Daily Archives: February 10, 2008

Waiting for the Shoe to Drop

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I’m still battling the cold and cough, hoping to avoid a 5-month bout of bronchitis like last year… when it finally went away after I started taking anti-acid reflux drugs in addition to some prescription and over-the-counter medications for general cough and asthma. There’s some kind of connection.

In about half an hour, we leave to go to lunch with the family, at a deli up in Highland Park. It’s bitterly cold, and with the wind-chill factor it’s about -20 degrees, something that’s guaranteed to get my cold-weather asthma to kick in (something else I have to avoid if I’m going to dodge the bronchitis). Although I stayed home from work Friday, stayed in yesterday, and skipped church this morning, this luncheon date is a do-not-miss: a family announcement about health will be made. Hugs and support will be needed.

Don’t know how positive the outlook will be until later this week,  Hope the shoe drops on the right side of things. My little cold-and-cough is nothing compared to this, but that’s about all I can say for now.

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Ecto: Working again?

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After reinstalling ecto, which I like to use for blog posts because it works on my WordPress and Blogspot blogs, it suddenly stopped working and threw some kind of error. Frustrated, I set it aside and blogged using the other interfaces. On a whim, I tried opening it today, and there it is, working again. It must have been some update or other that David ran on our server(s).

I’ll see if I can get profiles built (again) for my various blogs. I like ecto because it has a number of little buttons for easily adding Amazon, YouTube, Flickr, and iPod content. I don’t need it to do a lot, I just like to be able to click on a button and add a “currently listening” line at the bottom of the post.

Maybe it’s possible now to figure out how ecto does this with WMPTunelog, and see if David can write a plug-in for it on WordPress.

I do have something called iLike that updates a playlist on my Facebook page.

I’m thinking about changing my WordPress template to something else… we’ll see if that works out okay or not. I’d have to come up with a different banner image, or a series of different banner images.

And now to see if ecto truly is working again…

Will it be…

Allen Toussaint & Elvis Costello:Broken Promise Land:The River In Reverse (Digital Version)[4:34]

or

Sting:Brand New Day:Brand New Day[6:19]

UPDATE: Huzzah!

It’s working again. Nice to have the ability to add “Now Listening” again.

1 hurt as backstage fire halts performance of ‘Peter Pan’ at Elgin high school — chicagotribune.com

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1 hurt as backstage fire halts performance of ‘Peter Pan’ at Elgin high school — chicagotribune.com

Peter Pan cast member describes fire

ELGIN – A small fire broke out Saturday at a high school dance performance of “Peter Pan” in Elgin, forcing the audience of about 300 to evacuate.

One person was injured – nothing fatal or too serious, fortunately. The Tribune has amateur video that has a surreal sequence of various costumed cast members evacuating, some calmly, some in a panic. Tinkerbell trots down the sidewalk pretty briskly, and another character screams “It’s horrible!” as she races by the camera, but one of the mice was quite calm about it and gave a description of what happened backstage.  If she decides on a career in broadcasting, she may want to lose the ears and tail. Later in the video, a female Captain Hook describes how she tried to go down with the ship, but was dragged offstage when the order was given to evacuate.

Actually, it sounds like it took a while for the adults to realize there was a problem, because none of the kids seemed to think they should pull a fire alarm, they were standing around backstage looking at the burning embers that were dropping down from the curtains overhead. It’s lucky that no one was more seriously injured. Strange, though – the mouse says she noticed the ember during the “Indian scene” but an adult in the audience said the announcement to clear the building was given during the “Tinkerbell dies” scene, as they were getting ready to clap in order to “revive” her.