Cavalry!
posted @ 10:50 PM CST [link] [No Comments]



We have pipes!
The sewer is renewed! After Roto-Rooter got 300 feet of hose stuck down there, the City came to join the fun. It was eventually discovered that roughly five years ago, the main sewer was replaced and they neglected to connect our pipe! It has taken all this time to fill up! Somewhere underneath 5th St. Wausau the ground is thoroughly enriched with all our waste!
For speed and economy, the City have connected us to a closer and more accessible sewer. They had to dig a massive trench through our yard but have done a nice job of landscaping. They also added a floor drain to our basement for free!
The water authorities also joined in as they wished to find the water main and its shutoff valve, neither of which had been seen or heard of since they were installed in 1941! 8 inches beneath a huge patch of lillies was the location that had been a thorn in their collective sides for many a year. That found, they quickly disconnected it and hooked us up with a new supply, also for free!
The Roto-Rooter fellow retrieved his hose and will also be payed for his hopeless efforts by the powers that be. I have to take my hat off to anyone stupid enough to put 300 feet of hose down a hole that can be no longer than 125 feet! To put this in context, if I were to be transported 300 feet west, I would find myself sitting at the local bar.
What an excellent idea! Untill next post, farewell, I have to go on a short journey, maybe as much as 100 yards!
posted by @ 10:25 PM CST [more on the subject...] [No Comments]

Friday, June 13, 2003

Pipes and fires
Sorry for the lack of updates of late. We have a number of issues that are demanding attention.
We have a blocked sewer. We cannot shower or shit in our home. The basement is a couple of inches deep in effluent and the whole place smells bad. As they say "Shit happens", just not here right now.
There is an arsonist in the neighborhood who is setting light to garages. In the last couple of weeks, five garages and an empty house have gone up in flames within a couple of blocks of our house. We have installed security lighting on our garage and have our fingers crossed that the cops can find the a-hole responsible.
Still, at least the weather is reasonable!
Have a great weekend...........Adrian
posted by @ 07:19 AM CST [more on the subject...] [1 Comment]

Tuesday, June 3, 2003

I can't take many more weeks like that!
Jumpin' Jehosophat! So there I was thinking that we had put Rosie on her plane and could chill for a while. Wrong! First we went plant shopping, eating and watched the new Matrix movie (it rocked!). Next came all the gardening. a good nights sleep and it was back to work. With it being a shorter week than normal, work was very busy so it will come as no surprise that I was very thirsty by the time I got home on Friday. Robin had a week herself and was waiting for me in the bar! Tom then did what seemed a good idea, giving me Baltimore sized shots of Jim Beam. Cheers mate!
Saturday we had already made plans to go out and see our friend Darryl play at the bar. He is recovering from carpal tunnel surgery but still made magic with his assorted instruments. Then, as he was doing his last set, all hell broke loose. Some arsehole set light to a storage shed just across the alley from the bar. This was the third garage fire in as many days within an area of only a few blocks and an empty house joined the list a couple of hours later! Other than being vigilant, there is not much that we can do. I fitted some security lighting to our garage and we updated our fire extinguishing capabilities. The cops have started patrolling the area with much more frequency with the extra bonus effect that some highly dodgy neighbors have curtailed their illicit activities!
I'm not going to plan ahead for this coming weekend, there are too many variables. I feel so lucky to live here, however, because any town that can come to national notoriety for its Easter Bunny being beaten up in a busy mall has got to have its good points! I woudln't move for the World!
posted @ 09:59 PM CST [link] [1 Comment]

Saturday, May 24, 2003

Farewell from Wisconsin Rosie!
Wow! What a week that was. We have just bid a tearfull farewell to our visitor from out East. It was almost as if we were able to see our home town and friends through fresh eyes. Everything went extremely well, with the exception of one of our dogs eating her cell phone, and the visit is unlikely to be forgotten by anyone in these parts! The Mid-West is now missing something and we all hope that this can be rectified in the near future.
Rosie - We salute you
Who wants to shake for a shot? I'm a rider though!
posted @ 08:25 PM CST [link] [No Comments]

Sunday, May 18, 2003

Welcome to Wisconsin Rosie!
I would like to welcome Rosie to our fair state. Fresh in from Baltimore, she braved the rigors of Detroits airport to get here in time to drink too much! During her visit, this fanatical Green Bay Packers fan will get to visit Green Bay for the first time and hopefully will even see a cow although she would prefer to see Brett Favre!
posted @ 10:13 AM CST [link] [No Comments]

Tuesday, May 13, 2003

CSS
As part of the change of this whole site to XHTML, CSS has had to be used. CSS stands for Cascading Style Sheets. By using these in conjunction with XHTML, it allows me to seperate the sites content from its layout.This means that the entire sites color scheme can be changed in a heart beat as can the positioning of the various elements. It has been a bit of a headache to learn and I am only a beginner right now.
The initial validation failled and it took quite a bit of work to get it to pass. Once passed, the validator still gave me a list of warnings that needed fixing, even though the code was OK. This page is now warning free and will stay this way. Now for the rest of the site!
Woohoo! I have just finished validating the CSS used throughout the whole site and it is all correct according to the authorities! There is only one problem area and it involves the scripting behind the Blog entries. I'm working on it.
To prove that I am trying to get it right and that the coding is all correct, even if your browser shows it incorrectly, the link to the W3C CSS Validation service has been added. Like the link above it, this is shown as a seal of authenticity and is only meant to be shown when the code fulfills all the criteria. Mine does and I'm damn well going to show it!
More info about how and why I have done it is available if you click'More' below the entry.
From this point on the whole site is using valid code and will stay that way. With that in mind, I'll bore you no longer with my commentary on what is, to most people, a boring subject. I'll get back to all the interesting stuff like beer, toilets, loud music etc. etc.
Thank you all for your patience!
posted by @ 06:14 PM CST [more on the subject...] [3 Comments]

This site looks best using the latest version of Mozilla, Opera or Netscape for Windows or the latest Internet Explorer for the Mac. The higher your screen resolution is, the better it will look. For the time being, Internet Explorer for Windows is not a standards compliant browser and will not show these pages as designed. It will show all the content so if you are using IE for Win' you'll just be missing some nice layouts and effects. I refuse to have my designs limited by Microsoft who have anounced that there will be no future versions of their browser anyway! Do yourself a favor and move to a browser that shows the web as it is designed to be seen. Just say 'No!' to the beast that Gates built.

The code on this page has been validated by:

Valid XHTML 1.0! Valid CSS!