RaR day 1

~ randyaa ~ 1 Comment

First of all we just want to say thanks to everyone who brought down the house last night. We had some mighty fine dancers out there (you know who you are 😉 ). As our first act as husband and wife we would like to announce the MVP award. And the winner is… (the choice was obvious…) Uncle Jerry for his outstanding dance numbers. Thanks Uncle Jerry for making our first decision together as husband and wife so easy. We haven’t had that much fun… ever. To see all of our friends and family celebrating our love with such enthusiasm touched our hearts in a way we’ll never forget.

Check out some of the first available candid shots from yesterday here.

Thanks to everyone, we love you,
Mr and Mrs Aldrich

Keyboard not found. Press < F1 > to RESUME.

~ randyaa ~ 3 Comments

Say goodbye to your keyboard and mouse. Microsoft has released a new product that has been top-secret for the past 5 years under the code name ‘Milan’. It is now called Microsoft Surface and is definitely worth a look. I for one would welcome the new mode of input especially in my living room.

It appears as if the Microsoft people took a lesson or two from Apple and released a product that interacts with people in the way they wish to use it rather than the way Microsoft wants them to use it. Depending on the price I can totally see Surface being a standard household appliance much like the personal computer is today.

Check out the video below for a quick overview of some of the things Surface can do.

Piers Promotions Denver and Wedding Plans

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Sunset at Irondiquit Bay

Rachel and I went to the pier last Thursday. It was a beautiful day but there was some cloud cover to the west. A perfect opportunity for a beautiful sunset and a change to test out my new Gradient ND Filter. About 1/10th of a mile from the lake it dropped about 10 degrees (as expected) but the visibility also dropped to about 10 feet. The fog was so thick it was very difficult to get a decent photo. I was able to grab a few that came out decent. The fog even started to lift when we were leaving and I managed to get a shot of a dew covered spider web. If you’re interested take a look at the full album otherwise the picture to the left is a pretty good summary of how the shots came out (ie: crappy).

In other news Rachel got a promotion! She was previously working at Britton Rd Wegmans which is a level 4 (out of Wegmans reverse 5 level scale, 1 being the highest ie: Pittsford) which has to do with revenue. Usually when you move within Wegmans you move up one level at a time or you move laterally. This is to ensure you can handle the pressure and the different environment. Rachel had the opportunity to move 3 levels up to Perinton. She went from a level 4 straight to a level 1. Needless to say this is a great opportunity for her and she’s very excited.

Denver

Denver! We haven’t even posted about him yet! Obviously we’ve been slacking. Well a quick update… after bringing him home about a month ago he has learned a lot! Today he even rang the bell tied to the door to let us know he needed to go outside. We took him to the Lillac festival on Monday, and just like London he got compliment after compliment.

The wedding plans are certainly coming along (i hope…) its only 3 weeks away and I cant wait. Well… I can’t wait for the honeymoon that is. I’m pretty sure it’s a well known fact that the wedding is for the Bride and the families and that the groom is just along for the ride and for the vacation afterward. In that respect we’ll be in Hawaii in 24 days from right now. Best news I’ve heard all day.

WordPress 2.2

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I’ve taken the plunge.  For one its speedy.  Secondly it includes the widgets plug-in which is nice (although I was already using it).  The biggest difference I can see is the speed improvement.  However this was the first opportunity I had to test my new DEV server procedure.  I’ve had WordPress 2.2 on http://dev.aldrichfamily.org since about 5 minutes after it was released.  I’ve played around a little bit, made sure all the plug-ins I want to use still work.  After I was sure I had a database backup of the current install (via the daily scheduled backups now) I decided it was time to take the plunge.  Probably the easiest upgrade thus far.

Zippy Photos version 1.0

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well… It’s out. I’ve (probably prematurely) released Zippy Photos 1.0. The biggest problem is speed. I know I know… with a name like Zippy it should be quick. I haven’t spent a lot of time with speed improvements, I’ve mostly concentrated on features but I gurantee It’s top on the list now. I have some things to try and with some luck we’ll see a dramatic speed increase.

Be Excellent Unto Each Other

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If you didn’t notice the site had a little hiccup last night. I installed MediaWiki and wasn’t happy with the results. Apparently MediaWiki requires a lot of directory permissions to be setup correctly. I decided to remove it and drop the database. I went to my powweb mysql page and clicked on the last database and clicked ‘drop’. Immediately after dropping the database I realized what i had done. I had dropped the wrong database because they’re listed alphabetically, not in the order in which they were added.

Immediately I picked up the phone and called Powweb (my hosting provider). While waiting on hold I decided to use their ‘live chat’ service. I logged onto that and let the person know what had happened. By this time I had someone on the phone as well and let them know what had happened. The person on the phone told me that I was basically SOL and they don’t keep any Backups. I was dumbfounded and hung up, continuing to talk to the person on Live Chat. After a few minutes they let me know that a technician would restore my database and they would let me know by either phone or E-mail (my choice) once it had been restored.

I just received the phone call this morning and although I lost two posts, I’m a very happy Customer! Thank YOU POWWEB! A+ for your Live Chat support however; an F for your phone support.

Needless to say I’ve used the new cron feature in wordpress to schedule nightly backups. It’s pretty sweet, the Backup can be E-mailed to you.

Its great to be young and Insane

~ randyaa ~ 1 Comment

These people are absolutely crazy! Although this looks like a lot of fun. I’d love to try it but I have to imagine you need a lot of practice high up before you ever start skimming the ground like this.

If you liked that video heres another along the same lines.