Today is the day I should have multiple parcels arriving on my stoop, at least according to the estimated delivery time on orders from a couple of places.
Order #1 is a new bookcase from Staples. It's to match 5 other bookcases I already have. Staples didn't charge me shipping, but did charge me tax. Staples isn't telling me where the bookcase is shipping from, but I do know from ordering that they only had 1 bookcase in stock.
Order #2 is a desk with bonus material from Office Depot. I say "bonus material" because, thanks to Dealnews, I found a coupon for $40 off purchases of $200 or more. The desk was $169.99 (plus tax, which didn't help the coupon). I added a really fancy gel wrist support and some office supplies which upped the total to $201. After the discount of $40 to adjust the total to $161, I ended up saving $9 once it was all over with. All of this is to arrive on my stoop, but again I don't know from whence Office Depot is sending it.
Order #3 is a funky new gaming keyboard from Newegg.com. Luckily, they have good shipping and tracking info. Last night I could see that the keyboard was making its way from SECAUCUS, NJ to MONTGOMERY, AL. I don't know if it can finish its trip and then make it to my house today, but that's what the estimated shipping date is saying.
Order #4 is a handful of Starship Troopers Miniatures from Art's Game Store. I've bought stuff from Art before on the eBay, so I've pretty much got his shipping schedule down. He ships from Cleveland, Tn on Wednesdays and then things get to my stoop on Fridays. Of all the other orders, this is the one I'm most sure about getting here today.
Orders #5 & #6 don't have an arrival date yet. #5 is the new computer I bought from Digital Storm. Today/Monday is the scheduled day for it to ship, since their construction, testing, and ship date estimate is 5-10 business days, and today is day 10. The computer is about to enter the final phase of construction, which I hope is "put in box and send". It'll be coming from San Jose, California, so it's going to take a few days to get here. I know the worse part is going to be getting the "pc has shipped" notification, then watching the tracking as it crawls across the nation.
Order #6 is the new floor for the computer room. After putting it off for a year, if not two, I'm finally getting new laminate installed to replace the grey carpet that I hate! Moran Carpets was to order the laminate yesterday (although I bet it doesn't happen until today). I've no idea how long it will take for the laminate to be shipped, much less the time afterward to schedule instalation. But it's going be be done!
Ok, for the diet update my official weight loss for the week of going on vacation: -3 lbs, bringing my net total for the since the end of March to -38 lbs. Ah, there's less of me every day!
I got some email from Michael at SWAT (a Car Wars site) yesterday. He was very nice and pleasant, offering to help me out in my ever present quest for missing Car Wars supplements, along with being available for Car Wars discussions and observations. Reading his email made me realize that I miss my carefree high school years when Jer and I would design some vehicle and proceed to blow the bejeezus out of each other.
Jer and I have tried multiple times in the last few years to go back and play a game of Car Wars, but a couple of things keep standing in our way
As much as I miss playing, I doubt we'll ever really get down to playing another game again. Of course, it doesn't mean I won't reminisce about the good old days.
Ok, I just got back from a wonerful trip to Da Gulf Shores, where my personal highlight was eating PIZZA! I know, I know, where does one get low-carb pizza? Well, I was on vacation and it was a carb loaded treat!
Well, not too carb loaded. I would have felt guilty overdoing it so I limited it to a this crust pizza with all kinds of good-for-me toppings. Dude, it was good!
Except for the pizza and a side trip to some fried crawfish and crab cakes (Tangent: It's hard to find non-fried seafood in South Alabama) I stayed on my diet. I made my official weigh-in on Sunday and was down to 369 lbs (-2 lbs from the week before, for a total of -35 lbs in 6 weeks). I hesitantly made my way on the scales this morning to see what pizza, crawfish, and crab cakes had done, especially since it was starting to look like I was about to hit a plataeu last week. Turns out this morning's weigh-in was 368. Another pound down!
Maybe after losing another 35 lbs I'll treat myself to some more pizza?
I made a mistake on my diet. No, no, not the usual "I ate a cake last night" type of mistake. This one isn't as obvious. I switched scales.
2 years ago I bought a scale from Bed, Bath, Bath, & Beyond that was rated to weigh up to 400 lbs. I've been using that ever since, mostly to be shocked by how much I weighed. I knew it wasn't the best scale in the world, since my weight could vary by up to 5 lbs depending on which foot I placed on the scale first. That lead me to eBay and a super cool digital scale, also rated to weigh up to 400 lbs. Last week, said scale arrived on my stoop, and I expectantly hooked up batteries and weighted myself.
And promptly found I weight 8 lbs more on this scale.
After some investigation with some hand weights and weighing myself on both scales, I eventually convinced myself that the old BB&B scales were indeed weighing things lighter. My 20 lb hand weight checked in at 19.8 lbs on the digital scale, 18 on the old scale. So while my amount of weight lost has probably been about the same, I was weighing 378 instead of 370. It sucks mentally when you reach a little goal (in my case, 375) and it's suddenly taken away from you.
So, with my new scales as my guidepost, I've adjusted my old weight measurements by adding an extra 8 lbs. So instead of starting my diet at 396, I was at 404. Instead of 370 after 4 weeks, I was at 378. I had still lost 26 lbs, I was just a little further from my slightly unrealistic end goal of 238 than I thought I was.
It was with a little trepidation that I stood on the scales this morning. Would the new scales once again bite me in the ass? As luck would have it, they didn't. The little digital display that I could see down past my protruding gut read 371. So, I had lost 7 lbs in the past week. That almost took care of the 8 lbs the scale put on! Just to be paranoid, I stood on the old scales and they measured 363 - at least things were being consistent. So now after 5 weeks I've lost (allegedly) 33 lbs.
Man, I want a brownie. Not gonna have one. At least not yet.
I spent hours looking for something I thought would be relatively simple. I programmed a popup window so that a user can fill out some tangential information, and when they were finished I needed to redirect to the parent window so that it would display the needed, updated tangential information while closing the popup window. My problem was that I didn't know how to target the parent window so that it would dispaly the new information.
I decided to search the Google. It usually has all the answers to my programming woes. I searched javascript target parent window, and I managed over 1.3 million results. Unfortunately, most of them had tips on tweaking Dreamweaver, or how to target frames, or even worse, something totally unrelated and useless.
After a couple of hours, I managed to narrow my search by taking out the words that were most annoying, and I ended up searching for target "parent window" -refresh +javascript -frames -frame -reload -flash -dreamweaver -close -java. The 7th link turned out to be my magic solution.
And now, partially for archive purposes so I can find it again, and for your pleasure in case you ever need to redirect to a popup windows parent, is the magic phrase:
window.opener.location.href = new_url;
So simple that it's no wonder I had a hard time tracking it down. Makes me feel a little stupid. All I had to do was add that line of code to a buttons OnClick event and everything is right as rain.
As always, correct spelling is optional in any blog entry. Keep in mind that any links more than a year old may not be active, especially the ones pointing back to Russellmania (I like to move things around!).
Tags have been added to posts back to 2005. There may be an occasional old blog that gets added to the tag list, but in reality what could be noteworthy from that far back?
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