Author Archives: Randy Peterman

No Chairs for This Table

I have submitted a table stylesheet to a new CSSZenGarden like site CSS Table Gallery. Their is nothing overly complicated about the style other than it uses some nifty CSS 2.1 selectors for standards compliant browsers (read: not Internet Explorer) to add an arrow next to the download links. In fact, let me outline the code I used:

tbody td a{
background: url(down_arrow.gif) no-repeat;
background-position: top left;
min-height: 20px;
padding-left: 20px;
float: left;
padding-right: 4px;
}
tbody tr th+td a{
background-image: none;
padding: inherit;
float: inherit;
}
/* Fake for IE, argh! Maybe IE 7 will resolve this. */
tbody td a{
_background: none;
_background-position: inherit;
_padding-left: 2px;
_float: inherit;
_padding-right: inherit;
}

The first rule adds the arrow to all links that are children of a regular table cell. This is a problem of course because we don’t want the download indicator next to the author links. Therefore we use the preceding sibling (+) selector in the second rule to find the section that is the table header cell (TH) and then remove the background image and download styling for that link. The third rule is a hack to get Internet Explorer to ignore the whole thing.

I like to style things in orange simply because my brother, Ed, likes orange 🙂 Yeah, I’m weird like that.

I used TopStyle Pro 3.12 to code this and Color Schemer Studio to grab complementary oranges.

Boot Faster!

You may have heard the story of Abraham and his promised son, Isaac, going to the computer store and buying all the parts to put together their own computer. When they got to the register Isaac noticed that they had not grabbed any memory chips. Disturbed by this he asked his father where they were. Abraham’s reply was, “God will provide the RAM.”

Enough really sad religious technology jokes.

I got 3 gigabytes of RAM for my desktop earlier this week. It now loads Windows XP with a 1.67 MHz AMD chip in about 15-20 seconds. Just about as fast as the Apple iBook laptop with 512MB of RAM 🙂 However, this thing whips through applications and allows me to record audio and videos in for clients like nothing else!

Beep… Beep… Beep… Beep

I’m in the process of backing up most of my data. Its going to take some time backing up gigs and gigs of photos and music to DVD’s, but I’d rather be able to restore my music and not lose my pictures rather than re-rip my CD’s and try to coerce animals at the zoo to pose like my old pictures.

Have you backed up lately? If not, why not find out how if you don’t know how, or do it soon so as to save yourself from a surprise down the road.

Say it Right Or Somebody’s Going to Have to Eat This 30 Year Old Twinky

I was just asked how to pronounce Evy’s Evie’s name. This is important to me since we’re not naming her Terry, Robin, Randy, Jessica or Mike. You may have thought that it was pronounced Evie like Levy [?v’?]. Oh, but you’d be wrong. It is pronounced like Evie like Stevie [?v?]. To help clear things up I have produced the following brief recording: evie.

Welcome to Earth, Gemma!

My buddy Dave and his lovely wife, Darlene, have a new baby girl, Gemma Lynn O’Hara. This makes them the parents of two very beautiful girls 🙂 I’m a day late in posting this, but there was some discrpancy on her name (from my sources since I missed Dave’s call yesterday while in the shower, I know, TMI). Congratulations, Makena, on being a big sister! Abby is jealously awaiting this role for Evie (yes, Jessica and I discussed this and the spelling is changing – all future references to this little girl will be with the ‘ie’ ending. Being a web developer I don’t like ‘IE’, but such is life ;)).

Prayers in the Wake of Katrina

I am amazed at the destruction of Katrina has not happened earlier given the weakness of the dykes and water retaining systems that were in place before Katrina. However, engineering and hydro-dynamics aside: I’m praying for the real life people who have lost collectively billions of dollars and the many families who have lost members of their families. This is not like the Tsunami in massiveness geographically, but people from all over the United States and around the world will be and have been effected.

The second half of this post is aimed at city planners, boards in charge of counties and politicians who are making choices.

My father was a civil engineer (he’s an elder/pastor at a church now) in Carson City, Nevada and he spent some of his time working up a proposal for the City of Carson City to consider for a new drainage system. The source of the request of the proposal was a major flood that happened in 1996 that caused a lot of damage to homes, retail outlets and industrial businesses. However, the city planners had no intention of actually spending the money it would have required to get the new drainage plan implemented. So… a big flood happened again. No drainage work has been done to improve this as a whole to my knowledge. It may be a recurring event for years to come when major amounts of water sweep off of the Sierra Nevada mountains.

Secondly, in Carson City they have what is called ‘C hill’ which is where the local High School has placed a ‘C’ on a large grassy hill. It gets a lot of wind. When a fire was started in the area it was almost completely uncontrollable and some expensive homes were lost. The firm my father was formerly involved with prior to the change in careers also put a proposal together for the city knowing that this grassy area near very expensive homes was in high danger of fire hazards. The solution was brilliantly simple: get a sheep herder to let 100+ sheep graze on the grass in that area to keep its growth down. The cost would have been minimal compared to the damage that was caused several years back.

New Orleans has had a known issue with its waterways. Parts of the city were below sea level and large dykes were in place to help prevent flooding. However, it was a known issue that a major storm could cause this to be over-flowed and that major parts of the city would be flooded (as I write this the most recent report was that 80% of the city was under water, one major hospital had patients and staff still in it but the first floor was flooded). If you are involved with city planning you have to evaluate your budget and figure out what is the best use of the money that you have raised from your citizens in taxes, etc.. However, putting money towards things that will not be there long term if you don’t put money towards protective measures… is a bad choice.

As I said, I’m praying, but I’ll be praying for world, national, state/provencial, city, town and family leaders to make wise choices. Not a lot in life is under your control.

Color Me “Religionist”

This is not a post for everyone. If you are not a protestant, if you are not a Christian, this is not for you. You will take offense at this most likely. With that said… I’ve probably sucked you in and you’ll continue to read and then get upset at me. I’m not sorry if you ignore this warning 🙂

I subscribe to the Bible in a Year Podcast. This weekend the host/reader/producer of the podcast, Rick, posted a ‘special’ podcast wherein someone else did a “study” on prayer. I place quotes around the study because it was really hinky. The first prayer he looked at was all of the following:

Jesus. In the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit.

I recognize that Rick is a Catholic. I recognize that Catholicism is amazingly different from protestantism. I also recognize Jesus as my personal Savior. This is not a prayer. This is the name of my savior, a person. When I pray, it is not one word, it is to one person: God. To put this in perspective, prayer is communication with God. Similarly talking to my wife is communication with Jessica. I would not, no matter how goofy I am, walk up to my wife and say:

Jessica.

And then walk away.

I stopped listening to the podcast after about 10 minutes (I wasn’t keeping track, it could have been less, I’m just guessing). Why is it that I get so riled up about others trying to pray in single word prayers? Mostly because when Christ was talking to His disciples in John 15 he calls them friends. The principle in this context is that believers are not just removed from the Law, but that they are brought close to God and are hidden in Him (Colossians 3:3). If you have a friend in Jesus you’re not going to pray His name! His name is priceless, precious and special because He is a friend. It is not a prayer. Paul wrote in I Thessellonians 5:17 that we should pray without ceasing. Try praying that prayer very long and you’re going to give up and move along. However, if you are praying to your friend Jesus you will have lots to talk about. You will have lots to be thankful for, lots to request that He would be glorified, and lots that you can ask about for wisdom. You can pray for opportunities to share the Gospel, you can pray for lots of things, but it won’t just be His name over and over.

I’m still subscribing to the podcast because its nice to get incremented sections of scripture to listen to. I will not be listening to the rest of the special messages to avoid this sort of rant in the future. If I do listen, I will not blog about them :).You don’t need to read too many of these sorts of things.

OK, sorry if you’ve read even though I warned you not to and you’re now all bent out of shape about it. Like the title suggests I’m an intolerant Religionist. I guess this makes me a “fighting fundy.” [actually, not, I’m not much of a fighter.]

Selective Marriage Principles

I know that various people will be shocked but there are people who will marry anyone. Take for example: Robert Downey Jr. who appears to have been mis-represented by People magazine:
Marries People
You see when you marry producer-people it means that you won’t just marry anyone, you’ll marry anyone who is a producer.

Way to go Bobby. Maybe you’ll get further selective in the future since it sounds by this headline marriage is a common occurance for you.