Let's Ride - Fred Faulkner's Blog About the Road Called Life

In an attempt to push my Web design skills ot the limit, I've decided to join the Spring 2006 CSS Reboot. What this means is that I have about a month to come up with a completely CSS design, validate the bad boy, and implement it by 12:00 noon on May 1st. I'm not alone in this quest, thusfar there are over 700 other rebooters out there attempting to do the same. Until then I still plan to blog and such. I've added a countdown timer to the upper right corner to remind me, and you, that Let's Ride is going to be shifting into overdrive and coming up with a new design. Let's see what we can come up with.

Posted by Frederick L. Faulkner IV at 10:38 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Just a quick note regarding some minor updates to Let's Ride. Major site updates coming around Thanksgiving.

I did some tweaks tonight that should make Let's Ride better. Those include:
* Adding back Driving Distractions (del.icio.us links) RSS readers never stopped seeing these
* Making the title of the post a permalink.
* I added more posts to the homepage (now 5, was 2)
* Made my permalink archives two column from one.

Better navigation all around with these updates. More to come (new skin?!) Let's Ride will ride again soon.

Posted by Frederick L. Faulkner IV at 05:53 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

I’ve had a lot on my mind lately and not a lot of time to write about them, or not enough to have a good post (not that a one liner can’t be a good post).  But with all the things going on in my life at work and home here is the short and sweet list; a brain dump per se of what I’ve been thinking lately. 

No more Marshall Fields on State Street.  Federated Department Stores will dump the Marshall Fields name for Macy’s in 2006.  One more store I, and many more in Chicagoland, won’t shop at when the conversion happens.  This was a good marketing move why?? Hey Federated!  We’re NOT NEW YORK! Here’s an exhustive list of other lost nameplates.

Marty Casey lost the frontman job to JD Fortune on Rockstar INXS last night.  Oh well, our local boy d.  But all is not lost, now Marty (and the Lovehammers?) gets to open for them on their upcoming world tour. 

I’ve been busy at work dealing with the aftermath of Katrina (in a good way), it is good to know that Ernie is ok.  Rita is on her way, building strength, and that worries many in Texas and the rest of the Gulf Coast.  Which reminds to ask, what’s personal your disaster plan?  Do you know where to go if something happens to you or your family?  If not, better get a one.

iPod Nano came out last week. Very slick!  Very sexy in true Apple fashion.  Still won’t get one because Apple refuses to put an FM tuner on their musical bundles of joy.  Just makes it impractical for me for how I use my MP3 player.

Note to all hotels, if the fire alarm goes off at midnight, make sure your front desk staff know what to do, how to handle guests, and to apologize.  The Grand Geneva Resort needs a lesson.  “It was not our fault” is not an acceptable answer. Nor is “We didn’t ask you to evacuate your room, why are you here at the front desk?”  err..because last time I checked when a fire alarm goes off your instincts is to evacuate your room and we are here to see if it is safe to go back to our rooms.  Oh, and they never said they were sorry for the inconvenience.

Continue reading "Short and Sweet: Brain Dump of Recent Thoughts" »

Posted by Frederick L. Faulkner IV at 08:07 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Well, I upgraded to MT 3.2 the other day...well let me say I attempted to upgrade. I somehow in the process of things really messed up my install and had to build a new database and do a complete new install. Luckily I exported all my entries. The bad is I'm back to a basic template (which isn't all that bad because my old templates were messed up anyway). So I'm starting anew. I'll be making a new skin based on the new MT templates (which are based off of the Typepad templates). So back to square one. The best news is that I'm back up and running and everything looks good.

Posted by Frederick L. Faulkner IV at 09:57 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (1)

Let's Ride wants to "Pump *clap* You UP!" Starting tonight I have integrated my Driving Distractions (del.icio.us) link blog into the main RSS feed of Let's Ride. If you subscribe to just the Driving Distractions feed you can remain to do so. If you are like me and want to see more of what I link to and publish in one concise feed (clean out that aggregator...it is getting too cluttered!) then this is the feed for you.

Posted by Frederick L. Faulkner IV at 11:00 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Being a Web publisher gives you the opportunity to read some content before it is published. This was what I was able to do with a recent nothing.but.net column for our print magazine at work, Law Practice. The author of this months column, Rick Klau, is a guy I respect and always has great content to write about. He is always on the forefront of technology and explaining it in laymens terms to the public through his columns. This month Rick discusses social bookmarking with del.ico.us. I've noticed del.ico.us for a while but never really got into it. Mainly because I didn't find a need to use it. Now that I have seen it pop up more and more as side-blogs on Web sites I thought it was worth a revisit. Rick's column just pushed me over the edge. So I started an account and with some help from Rick pointing me to some great resources tonight through some e-mail exchanges I now have a new side-blog. I've udpated the RSS feed to reflect the new links. Hopefully this will allow me to post more links in an efficient manner.

Posted by Frederick L. Faulkner IV at 09:42 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

I did another update this weekend to my Circle of Friends page. I installed Movalog's MT Blogroll 1.0. It is a great little plug-in that will help you manage your blogroll. Some cool features include a "Blogroll It!" link to add to your toolbar and XFN relationship settings.

Posted by Frederick L. Faulkner IV at 05:46 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

I added a new feature to Let's Ride called Nice Titles. It is something that Safari is playing around with and others have implemented. I'm not sure if it is annoying or cool. So for those of you who don't view/read Let's Ride through your news aggregator, send me some feedback.

Also to note...today it was 50 degrees in Chicago, so I changed my masthead banner to reflect warmer weather ahead.

Posted by Frederick L. Faulkner IV at 07:28 PM | Permalink | Comments (1) | TrackBacks (0)

I wanted to inform everyone who has subscribed via the RSS feed that I now offer a full feed. I ride the train and read my feeds, so I know how much a full feed means to some of you. You can subscribe to the full feed here.

Thanks,

The Management

Posted by Frederick L. Faulkner IV at 09:15 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

I added my Amazon Wish List to the left nav. Not that I expect anyone to purchase anything off of it, but it is just one of those things that makes life convenient for friends and family around "gift giving" time.

Posted by Frederick L. Faulkner IV at 09:31 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

I spent part of my day updating Let's Ride on the back-end. I've finally got Driving Distractions up and running. It has a separate XML feed and will feature links to other distractions I find on the Web. You can be sure it will have links to Strong Bad. Next up is the return of my photo blog, now called Scenic Drive.

Posted by Frederick L. Faulkner IV at 06:56 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)