Deathshadow's Madness

Hey look, they've overridden the CSS for the sidebar images in the javascript forcing them up in size again... Impressive.

This was definately one of the better ones... though she's shy - I'm not exactly trusting of new people, and I think we both want more than another 'crappy one nighter'. I've had enough of those the past five years that I'm DONE - which is kind of creepy for a guy to say - but with me rapidly approaching 40 it's time to settle down a little... So 'take it slow' seems to be the name of the game. (Can't be a playa forever)

She is not my typical 'type' - and that's a good thing. Every time I hook up with 'my type' it ends in disaster - This time around I've found someone intelligent, athletic, cutest little thing... and being she's in the Army reserves she's got enough build that unlike most girls her size (80-90 pounds maybe dripping wet) I'm not afraid of 'breaking her' when I touch her. To be honest I saw her and went 'Wow' - started wondering if she was out of my league, a thought that hasn't crossed my mind with anyone in at least two decades.

I have to hand it to my friend Kate, she knew what she was doing setting me up with Kim. Shouldn't be too surprised, Kate and I have been acquaintances since gradeschool and friends since high school, and is the only girl I've ever come close to marrying... She should know me well enough by now to know my likes and dislikes, and who things might work out well with for me.

Of course during the date I was babbling on like a idiot about just about everything - which is actually kind of different for me when 'in person' - usually I only babble on and on about stupid stuff online. Still I at least think I was funny, so that probably worked out ok. (all my old jokes are NEW!!! Looking for... a helicopter!)

Being I'm legally blind and as such not allowed to drive - and being she's still at the shelter and therin has a curfew we didn't get to spend more than a couple hours out and around, and scheduling a second date is awkward for both of us. We have tentatively set plans for sunday - I just need to figure a way out there earlier than before (my roommate usually goes out that way later in the day, so I can at least get a ride back with him). I'm half tempted to spring for a room, but I'm not certain I want to send that message this early this time around. (that and it would break me financially until July 3)

To be honest, from what I've been able to gleen so far, this one's a keeper - and I'm willing to take my time to not screw things up this time out. I appear to have already fallen in LOVE, not lust (well, ok, I'm a guy so...) for this girl already, which is somewhat unsettling for the guy who normally just goes through the motions on most dates looking for a little action and to hell with the rest - but then most girls are just a bit too... vapid for me to deal with longer than a few hours. This girl was able to hold up her end of the conversation and actually seemed intelligent - and I'd forgotten how much of a turn on that can actually be.

Wierd thing is, she seems REALLY familiar, in a semi-unsettling way. It's like I've met her before or she reminds me of someone, and I just cannot put my finger on where/who. The smile, the expressions, the attitude, I recognize it from somewhere and I just can't seem to place it.

Of course, the html here went from dee, to dee dee dee... What do I mean by that? Well first off, dropping all the H2's to H1's so there are multiple H1's per page - great way to confuse screen readers and search engines... and dropping some H3's to H2's and H2's to H1's without changing the existing headers like on the links page - nothing like categorizing depth two headers under depth 2 headers - RIGHT. The blogs switched to using STRONG tags instead of a definition list on the about page, BECAUSE OF COURSE ALL THOSE CATEGORIES IF READ ALOUD SHOULD BE SCREAMED AT YOU... (I applaud dropping the DL, but that's NOT how you do it), use of presentational class names which pretty much defeats the POINT of using CSS (assigning the class 'block' to a span for example)... Of course the whole thing is nutters with classes and ID's that SHOULD be unneccessary if some proper semantic markup was used (of course probably shaving 30% off their bandwidth use and 40-50% off page load times)

... and I thought it was bad BEFORE. Yup, they do need to be advertising for a web designer alright.

Could be worse - could be the total train wrecks at blogger or Xanga... at least here all the tags are opened and closed properly

The following entry is in regards to the 20th april 2007 news item at ClassicBattletech.COM

You know, when it comes to doom and gloom, I'm a master of the art. Usually I'm the first guy in line to find fault, running around spreading word of how horrible things are or a companies actions are gutting their product, especially when it comes to BattleTech.

This time out - Meh. Big deal. The game of Battletech (now 'Classic' BattleTech) has survived multiple bad novels (for every bad one there's been at least one good one), unbalanced weapons, a lack of a accurate system for balancing games, a tendency to hand out licenses for sub-products like video games to the first person to show up in line with no concerns for continuity or creative control, and the collapse of the company that created the game almost seven years ago.

Oh no, the license is staying with the current license holder, but the company actually producing the product and licensing it is changing from a German company to an American one... Said company already making original products under license in the same game universe and acts as a distributor for the existing product line...

That MUST mean the product is dying. RIGHT.

From what we've been told, the same staff of people are going to be working on it... with a larger budget and the ability to bring more people in to help.

... and this is a bad thing HOW?

At the end of the day, it's still a fun game with a rich universe and a strong following... It's endured FAR worse than this and come out stronger. Give it a rest people... If nothing else, WAIT AND SEE WHAT REALLY HAPPENS instead of running around like chickens with their heads cut off before we have any proof one way or the other of the actual impact of these events.

This is it: fully functioning on all pages (or at least, all the pages I use)

baseline_leftcolumn_blog.css

That file is the template on which this blog will be based - though the 'live' copy will likely see many changes from that baseline as I add images and more 'lively' styling. I am hoping to recycle elements of a skin I designed for one of my clients, but discarded when we changed gears two weeks before deployment (out of three months work) to make the page look like one of their products.

Works in IE6, 7, Opera, Firefox and Safari. COMPLETELY broken in IE 5.x, and being that's a browser base pushing close to a decade old, I have ZERO plans to support that. If you use IE 5.x or 'need' to support it, how about you get something made in THIS century. 99% of the world has dropped support for NN4 - it's time for IE 5.x to get the axe too.

The columns in this version are generated kind of wonky... Because there's zero access to the html you have to do some 'tricks' to put the menu in the sidebar alongside the content that's normally a right column.

The technique I chose this time out is a left/right/left float model. The menu is floating left, the content is floating right and stacked upon it, and the normally 'right' column is floated left, riding it up flush under the menu.

While this works fine in the majority of supported browsers, IE6 being in stuck quirks mode (thanks to that pesky <?xml> declaration in the html) is unable to generate a dynamic width float using the 'normal' trick. If you use the box-model hacks the bottom part of the column will not ride up alongside our float. To fix this, we have to declare the width of our content area, so using the * html hack I'm sending IE a 760 pixel wide version of the site (800x600 friendly) while RoW (rest of world) gets the dynamic version.

Should you want to change to a fixed width for other browsers, I suggest uncommenting the max-width declaration in #wrap1 to constrain the max width, without actually forcing it to the 'crappy little stripe' like we're sending IE.

The columns are styled using a technique known as 'faux columns' in wrap2 (left column) and wrap3 (right column). Your images or background-colors should be applied there - be warned I had to use borders to get the spacing between elements like posts to work cross browser because of quirks mode, so applying image backgrounds to the columns may not be entirely predictable.

On a side note - I have NEVER had to resort to so many hacks in a layout before, but then I almost never skin something without access to the HTML or when stuck in quirks mode for IE. This **** is embarrassing.

If you have any questions, or find anything broken with this layout, please let me know.