Round Two...

I'm beat again.

I got up this morning and spent an hour trying to get the blog template to behave with a two-column view in Internet Explorer. It won again.

In the process of searching the web for help with this issue, I crossed a really neat site called eris : design. They have a nice selection of graphically-refined templates. As an added bonus, you put your layout tweaks in and it will generate the template code out. What did I have to loose? So with Lavie's help, I settled on this one and copied it into a text file, along with my old original template for safe keeping.

But, I had to leave before I really got up to speed (uggh! I hate that!). And we went to Lavie's parent's home in the "country." Then I spent over 4 1/2 hours today setting up his new Dell pc. I promise to do a long blog very soon about THAT experience. To my surprise, Lavie had unboxed it and hooked it all up yesterday when she was up there with them (she's quite clever that way!). So I just had to spend all that time pulling off the "3rd party-ware" Dell so "kindly" preloaded. Installed all the required patches, security and productivity apps we prefer and configured them. Pulled the HDD (6GB) out of his old Gateway system and hooked it up (temporarily) as a slave drive to his 160GB new HDD and copied his entire old HDD over. Then we moved his user-data to its new digs, and got him converted over to Firefox (with extenstions) and Thunderbird. YEAH!

It rocks and is a major upgrade from a 333MHZ processor to his new 2Gig MHZ processor.

So when we got back home around 8pm, I called my momma and checked in for the week. Then I got back to the blog design. After much tweaking and coding, this is where I am calling it quits for the night. I still have some minor adjustments to make and the IE 6 rendering engine is still sputtering over my template code--now the title and quip list to the left side in IE--but I think it really looks rockin' in Firefox. (Please let me know what you think--beside the fact it still looks off in IE6--I'm working on that.)

Special thanks to The Japan Years family. Mike, Nicky and Josh spent some of their collectively valuable time on my lost cause--working to help me sort out my "floating side column" issue in IE6. Only I didn't get their email until after I had published the new blogger layout. I feel so bad! Really! I'm sending some good karma your way tonight! I appreciate your time and work, guys! You really rock!

In side news, Dwight Silverman gave me and a few other "regulars" some nice "kudos" on his website post tonight. We worked to keep his Techblog up and current, even while he played at the CES. I can't wait to hear what "swag" he netted. Thanks for the props, Dwight!

Just for fun tonight:
Get some culture: Visit the WebMuseum and see some awesome works of art.
Get some laughs: Browse Ad*Access and see just how far advertisements have come.

Good news, the caffine in the Dr. Pepper I drank on the drive home is almost out of my system. Bad news, it's now almost midnight here in Texas, and I have to go to work in the morning.

So for those of you keeping score--the Second Round results: Claus(1), IE(2), Dell (Split Decision).

See you in the skies!
--Claus