Originally published at Birdangel.net. You can comment here or there.

During the last two weekends, I've spent a lot of time tinkering with Drupal. I discovered some useful modules that I had not found before.

SEO Checklist: This module is a good Drupal checklist for Search Engine Optimization (SEO). It will automatically check to see if you have certain Drupal modules installed that are important to SEO.

Rotor Banner: This module provides a block in which you can provide "rotating" content. It can be images, or text, and each piece of content will fade into the next. It's pretty cool looking and I was really impressed when I saw it in action.

Nice Menus: This module provides drop-down/left/right expandable menus if your current Drupal theme doesn't already provide them.

Pathauto: This module automatically creates aliases for your content based on the content's title. I was glad to find this module because I was tired of creating URLs for every single piece of content I created.

Search 404: This module replaces the standard 404 error page by doing a site search on the keywords in the URL.

Google Analytics: This module adds Google Analytics support to your website, which is good, because I had thought I had installed my GA tracking code when apparently I hadn't.

LiveJournal CrossPoster: This module cross-posts content from your Drupal site to a LiveJournal account (like I'm doing with this post).

Twitter: This module allows you to update your Twitter account whenever you add new content to your Drupal website, among other things. If you install the Twitter application on Facebook it will also update your Facebook status. On my Drupal module wishlist is a Drupal module that will update your Facebook status without needing Twitter as a go-between.

Also on my wishlist is either a Drupal module or a WoWArmory addon to show my latest WoW achievements in the sidebar -- right now I am doing it manually.

So I've discovered a few new geeky toys that I've been having fun with recently.

The first toy is Pandora, and I discovered this a few weeks back. I'm already almost out of free hours this month (you get 40 free hours per month). I'm sure this website has been out for awhile now but apparently I am slow to get with the program! I have fun listening to this while I am working instead of my iTunes playlist. So far on Pandora I have three different "stations": Muse, Linkin Park, and Apocalyptica. The Linkin Park station ended up playing a lot of Nickelback, which was good because apparently I like a lot of their music.

I submitted a "music request" to Pandora for them to add Yuki Kaijura. They actually responded to my email, but they didn't really give me a direct "yes" or "no" to my request. They did say that they're working on getting more "world" music included, instead of just U.S. music, but that it's an enormous task. So, maybe I'll see her on there one day!

The next toy that I've been playing with recently is my new (to me) refurbished MacBook Pro! It is two years old, and I received it as a birthday present from Rob a few days ago. This is my first Mac, so I keep running into things that I don't know how to do, but I'm learning. It's set up to dual boot both MacOS and Windows XP. I had to replace Pidgin with Adium and Crimson Editor with TextWrangler -- haven't really tried out TextWrangler yet, but Adium is very nice.

One thing that has been driving me nuts is that my sound keeps muting itself. I haven't been able to figure out the exact cause yet. First I thought it was doing it on every reboot, then I thought it was doing it after every sleep, so I changed my system settings so that the computer would never go to sleep. But I'm still having my sound randomly mute. Argh.

Any general Mac advice from Mac users would be welcomed! I'm definitely still a newbie at this so I can use all the help I can get.

The next toy that I've been playing with I just discovered today. I was looking for a RSS reader because I constantly have a ton of tabs open in Firefox just to keep up with various websites: LiveJournal, Facebook, Twitter, CNN, Consumerist, OneManga, and MMO Champion. I was also following Slashdot through both LiveJournal and Twitter and felt that it was a little redundant. I'm trying out Google Reader now. It won't follow my LiveJournal, Facebook, or Twitter page, but it'll take care of mostly everything else.

I'm subscribing to CNN, Consumerist, OneManga, MMO Champion, Slashdot, The Dagger (Harford County news), and Matt Cutts' blog (for work purposes). Any other good weblogs/RSS feeds that I should add?

Lastly, I'm trying out the delicious bookmark service, but so far I don't like it. I wanted to try it so that I could sync the bookmarks across my desktop and laptop. I imported my bookmarks from my laptop, and it turned all of my folders into tags, which would be fine, except I had a lot of subfolders within folders. So for example, I had a World of Warcraft folder, with subfolders for each class (Druid, Priest, and so on) as well as subfolders for things like Armory Tools, and Professions. Now when I view the World of Warcraft tag/folder, it shows not only the bookmarks that were in the initial folder, but also the subfolders, leaving me with a gigantic list of bookmarks to search through.

I'm wondering if maybe I just need to live with it and maybe re-tagging things will help, or if I need a different system, or maybe I should just stick to keeping bookmarks on my own hard drive.

So those are all the toys that I can think of that I've been playing with recently!

So, it's been awhile. I actually update my Facebook fairly often, so I think I forget to update this because I'm already posting updates somewhere else.

First and foremost... we won the bid on a house! It's a foreclosure in Abingdon, in a great location, close to Walmart, Bel Air, and I-95. We got a pretty good deal on the house, too, since it is a foreclosure. Now, it isn't in the best of condition, and it's going to take a lot of work to fix up. All of the carpet is stained pretty badly and the painting job is pretty bad. So our plan is to replace all of the carpet and repaint pretty much the entire house.

The entire place needs to be cleaned up, too. It's been on the market for 100+ days with the note that it's being sold "as-is." In addition, it looks like the house was never cleaned when people actually lived there. For instance, there's dirt caked on all of the ceiling fans.

Our mortgate paperwork is already complete. If the home inspection doesn't turn up anything scary, we should be set for a settlement date sometime near the end of October. Once we settle we'll take about three weeks to fix up the house, and then move in.

So I'm pretty excited! It'll be really nice to have our own house, with extra space, no noise from people living upstairs, and a yard for Sakura to play in. And this wouldn't have been possible if I hadn't gotten a job when I did.

My job that I started in July is still going well. I am still part-time but that might change in the future. I really enjoy the work I am doing! It's amazing how much better I feel about life now that I have a job that I'm good at, and that I enjoy.

I got a job!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Found via a post on ellorgast's LJ, I felt it was necessary to spread this epic link.

I'M ON A SHIP

If you like the song "I'm On A Boat" and you liked the latest Star Trek movie you need to go to the above link.

I overhauled Birdangel.net. This time I decided to play around with Drupal, a content management system.

I visited Caleb's parents' house this weekend and we took Sakura to a lake, where I let her swim. She was so cute. This is only the second time she's had a chance to swim.



( More Sakura pictures )

Here's the Facebook photo album that these pictures are from.

This past week has been emotionally exhausting.

On Saturday, Sakura began vomiting. She probably vomited on Saturday for a total of approximately twenty times. We could tell that her stomach was upset (we could tell from her vomiting and her mood in general).

Sunday, she vomited about three times, but she still was not looking very well. She refused to eat anything, and she wasn't able to excrete.

On Monday, she was still vomiting and still not looking well. She ate some food but none of it stayed down. We took her to the vet. The vet x-rayed her and the x-rays showed a possible foreign body in her stomach, as well as a possible blockage in her intestine. Sakura was given something to reduce the nausea and we took her home overnight, with the goal to get her to pass the foreign body (excrete it out). If she wouldn't be able to pass it, she would need $1000 surgery.

Rob took her on several very long walks, but she was unable to excrete at all. On Tuesday morning we took her back to the vet. They x-rayed her and it looked like the foreign body was still there, so they did surgery on her. They had to do about ten incisions on her to get all of it out of her.

The foreign body ended up being a mix of plastic, hair, and tennis ball fuzz. The plastic was from the plastic water bottles we used to let her chew on, and the tennis ball fuzz was from a frisbee made from tennis ball material. We threw out the frisbee and we have vowed to never allow her any plastic water bottles ever again.

After we brought her home Tuesday night she was extremely drugged and in a lot of pain. Today she is still not feeling well but the sedation has worn off. I was able to get her to eat a tiny bit of food. She even attempted to play with her rope toy, bless her heart, but she wasn't able to do much. She went into the room where I had put it and stared at it. I brought it into the computer room where I was and she picked it up, but that was about all she could manage.

It was a very expensive and very emotional toll-inducing lesson to learn that the plastic water bottles were a bad idea. However, I'm so very grateful that the price we had to pay was $1000, and that the price was not a dead dog. I am so grateful that she is still alive. I love my baby girl. I would be beyond devastated if she passed before her time. I love her so much and I am so afraid that I will lose her.

All I want is my happy, loud, energetic, chews-on-way-too-many-things puppy back.


(this is by no means a recent picture, she hates getting her picture taken so I wouldn't dare do that while she is feeling this horrible)

I have a hard time of keeping track of movie release dates, so I'm detailing here the movies that I want to see in the near future.

Dragonball Evolution: April 10
Crank 2: High Voltage: April 17
X-Men Origins: Wolverine: May 1
Star Trek: May 8
Angels & Demons: May 15 (maybe, haven't decided if I want to see this for sure)
Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince: July 17

Most of these are self explanatory. I know Dragonball has a high chance of being absolutely awful, but I have to see it anyway, cause otherwise I will wonder what I missed. Angels & Demons looks like it could be bad like the National Treasure series, but I liked the trailer for A & D.

Hagane no Renkinjutsushi Fullmetal Alchemist (Fullmetal Alchemist: Brotherhood), the second television adaptation of Hiromu Arakawa's Fullmetal Alchemist dark fantasy manga, will take over Gundam 00's 5:00 p.m. Sunday timeslot starting next week on April 5.

Source

That could not be better timing. Too bad Gundam 00's ending was really disappointing. The second season was so good up until episodes 24 and 25. There's supposed to be a movie next year, and hopefully it will redeem the series finale being so disappointing.

Meanwhile... OMG FULLMETAL ALCHEMIST YAY.

I am still unemployed, and it is still very frustrating to me. Does anyone have any advice? I know the economy isn't great at the moment, but it isn't the sole reason I am still unemployed.

Most of the jobs require you to have prior experience, but I can't get experience if I can't get a job. I have tried to be less picky about the jobs that I apply for, but I am still missing the experience and/or skills for most of them.

Growing up they sure made it sound like having a college degree made it super easy to get a job but that hasn't been the case for me at all. I was also told my college GPA wouldn't matter but most of the government jobs that I have applied for have asked for it.

I even looked for a job seeker's LiveJournal community but it seems that the ones that exist aren't updated very often.

I am depressed because I am still unemployed. But there is one thing that can always cheer me up...



( Click for more puppy goodness )

Congratulations, Connecticut.

So, the election is a week away. I thought I'd throw in my measly two cents in before it occurs.

Have you heard about the bailout? I can't imagine you haven't. The bailout was the U.S. government's plan to "bail out" the big banks so that they'd have money to loan to people, to try and help to bring our economy back on track. Both Obama and McCain voted for this bailout.

Want to know what the banks are doing with their bailout money?

AIG executives spent part of their bailout money on a $86,000 hunting trip.

Chase bank plans to use their bailout money to buy out other banks instead of making more loans.

I'm voting for the one presidential candidate who voted against the bailout. That presidential candidate is Bob Barr.

Some people may say I am throwing my vote away because he has no chance to win. However, if I were to vote for Obama or McCain, I would be voting for someone whose ideals I do not share. In my mind, that is throwing my vote away. I'm proud to be voting for Bob Barr.

I posted a bunch of pictures of Sakura on Facebook a couple of days ago. They are here. Here are some of my favorites:



( More pictures after the jump )

I put the finishing touches on the Fighting Gobblers Guild website today. This was the first time that I had ever used PHP Nuke. I ran into some bumps along the way but I have learned a lot about using it.

Anyone know where I could find out if the number of third party/independent members in the House and Senate has stayed the same over the years, increased, or decreased?

So I was reading the Fullmetal Alchemist manga available at One Manga, when I saw an announcement for a new Fullmetal Alchemist anime. I didn't think much of it at the time for some reason; I guess I thought it was an old announcement referring to the anime that is already out. However, I now realize that this announcement is really recent, and there is going to be a NEW Fullmetal Alchemist anime! That's awesome! I wonder what the plot will be about -- will it continue from where the movie left off, or will it try to go back to the original manga plot? (The anime and manga plots are a lot different.)

Hmm... to try out Google Chrome or not. I probably will, as much as I love Firefox. I haven't found a Google product that I didn't like.

Let's see, time to figure out how to imbed a YouTube video.



This is a cute video that I first saw on CNN. It's JibJab's parody of this year's election.