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This week I learned that, in order to receive credit for excercise minutes when you engage in an indoor walk, you first have to calibrate your Apple Watch using the Outdoor Walk workout while outside with good GPS reception. I have not done this, so the Apple Watch did not give me credit for the fifteen thousand steps I took on Tuesday, nor the thirty-minute indoor walk I did yesterday. I am participating in three challenges this week, so this matters a great deal. To make up for this, I spent forty-six minutes on the bike yesterday and today. Denise has joined the fray, and now has an Apple Watch, and she is one of my coompetitors this week. I plan to go out at some point to calibrate the watch, but I was still pretty pissed when I realized I wasn’t getting exercise minutes credit. I’ve already done my workout for today, so all I have to do is concentrate on filling up the move ring. Right now though I’m contemplating lunch.

167 Stuart St, State College, PA 16801

48 °F Clear

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I am so glad to be done working for today. Today was as crazy as Mondays usually are, except towards the end of the day things got very crazy very fast. I ended up multitasking during my last meeting, and we all know how dangerous multitasking can be. For now though, it’s time to think about dinner.

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I’ve achieved my maximum six hundred points for today, which means I’m tied in one Apple Watch challenge and kicking ass in the other. All my rings were closed by 1600, and I’ve just finished work for the week. Consequently it is time to do some serious resting and relaxing. I’ve been invited to socialize over the weekend and there is going to be good food and alcohol involved. I am looking forward to this. Shabbat shalom (a peaceful Sabbath) everyone, and I’ll see you on the other side.

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I am participating in two Apple Watch challenges this week and I am determined to win them both. I’ve started spending some time on one of those indoor bikes with the handle bars that move your arms as well as your legs. I started Sunday and if I keep it going until Sunday I’ll have my first perfect exercise week, plus moving and standing perfection. admittedly yesterday was pretty hard, but I got on the bike this morning before work instead of after work, and that seems to have gone much better.

903 S Pugh St, State College, PA 16801

36 °F Cloudy

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I’ve made a point of staying out of all political discussions as of late, but I’m looking at Twitter and seeing reports of someone who despises Trump as much as, (or more than), I do going out of their way to approach Eric Bolling at a Trump hotel to throw his son’s death by overdose in his face. I don’t care how you feel about any politician, right or left. Throwing the death of a child in their parent’s face, simply because you don’t like who they voted for or who they’re associated with is inexcusably way over the line. I haven’t scrolled much yet, but I’m sure there are people minimizing this and making excuses for it. There are no excuses which would make this acceptable, and if you’re minimizing it, you need to take a break from social media, or politics, or both, because that’s pretty damn low.

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I would like to wish everyone who is celebrating a joyous and happy Purim. For those of you who aren’t celebrating, and don’t know what Purim is, it’s the Jewish holiday commemorating the salvation of the Jews in Persia from the annihilation planned for them by Haman, the advisor to King Ahasuerus, all of which is recounted in the biblical book of Esther. The day is marked by festive meals among family and friends, gift-giving, (customarily gifts of sweets), drinking, jokes and satire, and costumes. I’m not dressing up or anything this year, but I did get some hamantashen (three-cornered pastries with filling, usually fruit) and some rugelach (crescent-shaped pastries wrapped around a filling). The hamantashen are raspberry, which is not my favorite flavor, but these are surprisingly good. The rugelach are cinnamon and sugar. These were both made locally so they are very fresh and thus as moist as they should be. Very tasty.

921 S Pugh St, State College, PA 16801

39 °F Fog/Mist

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Dear people of the internets: I would just like to announce that I put a serious dent in a huge veggie tray because veggie trays rule. Also, everyone should take the opportunity to go outside or hug the ones you love or do something to take care of yourselves because these things rule too.

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As someone who prays regularly, I’d just like to put this out there. Prayer is not a substitute for action, when you are capable of acting. To attempt to substitute prayer for action when you are capable of acting, especially on behalf of someone in need or someone who is coping with overwhelming loss, is a slap in the face, and we would all be better served if you kept your thoughts and prayers to yourself.

921 S Pugh St, State College, PA 16801

54 °F Mostly Cloudy

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That time you start your chosen work playlist, which is one you didn’t create, sit down away from the device to start working, and a song that you hate even when it doesn’t involve Kenny G. comes on, and then it’s the version with Kenny G. which makes it worse. Thank god it’s relatively short. I need a way to block artists on Spotify. When I become Supreme Ruler of the universe, adding Kenny G. to a jazz playlist is going to become a finable offense.

921 S Pugh St, State College, PA 16801

34 °F Partly Cloudy

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Today will be an incredibly light work day I think. I’m getting a very late start this morning and I’m still getting used to the drastic weather and elevation changes. I went to bed at around 10:30 last night and didn’t wake up for the day until close to 8 this morning. I’ll need to have my ass more in gear tomorrow but I’m not worried about today.

201 McCormick Ave, State College, PA 16801

34 °F Partly Cloudy

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IIS Outbound Rules with gzip compression by JAN REILINK
Saotn.org uses used URL Rewrite Outbound Rules in IIS, to offload content from a different server and/or host name. This should improve website performance. Just recently I noticed Outbound Rules conflicted with gzip compressed content. I started noticing HTTP 500 error messages: Outbound rewrite rules cannot be applied when the content of the HTTP response is encoded ("gzip").. Here is how to fix that error. …
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It’s a couple of hours before I have to leave for the airport, so it’s time to disassemble the electronics and double and tripple check that all chargers are where they need to be. The suitcase is strategically packed, which I have no idea why I bother about since TSA is just going to mess it all up anyway. Anyway, this will be a long day but totally worth it.

3605 Exchange Ln, Augusta, GA 30909

38 °F Clear

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Today has been very busy so far. I couldn’t sleep and ended up waking up at 4AM. I was at the Department of Driver Services, (DMV in most other states), by 8AM and out again by 8:30 with ID in hand. Well, at least the paper copy. The hard copy is being sent to my address. I’ve finished doing my roommate’s laundry so I could free up the washer and drier to use for myself, started a load of laundry of my own, gotten in some exercise, inventoried travel odds and ends. I have a meeting at 2PM today and then I need to pick up some of the things I don’t have around here for travel, and then I can start packing. The day before travel is always so hectic for me.

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I am really proud of myself. The cane saga I sort of ranted about the other day finally resulted in the cane tip becoming permanently detached last night while I was out at the Ed Turner and Number 9 concert, so I took Chris’s advice and ensured that I had some ductate handy while I was doing my groceery order this morning. That tip is not rolling anywhere, but it’s also not detaching from that cane anytime soon. The request assistance I needed from my apartment complex finally happend this morning, about two hours after I was promised it would happen, but everything’s in order now. There excuse for continually forgetting about it was “Well, you never really ask for anything.” Yeah, don’t you think that if I never ask for anything, and then I ask for some help, it’s really damn important? Oh well, it’s taken care of and I am having an enjoyable Sunday afternoon.

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I starved my Apple Watch to death overnight, and I am here to tell you that if this happens you are absolutely restarting your phone because all your connections go to shit. I went to see Ed Turner and Number 9 last night at the Imperial Theater and they were amazing. Lord help them though they need a website because right now they have a Facebook page, a Youtube channel, and all their other content is published in newspapers and magazines, and they own none of these bits of content. I’m trying to decide if I have a large enough set of balls to leave them a message on their Facebook page. Maybe later. Right now I’m spending my Sunday morning waiting on assistance for a request I have made of my apartment complex something like five times in the span of four days and so far, despite an approach by staff this morning with a promise of assistance within thirty to forty-five minutes, no dice. I’ll provide more details later if it gets to that point but this has until tomorrow morning to finish playing out so I’ll keep those to myself for now. If it gets to the point of no return though it’s on then because some serious shit is going to go down and I have everything documented. However I am fast losing patience and it’s only a matter of time before it gets flamingly lit.

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OK, so the hot new Ambutech cane I recently purchased has cracked, so it’s time for another one, and so it’s also time for a rant about assistive technology and eCommerce. Specifically, why does every single assistive technology vendor’s eCommerce setup have to suck so badly? Most of these are running WooCommerce, and holy hell it’s painfully obvious that these installs aren’t up-to-date, that the themes being used do not have WooCommerce support, (let alone accessibility), and that whoever set these up knows pretty much nothing about eCommerce, marketing, or WooCommerce. This isn’t about one-man shops. This is about vendors who have staff, who have the income, and yet who are perfectly willing to provide their customers with a horrible user experience just to save some cash. Guys, eCommerce is hard. There’s a reason you’re not going to get a working eCommerce that does everything you need it to do for any less than $10,000. But trust me, it’s worth the investment. If your customers have an enjoyable experience shopping with you, (and this includes accessibility), they will be more than willing to recommend you to their friends and family and you will see more business for your efforts.

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Not that I’m going to go leave this comment on the Breitbart website or anything, but there’s one huge problem with the so-called “buttering-up” strategy which Joel Pollak attributes to the president, and as someone who has negotiated my fair share of contract terms, I think I can comment on this to some degree. That strategy can work, if a few things are in place: First, you have to already possess a reputation for having an amiable personality. If you don’t have that, and you then go to the negotiation table pouring the sugar on as thick as you can, whoever’s on the other side is going to see right through that, and proceed accordingly. Second, as with any negotiation, you don’t show your hand before talks begin, and you sure as hell don’t hand over all your cards, (as the president appears to have done), before you secure worthwhile concessions from the other side. To do otherwise isn’t negotiation, it’s desperation to save face, and it usually never turns out that way. So I think it’s safe to conclude that the president, (once again) got played like a baby grand.

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An Introduction to Block-Based Homepages with the Genesis Framework by Carrie Dils
StudioPress just released Revolution Pro, the first Genesis child theme to sport a block-based homepage. In this tutorial, you'll learn how to create one.

Speaking from experience, I know exactly what Carrie is talking about when it comes to widgets being a poor choice, (although the only available one), for homepage layouts. I’ve done more than my fair share of theme customizations and often times those customizations meant hiring someone to redo the CSS. I, for one, will be over the moon when I can fully use Gutenberg and take advantage of block-based homepages.