Harvest Festival - Arroyo Grande 2008

Tianna's soccer team "Terminiators" have been doing very well. They've won 4 out of their last 5 games. They were particiapants in this annual Harvest Festival in Arroyo Grande.

Tips

So in my spare time, I like to peruse photoshop tips online. I ran across this youtube photoshop tutorial that was just hilarious! If you want a free scaled down version of Adobe Photoshop - go here. I absolutely love colourlovers.com. I get inspired by their designs. I never thought I would say this but I like perusing Youtube for tutorials such as: How to apply eye makeup on Asian eyes (Makeup Gourmet) Beginner acoustic strumming I learned how to play Sweet Home Alabama here I don't know what I would do without the Internet...

Another one bites the dust..

It's been three weeks into this apartment hunting in Santa Barbara, and I have not had success. I've never had this much trouble finding an apartment to rent.

I just got a call last night from a rental management company advising me that Kevin and I were not selected as new tenants for their apartment. They had several showings for this unit and got handful of applicants. She told us we were not considered because our salary was not high enough. Wow, our salary combined is well into six digits. The rent was only $1600. How much do they want us to make?

Here was one interesting ad:

Wood floors, garden view, one bedroom at Park East across from Alameda Park. Water, trash paid. Stove, refrigerator. Laundry on site. No co-signers, no pets, no smoking or musical instruements. NO EMAILS! Call only:

I thought finding an apartment that would consider a pet was difficult! I have two guitars, one violin, and a electric piano. We don't rock out or anything. Maybe who ever lived there before was a musician who had regular band practices there.

Earlier this week, I finally tracked down a landlord that we had submitted our application to last week. She said we were the first applicant and would get back to us shortly after checking our references. After several days have passed, I called my own references to see if she had called them and she had not. When I got her on the phone, she said "Oh, I meant to call you. I went with someone else." I was furious that she didn't have the courtesy to call me and let me know! I daydreamed about burning her house down. I know I know... I can't take these things personally.

I just bought a rental list for $49.99 that comes out every Tuesday and Friday afternoon. 75% of the listings that I called were already rented! I am looking at three apartments today one of them has got to want to rent to me!!

Sharepoint Favicon.ico

Very seldomly do I post something technical. However, today, I just spent 4 hours on something as simple as a favicon. For those who don't know what a favicon is, just look at URL (web address). Sometimes, there will be a little icon associated with the URL. This is a simple process, basically you save a file as "favicon.ico" and stick it in the root directory of your web folder. (Save as is not synonymous to renaming the file.)

The tricky part is if you have Masterpages. What's even trickier is if you are using Sharepoint.

So I first attempted to place the favicon.ico under the root of each Sharepoint site. Did not work. (Checked permissions..etc)

Then I edited the default.master page to add the links to the .ico file. Still did not work. While googling the problem, I came across some thing about checking in a file in the Site Settings area. This was a big mistake as it caused the dreaded error: "The enablesessionstate attribute on the page directive is not allowed in this page" in the default.aspx page. The only way to fix this was to reset the site definition. This is dangerous because any customizations would be lost. Fortunately, this was just the development box. I was able to fix the page. I think this only works if you are using the Sharepoint designer which I wasn't.

What finally worked was editing the default.master page (do not check in). This must be the first line under the "head" tag

link rel="icon" href="/_Layouts/PWA/Images/favicon.ico" type="image/png"
link rel="shortcut icon" href="/_Layouts/PWA/Images/favicon.ico" type="image/png"

and then placing the favicon in the appropriate folder listed. In my case: _Layouts/PWA/Images/

I originally stuck the image in the "TEMPLATE\IMAGES" and it should have been the "TEMPLATE\LAYOUTS\PWA\IMAGES". And the links must be the first line under the "head" tag in the default.master page. Clear out the cache and voila!

Horn worm

Few weeks ago, I watched "Sunshine". It's about a team of astronauts sent to re-ignite the sun which is dying. In one of the scene, Michelle Yeoh's character, plant biologist, is devastated at the loss of her plants during an explosion. While perusing through the mess, she finds a seedling peeking its head out of the rubble and cry tears of happiness. I'll admit, I couldn't relate to the kodak moment and earnestly waited for the action scenes.

I've been planting some tomatoes, basil and pepper. And recently, I noticed that they were all blooming. I was soo estatic! My babies were growing and I now can understand what Michelle's character was feeling.






But I was completely angered by this:



What worm dared crawl into my fruit? Is it a horn worm? I will need to go get some bug and caterpillar control.

Santa Barbara

I've been busy this week looking for a place to live in Santa Barbara. Kevin was promoted to a new position in Santa Barbara so it's back down we go. I like to stay relatively close to downtown. In addition, we now have a cat (Macho) that we can't give up. He's family now. I have found that Santa Barbara is not really pet friendly when it comes to renting. I have rented out my condo in Arroyo Grande and need to be out by the end of this month.


Find more photos like this on Human Scale Urban Development


I love the architecture of the homes in Santa Barbara:

Soccer Season

Today was the first game of the soccer season. Tianna and her team "Terminators" played a great game but lost 4 to 2. She is playing for AYSO U10. This is a fun age group to watch. They aren't throwing tantrums on the field and they aren't that competitive yet that they chastise each another if one of them messes up.

Spelling

I consider myself to be a great speller and was ashamed to be corrected by Kevin for the following words:

Ornery : mean, obstinate - I have been spelling this word as "awnry"

Rapport : close friendship - I have been spelling this word as "repoire"

How could I have gotten away with these spellings for years and never have been corrected by teachers or friends :( . I may have even used "repoire" in a resume!!! How embarrassing!

I would have to say that hors d'oeuvre is the hardest word for me to remember how to spell. I keep wanting to swap the "v" and "r"....

Throwing away $$$

My "Check Engine" light came on this week and after driving it around for several days I finally decided to have it looked at. It's only three years old so I can't imagine it breaking down just yet. After a couple of hours and $155.00 later, I find out that it was merely the gas cap. I wish I had gone to here and save myself $155.00

"..Some cars measure how much pressure is building up inside your gas tank. It involves a series of mathematical algorithms that track your driving style and how much pressure is usually in the tank, then set off an alarm if it strays a certain percentage from the average. Whatever. All is means is that if you're gas cap isn't on tight, it thinks something is up and lights the orange dashboard candle, the Check Engine light......"

In a rush, I have not tightened my gas cap the last few times I have gotten gas!