We discovered a dead ‘possum [I’m spelling it the way we say it] on the street just down from our home. It was in the middle of the road, on our usual route in and out of our neighborhood, so it was obvious to everyone in the mini van. Both boys were interested in it, and trying to distract them when we passed it didn’t help at all.

Calfgrit7 put out the idea that it might be playing dead, as ‘possum’s are said to do. I’ve never seen one play dead. All the ones I’ve ever seen that looked dead, were most definitely dead. This one was no exception — it had obviously been run over. (Sorry for putting that image in your mind. Be glad I didn’t take a picture.)

I explained the situation to the Calfgrits: how animals don’t understand about roads and cars, and although most people try to avoid hitting or running over animals in the road, sometimes it happens. Calfgrit7 suggested we stop and get it out of the road. He’s very conscientious about things like that. I then had to explain how we don’t mess with dead animals, or even wounded animals. We have professionals who handle animals — living, hurt, or dead.

I promised to call animal control when we got back home and could look them up in the phone book. When we did get back home, Calfgrit7 made sure to remind me to call about the ‘possum carcass. I tried looking through the book, but I couldn’t find a listing. I then promised to look them up on the computer after they went to bed.

The evening went fine, but Calfgrit7 mentioned the dead ‘possum a couple times, and Calfgrit3 repeated the questions I had already answered — he wanted to make sure he understood this whole situation. (There’s nothing quite like discussing a squashed varmint to diminish an appetite.) I don’t think either of them have noticed a dead animal before this. I and Cowgrit have seen dead animals on or beside the roads while the boys were in the vehicle, but we’ve usually managed to distract them, or else the sight just didn’t register with their brains.

I did as I promised, after the boys were in bed, and I looked up the local animal control department. I called first thing the next morning and left a message with their voice mail about the carcass needing clean up. It was still there when Cowgrit took the boys to school in the morning, but it was gone by the time they came home in the afternoon.

Calfgrit7 was happy that the poor animal had been removed from the road and “buried.” He loves animals, and he has a strong sense that things should be handled properly and politely. It would have hurt his sensibilities for that critter to stay in the road too long. I’m glad our town crews are on the ball with things like that.

Cowgrit has one and only one joke in her humor repertoire, and it’s related to this subject.

Cowgrit: “Why did the chicken cross the road?”

Bullgrit: “I don’t know. Why?”

Cowgrit: “To show the ‘possum it could be done.”

Bullgrit
bullgrit@totalbullgrit.com

I’ve set up the database and installed proper blogging software to use the database. I fiddled around with the code in the software to get the layout I wanted (almost), the basic features I wanted, and the space for expansion I wanted. I’m good to go, now.

Now as I write posts, the software does all the management functions — I can just concentrate on writing. And now this site is becoming easier to navigate for visitors. To the left, you see the Archives section and the Categories section. The months before April are still in the old basic Web page format, but I’ll be working to add all the posts to the database in the coming weeks, as I can. The “specialty” posts (on Games and Movies) are also still in the basic Web page format, but I’ll be moving them into the database, also.

To do all this changing over, I had to learn some PHP coding. I studied computer programming in high school (Basic) and early college (Fortran, COBOL, C, C++, Assembly), around 20 years ago. I’ve dabbled a little bit in HTML, but I always used a WYSIWYG editor to create my Web sites. So I have a base of understanding to build on for learning PHP. But I haven’t done any actual programming since school — my career went in a wholly different direction. I learned what I needed to know for this project as I played with the software.

I downloaded a basic theme for the Web site that I thought I could hack into what I wanted, and set about studying the code. I learned something that I had pretty much forgotten in the 2 decades since I last programed a computer: I like programming. It’s fun to get down into the lines and strings and characters of computer code. I used to enjoy translating machine language — that series of 1s and 0s, and occasional hexidecimal letters.

This week I looked at the code and starting finding the patterns and logic. I’ve never seen PHP before this, but all programming languages have patterns and logic. There are absolute right ways of doing things in programming languages.

This is a drastic difference from working with words. As a writer and editor of a human language, making a sentence, paragraph, and document “work” perfectly is sometimes an exercise in frustration. Human language is so subjective that no two writers or editors will always agree on how to convey a piece of information in text. I would imagine trying to learn a human language by reading a newspaper would drive a reader mad.

But learning PHP by reading .php files? That can be done, apparently. I’d read through the code, form an idea of how a particular part worked, make a change to the part, reload the Web page and check the results. The first few times I did this, I didn’t know what to expect from the results, but after a short while, I could predict the outcomes. And that’s when playing with the code and the Web pages were fun.

I had to do a hatchet job to the base theme to the point where the original layout is pretty much unrecognizable compared to my page layout. I see some errors here and there in my site, and I’ll be fixing them soon. But the basic look and functionality is here. I want to get this new page to look more like the old page in basic layout, but I’m not satisfied with the bland look. I’m going to play around with the colors and maybe some graphics as time goes on.

But for the time being, the base functionality and automation I need is here.

Bullgrit
bullgrit@totalbullgrit.com