The new design looks downright crappy in Internet Explorer 7 and even worse in Internet Explorer 6, but I’m working on that. Actually, I may not attempt to make it compatible with IE6 at all, preferring visitors upgrade to IE7. I can get away with that because I’m not trying to please anybody or make any money here.

I’ve got my [del.icio.us] bookmarks populating as regular entries and I’m working on getting my [Flickr] photosets to do the same. Toward that end, the Flickr Photo Album for WordPress plugin looks promising. I’m still working on a way to bring all my [Foundation] content over here. That’s going to be more complicated than I hoped. I may simply have to hold out for WordPress 2.1, which is supposed to have a fancy new export/import feature.

Anyway, all this to say that a lot of stuff is broken right now. Hold on to your shorts.

Update: I’ve managed to get the site looking good in Internet Explorer 7 with only minor tweaks to the code. Amazingly, it didn’t require any IE conditional comments (or any other hacks for that matter). The exact same code is working in Firefox, Opera, and IE7, and all three browsers actually render the page as intended. This has got to be one for the record books.

I confess. I’m addicted to The Weepies. I just bought their latest album, Say I Am You, on eMusic.com and can’t stop listening to it.

The group is fronted by singer-songwriter duo Deb Talan and Steve Tannen. They have a rustic folky sound that is in some places poppy but in other places pretty mellow. Their lyrics are playful, yet deeply poetic, and Deb’s beautiful alto voice (that has elsewhere been compared to Karen Carpenter’s) and Steve’s perfect harmonies give the album a rich character.

I first heard The Weepies in an NPR interview (click “Listen” just under the article title to hear the interview). Their personalities and their history together struck me as much as their music did, which prompted me to buy their album. I’m not a huge fan of the folk genre, but I pride myself in my eclectic taste in music, so it was inevitable that I would find some folk music I can really enjoy.

I’m pretty stingy with my five star ratings in iTunes. Most songs I like are marked three stars, the best songs are marked four stars, and I save five stars for those songs that are simply amazing. That said, I’ve marked no less than six songs on this album with five stars: “Take It From Me”, “Gotta Have You”, “World Spins Madly On”, “Painting By Chagall”, “Nobody Knows Me At All”, and “Living in Twilight”.

In short, buy this album. If you’re anything like me, you will not regret it.

I stopped blogging about it, so you probably all thought I gave up on it, right? Well, I didn’t. I’m still going strong getting up at 5:00 am every morning. I’ve had a few rough mornings where the alarm clock failed to go off and a few mornings where I took a little “nap” after getting out of the shower, but I’ve been on time to work every day for the last three weeks and I’m pretty proud of that.

I love having time in the mornings to get things done. I’ve been so much better about spending time alone with God and reading my scriptures. I’ve also had time to catch up on my finances and budgeting, and to work on a few other projects that have been ignored far too long.

I mentioned in my first post in this early riser series that I am hoping to combine my two blogs back into one blog. I haven’t found a way to export and import my blog entries into one big blog yet, but I’ve heard that WordPress 2.1 will have that capability built-in, so I think I’m going to wait until the new version comes out.

However, I think I’ve come up with a good name for my combined blog. I’m going to call it “Σύζυγος”. If that looks like Greek to you, that’s because it is. It’s pronounced “Sood´-zoo-gos”, and it’s the word we get our English word syzygy from. It’s a verb that means to yoke together or to bind together. I think it’s appropriate because I’ll be “yoking” my two blogs together, but not only that, it represents the coming together of my various different hobbies and interests (including my interest in Koine Greek). I also mentioned that I’d like to use the tumblelog format, so the name also appropriately denotes the coming together of many different types of media, including blog entries, [Flickr] photos, [LibraryThing] books, [del.icio.us] bookmarks, and whatever else I feel like throwing into the mix. Let me know what you think of the name. If too many people think it’s silly, I’m open to other suggestions.

So anyway, I think I’ve talked about this early riser thing for too many posts in a row. I’ll have some real content in my next post, I promise.

I woke up at 5:00 am this morning to take my mother-in-law to the airport. I think I’ll stick with 5:00 am from here on out. I’m feeling good and today was the first day that my waking up was almost automatic. I can feel this slowly transitioning from willpower to habit.

I feel bad because haven’t commuted by bicycle all week, but Janene and I did go on a nice two mile ride last night. It was her first time on a bike in a while and I’m still getting back in shape, so it was good for both of us. I’m starting to eat healthier and I’ve even started taking a multi-vitamin. I’m beginning to feel really healthy, but Janene keeps asking me what I’ve done with her husband. :p

My dad told me today that my Grandpa Day was something of a health nut. Apparently, when he was a teenager the President of the United States unveiled a national health initiative ((I haven’t been able to find which president this was (possibly T. Roosevelt, Taft, Wilson, or Harding) or exactly when this took place (my Grandpa was young in the 1910’s and 1920’s). I’d love to see exactly what my Grandpa learned from the initiative and how it helped him develop his good habits. If anybody knows anything about our nation’s history of health initiatives, drop me a line using my Contact page. Thanks.)), and Grandpa learned many health-conscious habits in early life, including getting up early in the morning. My dad says Grandpa always got up at 4:00 am! Of course, he was a dairy farmer, so I suspect he got up that early mostly to milk the cows, but my dad says he had learned to wake up early even in his younger years.

So, I guess I’m following in Grandpa’s footsteps. I hope I’m gaining habits that will stay with me the rest of my life.

Well, I’ve successfully gotten out of bed the first time my alarm has gone off four days in a row, and have risen at 5:30 am or earlier for the past 3 days. I’ve been pushing my alarm clock back about 5 or 10 minutes each day, so today I actually got up at 5:15. I plan to continue pushing back until I hit 5:00 am. I’ll try that for a while and see if I feel like I have enough time to get things done, and then we’ll see if I want to go even earlier.

I’ve told a lot of people about my plan, mostly so I can stay accountable, just like people who are trying to quit smoking or lose weight usually tell their friends. I think having other people watching you and wanting to know how you’re doing helps a lot when you’re trying to reach a goal. Reactions have been mixed. Most people seem to think it’s a great idea, but there are the select few folks who turn up their noses and ask why anyone would want to do this. I suppose I would’ve reacted that way to myself no more than a month ago. No matter; I press on toward the prize.

The prize is bigger than I initially realized, by the way. Not only do I regain my night owl hours by getting up early in the morning, but by making it to work at 8:00 am instead of 9:00, I regain an hour not having to stay at work until 6:00 pm. I get to leave work at 5:00 on the dot and go home and spend the evening with my wife. Not to mention all the other things that go along with being an early riser: I don’t feel so groggy in the morning, I’m more productive at work, I have two hours to myself in the morning when I can spend alone time with God reading scripture, I can read a book (I haven’t read a book in months), or I can work on my blogs. I’m convinced being an early riser is going to change my life.