theparkerfamily.org

Tag: Website

  • #1000

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    jeez, that was quick. it took me five whole years to get to blog post #500 and now just 12 months later i’m at #1000.

    now, i’m not exactly a linear blogger — i’ve usually got 20 or more drafts posts going at any one time, many of which will eventually be backdated by twelve months or more. just last week I added 40+ posts about our trip to Europe in Spring 2009.

    but, everything i do is in service of my horrific memory — the point of going back and blogging about Europe isn’t so others will read, but so that future me can remember.

    (speaking of, i just spent 15 minutes reading through my posts tracking Sparklet’s “firsts”, and last week i spent what felt like an hour digging through the 50+ “photo of the week” posts tracking her growth. awesome.)

    back at post #500 i joked that:

    i have doubled the wonderful women in my life, and will certainly be doubling the silly, stupid things that i want to write down so i don’t forget.

    … and that has certainly turned out to be the case. i’ve never had so much material to write about, or so many things i’ve not wanted to forget.

    so, thanks to my 2.7 3.7 loyal readers for tagging along — here’s hoping that the next 1000 will be as much fun as the first.

  • baby’s new web site design

    Screen Shot 2013-11-11 at 4.56.02 PM
    happy (early) birthday, sparklet!

    daddy doesn’t do much, be he does do web sites — so he spent the last couple of days designing and building out an new look in honor of your first birthday.

    the last design was great, but it was mostly someone else’s work, and i threw it up literally overnight when bad people started doing bad things to our website.

    so happy birthday, baby sparklet.

    someday you’ll be able to read — and when you can, you’ll finally understand why daddy’s been sticking that camera in your face for the last 12 months.

  • the others

    as shocking as it is to my fragile, miopic worldview — we aren’t the first theparkerfamily.org.

    turns out, according to the internet archive “wayback machine” there was another parker family who had the domain back in 2001.

    i don’t have much on who they were — scott was the dad and wasn’t up for “programmer of the year”, jordan was the daughter and created a fan site for horses (called “thunder horses” no less) and a cheerleading page (featuring nearly impenetrable cheerleading trivia).

    family thunderhorses cheerleading

    unfortunately, 2 minutes of googling didn’t lead to any “where are they now” stories, and that’s just about the sum total of my attention span these days.

    in other news, the new owners of evanandtasha.com — our wedding domain from a few years back — got married, went on a cruise, and if splash pages are to be believed may be thinking about babies.

    more bulletins as warranted.

    From the Wayback Machine:
    the other theparkerfamily.org

  • mighty, mighty boigs

    i really, honestly can take no credit for this one — but that doesn’t mean i’m not going to try.

    good friends of ours bought a domain (mightymightyboigs.com) to migrate their old blogspot blog, and never made it past the content migration. after 10 minutes of setup, 12 minutes of page migration, and one pre-made wordpress theme (yup, it’s too nice to be mine) and we’re good to go.

    Mighty, Mighty Boigs
    http://mightymightyboigs.com/

  • erikanortemann

    a friend was looking at a couple $30+ a month web providers to feature her photography, and i talked her off that ledge — and promptly ended up tricking out WordPress for her instead, in exchange for free professional baby photos from her forward.

    i think i may have gotten the better end of the deal, so long as sparklet isn’t already going to be the most photographed baby on the planet.

    Erika Nortemann, Documentary Photographer:
    http://erikanortemann.com/

  • #500

    [Hurricane Andrew Relief (circa 1994), Homestead, Florida.]
    ECPA20070918_x021, originally uploaded by [ecpark].
    it’s hard to believe, but this blog entry brings me to 500 posts over the last five years. so it’s navel gazing time, although i certainly don’t mean to imply that my previous 499 were directed anywhere other than my midsection.

    i started blogging back in 2004 … i was bored, i was recently single, and i had just survived a near death experience at the hands of a happy young Christian soccer mom driving a hummer.

    when i started blogging, i held absolutely no pretense that anybody was reading. i blogged purely for myself, to give my future self something to look back on and remind me of the things i had seen, the places i had been, and the things that i had done.

    that still (mostly) holds true even today. i have an absolutely horrific memory, so need to write things down or they are lost for good.

    don’t get me wrong, i’m absolutely cheesed that other people are joining in the fun as i chronicle all sorts of embarrassing stories about the lady sparkler, but in the end … i blog because i never want to forget what happened, or the look in her face or what i was thinking at the time.

    with that in mind, i apologize for the banalities that are coming down the pike. with baby sparklet, i have doubled the wonderful women in my life, and will certainly be doubling the silly, stupid things that i want to write down so i don’t forget.

    here’s hoping that the next 500 will be as much fun as the first.

  • new theme (launch, v11)

    well, while i was rebuilding the site anyway i figured it was about time to ditch the old three column format. it’s not my design, but that may actually be the point — i find i like designs longer when i have nothing to do with them.

    it’s the 11th design i’ve had since my first site in may of 2002, and i can’t think of one that lasted longer than 18 months.

  • website: hackers, and my blog, and stuff

    i feel so violated.

    early this week, i was making a quick change to the blog, when i discovered hundreds of files filled with all sorts of obvious porn keywords (khandi-alexander-nude-pics.html) and some more with not so obvious porn keywords (blue-lotus-tea-recipe.html).

    now, i would have been fine if was making porn-star money for hosting the files … but no one appeared to be sending me my cut of the proceeds.

    for three days, i tried everything from deleting the files to figuring out where the security hole was that needed to be plugged. i had the latest version of the operating system, the latest version of WordPress, i deleted “extra” logins to the system, and i changed to a new WordPress theme (hense the new design) to make sure one of my “upgrades” wasn’t at fault.

    but each night at 12:04 am, the porn files mysteriously reappeared. out of desperation, i finally contacted my web host — i did that last because i knew they were going to be useless — and sure enough all they could manage was “sorry we can’t help you, but try resetting your passwords.”

    oops. hadn’t thought of that …

    sure enough, i reset all the passwords, and the site hasn’t been hacked since. hard to believe it was something so simple (and stupid, and obvious).

    i think there is some sort of life lesson in here somewhere, if i only knew where to look.

  • website: comments

    In what is sure to be a freak storm never to be repeated again, I had three people complain to me that the blog didn’t accept comments. Here is what was *easily* my favorite complaint:

    I have thoughts and opinions. I need to be able to express them on your blog.

    Frankly, I had comments turned off because I assumed that no one actually read my ramblings, or cared to comment if they did. However, after about 15 minutes of hard labour, you, the adoring public, can now comment to your hearts content.

    (cue the sound of crickets chirping)

  • Website: theparkerfamily.org (launch, v10)

    screenshot2

    Now that the wedding is over, we have to figure out what to do with tashaandevan.com … do we hold it in perpetuity as a last memento of the glory days of our engagement?

    Sitting on the domain just seems unfair to the legions of Evanses and Tashas sure to follow (especially as evanandtasha.com appears to taken as well).

    Instead, we have decided to take merge my web site (evancparker.com) with the engagement site, to form a brand-spanking new site called theparkerfamily.org. I had bought that domain for my parents for a Christmas almost five years ago (hi mom!) but sadly, nothing came of it (sorry mom!) and my mom ended up with a computer instead.

    Anyway, if you want to keep track of the Sparklers from this point forward, you have come to the right place. You might want to grab our RSS Feed (if you are into that sort of thing) or sign-up to be notified by email when we post something new.

    p.s. If you are wondering about the picture, for the last decade — dating back to when my vanity web site was unclevanya.com — my site has featured the same picture of my face on Karl Marx’ body that you see here. The new addition is the lady sparkler’s face gracing the body of Catherine the Great, who was arguably the most powerful female ruler of the last half millenium (it seemed fitting).

    UPDATE: Karl Marx and Catherine the Great are growing to be a little too obscure, even for us. I just swapped them out for The Great Gonzo (needs no explanation) and Abby Cadabby, the newish girly-girl-fairy-princess Muppet on Sesame Street (which seems to resonate the lady sparkler all over the place). I was also thinking about Shaggy and Velma — which would be funny beyond all possible understanding — so maybe that will come next.