WordPress 2.5 Upgrade Painless – Really!

Posted on March 31, 2008 by Ron Bieber

Yesterday I read that the 2.5 version of WordPress was officially released. The cautious part of me wanted to wait to upgrade, but the totally paranoid and non-lazy part wanted to just get it over with. I had read a few mentions of incompatibility, but I decided to just bite the bullet and upgrade.

I hunkered down at my desk, did database and filesystem backups, downloaded the 2.5 release and untarred to my blog directory. Typed in the URL and — poof — there was the blog. Did smoke testing of all the plugins and they worked – every one of them. I was literally done in about 5 minutes.

I don’t think I’ve had an upgrade that wasn’t painful in some way in a long time. This one was nothing. It just worked.

So anyway, long way to say I’m on WordPress 2.5 now. I was shocked at the ease of the upgrade. Later in the day, I saw all kinds of tweets around other people upgrading and having the same fulfilling sense of surprise when they realized they were done.

Thanks to the WordPress team for another great (and uneventful) release.

More Great Quotes, These from Serenity

Posted on March 30, 2008 by Ron Bieber

We watched the movie Serenity last night, and a pulled a couple quotes that I really enjoyed out of them:

“She’s starting to damage my calm” — Jayne (guy from crew of Serenity)
“That’s my motto, or it will be if I ever have a motto.” — Mr. Universe

I’ll be looking for any situation to use these, especially the first one.

Old Hardy Boys Books

Posted on March 30, 2008 by Ron Bieber

Photo by rbieber

I think I had this whole set as a kid.

Jonna and I hit a local antique store yesterday to kill some time and sitting on a shelf I saw these. I am pretty sure I had every one of this set when I was a kid and would spend hours reading these books.

Its cool to run into something every once in a while that is such a powerful anchor that it literally takes you back to lying in your bunk bed reading “The Twisted Claw”.

Favorite Tweet Fragment for Friday 3/28

Aside

Favorite tweet fragment of this morning goes to James Governer: “ideas are nothing, execution is everything”

Quote of the Week by Mike Arrington

Posted on March 26, 2008 by Ron Bieber

I finally got around to listening to The Gang XX tonight and thought this quote from Mike Arrington was priceless:

This is the reason why I’ve never raised money, because the one thing I don’t want to do is go to a monthly board meeting and listen endlessly to people telling me how to run my business …

Amen.

Google @ Outback Steakhouse

Posted on March 26, 2008 by Ron Bieber

Photo by whurley

So on the Outback Steakhouse coaster tonight I noticed it says "I searched for myself on Google and found nothing". Anyone else think that’s weird?

Found this while browsing around on Flickr and it made me laugh. I didn’t know Outback had “geek” coasters. Maybe only the ones in Austin are this cool …

The Number 42

Aside

I ran across this Flickr Group by accident and was fascinated. Check out the Number 42 Group.

Flattering

Posted on March 25, 2008 by Ron Bieber

I received this email from a former employee today:

I was reading a book recently, called “The Goal” as I was flying to California. It is about a big turnaround in a manufacturing plant in less than 3 months.

It is a very nicely worded book. The reason I am writing this mail is because there is one character in that book, Jonah – a professor – and he is a management consultant and the kind of questions he asks the main character Alex, the Plant manager are sufficient for him to ‘click’.

It was so interesting and I was smiling whenever Jonah showed up in the book since he reminded me of you, the way you would ask me something when I used to work for you.

If you get a chance do read that book. The book is basically about removing bottlenecks in operations.

Its nice to feel like you made a difference. I would never describe myself as a Jonah, but its nice to know someone would.

25 Days Until Campground Opens

Aside

The campground that houses the Bieber Labs Remote Relaxation Unit opens in 25 days. Hooray!

RIP Randy Rhoads

Posted on March 19, 2008 by Ron Bieber

Today is the 26th anniversary of the death of Randy Rhoads. What better way to remember him than an 8 minute guitar solo from the Quiet Riot days? You’ll find a lot of familiar pieces in this solo. Enjoy – and RIP Randy.

I also have pictures of the grave site from a trip I took back in 2005. You can find a lot more at the Diary of an Axeman web site – the definitive site on the net for Randy Rhoads “stuff”.