Hah!
I am the man!
My new blog is live!
I whipped CSS’ ass and wiped the floor with it!
Except not really.
To be completely candid, it wiped the floor with me, as well as the windows and the inside of the chimney and the neighbor kid’s runny nose.
Did I mention that I will never design a blog again?
I really, really, really, meant it. As in, REALLY.
The last twenty-four hours have been a profound nightmare and I called my brother, who is pretty proficient at coding, approximately 1,836 times and he answered approximately once.
I kid! He answered lots of times and only twice did he tell me in a weird, falsetto voice that I had reached a wrong number and to stop harassing him. He lives on the opposite coast and works nights. Therefore, his optimal time for calmly walking me through div tags and attributes and OH MY GOD, STOP THE WORLD, I WANT TO GET OFF is late afternoon. Coincidentally, because God just has a sick sense of humor sometimes, late afternoon is my kids’ optimal time for Can so-and-so come over? Can I go over so-and-so’s house? Can you drive me here? Can you drive me there? What is 48 divided by 8? Why? Can you help me deconstruct The Hobbit and write a thesis on how it relates to the modern world?
So while Tino tried to help me decipher code, I tried to type while simultaneously cooking dinner, praticing multiplication and division facts, shouting JUST BECAUSE IT IS, THAT’S WHY and building a reasonable facsimile of Stonehenge out of blocks of cream cheese.
I’d like to thank my brother profusely for helping me off the ledge 37 times but I don’t think he’s taking my calls anymore, let alone reflecting fondly upon our time together as roomies in the same womb.
One of the most important things I found out about designing for the web, other than the fact that I am not cut out whatsoever to design for the web, is that there are huge differences with web browsers. I use Firefox and once I got something looking peachy keen in Firefox, it would look like dried up vomit in Internet Explorer. After eating hotdogs.
I’d fix it in Explorer and it would look like diarrhea in Firefox. After eating corn.
I went back and forth between hotdoggy vomit and corny diarreah for about a millennium and then, rather than gnawing my fingernails up to my freakishly pointy elbows, I finally gave up and resigned myself to the fact that Internet Explorer has a big, permanent, prickly bug up its tightly wound ass. Thusly, it will be included on my list entitled INANIMATE OBJECTS AND OPERATING SYSTEMS THAT HATE ME FOR NO REASON. I’m going to have it laminated and use it as a runway at our local airport.
Lucky for me, my brother took pity on me and provided me with a custom function that allowed me to tweak code in Internet Explorer while leaving my Firefox code pristine and untouched and virginal. Just like me! Except for the untouched and virginal part. And the pristine part, if you want to be technical. And mean.
I stopped tweaking this site late last night, once I caught my cerebral cortex sneaking out the door with my will to live.
My managed to tackle my will to live and shove it back into my soul through my eye socket but my cerebral cortex is still AWOL.
Who are you again?
I miss my cerebral cortex. It’s probably hanging out somewhere, partying it up with my waist, remembering the good old days.
Anyway, to sum it up, I hate web design. I would rather give birth to a gigantic, scared, pissed-off porcupine strung out on meth than do it again. I find it stressful, aggravating, frustrating, exasperating and down right shitty.
Did you know that I wanted to write a thesaurus once? I decided to write a blog instead. See where that got me?
If you all would do me a favor … would you mind clicking around the site and letting me know if something appears wonky? Are links working? Pages loading OK? Something missing? Is my profile photo scaring the heebie jeebies out of you? Save me the green ones.
If you find anything amiss, or even a mrs., please let me know. And let me know what browser you’re using as well.
I leave you with this:
My roasted potatoes. They were yummy and totally made me forget about the rancid, pus-oozing, flaming genital wart that is web design for about ten minutes last night.
.
.
Like it? Share it! Karma rocks:
{ 50 comments… read them below or add one }
The site looks STUNNING!! Really, you’ve outdone yourself. I clicked around a bit and all seems to be right with the world. FWIW, I love the new look and feel.
Holy wow. I’m all about NOT doing web-design now. Not that I had any inclination to to do it before. Now I’m really off it. I wish that smoking and drinking were as disagreeable as web design was though. *sighs* I could toss them out the window easily enough THEN I’m sure!!!
Oh … but the new digs sure do look nice
I love the new design! It looks great!
Looks wonderful Andrea and your photo is gorgeous. Well done. How you feel about web design is that way I feel about photoshop so now we’re even. Spuds look prettty special too!
oh well done! see you survived, I give it 3 weeks before you start thinking redesign again.. I swear it is addictive
Fantastic job and brilliant read as well.
Working fine on my side of the world in Perth Western Australia with Internet Explorer.
Well done.
Twitter: heather_t_
April 1, 2009 at 1:29 am
Wow, you are hella lots braver than I am. Great redesign–love the header. Interesting comparisons in Firefox & IE — the little comment bubbles work great in IE, but in Firefox the top part extends to both borders, and the lower comment filled part is not as wide. Also, in IE, the ads on the right are all bunched up in a block 1, 2, 2; in Firefox, they’re one by one underneath each other.
Besides that, I can’t tell any difference. I like white–easy on the eyes, clean, you can see where you’re supposed to go, the navigation is clean–great stuff!! Did I mention I love the header?? *grins*
So do you get to eat lots of chocolate as a reward, now?
Love the redesign! I’m using Firefox and everything looks grand and not at all reminiscent of corny diarrhea, pus-filled genital warts, or whatever your cerebral cortex helped you think up!
Twitter: barbhogan
April 1, 2009 at 5:32 am
Now you feel my pain, every tuesday when I meet with my boss and he asks “How’s the website coming?” And yeah, I have a degree in this shit (however, CSS only stood for Cobol Stinks like Shit) when I was in school. Looks great, Andy! xoxox
This looks awesome! I love how crisp & clean everything is! Bravo!
Your blog looks awesome! I love roasted potato’s yum yum!
Twitter: HeatherM74
April 1, 2009 at 8:09 am
ROFLMAO w/corn? EW! The visuals woman, the visuals! Look at how beautiful it came out being though.
Dude, I’m not messing with mine. Blythe put my theme up. I couldn’t even figure out how to change my link color in my pink sidebar. Happily, it took her a few hours to figure out why it wouldn’t change too. LOL
Have a great day Andy! I’m tweeting you again. LOL
OMG! It’s totally wacked – nothing looks good in IE or Firefox. All that hard work wasted….
April Fools??!!
Redesign looks great and all seems good in both IE and FF.
I’m going to give your blog post to our customer when then ask why “web design cost so much”. The site really does look fabulous – you should be proud.
Stan at Scrappers Workshop
http://www.scrappersworkshop.com/blog
What a HOOT you are!…even when under stress! I found this through a twitter.
and I retweeted it.
I love the new design! It looks wonderful!
Love the site design!!
once again you have me in stitches..hay can I call on you to help me with mine? lol just kidding..april fool’s. come see my blog
Twitter: eclecticred
April 1, 2009 at 9:41 am
WOOHOO!! and she lives!! GREAT job Andy! oh and you too Tino! LOL! It looks awesome, love those nav buttons, that header, EVERYTHING….
ugh…I am STILL sick that’s why haven’t been around much and here I remember to check on you today of all days and what do I read??
hotdoggy vomit and corny diarreah THANKS Andy! I knew I could count on you…sigh now back to the bathroom..
Congrats kiddo
Ha- my thoughts exactly. I tried, I really did, way back in the olden days of blogging (about a year ago) do to my own design and it was ridiculous. I think I had my own “custom” design up and running for about a month before I realized that it looked like absolute dog crap in Firefox. I had never even heard of Firefox. Now I have come to the conclusion that IE must be sent to hell where it belongs and Firefox should be crowned the king of the world.
Anyway, I’m glad someone has blog design talent around here. I’m impressed!
I haven’t been around bloggy land for a little while now so when I got here I was like, “What in the world??” In a good way. I had a terrible computer worm that would redirect me to all these weird sites every time I tried to go anywhere, so I’ve been AWOL. But hubby finally found it and nuked it last night, so I am free to roam the internet again.
Oh, and I want to see Better Midler in Vegas. For some odd reason I have had a fascination with her since junior high. Actually, my second year of bible college in Minneapolis she came to town with her big production and my roommate and I got some scalped tickets on the street, paid $100 a piece and sat in the section furthest away from the stage. She looked like a little peanut on stage but I was in heaven.
Twitter: kwr221
April 1, 2009 at 9:49 am
I’m jealous of mad webdesign skillz!
What? No Greek lemon potatoes?
Twitter: kwr221
April 1, 2009 at 10:05 am
¡dn ???q s??q u???q ?no? ?o ??? p??????? ??,no? ??s ? ¡?????? no? ?,u??? ‘?ooo
Twitter: kwr221
April 1, 2009 at 10:06 am
Oooh, aren’t you clever! I see you’ve gathered all of your brain bits back up!
Darn. Obviously, Word press doesn’t like my fancy-schmancy skills
Hi! I’m visiting because livelaughlovepullyourhairout did a tribute to your blog today. She right, you are very clever and entertaining. I’m glad you got your site up!
Fabulous! Well done. What’s that below the comment box here?
Great job! It came out fabulous! I really really like the looks of it. Your missing cortex still pulled it off, it seems.
I’d be interested to know what the widget or thingy is that helped you change code in IE but not FireFox… Actually I could give a rat’s ass, but I’m sure my hubby would like to know
So if you could let me know, that would be PEACHY.
Even though I’m a computer geek by trade, I stick with the boring Blogger template. I don’t have time for self-torture.
I love the new look! I would not have been able to do this! As you know, I had trouble just figuring out how to add your button to my blog! (thanks again for the help with that!) I’m so completely inept when it comes to computer stuff! It’s actually amazing I can figure out how to even add this comment!
The new design looks great! Congrats! And thank you Tino
I think my March banner is going to be there for a while…maybe June? I just don’t see the time to create one for April (nor May for that matter) popping up in my schedule any time soon.
And by next week, I’ll have horse poop to move around. I mean come on…who wants to design a new blog banner when you’ve got horse poop to move?
I think I’ll let my brother or one of my nephews design my blog if i ever leave blogspot… that whole genital wart thing creeps me out!
You always make me laugh. And the blog looks really, really great! I hear ya on the ‘it looks good in BUT. . . ” department. Just when you think you have it *sigh*
The one on the side connects to test blog. The other stays here.
Don’t know if this kind of feedback is what you’re looking for and maybe it’s completely intentional and I’m just wasting comment space– since I don’t know I’ll just say it– the ‘contact me button’ (which I love btw- makes me laugh) on the sidebar and your contact button at the top are connected to different pages. (don’t kill me! or if it’s supposed to be that way please forgive my overly analness– is that a word?
forgot to mention I’m using Chrome. . . and it looks great!
I so admire your website designing skills. I could call my brother all day and he would be as helpless as me – he only got a DSL line a week ago! We are Luddites! We only use phones to make calls, for god’s sake. Computers scare me. My daughter, OTOH, who has only been speaking English for 4 years and has a learning disability, can do anything technical. She can make the TV show the weather in Brazil and tell me my horoscope. I can barely change the channel or operate the 4 remote controls. I blog on a canned template but I feel it’s a nice one and I am afraid to do anything creative, except write. Words are my friends. Everything technical about a computer gives me a migraine headache and an intense longing to drink bourbon…
Twitter: Wickedlychic
April 1, 2009 at 11:50 am
Looks awesome, Andy!
Looks, fab, Girl!! Really inspired-and you made me laugh–as usual–
Love the drop shadow, love the sidebar advertising side-by-side tiles, love the share me bar, love, love, love it. Bravo!
Blessings!
UR Blog looks fantastic ! I too struggle with coding in Firefox and at times can go a bit batty with it all. It took me a good year after learning basic CCS and HTML to attempt a blog so hats off to u !
I’m using IE, and even your potatos look good.
Job well done.
Tatties are nicely browned too. Just sayin…
I was just visiting with livelaughpullyourhairout and she said you were serving fresh iced tea and lemon cookies! I guess I’m too late for the tea party, huh?
Love the writing! I just wish you’d show a little emotion and enthusiasm for your subject, though! JK – enjoyed it thoroughly – you’re already in my favorites list! Hell, the last time I asked my brother for help, he said I should figure it out for myself – I’d value the education more. I’M 61 YEARS OLD!! Tell me now! I don’t have TIME to learn!
Thanks for sharing!
I don’t understand a thing about code. It all looks great to me as do the potatoes! Those look especially delicious.
I love the new site look!
I have no idea how to do web stuff. I paid someone to do my blog. I tend to cry when I can’t figure stuff out so it was just easier that way.
Nice site, nice potatoes!
What the heck were you so uptight about? It looks great!
Well, all your hard work paid off, Andy!! It looks totally fab! And man, I’ve got a hankerin’ for roasted potatoes now – those look yum!!
haven’t you heard that web design, blog templates, html, CSS, etc. are all things that the Obama cabinet had named as torture? It is now illegal. So don’t go telling anyone about this. In fact, delete this post right away.
Looks AMAZING! And all that talk about code? This is what it sounded like to me: BLAH BLAH BLAH BLAH BLAH BLAH BLAH BLAHBITY BLAH.
Twitter: sixfeetunder
April 2, 2009 at 1:46 pm
I TOTALLY LOVE YOUR NEW BLOG LOOK!!!! Congrats, girl! You are awesome! Want to design mine? Just kidding…
Oh, you did a great job. You have skillz! Wow! I’m not saying that in a surprising way, but in a “I wish I was creative like you” way. And, you are an awesome cook. I’m hungry.
great job!
OK – I love it, but I thought I had wandered into a Martha-esque type shabby chic trendy retro new blog, then I started reading the post and realised it was YOU!!!
Love your makeover, glad you made it through, we appreciate your pain
Wow, now I’m afraid to admit that I like web design! Please don’t hate me because I’ve retained enough of my cerebral cortex to tweak the night away. Frankly I think you morphed into a geek, since the design is quite respectable! But don’t worry, your blog is just as ‘wonky’ as before. Good Job!