Technology

Categories Technology

Version 9

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I have discovered php and it is AMAZING!

Too bad this web design stuff doesn’t really tie into my profession that much, ’cause I’m really building my arsenal.

I’m proficient in HTML and CSS, can do a smattering of xHTML and Javascript, and am in the process of learning PHP.

A classmate asked me on Thursday why I kept calling myself a nerd (apart from the obvious: annually celebrating Bilbo and Frodo’s birthday.)

I threw out a few things (copious reading, blog keeping, etc.)–but here’s another piece of proof: I just spent over two hours searching through the script for my new PHP driven web-design to find the bug that was messing up my formatting.

I found the bug–finally!–so now Version 9 is rolling out.

Of course, like with the many versions before, the roll-out may be slow. I only have so many hours in the day to work on things (and I shouldn’t GENERALLY be up at 2:45 am still working on web design!)

But the amazing power of PHP is that it should be a snap to adjust to version 10 if and when it comes out. (I wouldn’t hold my breath for that one!)

So, having shared the latest evidence of my nerdiness (and some really cute pics of me as a baby), I will bid you goodnight!

Categories Technology

And it’s up…

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I’ve been wanting to get my little sib’s blogs onto the menterz.com website for quite a while now. It doesn’t seem reasonable to be paying for a domain with our own name on it and then using free hosting at a different domain.

Problem is, the kiddos (Joshua and Grace) are using WordPress.com for their blogs. They like their blogging platform and don’t want to go through the bother of learning html and using it for their blogging (like I do.)

Thankfully, the blogging platform they are using is open-source from WordPress.org. Which means all I have to do is install WordPress on our web server, configure it for their blogs and get their blogs transferred over.

But I’ve never used WordPress–and I’m not THAT comfortable with programming of the non-HTML variety. So it has taken me a while.

Actually, now that I think of it, maybe it hasn’t been all that long. Was it really just this last Sunday that Dad and I sat down together to install WordPress on our web server? I think it was.

I’ve been spending every spare moment since learning how Worpress Themes work–by creating a them that matches my website. I am in the process of switching the blog portion of my site over to WordPress–as it will make it simpler for me to post from a distance (for example, while in between classes at school). I will continue doing my own html for articles, bible studies, book reviews, and the like.

It seems that this will have the happy effect of allowing me to post on my blog more easily, while maintaining my skills in html and css–and maybe even learning a bit of php and mySQL while I’m at it. I’m pretty excited about the prospect.

And, having worked out most of the bugs (I think) with the whole “WordPress blogging” thing, I am now ready to unveil the newest development in the life of “bekahcubed”. While messing around with our web server, we discovered that we could create a new subdomain for me with just a couple button clicks. So, instead of the old www.menterz.com/bekahcubed, you can now access my website at bekahcubed.menterz.com. This is a much nicer url to share. So, please update your bookmarks to bekahcubed.menterz.com.

In addition, you may want to update your RSS feeds or subscribe to my RSS for the first time. I now have two separate RSS feeds: one for the blog content and one for the (more) static articles.

Also, be prepared for an introduction to Joshua and Grace‘s blogs–coming soon to menterz.com

Categories Everyday Life, Technology

Evading Hypocrisy

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In a last ditch effort to avoid hypocrisy after proclaiming (to my online class) that nutrition professionals should get familiar with current media and social-networking type sites, I have joined Twitter.

Yes. It’s ridiculous. I know.

Ultimately, it’s an ethical dilemma. Do I do as I say and get familiar with all the crazy technology and (ahem) time wasters of the present day? Or do I maintain my heretofore expressed disgust for said time-wasters?

While decrying the foolishness of this generation whiling away their lifetimes on the web, I find myself sucked deeper and deeper into its morass. I excuse the blog and website because 1) it allows me to develop my (marketable) skills as a web developer, 2) it allows me to hone my writing skills, and 3) it allows me to connect with (actual) people. I excuse Facebook because 1) it helps me keep track of people when they’re moving all around the globe and switching phones and addresses all the time, 2) it allows easy access to my fellow interns for class-related stuff, and 3) it helps me to stay up-to-date on what’s happening in the “CLAN” (my extended family). I excuse my blog reading because 1) it helps me connect with people I actually know, 2) it informs and entertains me, and 3) at least I’m reading ;-). I excuse occasional forays to YouTube in the name of staying culturally literate. And now I’m calling Twitter professional development?

I mean, seriously.

Next thing you know, I’ll be excusing online gambling or Match.com.

If you’re on Twitter too, add me to your (just a sec while I look up the lingo) follow me–my name(?) is “bekahcubed”. And don’t forget to leave me a comment with your name(?) so I can follow you.

Categories Technology

The new and improved bekahcubed

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Despite spending almost every non-working waking hour on my computer, I have not posted since Monday.

That’s because I’ve been working on the newest version of bekahcubed: version 7. New features include a fresh new site design, more easily updatable links, and better compatibility with Internet Explorer (hopefully).

I began to see the need for a change when I viewed my site on someone else’s Internet Explorer. The main page worked fine, but higher up files were all out of whack.

I’m something of a nerd–and I do all my own html (hypertext markup language), css (cascading style sheets), and rss (rich site summary or really simple syndication). But I don’t have endless time to design and my knowledge is fairly limited (although expanding all the time.)

I worked up version 6 after I’d switched to Mozilla Firefox as my web browser. While I checked the main page once or twice on IE, I didn’t pay too much attention to trying to solve the IE bugs.

But, having seen the results in IE, I see the need for a change. So Internet Explorer is a buggy, decrepit browser that doesn’t even attempt to follow the W3C standards for web browsers–but just because someone has not taken advantage of the amazing, free Mozilla Firefox doesn’t mean I should exclude them from my site.

The new version has some additional properties that will make it easier for me to make changes quickly without having to open up half a dozen hundred files and meticulously add, delete, or rewrite code. That should decrease my stress quite a bit–and hopefully enable you to enjoy an even higher quality site.

Categories Everyday Life, Technology

Women aren’t supposed to forget…

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Forgetting anniversaries is popularly reckoned as man’s domain. Women aren’t supposed to forget. But, in my case, I’m not sure I remembered in the first place.

I’m talking about my “blog-o-versary”–the day that marks the beginning of my blog. Of course, discovering the exact day that I started blogging is somewhat difficult since “bekahcubed” has existed in some incarnation or another for five or more years.

However, while participating in Becky’s Birthday Carnival, I discovered that it was a year and a day ago that I began posting on a regular basis.

So, in honor of my forgotten “blog-o-versary”, I would like to share a few fun facts about myself–and invite you to ask me some questions that I shall attempt to answer over the next month.

Fact: Paul Menter is my father, not my husband.
We were talking just yesterday about how people look at us strangely when we go shopping together–undoubtedly assuming that I am the “trophy wife.” Then my new preceptor assumed today that the “Paul Menter” on my emergency contact information must be my husband–since it was just a male name instead of two names together. So, just to clear up any confusion: I am unmarried, and my dad is happily married to my mom.

Fact: I do not believe in any such thing as bad food.
The first thing people say when they hear that I’m becoming a dietitian is some variant on, “Oh, I know I eat all kinds of bad foods.” I disagree. Food is good–and that means all of it. That means carrots and celery and fresh baked muffins and white bread and bananas and swiss cake rolls and potato chips. That means juice and fruit drinks and soda pop made with (gasp) high fructose corn syrup. I despise the kind of “nutrition” that puts endless rules on what people can and cannot eat and completely zaps the fun out of food. I abhor the philosophy that “food is just fuel for my body.” Food is not a moral issue–food is food. It’s something that fuels our bodies, soothes our minds, brings us together, imparts meaning into our rituals. Food is integral to early socialization, to language development, to family togetherness. Jesus’ first miracle was at a feast–and he chose a feast to forever commemorate His crucifixion. Food is not bad–it’s good. The question isn’t whether a food is good or bad, but whether we use it in an appropriate way.

Fact: I like sardines…but only if they’re packed in mustard sauce.
My family calls them fish tails in mustard. They’re a great source of calcium and Omega 3 fatty acids–in addition to tasting fantastic. One time, I accidentally bought sardines packed in olive oil. I took one bite and gagged. They were disgusting! I couldn’t eat more. I did learn, however, that uneaten sardines in olive oil should be disposed of in an outdoor trashcan rather than left in the kitchen. EEEEWWW!

And now that I’ve shared a bit about myself, what else would you like to know?

Categories Everyday Life, Following Christ, Reflections, Technology

Job Day

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In case you’re not familiar with the phrase, a “Job day” is a day in which everything seems to be going wrong–a la Job in the Bible. One day as Job’s children were enjoying a feast at their oldest brother’s house, a servant came to Job to tell him that his oxen and donkeys had been raided. Then another servant arrived to tell Job that all of his sheep and shepherds had been killed by lightening. Another servant arrived to say that Job’s camels had been raided and their keepers killed. As a final blow, a last servant arrived to inform Job that his eldest son’s house had collapsed, killing every one of Job’s children.

I can’t say my day is quite as bad as Job’s–No one has died, at any rate. But today has still been a bit trying.

It began at midnight. I was still awake from yesterday, and my nose began to run. It ran for several hours–right down the back of my throat–keeping me from being able to sleep and enduing me with a magnificent sore throat.

I finally slept around 7 am. Waking up at noon to a particularly obnoxious song blaring from my computer, I noticed pop-ups appearing on my computer screen. I investigated a bit–and discovered that I had a Trojan. After several hours of investigation and tweaking, I think I removed it all.

But having been reminded that computers are intrinsically fragile, I thought to back up my files again. So I logged on to the family server to back up my files–and discovered that I didn’t have permission to make any changes within my own designated folder. I should have been able to make changes–I backed up the family photos onto the same drive yesterday. But even after a couple more hours of fiddling, I was having no success.

So I dropped by my parent’s house to see if I could adjust permissions from my mom’s computer (the same computer I’d backed up the family photos from the day before). But, to my surprise and horror, I no longer had permission to do anything on the server from there either. I fiddled a bit with no success, unsuccessfully tried to access the server in the basement directly, and finally decided to give up and have a piece of candy.

I was putting Mom’s full candy jar back when it slipped out of my hand and shattered all over her living room floor.

The post-nasal drip has continued. I put on my skirt this afternoon to find that the hem has ripped loose since I last wore it. My new thigh highs won’t stay at my thigh–instead one side slips down to below my knees. My nose is raw, my throat hurts, and I haven’t gotten even one item on my to-do list done today.

I struggle with Job’s response to his very bad day: “The Lord gave, and the Lord has taken away; Blessed be the name of the Lord.”

Instead of returning to praise the Lord, to often I turn to recount my grievances. Sure this day has been a bad day–but then I make it worse by borrowing trouble. I stew about my news from the eye doctor–I’d rather have been born blind than start going blind from glaucoma now. I stew over my singleness. I stew over everything.

The Lord gave me eyesight–doesn’t He have the right to take it back? The Lord gave me health–doesn’t He have the right to retract it? The Lord gave me time–doesn’t He have the right to “waste” it? I came into the world naked and helpless–and I’ll return to the earth in the same state. Is God not still worthy of praise?

So I will praise Him not for what He has done or not done for me, but for who He is. He is GOOD. He is FAITHFUL. He is HOLY. He is ALL-POWERFUL.

My circumstances have changed–but God has not. He is not broken like Mom’s candy jar. He is not swollen like my throat. He is not malfunctioning like my thigh highs. He is not infected like my computer (was). And I still have access to Him–even if I can’t access my folder on the server.

God, it’s been a tough day. But I’m going to praise you anyway.

Categories Technology

Things I’ve wanted to tell you…

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I have a thousand things I’ve wanted to tell you–but not in blog form. I wanted to write them in nice, polished article form, with references and everything. I wanted to include good meta descriptors of them on each page so that people doing Google searches could find them. I wanted to make them nice and fancy and search engine friendly (like my population control article).

Unfortunately, time doesn’t exactly grow on trees and I’m spending most of my time either a) planning a health program for the Airpark population using the Precede-Proceed model of development or b) writing a proposal for some original research on the perceptions and motivators for consumption of caffeinated beverages by college students or c) polishing up my rusty memory of parenteral calculations or D) reading other people’s blogs in order to avoid studying for what I am sure is going to be a KILLER Food Chemistry test. Have I mentioned that it’s been a year and a half since I last took a science class, and three years since I took my last chemistry class? Argh!

So, I suppose someday I’ll get around to explaining why some meats develop off flavors after you’ve had them in the freezer for too long (It’s a fun food chemistry explanation). And someday I’ll get around to discussing the science behind High Fructose Corn Syrup (and why it isn’t really that bad for you–at least, not much “badder” than your average sugar.) And someday I’ll describe how I learned the hard way that Mom was right about not stacking dishes in the sink. And someday I’ll tell you why I’m about ready to stop shopping at Walmart. And someday I’ll tell you about my almost-crush on my Health Program Planning prof (all except for his politics, and well, a lot of things). And someday I’m going to tell you about my closet recycling, dumpster-diving ways. And someday I’m going to write another “Bible on environmental issues” study. For that matter, someday I’m going to write a family history and a site map.

But for today, I’ll just quickly list the stuff I intend to write so that someday, I’ll look back on all my unfinished ideas and sigh.

*Sigh*

Categories Education, Technology

You wouldn’t believe me if I told you

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Those of us who grew up in the internet age also grew up hearing warnings against the use of Wikipedia as a reference source. Most of us routinely ignored this advice from our high school teachers–choosing instead to use it surreptitiously, not citing our source or using it to find other sources of the same information.

As we entered college, we heard the same warnings. We still used Wiki–just not for formal purposes. Instead, we used it to look up stuff we read about in the newspaper or bands or expressions or whatever. Wiki is pretty much irresistible–despite how much teachers complain about it.

So guess who suggested the use of Wikipedia today?

I doubt you’ll guess. My graduate Research Methods professor suggested using Wikipedia as a source for a definition of energy drinks. Her sentence was something like “You’ll need to come up with a good definition of “energy drink”. It shouldn’t be hard to come up with–you could check the American Marketing Association or Wikipedia.”

I about fell out of my chair. Did she really just say Wikipedia? Yes, she did. Apparently, once you’ve reached a certain level in your academic career, Wikipedia becomes an acceptable source of information.

I can’t say I mind.

Disclaimer: Dr. Driskoll was suggesting that we use the Wikipedia definition in the survey we are developing to ask college students about their energy drink consumption. She was not suggesting that we use Wikipedia as a source for a definitive explanation of say, the Hygiene Hypothesis.

Categories Missions, Technology

Here´s wishing I didn´t do my own HTML

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Mexican keyboards aren´t that incredibly different than American ones. The alphabet is all in the same places–with an ñ thrown in where the colon/semicolon should be. But the characters? All over the place. The dash that is ever present in my writing is located where the back slash should be–which means the back slash is up on the top line after the 0–which is also where the question mark is located. The semicolon is with the comma; the colon is with the period. The carats that open and close html script are located underneath the a–in the place where the shift key generally lies–the shift is shifted a bit over.

Why am I typing on a Mexican keyboard? I can hear you ask.

I am on a Mexican keyboard because a friend just happened to bring us a virus on his flash drive. It knocked out our laptop, leaving us computer-less. So I’m sitting in a Mexican “chat room” paying a whopping 10 pesos (1 dollar) an hour for the privilege of figuring out the Mexican keyboard.

I think it’s easier to just copy and paste my commands. It’s too much work to do anything else.

Categories Missions, Technology

I’m back

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Online that is. We got into Juamave late on Saturday, only to discover that the power at the casa had fluctuated wildly while we were gone–and had taken out the computer, a couple of routers (including the HS internet one), our water purifier, and the tvs. This meant that we were without computer, internet, and internet phone (the “local” Nebraska number).

Jim went into Cuidad Victoria today and got a new High Speed router for us, so I’m now writing from the laptop. I have a hundred things to say–that I’ve faithfully logged in my (paper) journal–but it is Michael’s 21st Birthday and we are having an enchilada dinner to celebrate. Which means that I should probably not spend all evening on the computer.

But be forewarned–I might have to figure out really quickly how I want to format multiple posts in a day. ‘Cause I have a lot to say.