two for tuesday and a small service announcement

Service announcement: It’s almost December and this one will be a double whammy for me (ok triple). December is always busy for my clients (all that year-end stuff) so I’ll be running around making sure they are all functioning smoothly. I also have two classes I need to finish. Also, we’re going on vacation the third week of the month so I need to make sure I can leave things while we are away and come back and find them (hopefully) still in one piece. Add to that everyone’s holiday stress … if I don’t reply to email immediately … I will get to it. I know this is not how I generally operate (that 5 second to response time everyone has become accustomed to?) but this will most likely be the game plan until January.

First tool:
I don’t bake that much anymore. That whole wheat intolerance thing. ya know? I buy brown sugar use a tablespoon or two and then forget about it for months and then when I need it — I find a brick. I complained to mum about it and [photopress:brownsugarstone.jpg,thumb,alignright]she sent me this brown sugar softener and I thought it was one of those gimmicks. It’s not. It works. You soak the stone in water for 15 minutes put it with the brown sugar and then it lasts about two months before it needs a soak again. It’s really cheap too. Just think, no more dropping brown sugar on the floor and annoying the downstairs neighbors or attacking with a hammer. (btw the microwave will work to soften as well. Supposedly keeping it in the freezer is another option but i always forget to do it when i first open the box so I don’t know if they really work). It’s really helped me out. Well, for the most part. I’ve always liked the taste of brown sugar and now i can easily take a spoonful. (I know, it’s really bad for my teeth). A good explanation can be found here.

Second Tool:
Sara (aka fyberduck) asked for some help on her new blogger (not beta) template as it wasn’t viewing properly in IE. I looked into it and I want to talk more about the process than the problem or result (which is mostly fixed). She was experiencing problems with a three-column format, the sidebar columns weren’t all properly displaying. Sara has a lot in her sidebars. What I did was make a backup copy and broke it down looking for inconsistencies (I planned on running it through some validations but they were all off-line this morning). I then made her sidebars just say “I am left” and “I am right” and then slowly stepped through adding everything back in and making sure that each piece (I mostly went by her “big titles”) worked before moving to the next. It’s still not perfect as the blog ring code (which is in a table) isn’t quite rendering properly for IE (among a few other IE quirks); but for the most part it is better. I love the “standards” that the browsers follow. When debugging start simple and build up to more complex. Always make a backup. My test site for her template may be found here.

• Category: food, tools
• Tag: friends, tech