[It's August and time for a new sheet for the log, which you can find through the "Next" link up top there or here. Those who've linked to a specific item or entry in the July log can trust that it's still in place. Those who've established a link for occasional returns to a current page would be better off linking to the journal index page. Thanks, Mom.]

It rained last night—great rolling sheets of water—for the first time in almost two months. We'd forgotten the smell of a moist planet. Last night earth smelled like wet straw because, like most of our neighbors, we let our thirsty lawns go dormant and brown in July's heat rather than try to keep them green with inches of morning waterings.

Donner und blitzen accompanied the rain until the wee hours, when the rain settled down to a gentler, steady patter. Around 1 a.m., a nearby lightning strike woke me after I'd slept for only two or three hours, and when the lightning moved off, I returned here to begin work on a new version of this page for August, something less busy than this design, something that older versions of Netscape might render more kindly.

While working on the successor to the July page, I downloaded and installed a copy of Netscape 4.79 so that I needn't scurry off to the public library every time I want to check the appearance of my work in an older browser. I've validated the CSS and the HTML with W3C, and I've checked to confirm that some new color choices mask most of the defects of the new design in both Netscape 4.79 and 6.2. I'll let the new page sit for a few days before uploading it, enough time to see if I can tolerate it. (Think white.)
08:30 a.m. CDT (GMT -5)

Yeah, I hardly believe it myself, but there's another new entry over on the flotsam side of this place. Three in a month--with eight days remaining in the month--is a modern record for me. Somebody make me a sandwich.
06:00 a.m. CDT (GMT -5)

There's another catch-up entry over on the flotsam side of this place.
08:10 a.m. CDT (GMT -5)

Deadlines can be a problem.

The caption to an AP photo of Nigerian women occupying a ChevronTexaco oil export terminal reads:

Women occupying the ChevronTexaco oil export terminal in Escravos take their afternoon nap at the terminal's airport on Tuesday, July 16, 2002. The women said that they will occupy the terminal until they get final documentation from the company offering local residents jobs, schools, water, electricity and other amenities.

Find the amenity in that list.
02:50 p.m. CDT (GMT -5)

In the next few days (or weeks) I'll begin playing Jenga with the new formats for the journal pages and for the index page (which page was just completed and uploaded this afternoon). Bit by bit I'll remove HTML formatting tags and replace them with CSS styles, and after each change I'll wait with bated breath, crossed fingers, and clenched teeth to see which browser(s) the pages fail in.

And maybe someday I'll get around to updating and organizing the archives, and updating the album, and completing or at least dabbling in one of the projects promised in the right sidebar of the index, and adding the pages about Kansas, and.... Well, you see the problem.
08:00 p.m. CDT (GMT -5)

There's a short journal entry up today. Yeah, I'm surprised, too.
07:40 p.m. CDT (GMT -5)

This is version 3.14159265 of this page. I can live with it, and Netscape can too. Older versions of Netscape alter some formatting. (They don't heed the line-height adjustments or the text margins in the center column as well as they might, and a CSS-generated border that had initially surrounded the top and sides of the banner table just floated around the designated perimeter in Netscape 4.7-something, so I removed it.) But the page is now more widely viewable. I'm tired of writing about it here and I never believed that you few were interested, but this is, after all, my record. So. Thanks be to patience and persistence, mine and yours.
07:30 a.m. CDT (GMT -5)

Well, the computers reserved for patron use at the public library were up and running today, dammit. And despite the kind e-mail from a reader--a stranger unrelated to me by blood, marriage, or indebtedness, and too distant to subject to physical coercion--who wrote to say that the page appears correctly in Netscape 4.79, I can attest that in Netscape versions 4.61, 4.7, and 4.76, this page really blows [I'm not sure that 'blows' is the technical term, but it's not so foul as the phrase I muttered as I typed it]. So here I sit, three hundredths of a version away from satisfaction. A miss, a mile; horsehoes, hand grenades.

Although the page has improved to readable on the older browsers that I tried, its appearance is still in the low ugly range, so I'll continue to work--slowly, slowly--on making it appear more nearly as it does in current versions of Explorer and Netscape, where it is merely homely. The problem probably results from some very small item, some little, apparently insignificant addition that I'll have to make either to the CSS file or to the HTML file.

I'll end with the observation that today I used Netscape 6.2 in my morning surfing, and I must say that seeing some of my favorite stops blow up even in a current version of Netscape gave me little pleasure.

But it did give me a little. Pleasure. A.

Heh.

[The comments in this entry refer to this version.]
05:30 p.m. CDT (GMT -5)

I've been messing with the page again, I have. The top table has suffered some rearrangement, some DIV elements have replaced some paragraph-level elements for which I'd assigned classes, and I've replaced some HTML font tags with SPAN elements that make the same changes more compactly. I've also added a second color to the side columns.

The CSS and the HTML have been through the validators at W3C, and the page looks as expected in both Explorer 5.5 and Netscape 6.2 (Windows versions).

So. When I steel myself, I'll bicycle down to the public library where there are computers that use the dreaded Netscape 4.76.

Maybe not.

I could hope that all of the library's public computers will be in use.

You know, all I wanted to do when I started out on this misadventure was to change the line height of the text in the main body. Sheesh.
04:20 p.m. CDT (GMT -5)

Even better: the computer area at the library was closed. Netscape: 0; Ostrich: 1.
08:35 p.m. CDT (GMT -5)

Less than a week after he had finished fourth grade last year, Taylor was ready to return to school. A long, luxuriant summer vacation held no appeal for him.

"Because all your friends are there," I said.

"Well, yeah, there's that, but I also like the way my brain feels when we do math," he said.

I knew what he meant. It's the same feeling I've known this week as I have learned a little about cascading style sheets; however, it's time to leave the pleasurable absorption of the neural fog that has surrounded me this week and move to other things (like updating this page). So this page, cautious and constrained though it may be, is going to have to be 'it' for now.

The page behaves well in Explorer 5 and above, and even in Netscape 6.2 (which I finally downloaded this week, and which, to give it its due, renders the smaller fonts more attractively than Explorer does). In earlier versions of Netscape, things may disappear, but I no longer care. Simple as that. I'll 'care' again later as I learn and understand more about CSS.
05:35 a.m. CDT (GMT -5)

Owen couldn't be bothered because it occurred before noon (his usual time for rising during summer break), and Taylor claimed he wasn't feeling well, so he went back to sleep. Josh, however, arose in time to run in a 5K road race at 7:30 a.m. today at Cico Park. He hung with the leaders until the halfway point, when a lack of training and a possible overabundance of dorm food took their toll. Although he didn't finish among the leaders, he did finish well and strong.
08:45 a.m. CDT (GMT -5)

O Canada!
08:05 AM CDT (GMT -5)

Taylor has been away at camp since last Sunday. He'll return in an hour, about ninety minutes behind the postcard he sent. He opens his message with the conventional sentiments: love you, miss you, see you in two days!

And then he closes with this postscript: "PS: (I would like to be home.)"

Dulce domum.
12:05 PM CDT (GMT -5)

A cool, fragrant breeze swept through the window of my second-storey bedroom last night, and when I awoke at 2:30 after just a few hours of sleep, I knew right away that I wouldn't be able to sink back into the abyss.

So I came here and piddled until 6 a.m., converting more of this broadsheet to CSS, and even resorting to reading some actual instructions from O'Reilly (Niederst, Web Design in a Nutshell. Bei-whodathunkit-jing: O'Reilly, 1999...little otter on the front cover) and from W3C. There is much more converting to do, and that top table, that unsightly banner and navigation area up there, needs some attention. But for now I plainly need some rest, so this will have to do.

(The previous CSS version of this page remains here.)
11:00 PM CDT (GMT -5)

Now that I know a little about CSS, everyone else has moved on to XML, XSLT, and RSS? And PHP? CHIT!
8:45 AM CDT (GMT -5)

The karmic wheel that I mentioned last Tuesday continues to turn and wobble. That same evening, enjoying the fragrance of fresh mown hay and marveling at the daylight that still shone at nine o'clock, I was spinning eastbound along K-18 at 65 mph in the mighty Metro. I had almost passed the driving range at the Stagg Hill golf course when I heard the loudest KAPOW!! that I have ever heard— and as I make that claim I am mindful of a lightning bolt that struck near me when I was a kid that might easily have started my puberty (or might have ended it in a lesser boy).

I whipped my head toward the presumed direction of the blast and watched the shattered remains of the rear passenger-side window crumble into the back seat. I turned the car around on the highway as soon as I safely could and returned to the golf course parking lot. I hadn't paid attention when passing alongside the driving range, so I had not seen anyone on the range hitting balls. In any case, by the time I arrived at the golf course, both the driving range and the parking lot were vacant.

I could fall back on the line about the fact that even god can't hit a one iron, but I'd bet that god plays a ball better than the cut Pinnacle range ball that rested with a smug smile in the back seat of my car.
1:30 PM CDT (GMT -5)

This morning, Taylor departed for a week of camp in western Kansas. He took with him nearly everything he cherishes except his snow cone machine.
1:45 PM CDT (GMT -5)

I've spent too much time here today, but I've used the time learning about cascading style sheets. As of five minutes ago, this page has been brought to the Internet with the help of a linked style sheet. Wheee dogies!

There's much more to do on this redesign, particularly now that I've learned about some of the properties available in CSS. But now I'm tired, and I think I'll just watch the page to see if it boils.
10:20 PM CDT (GMT -5)

Well, it's simple. The redesigned page, I mean.

Anal.

Simple, I think. And easy to use.

We'll see.
8:45 PM CDT (GMT -5)