The Funny Farm

Rookie Mistake

I have been having some funky times with my stylesheet template here in Moveable Type Land. It looks mighty fine in FireFox, but in IE it has a rancid gap between the links zone and the blog entries.

Any assistance in solving this dilemma besides telling me to RTFM* will be gratefully acknowledged.

* : RTFM = Read The Frelling Manual in geekspeak.

Update 2004/05/02: Apparently, when you put a couple of the wrong keywords in the wrong place in your stylesheet (the place in MT where you tell it what colors and formatting you want to use for your web site), the sort of problem I have been having can occur. I have removed the offending lines, and hey presto!, things look better. I might actually figure out what the heck I'm doing if I can keep this up...

Heretical Thoughts

So, I'm sitting at work today (in a funk, of course, because of the travesty tragedy on ice that I suffered through last night - otherwise, I might not even be bothered by this), and I get some bad news. One of my coworkers recently found out that one of his daughters was diagnosed with acute leukemia last week. The email informing his coworkers of what is going on in his family then updates us on the status of the situation, and how the family is adjusting to the new situation. Then comes the part that is bothersome to me.

First, my VP asks us all to contribute to something so that we can show that our thoughts and prayers are with our coworker in his time of trouble. Then, I get an update from my fellow coworker, informing us that his daughter is feeling better, and thanking us because it appears our prayers are working.

Excuse me, wouldn't the chemotherapy treatments (she's now on day 4 of 7) be contributing to her improvement slightly? Maybe her acceptance and positive outlook (of course, this could possibly be helped out by her faith) might be contributing to her handling the situation better, too. But to credit this individual's recovery to divine intervention seems to be quite a stretch for those of us who don't necessarily feel the same way about an Invisible Cloud Deity reaching down to succor this particular soul right now (possibly, a cynic might say, just to prolong the agony she's about to have to go through), or for that matter, those who might not have the same beliefs about what, if any, god(s) there might be.

I'd like to convey my desire for things to work out for my fellow employee. But I am very much afraid that there is little if no way to do it without either tacitly supporting the religious beliefs expressed in the group's support for a friend in need, or causing offense to those religious beliefs (by showing my support and making it clear that I do not believe in his particular form of faith). I guess I need to stay away from the official office show of support for my coworker, and keep my mouth shut about my blasphemous pagan babblings of doubt about our Lord And Savior (Amen!) so as not to offend those around me in my place of business.

I wonder if they would be happy to have the Hindus in the House (can I get a Holla!) ask Vishnu to watch over their daughter (although I'm pretty sure they wouldn't appreciate offerings to Siva on her behalf)? Or if it would be okay to ask Allah to help their little girl? I find myself questioning whether even bringing this sort of discussion up is offensive to True Believers of the One God. And whether those adherents of the faith are aware (or concerned) about their effect on the work place when they do this sort of thing (need I mention that of course this is considered an appropriate use of company time and resources?).

Quite a few others have grappled with this question recently, and that may have caused me to notice this sort of thing a little more. I'm sure that it has allowed me to communicate my dilemma more clearly. And I hope that it has managed to make you think about this issue a little better than you did yesterday.

Cross-posted at the original home of the Funny Farm and Open Source Politics.

We Have Liftoff!

Even as we communicate about it right now, my imagination is furiously designing the new home of the Funny Farm. There will be some upgrades arriving here eventually but for now it's pretty rough. I hope you will be able to settle in comfortably along with me into my new home. Of course, there's lots of new toys (including my own pictures and my first adventure with interactivity. Zoinks! I quite possibly may have to deal with comments now... plus XML / RSS / whatever else I can manage to figure out to hook up) to keep me busy, and I may even manage to find a few extra authors to put some content up at the new digs.

There will also be a few double posts, with the distinct possiblilty of hitting my own personal trifecta for the first time with a post over at Open Source Politics that gets cross posted everywhere I can manage to put it.

So drop on by from time to time. The color scheme should return to something less searing to the retinas by the end of the week. The old blog will remain active for as long as the good graces of Blogger keep it gratis. I would also like to take this opportunity to request that my friends in the TTLB Ecosystem (evreyone else with a blog who is not yet a member of the ecosystem - you should be there too!) update their links to me. Let me know how you found me in the Fashionable Left Bank of Blogistan. And I'll talk to you again real soon!

This entry cross-posted over at the original home of The Funny Farm.

And So It Begins

Welcome to the new home of the Funny Farm! This will be a fairly short entry because I have to play some more work on the template and feel my way around the Movable Type blogging system. Hope you enjoy your stay. Please come back again soon!

[Proprietor's Editor's Note: But wait!]

There's more behind the covers...
I need to examine a few more things about Moveable Type, and how it displays linkage, among other things. Plus, I want to see how the extended entry looks in this relatively virgin environment.

And this is the first post put up over at the original home of the Funny Farm. It seems like so long ago that I got a chance to meet an amazing bunch of people at the Vegas BartFest in 2002...

We apologize in advance for those of you frustrated because you can't see the extended entry. Once I figure out which switches to flip it magically appears, you'll have to imagine what an extended entry would be like at the Funny Farm.

[Ba Dum Bum! Thank you, you're too kind. I'll be here all week, where the special is the lost kitten fricasee...

We still need to get the extended entries functionality, and the archives aren't coming up as of yet either. But I guess no one will be able to see this until I get it working, anyway.

So,.... like - you don't even know if we're nude, eh? All of us here at the Funny Farm are nude while we're writing the blog, okay? (...and if you really believe that, well, I've got some oceanfront property in Nebraska you may be interested in... I'm kidding! I'm kidding! ...)