Category: site junk

v 0.3 of the new Cubs blog features an actual design. Wow!

Now to fix all the details.

all @thecubsfan.com address should be working again. I’ve noticed the spam has already started to trick in, yay.

While the ESPN the Weekend concept is still quite goofy, I don’t think you can beat Gammons’ commerical with Cinderalla and Captian Hook. (Hmm, who’s better – Captian Hook or Jim Abbott? One was NOT A YANKEE.)

Edit: False start? Bad workmanship? Totally not my fault and they’re not even replying right now? A good thing for them I paid my yearly site fee last month and not this month? Yes.

Alt: thecubsfan AT ddtdigest

There’s the same one at Yahoo, but I don’t have POP access on that account. I never asked anyone for a gmail account because I thought having domain ones were fine but I guess not.

Got a bunch of things half finished (cmll, lucha show recap – need to pick up the photos), got some stuff I should be doing, but I’ve been busier/less interested? in doing more so far. Tomorrow evening looks good and free, though. Can’t wait to find out what happens.

One piece I left unfinished from – uh, last week? – that was written out long form and just needs to be typed, so here goes.

I’m back in the evening nap mode, totally screwsing me in every other way except needed bonus sleep. Adding links to any live site who refered five people to the site this month to kill time (which means Butch finally gets his link.)

While doing so, I just figured out the FWAKAnimation site that’s linking to me (well, the CMLLBlog) is MUCHA LUCHA. Coolest thing this month.

Segue segue I need a segue.

Speaking of people cooler than me, I’ve been thinking about the Hives. I have this idea that someone could make a smashing political satire music video out of “Walk Idiot Walk”. It lends itself well to the idea – more so for 2000, but going back in time is tough nowadays. It seems like work, though. I don’t know if I’m for work. It’s better than Scrabble, though.

You know, if you use a title tag instead of an alt tag, the captions work for Mozilla type browsers too. Just saying. (so subtle)

Had a couple modifications I wanted to do. Couldn’t get the MT RSS plugin to work. It doesn’t work with Atom yet and half the reason I wanted to use was to be able to see when Scott updated /baseball, so I’m not bothering with it right now.

I think I turned over all the archives that I actually use, too. I’m thinking about doing the same with the other articles, but I’ve got test it out first. And one would think I’d have better things to do.

I’ll probably fine tune a few other things later on; I have an idea on what I’d like to do instead of category archives, but we’ll see.

Perhaps I should work on actual content? Nah. I can stare at the TV this way.

Nathan: If MaddenChallenge has a feedback box, they keep it hidden pretty well. They have message boards, but I don’t expect they actually read them. I haven’t thought about checking the auto-response registration e-mails they sent me to complain till just now, so maybe that’s my only out.

All in all, I think I probably would’ve been happier using an extra $10 to go the IWA show instead of wasting my day at Navy Pier. (This is the segment of the show where I pretend I’ll drive to Highland for either day of the TPI.)

Donald: Did you really respond to eight different blog entries in like fifteen minutes? How many RJ names are you going to drop? Are you insane?

No women? Does that mean The Anti-Christ is finally sick of boob jobs?

Nah, I think they just want to get someone likely able to go right away instead of being a manager, and it’s to balance only women in the Diva Search.

There’s always room for more boob jobs.

I’m sure The Lizard will write HAVE October 16th OFF on his wristband.

Uh, good for the Lizard.

(People on AIM gave me the “why do you care, the Cubs will be long done by then” taunt, in case non-AIM people were wondering how that slipped by.”)

I think if you look up oopensecrets.org you’d find Linda McMahon is a VERY interested contributor to politics.

For those who didn’t check that out, the search result is here. As a business owner(/homemaker? Huh? I don’t think Stone Cold was CEO at the time), you shouldn’t be surprised she’s a fan of the elephants.

If Kris Benson doesn’t come back, then it was a stupid trade. Until then, I’ll laugh at the Stankees choking.

Benson one may be salvajable, but he seemed more like a media creation this year, based on the void of people to talk about. (The new Jeff Weaver!) The Zambrano/Kazamir one….

I’m 8-1 in the 2004 season of the DAL franchise, with the loss in OT. Running seems to be a bad idea with M05, so unless you have a passel of skilled WRs, you’re gonna last as long as Mrs. Scott Erickson on MNF.

Playing Pro? All-Pro? I finally got around to starting a franchise this week with other people, and had no problems on All-Pro vs the Patriots even before they started pulling guys. I guess it was the ol’ training at 100x normal gravity trick.

The one great thing about having done the Madden Challenge is I learned how to scramble for positive yards with a QB, since I was actually using a non-pocket guy for once. I was able to run traditionally a little bit (but in the second half, against the second line) but I’m thinking most of my ground gains are going to be on McNabb this year.

I was supposed to go broke this hand, but I didn’t like the way he raised the pot-Phil Hellmuth

The worst part of this year’s main event is the sheer numbers cause 90% of the interesting people to disappear. Even the really annoying ones.

Kevin – wait, who’s Kevin?: I was wondering what you thought about Team Midget in TAR5…

Liked them for seeming to actually enjoy the trip, disliked them when it seemed to be a camera catching act, annoyed at their “she’s a midget! we’re going to prove people wrong about being a midget!” single mindlessness, looked as bad as Colin/Christie until Colin lost his mind this week, expected them to get oddity fame (which they did), engaged in a never ending debate whether non-midget was Hot or Not (I took Not), surprised they didn’t rig the show to keep them on at least one week more. I think that covers it.

Nathan: Leaving *all* eliminations up to fan voting for a contract worth up to $1,000,000? I think we might see some people “drop out” that the fans like but the company thinks are worthless clods.

I’d think that, but I’m watching the company hate on Carmella (or it’s quite a work to create a new heel valet) and not finding some way

Maybe they’ll learn lessons from Diva Search in order to control the puppet strings better, but who knows. I’d hope there’d be 8 people out there the WWE would be happy to have win no matter, but it’s up to casting to find them.

I don’t think I hit this hard enough before: It’s very strange they’d completely avoid the New York/Philadelphia region for casting. They haven’t said “no indy wrestlers” and I’d think this kinda position would require indy guys who’d be able to perform in the ring ASAP, but they’re shying away from the locations they’re usually found. There’s no high profile groups based in New Orleans, there’s some in Florida and I suspect a lot of guys will show up in LA.

Regardless of what happens during, whoever wins has to be having matches the week after it’s over, and has to look good doing for this to work. Taping SmackDown! can only help so much. They’ll get a honeymoon with the bookers (I already forsee the winner dropkicking Maven out), but the glow of being the fans choice will wear off awful quick if they suck.

Choosing untrained guys and trying to turn them into wrestlers people don’t turn away from in eight weeks is near impossible. Maybe Al didn’t win. Maybe the need to start the casting now and give some room for training before they get to TV.

Take a look at this and complain about the colors before I implement it.

Been screwing around with the main page a bit. But I think I’m done for now, so it’s good that it’s working. (I think.)

Can you believe I did all the art by myself? It sure does show. Pictures are the link to the individual archive now, and change by category.

The category archives still exist (for right now, you can get to ’em from the individual archives), but outside of particular category-events, I didn’t think they had any particular value to them. I may throw a link up to ’em later.

My newest plan is to skip waiting till I’m all done to implement changes, since I end up tinkering forever, and just put the stuff up there as I’m working on it. Might as well do my tinkering in public, even if it leads to embarrassment and criminal charges.

I changed the individual archive pages. Let me see if I can guess what’s the link for this page – now. Lesson learned: dark backgrounds distract, light backgrounds enhance.

I’m not sold on the link colors, but I’d like to know what y’all think. If it works there, it’s coming to the all the .com/blog pages.

There’s a certain historical shout out by keeping the stuff black and white, but I think I ought to make things look better if/when I can.

What I’ve really got stuck on is attempts at beautifying the sidelinks; something like drop down menus, so you don’t have to stare at the October 2003 link in case you’re looking for it, for instance. Lots of DHTML ideas have been tried and found unsatisfactory, though.

I’ve cut down the main page entries to 14 days, which may or may not cut down on the annoying spammers but definitely make the page quicker to load. It’ll probably go down to even less once I can massage the Index to work like I want; my theory is I don’t post so often that people who come by once a week can catch up on the last ten decent things I wrote. (And it’s not like anyone’s going to be sad when this is 11.)

I have these things I keep meaning to write about how recaps suck and Paul London is boring, but I can’t seem to do it without being sucky boring. Maybe tomorrow.

Lunch…did not go well. Paying $6.29 for a large Sprite has it’s thrills.

Quick updates

• Scott’s RAW recap being later than usual was at least partially my fault. I apologize for the mental anguish that might have caused you.
• I’m so not changing the weights for Tomko and Rosey until they stick with them for two shows.
  Sakoda is the mystery wrestler being 1wrestling’s “WWE Releases Another Wrestler”, so I’ll bump him from that list when I get a chance. At least Sakoda went out on a good note.
• The TNA Index (combining James, Scott and Feely’s recaps into one order list) is updated for the fist time in over two months. Perhaps mostly because I found episode numbers for the PPVs over on TV Tome.
• I keep meaning to add the latest numbers to that buyrate/attendance chart I put up here a while back, and link it some place better. Hopefully get that done tonight, as well as moving all the different Info pages (hometown/finisher lists, title histories) to they’re own directory
  Note to self: put up redirects to avoid lots of 404 linkage problems
• Someone say something about the changes to individual entry pages. Like, if it hurts your eyes now, you better tell me before I flip this page over to that color scheme.
  I wrote that, worked on something else and posted that extended entry Wild Card post without thinking about the results. Hahaha.
• I came up with a new idea for the background when working on a different aspect of the redesign (theme!) but it requires me to draw decently or find someone to steal a graphic from. The background needs some texture, but I’m just trying not to disrupt the readibilty.
• I’ve like the white text the less I’ve seen, so I think I’m going to change that. Just haven’t decide what to use, and I’m gonna wait till I fix the background before I do that.
• Anyone know a good place to get started with mySQL? Or a MT plug in that let’s you turn off/on categories from showing up in the display bar on the inside?
  Maybe maybe I google one, hack at the other. But who knows.