Archive | April 2012

Ordinary Retirement Life has Moments of Joy

Apr20
Congressional Hearing
Congressional Hearing (Photo credit: cali.org)

Retirement life can be pretty ordinary at times.  On the whole, this is a good thing.

It’s nice spring weather, and Spouser is pouring concrete sections for our fence.

Tax time came and went.

There were a couple of birthdays, including mine, but the celebrations were deferred until everyone feels well again.

We put the last touches on new décor for the project room, which used to be our gym.

Reading some computer-diagnostic logs pointed to an overloaded video card.  We adjusted screen resolution and the computer crashes less now. Yes, the new router is still on The List of things to do.

We vanquished the backlog of catalog orders in waiting; now packages arrive almost daily, most of the clothes fit, and the other stuff has worked out pretty well.

Our friend Z. visited yesterday in honor of his third birthday.

Our granddaughter-to-be saw her adoption paperwork pass a big milestone. It looks like the kids will go to China to get her in July!

We watched some dramatic hearings as aggressive Congress members went after the GSA officials who partied in Las Vegas on the taxpayers’ dime!

Some good-looking pastel painting webinars are coming up.

What brings pressure into this ordinary life?  The first priority is getting this blog fully stable in its new domain.  WordPress’ Guided Transfer includes only two weeks of paid support right after they move the files, and there are quite a few things that we don’t understand yet. Everything else on The List can wait.

There’s also a big temptation in the house:  a friend lent us her copy of The Hunger Games and we started reading it.  Big mistake to give in to the temptation…

 

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Relocation Progress Report

Apr19
A graphical depiction of a very simple css doc...
A graphical depiction of a very simple css document (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

The Time is Come has moved from http://jbrysh.com to http://rrretired.com . It’s still the same blog with the same posts and comments but now we will have more flexibility.

Things have shuddered to an uneasy halt:  it can take up to 72 hours for domain redirection to propagate and send folks to the new domain.  Our sister made her first blog visit today to the old domain and landed on the “parked” page displayed there.  It took over a month for her to actually look for our blog and she found a page of ads.  It’s our fault:  we had not told her when we were moving.

The Time is Come is up and running at http://rrretired.com.  We’ve begun fine-tuning settings, but the whole thing is still unstable.  For example, sometimes the dashboard ignores the edit-post command and won’t accept keystrokes in the text editor.  Positioning an image in the text editor is weird now, although Zemanta images work o.k.  We have a list going and will call support when it’s long enough.

The guided transfer package gives us two weeks of paid support. We cleared the calendar for the entire two weeks.  It’s going to be pretty intense, what with learning enough CSS and XHTML to know what the code means, and with modifying the features that need changing.  Our experienced blogger-friend reassured that our background will suffice to tackle WordPress outside the .com safety zone.  Nonetheless, we have heard that Fools rush in where Angels fear to tread…

Please come visit the new location,  http://rrretired.com, to watch site stability unfold!

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Style and the Editorial We

Apr18
Grammatical Person / Pronouns - "I" ...

Grammatical Person / Pronouns - "I" first person singular (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

One blogging problem is awkward: I want to use “I” too much when I write.

  • A way out is to use the passive voice:  “It is a problem when the pronoun “I” is overly used when writing a piece.”
  • Another is to drop the troublesome pronoun from the sentence, leaving the reader to imply that it is there:  “When I write a blog piece, want to use the pronoun “I” too often.”
  • The fallback is to ignore the awkwardness and sprinkle in all the “Is” that pop out, willy-nilly, in the first draft. “When I write a blog piece, I want to use the pronoun “I” too often.

The first person singular feels awfully self-absorbed when it is unsparingly.  It leaves the reader with a grating, “too full of herself” impression of the writer.  It’s almost as if the writer’s musings carry a double whammy:  the writer and the person whose impressions are being communicated are both actors in the same sentence.

We English-speakers have a work-around in the Editorial “We.”  Monarchs and Popes use the Royal “We” as well.  We find that the curse lessens when the editorial we takes the place of “I.”

We are switching over for a while to see if it saves time and effort.  And we welcome your feedback, especially a couple of posts downstream.

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Blog Relocation is Under Way

Apr16
Plaque on the ICANN (Internet Corporation for ...

Plaque on the ICANN (Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers) head office, Del Rey, California, USA. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

The Time is Come: The WordPress Happiness Engineers got to us three days ago!

Still have to get content, theme, and some  other stuff moved, but things, they is a poppin’.

ICANN, whose plaque is shown here, keeps track of domain names and their numbers. GoDaddy (our hosting Provider) took care of the ICANN part of getting the new domain name.

The new site has only a placeholder, “Hello World” page titled The Time is Come.  We have yet to hear from the Happiness folks beyond  their April 2 email  describing the Guided Transfer now in progress but we plunged in anyway and activated most modules of the JetPack suite of plug-ins.

The current operating version of The Time is Come blog, at http://rrretired.com, is currently operating  under WordPress.com’s rules.  WordPress.com is a safe platform for folks who choose to avoid the technical side of blogging.  It’s been a perfect beginners’ practice set.  Here’s a link to a great explanation of the difference: WordPress.com vs. WordPress.org (bradyszabo.com)

The other side of WordPress drops some of the keep-it-simple approach. The user can modify some portions of code with WP’s blessing.  The blogs out there can have advertising, as well. This move is for both of these reasons.Our new domain, http://rrretired.com, plays by the more liberal rules outside WordPress.com, and it will hold The Time is Come blog when the transfer is done.  We’ll keep you informed.

There’s not been time to write lately, (tax time and all that)  but plans are to resume updating this blog  RSN*.

*RSN is a term of art meaning Real Soon Now.

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The Rest of the Tax Time Story

Apr11
Taxes
Taxes (Photo credit: Tax Credits)

Both our Federal and California tax returns are printed out in draft form, ready for Spouser to review and approve. He needs to know what he’s signing.

Checking the returns took quite a bit longer on the H&R Block tax software than it normally does with TurboTax.   Most of the return pages printed out o.k. but there was one major problem:  Block’s tax software error check was wrong!

I chose Direct Deposit for both Federal and California refunds but forgot to say which bank to put them in.  Block’s tax preparation software errors review did not catch this, which could have held up our refunds for months!

The problem was easy to fix, but I’m disappointed in Block’s slip-up.  We’re going back to TurboTax for next year’s tax time.  The look and feel of their product is familiar and, IMHO, more elegant.  It also provides an audit trail that is easier to follow.

Related Post:  Tax Time

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