You Ask?

Well, I have been busy.  For starters, I have been steadily rebuilding some webforms for the Coach Kiprunning website.  In addition, I have just put the finishing touches on my father’s website for his small business: Consolidated Tax and Financial Services.

And in addition to those things—and as a direct result of those things—I have ventured into the confusing and overwhelming realm of CSS, which I am in the process of learning.  In particular, I have been fighting my way to understand how to get the :focus selector to operate properly both by keyboard tabbing as well as by hovering on mouseover.  In one instance, I did in fact figure this out, after fourteen hours of banging away at what ultimately ended up being five humble lines of code that I needed to write (and place properly in the stylesheet).

People who know me well, like my wife, are endlessly puzzled by my very particular (read: fanatical) approach to developing websites.  There are a couple of things to note here.  First, as a true novice, I am still learning all of this stuff—and I want to learn it the right way, which takes time.  Second, much of this work brings me back to the euphoric feelings of my youth, when I would finally solve a complicated puzzle in The Legend of Zelda after much time and effort.  Likewise, much of this work takes me back to the frustrated feelings of my youth, when I would throw my NES controller at the TV screen while playing The Legend of Zelda after much time and effort.  It’s all about being young at heart, I guess.

And also in addition to all of those things, I have started trying to clean up and stremaline various display things on this particular website.  In particular, I am beginning the process of lightening up and customizing all of my hero images so that they display properly on the variety of devices that human beings use to access the Internet.  This process has taught me a couple of things.  First and most significantly, designing websites for tablet displays is the absolute worst thing in the world, and I hate it, and I hate tablets.  Second, I think that my website will likely be much like the fabled construction contractor’s house: all of the websites that I build for other people will be lovely, and my own website will be in a perpetual state of disarray.  

So please, forgive the fact that, right now, some things on my website look this way, some other things look that way, and some exact same things look two different ways in two different locations, and so forth.  Just know that right now, I’m spending all kinds of time trying to figure out why I can’t get the :focus selector to inform the :hover selector on someone else’s website.

My ankle, as I am sure you are wondering, is still healing very, very slowly.  It remains swollen for long stretches of each day, and it still does not fully move.  The plan, of sorts, is for me to attempt running on an AlterG treadmill in early May.  Right now, that doesn’t seem physically possible, but we will see.

I am still attending regular physical therapy about which I am largely conflicted.  I am planning a longer post about (what I believe are) the substantial problems with PT, which I am hoping will soon be informed by Christie Aschwanden’s book Good to Go: What the Athlete in All of Us Can Learn from the Strange Science of Recovery, which I hope to read very soon.

Finally, in one of the more wonderful unexpected surprises of my adult life, I will be seeing Swervedriver in concert this week for the fifth (!) time since 2008.  Since I never actually saw them in concert in the 1990s, I never thought that I would ever see them live, let alone see them this many times live.

Truth be told, I would be hard pressed to say really positive things about this new record of theirs.  It’s the only one in their catalog that truly underwhelms me, even though things started to crack back with 2015’s I Wasn’t Born to Lose You.  I know the man is off doing excellent legal things, but the band really needs Jez. The speedy, scorching pace of Swervedriver’s best work was due in large part to him banging the drums with such ferocity, and it is just impossible (for me) not to acknowledge that he would inject some of the more languid tracks on Future Ruins with some much needed immediacy.

Oh well . . . Only the best bands ever reach the legacy act stage, so this is all cool with me, because Swervedriver is one of the best bands.

Also, this new one is ace: