What a rough couple of weeks. It began by finding out my Visa Check Card had been compromised. A few months ago, I received a notice from DSW Shoe warehouse that their systems had been hacked and my credit card information was stolen. Honestly, I didn’t think much of it. Another apparent clue I missed was that Mark and Debbie (Lindsey’s Parents) had received the same notice and the week before had their account compromised. Unfortunately, I’m a dolt and didn’t take action.

So, I log into my bank account and see all of these charges that I don’t remember making (about $473.00 worth) and immediately call Wells Fargo to protest. Apparently I had been purchasing fried chicken, groceries and all sorts of drugs and personal hygiene products somewhere in the Phillippines. To top it off, all of the transactions show as “card presented”, meaning that they actually had a duplicate of my card (mine still being tucked away in my wallet) and went to town.

After assuring the bank that my card was not stolen, Lindsey (as the only other person that would be making charges on my card) was not running off to the Philippines with my card, and I had not been traveling to that country…ever, they froze my account, canceled my card and suggested I file a police report. Nevermind that we were leaving for Santa Barbara that evening and doing so would leave me without access to my account. Fortunately, I had some cash on me and we were able to go on “vacation” without incident.

After all of that, yesterday we were supposed to have our engagement photo session with the wedding photographer. After spending the morning fretting about what everyone (Me, Lindsey, kids et al) was going to wear, we actually arrived on time at Torrey Pines State Beach (a miracle in itself). Unfortunately, the photographer was no where to be found. After waiting for about 45 minutes and me driving around aimlessly looking for her, we decided to call it a day. We found out later that our photographer had scheduled us in her book for the 23rd (rather than the 22nd) despite e-mail correspondence to the contrary and she apologized profusely.

To top it all off, I began to get sick yesterday and my body is in full anti-viral mode. I have a headache, my muscles hurt, my throat is killing me and my head feels like someone shoved a cotton pillow up my nose. I’ve been trying to take care of a little work today, but had to call it quits a few minutes ago. I was looking for my cell phone headset in preparation for a conference call and promptly opened my truck door onto my forehead. This, of course, left me with a 1/2 inch gash in my forehead and enhanced my already cloudy, pain infested head. By the way, the gash should look great for our now rescheduled photo session this Sunday.

At this point, I’m fully expecting a meteorite to come crashing through the roof and put me out of my misery…but I might enjoy that too much right now.

So I’ve upgraded the site to Wordpress 2.0 and the new k2 (beta) theme. Try to keep up for a sec:

Fluffy (slightly modified by me) is the “style” within K2 which is the theme within Wordpress which is the blogging software that runs on a web server (Apache/Tomcat/IIS) that runs along side a database (Postgres/MySQL/SQL Server) that runs on some form of (Linux/BSD/Windows) operating system that maintains everything (I’m sure I’m missing something in there, PHP perhaps?).

Since I’m into photography and want to share my photos with family members located around the country, I also need to run some sort of photo gallery software which has the same “tree” as above (although it admittedly shares a lot of the same resources).

Certainly, there is one package that easily integrates or combines the two, right? If there is, I’ve yet to find it. I’m forced to deal with the “main” package (Wordpress, etc.) and then try to integrate the gallery package with a plugin or some sort of hacked together code. Why? With all of the innovation, hype and crap (yes, crap) surrounding web 2.0, why is this so hard?

I can’t be the only one that has this desire — I’ve seen multiple “Frankensites” with patched together packages that took a lot of effort to do, by people who actually know how to code (I’m certainly not one of them). Yahoo has flickr, Google has blogger and no one (that I know of) has a combination of the two.

My frustration stems from trying to get Gallery to work not only with the new Wordpress, but with the bleeding edge “k2″. Perhaps if I were actually a guy who knew how to code css, html and php, it would be a bit easier, but for now, you can find me searching through various support forums and indexes looking for a kind soul who has already accomplished this and can instruct me on the path to righteousness. Ugh.

“We should not expect good work to be acknowledged; and where it is, we should not expect it to be welcomed. Rather, the strength of a creative impulse is measured by the strength of opposition it meets.” -Robert Fripp