Author: Mark Linton

The trees are filled with migrating birds. It sounds like some great rusted metal machine gone mad.

We have wood heat and in the eleven years I have lived in this cabin I cannot remember ever having had to start a fire so early.

In the truth in advertising category, I thought I would document where I got the HTML code for the banner at the top of the page before I forgot. I think it came from the <a href="http://www.alistapart.com/stories/practicalcss/" title="A List Apart: Practical CSS Layout Tips, Tricks and Techniques">Practical CSS Layout Tips, Tricks and Techniques</a> column that <a href="http://gnuhaus.com/iblog/" title="iBlog - still putting the &quot;blah&quot; in blog...">Mark Newhouse</a> wrote for <a href="http://www.alistapart.com/" title="A List Apart, for people who make websites { tease }">A List Apart</a> as modified by <a href="http://www.bigtrouble.com/ala_119_opt.htm" title="bigtrouble - A List Apart #119: A Miniscule Optimization">A Miniscule Optimization</a> from <a href="http://www.bigtrouble.com/" title="bigtrouble">Bryn Dyment</a>.



Now that I look again, I see that Mark has a clever way to get rid of tables used for form formatting like I currently use for my contact page. Perhaps I will try to reformat that page using his techniques.

I had scrambled eggs, hash brown potatoes, and orange juice for breakfast this morning.



<ins datetime="2003-10-05T07:47:00-05:00">Lunch consisted of a hand full of peanuts and a beer. Dinner was three fajitas and two more beers.</ins>

I have discovered that there is a way to run CGI scripts from the PSU personal Web pages (like this one). Here is my <a href="http://scripts.cac.psu.edu/users/m/h/mhl100/scripts/printenv.pl" title="CGI Process Environment">CGI process environment</a>

Just cereal this morning &mdash; no fruit. I wanted to get to work early so I could get across town this evening before they close down the roads for the <a href="http://homecoming.psu.edu/" title="Penn State Homecoming 2003">homecoming</a> <a href="http://homecoming.psu.edu/events/week.html#fri" title="Penn State Homecoming 2003">parade</a>.



<ins datetime="2003-10-03T17:07:00-05:00">Lunch today consisted of stir fried Tofu with green beans and onions with chow mien noodles. I walked to and from for a total of about two miles. I had a beer after work. Tonight we are going to a friend&rsquo;s house for Lasagna and Sangria.</ins>



<ins datetime="2003-10-04T10:19:00-05:00">Our friends also had this really good salsa/cheese dip that I ate several servings of on tortilla chips.</ins>

I got this technique for producing fancy horizontal rules (see below) from Dive Into Accessibility.

---

It seems to work pretty well.

Here is the code from the style sheet:

div.hr {display: none}
/*/*/a{}
div.hr {
    display: block;
    height: 65px;
    background-image: url(images/fancyrule.gif);
    background-repeat: no-repeat;
    background-position: center center;
    margin: 1em 0 1em 0;
}
hr.fancy {display:none}
/* */

Here is the code to place the rule on the page:

<div class="hr"></div><hr class="fancy" />

Breakfast this morning again consisted of a bowl of generic toasted oat cereal with half of a banana sliced on top and 2% milk. The cats again getting most of the milk.



<ins datetime="2003-10-02T11:57:00-05:00">I went for a 1 &frac12; mile walk this morning &mdash; over to Pattee Library. I grabbed a bag of chips for lunch.</ins>



<ins datetime="2003-10-02T12:30:00-05:00">I was going to go for a walk over my lunch hour, but believe it or not it appears to be <em>snowing</em> out!</ins>



<ins datetime="2003-10-02T19:45:00-05:00">I broke down and had a pack of peanut butter crackers this afternoon. We had chili and cornbread and two beers for dinner tonight.</ins>

Breakfast this morning consisted of a bowl of generic toasted oat cereal &mdash; that is like <a href="http://www.cheerios.com/" title="Cheerios.com - The 1 and Only Cheerios">Cheerios</a> for the brand name buyers amongst you &mdash; with half of a banana sliced on top and 2% milk &mdash; a compromise with my wife since I cannot bring myself to dring the gray water they sell as 1% milk &mdash; but the cats ended up getting most of the milk. No lunch&hellip; yet. I also walked four miles over my lunch hour.



<ins datetime="2003-10-01T20:35:31-05:00">Tonight was our wedding anniversary, so we went all out and had creamed chicken and waffles! We also had a bottle of <a href="http://www.bolla.com/view_wine.asp?nWID=6" title="Bolla Wines of Italy - Open Up">Bolla Sangiovese Di Romagna</a>.</ins>

We had salad and a beer tonight. Granted, it was a fairly substantial salad, but I was feeling pretty good about it. Then my wife told me it was our brother-in-law’s birthday, and her mom was having cake and ice cream. :-/