Once again, the time has come for all good bloggers that use WordPress to visit their local WordPress meetup.
I will be attending the WordPress meetup in Philly as usual, after a several-month hiatus due to moving houses. I’m anxious to get back and see the clan and hear about what everyone has been up to over the summer.
I used to think that Volant Fitness in Downingtown was a great investment in a home-town gym, but as it turns out, they’re just another of the myriad of money-grubbing impersonal fitness corporations earning their keep off the forgetfulness of their auto-debited members.
Admittedly, it’s been quite a while since I’ve visited Volant Fitness. Since April, when we started seriously thinking of moving, I haven’t had any time for that, not that I was a very regular visitor before then. But I did call to cancel my account because it was a $50 monthly drain down which my money poured.
My call to Volant was a bit odd. They told me that the person responsible for cancelling accounts was not there. I assumed this was necessary so that they can convince you to keep paying for nothing, but at a lower rate. More likely, it was a ploy to keep me unable to cancel so I would continue to have the fees drafted from my credit card. I left a message in the general manager’s voicemail, and in the turmoil of moving preparations I never noticed that he didn’t return the call.
I would see the charges from Volant gym on my bank statement periodically during this period, and sometimes call them to try to cancel. Each time, there was no manager available.
Finally yesterday, I figured I would visit the gym itself to cancel my membership. They couldn’t deny me if I was standing in front of them, could they? Yes, they could.
I’ve updated my Countdown plugin to add a new feature in addition to a few minor changes.
Thanks to Denis de Bernardy, Countdown has widget support. If you use a theme that supports widgets, you can install Countdown and use the widget interface to position the Countdown output. The widget controls allow you to specify the title of the area and number of events to show. Use the regular Options page for Countdown to set the standard options including the event dates themselves.
Nothing. Or, not much. Today. Soon there should be plenty of things on TV with which I can empty my brain. But what will the fall TV season offer me? Let’s take a look at some of the returning shows that I will be watching this year once again…
Gilmore Girls - The first couple of seasons had good rapport between the Girls, and the middle entries played on breaking that, and the most recent seasons were enjoyable if a bit less whimsical. I’m sticking with it because I like the dialogue, but I hear that the original creators are not going to be with the show this season, so I wonder if that witty banter will continue. Remember what happened to West Wing when Aaron Sorkin left.
Veronica Mars - The first season kicked butt. I think I expected too much greatness form the second season, but I still wasn’t disappointed with it. Third season should see Veronica attending college in Neptune, which will hopefully bring a bit of new blood into the mix and make the big mystery more mysterious.
House - I didn’t watch this show when it was on TV. But I downloaded an episode or two, got addicted, and then downloaded both seasons to watch non-stop to the end. The first two episodes of the fall season have already aired, and they keep the same attitude as the first two seasons. House, incidentally, is one of the few shows on TV made up of self-contained episodes that doesn’t suck.
Waking up is often terrible for me. I’m not sure why our mattress is doing this to me, but I occasionally wake up with really crisp back pain, and headaches that last all day.
I’m sure that whatever causes these things is something that happens while I’m sleeping. Whether the headaches are related to the mattress I can’t say for sure, but I know that the back pain is.
Recently, Berta and I went shopping for a new mattress. Partially because of these issues, and partially because of our house planning. Our new bedroom is much too small for our Queen-sized bed (yeah, but if you saw it, you’d think it was a twin compared to the room size), and we needed a guest bed anyway. To this end, we visited the Sleep Number store in the Exton Mall and chose some beds that we could blow up.