As is tradition at the Life of Brian headquarters at year’s end we’ve gathered what we consider our favorite posts, one per month, and put them all on one page, a Christmas/New Year’s letter if you will, to the tens of our faithful readers.
I have spent the last couple of nights patching up posts and pages from the database hiccup. I’ve had to redo every one of the “Best Of” pages and about half of the other pages. As for posts, I’ve worked my way backwards through all of them back to July of this year. Most of times it is obvious that a post is messed up, the Miata Top Transitions will be missing from the top count at the bottom of a post or a blatant shorten story, but for thoroughness I’ve been checking every post.
The repair process goes like this, I find the post number and search for it inside a backup copy of the database. Once the line is located I copy it and paste into a word document. The header and footer code is stripped and every instance of /r/n is replaced with a paragraph mark. Then every ‘/ is replaced with just a ‘. For good measure I copy the results into notepad to convert any smart quotes into plain ones. The whole thing is then pasted into WordPress’s empty post editor box. That is how I really know the post/page is corrupt, it may display correctly on the web, but the post editor box is blank.
It is tedious, but for me right now, easier than writing a real post.
When it came to draft day for the EZEFFL back in August, a couple of the owners wouldn’t be available to be at the draft. Those that couldn’t make it, made arrangements for a substitute, who had their proxy to pick players. Some had elaborate matrices on who to pick for their stand-ins, while others instructed they use the pick the next best available player strategy.
One of the owners who couldn’t be there, got Donna to pick his team. They both have New Orleans in their roots, so his and her number 1 priority was the drafting of Drew Brees. Along with that, he had a couple of specific requests and a collection of pick the best available of this position in this round selections. As their luck would have it, Donna managed to make all his asked for picks. Because of this, she granted herself the unofficial title of Director of Player Development for the Swamp Rats SR team. So during the season, right after she asks me how my team is doing on Sundays she asks about them.
Fast forward to Tuesday morning of this week. After a mediocre 4-8-1 season I got hot in the playoffs and won three games in a row advancing the Purple Whales into the Championship Game. My opponent is the team with the league’s best regular season record at 10-3, the Swamp Rats SR.
When I asked Donna who would she be rooting for this coming Sunday when the Whales square off against the Rats in the Lenio Bowl for all the marbles, she replied, “I’ll let you know.”
Please accept – with no obligation, implied or implicit – my best wishes for an environmentally conscious, socially responsible, low stress, non-addictive, gender neutral celebration of the winter solstice holiday, practiced within the most enjoyable tradition of the religious persuasion of your choice, or secular practices of your preference.
In addition, please enjoy a fiscally successful, personally fulfilling and medically uncomplicated recognition of the onset of the generally accepted calendar year 2014.
Donna and I walked the 1-1/2 miles up to Hopeland Gardens to see the annual light display, but we didn’t go in. We couldn’t. Even though it was advertised as being open on the 24th, it wasn’t. I poked the camera through the fence and took the above photo of the lights that were on and the empty walkways surrounding them.
httpvh://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7eu3kKd9-vI
This is my first video uploaded to YouTube. Go watch it a hundred times OK? Next, I need to figure out how to add some cheesy Christmas music.
We left Hendersonville early this morning to avoid the really nasty line of storms marching their way east. For the first dozen miles or so it looked like we didn’t make it. But once we got down the hill in South Carolina the dense fog cleared and took the heavy rain with it. We drove through some light rain on and off for the middle third of the drive, but last third, while cloudy, was dry.
Just north of Greenwood the Emperor passed through the 38,000 mile mark.