I’ve been working on site concepts for a site redesign for a friend. He wants a ’splash’ type of screen at www.hisname.com with options for the different sections (4 total, counting the actual blog) of his site. The problem I had was twofold -

1. If WordPress was at www.hisname.com, the ’splash’ page would get in the way of WordPress using index.php. If I put WordPress at www.hisname.com/blog, then all of the other sections would live in /blog. Not what I wanted.

2. I need to be able to make it so that the sidebar navigation is different for each section. If I used a single WordPress install, I’d have to create a page for each section (with slug /section1, /section2, etc.). That would be ok, but I need the sidebar stuff to be different for each of the sections. (Like, for example, I don’t want the blog archive on /section1 or /section2, but I do want it on /blog.)

I started looking around for ways to make WordPress do multiple blogs with 1 installation. I found this site that has pretty straightforward instructions on making /blog, /section1, /section2, /section3 all separate WordPress blogs.

For a site like I’m working on, it ads some to the administrative overhead, but not a whole lot. All of the sections (except /blog) will be pretty static once it’s all setup and running, so administration shouldn’t be a big deal. I’ll make all four sections (which are really now 4 blogs) have the same theme, layout, graphics, etc. so that the users will never know the difference. Very cool.

The instructions on that site, like much open source goodness, aren’t professionally written; but if you have half of a clue what WordPress does and you understand symbolic linking, you can handle this.

The only thing that I really had trouble with was that it doesn’t support putting WordPress in its own directory. I usually put my blogs at www.site.com and WordPress at www.site.com/wordpress. You could probably change the code to make it support that, but I just opted to go with what works.

I’m not moving too far forward with development on this yet, so if some of you guru geeks know a better way to do all of this, I’m all ears.

I moved my site to another server today, so if you see anything odd going on, please let me know.  I tested as much as I can, but I probably missed something somewhere.

Rich Mullins passed away 10 years ago today. I’ve been thinking for the last several days about today and what my blog post about Rich would say. The only problem is that I haven’t been able to come up with much.

Tonight I saw Brandy (one of my favorite internet friends) online. We talked a little bit about Rich and his life. I think it speaks a lot about a guy when after 10 years, a couple of friends get together and talk about his influence in their lives.

I’m not really sure what to say about the guy, but I think the words he wrote (which were later sung by Andrew Peterson) in “Mary Picked the Roses” are appropriate for a night like this:

I write songs, these songs I sing
I’d have none if not for Him
And I know whence came the tunes
Because Jesus made the roses bloom.

I will soon be leaving, I will soon be gone.
I will soon be leaving, but I leave for you my songs.
Though this life is fleeting, and time is no one’s friend
I will soon be leaving, Jesus never ends.

May the songs of our lives be sung 10 years after we’re gone.

I called my mom on the way to work this morning to make sure she read my last blog post about conversations with a 7 year-old.  She said that she had already seen it because she checks my web site every morning to see if I posted anything.

That means Mom has read a whole lot of geek stuff, concert information, and music reviews that she probably didn’t care about.  I figured that deserves a little shout out from the blog, so here are a few things about my mom you may not know:

• She ate a whole medium pizza the night before I was born.  We believe this explains my fondness of pizza.
• She worked many, many hours to help support the family so that my dad could get all the way through college.  He did the undergrad and the Masters thing, so you know that was a lot of hours.
• She has a scar on her elbow that is from where I accidentally tripped her in a parking lot many years ago.  (I was trying to help her carry something heavy, but apparently I wasn’t helping.)
• She is weeks away from receiving her 3rd car courtesy of Mary Kay, and she hasn’t had a car payment in 5 (maybe 6) years.
• She was awoken in the middle of the night by shouts of joy from Dad and me on October 14, 1992 (1992 NLCS Game 7, the night Sid Bream came home) and didn’t even get mad.
• She once killed a snake with a baseball bat.  Yes, really.
• She brought me into this world, and she can take me back out.

Recently, I posted a conversation with my 3 year-old son. Tonight, I had a chat with my 7 year-old daughter. This conversation, like the one with my boy, actually happened.

Ron: Do you know who my 6th grade teacher was?

Her: No. Who?

Ron: Your Pappy was.

Her: Really?

Ron: Yup.

Her: Cool.

Ron: Do you think it would be cool if I were your teacher?

Her: Yeah!

Ron: Well that isn’t going to happen. It takes a very special kind of person to be a teacher.

Her: Yeah, you have to be smart.

Ron: *sigh*

Following the ways of Slightly Dorky Nerd King Penrod (the Cisco god), Uber Cool Non-Nerd Aaron, and Uber Cool Nerd King Chris, I am merely Nerd King Ron.

It’s been a long summer. If you don’t believe me, you can ask my wife (or any of the wives of my co-workers, for that matter). I started a new job in February. Things ramped up at work until around May, then things got busy.

We picked up speed through June, and then through July and August, it wasn’t uncommon for us to be working 18-hour days. I even had the opportunity to do some of that work over a 2-week period in Melbourne, Australia.

The end result of this crazy summer is that we are part of the Australian Government’s NetAlert program, which makes internet filtering software available for free to Australians. You can read the press release about it here.

We’ve mostly wrapped up the work for the launch of that project, and we needed a way to celebrate. Last night we had that celebration.

Shane and I brought the “Aussome Burger” back from down under, so we wanted to share that “aussomeness” with the rest of the gang. Additionally, we had giant prawns and grilled kangaroo.

Al Zeigler from Zeigler’s BBQ (official caterer of InternetSafety.com) did the cooking for us, and he did a splendid job. He had never cooked kangaroo before, but (being the catering pro that he is) he had it grilled to perfection. The prawns were marinated in a marinade that our mate in Australia sent us. And the burgers…well they were great. We also had the (amazing) side choices from Zeigler’s.

After we consumed pound after pound of animal protein (mmmmm…), we moved on to dessert. Alecia is one of the wives of the co-workers, and she handled the desserts. If you’ll take a look at her MySpace page, you’ll see pictures of some of the things she has made. What’s crazy is that her treats taste even better than they look. She made a cake that was all 8 letters of the words “Safe Eyes.” It was probably 4 feet long.

Throughout the night, we enjoyed the DJ talents of G-side, whose day job is managing our customer service department. He did a great job mixing in all of the terrible songs we requested. Yes, the bad requests were intentional attempts at humor; nobody would seriously request Celine Dion (I hope).

The night was a good time, but for me (and I suspect for those guys that I work closely with) it was more of an emotional release. There’s some normality in life now, and we welcome it with open arms - and a full stomach.

I have 2 coupons for a free eggroll from RaceTrac. If you’re brave enough to eat a gas station eggroll, you can have one.

First come, first serve.

This post is long overdue.

Before I left for Australia, I set out to find some new music for the 20ish hours of air travel. One of the things I’ve been trying to do is pick up some of the music that influences my favorite musicians.

Andy Osenga has gone on and on about how great “Long Gone Before Daylight” from The Cardigans is. I knew nothing of them, hadn’t listened to any online samples, and had no recommendations from anybody else (other than maybe, indirectly, Geof). It’s very rare that I buy music like that.

What else is rare is that I’ll absolutely love a new (to my collection) artist the first time through. Usually it takes me some time to warm up to some new music. Even if I think it’s good, sometimes I’ve got to hear it a few times before I’m crazy about it.

I managed to wait until I was on the plane from Atlanta to Los Angeles to start listening. I was amazed. And that plane ride was really quick. The Cardigans spent many, many hours playing on the iPod. I listened on the plane, in the data center (centre) setting up servers, walking around Melbourne, and even one night when I couldn’t sleep.

Bottom line: it’s not exactly a new release (2003 or 2004, I think), but it’s really good. If you’re looking for something different, and you have never heard The Cardigans before, I’d suggest trying them out. I’m glad I did.

Saturday night I saw people picking up roadkill. My wife insists it was a dog, but I’m not so sure. Roadkill. Eww.

I drove the family up to Spring Hill, Tennessee on Saturday to see Andrew Peterson (and Ben Shive) in concert. Spring Hill, in case you were wondering, is 3 miles east of the geographical center of nowhere.

Andy and Ben missed their flight in St. Louis, so they called back to Nashville and had Randall Goodgame and Ron Block (from Union Station) come out to be the openers for the evening. Randall and Ron did a great job before Andy and Ben showed up to take the stage. It was a real treat to see them.

Around 9:30, Andrew and Ben pulled into the parking lot and quickly rushed to the stage. AP played some of his new stuff that will be on the new CD “Resurrection Letters.” It’s going to be really, really good.

I got a chance to talk with Randall about the new Caedmon’s Call CD, which is excellent. We talked about the writing and about some exciting things he’s got going on. I rarely get to see Randall, and it was a nice surprise to see him.

Because of the late arrival, we got back extremely late. The kids were exhausted today, but they seemed to have a good time at the concert last night. I’m a little tired from the trip as well, but it was nice to pull away for an evening, hang out with some friends, and listen to some really good music.

I should do this more often.