Author: Joe

Categories
Adventure

2010 Holiday Gift Exchange

2010 Holiday Gift ExchangeThe 4th annual Holiday Gift Exchange was held yesterday in the employee cafeteria. I thought it was a great time and another highly successful gift exchange. Slightly biased here I’m sure, but it’s the finest gift exchange at work.

I would like to thank all those who participated Especially those who went the extra mile bringing in food, drink, taking photos, or just assisting with the setup. A truly great team effort.

This was the furthest that the swap had gone, with several swaps after the initial mandatory round. A wide assortment of gift cards, swords, blankets, Buccaneer attire, and a shake weight just to name a few swapped hands. Well I don’t think the shake weight swapped hands, but most everything else seemed to at one point.

I wound with with the gift I happened to bring in. A foam sword, monkey (together forming a monkey sword) and a Target gift card.

Great strategy was exercised and all seemed to have a pretty good time. It’s great to have a good time with co-workers and look forward to next years.

Categories
Development

Make CKEditor match your site’s CSS in Drupal 6

I’ve been converting a pretty big site over to Drupal 6 recently and have been trying to get the CKEditor to very closely appear like the sites CSS styles. By default it was doing an ok job, but not good enough for how the site’s content managers would be working with it.

Through a bit of research I did find an excellent tutorial on the subject. This was a tremendous help and exactly what I was looking to do.

Just a few simple adjustments in the ckeditor.config.js was all it took.

First I just changed the value of:

config.bodyId = '';

Now the majority of my site’s styles were cascading onto the CKEditor. There were still some minor tweaking that needed to be done.

Adding a few lines using:

config.extraCss += "";

and I was all set. Now the CKEditor editor is displaying content almost identically than how it will actually appear on the site.

Categories
Books

Pro Drupal Development Second Edition

Pro Drupal DevelopmentI’ve been in the process of deciding whether or not to move atlantic.edu over to Drupal. While the online documentation and the various online sources of info are pretty solid, I really was looking for a concise resource that is aimed more towards the intermediate or advanced PHP developer.

Pro Dupal Development Second Edition has really been a great read for what I was looking for. It does an excellent job of breaking down the various modules, hooks, themes, nodes, blocks, etc. of Drupal. Drupal is very powerful, but at times I find it’s learning curve can be a bit on the steep side. This book really does an excellent job of explaining things from a developers perspective.

The Second Edition covers Drupal 6, which is what I will most likely initially be running. There is a Third Edition due out around this time that will cover Drupal 7 if that’s of more interest (and something I’ll probably end up getting eventually too).

Categories
Sports

Thanksgiving Football Game – 2010

In what is probably my favorite tradition I have, we played another Thanksgiving flag football game this year. We had a great bunch of guys playing this year, with some new comers added to the mix as well.

The team I was on:

  • Me
  • Josh
  • Mark
  • Dave

Other team:

  • Wes
  • Chris
  • Joe M.
  • Joe L.

On paper I really thought that the opposing team had the advantage, but I was lucky to be on the winning side this year. Everyone had at least one signature play it seemed, so that was great. The ball got spread around, with more short passes and trick plays than in years past.

I didn’t really do much offensively, but I always try to make sure to at least create working space for my teammates even if I’m not the one making the plays. Josh, Mark and Dave were making plenty of plays for us. Amazing job, especially for a bunch of “old” guys.

My personal highlight was my tackle on Joe M. and leveling block on Chris. Coincidentally the 2 gentlemen who trash talked me this week. LOL, honestly both instances were pure coincidence and no malice involved.

I must be getting old as my lower back is quite sore and a sprained finger is swelling up nicely as I type this. Nothing too bad however, but I’m really not used to feeling sore after our game.

Again this was a lot of fun, and a great bunch of guys. Competitive and fun, but not too competitive where people are acting like idiots. Can’t wait til next year.

Categories
Adventure Sports

Media Mud Stain

Media Mud Stain 5 Mile FinishI participated in the Media Mud Stain 5 mile run yesterday. It was a pretty cool run. NGM picked this one out, and I drove up with him. It was at the Ridley Creek State Park in Pennsylvania.

The park and run were very scenic. I felt like I was in the Revolutionary War. There were some very old but awesome houses around there.

The race was a little over 5 miles. There were a couple of tough hills mixed in there, one very tough one around the midpoint actually. Towards the end of the race there was an 8 year old looking girl and her father closing in on me. They made sure that I kept on running towards the end, I really didn’t want to finish behind and 8 year old.

Afterwards we stopped and got a bite to eat at the Court Diner in Media, PA. Even though I had just eaten a ton of the excellently catered food from after the race, I still ate a full breakfast at the diner too. Food was very good there.

Another excellent run with NGM.

Categories
Video Games

Halo: Reach

Halo: ReachJust finished up the campaign on Halo: Reach. It was great, difficult but not too impossible. This was the first Halo game that I really played,but since this was the prequel everything made sense.

The whole mood and setting of the game were extremely well done. You’re facing a dire invasion that you guys have no shot at all at winning, and the whole somber mood really is convincing with the soundtrack and dialog that takes place.

The production value in this was top notch, and it’s really amazing what game studios are able to produce these days. I’ll have to give online play a shot now.