1. Download ColdFusion MX from Adobe website.
2. Get all confused about needing a serial number and try to think of ways to get around it.
3. Finally realize you don't need a serial number to install the developer edition, and also think that even if you did "find" one, you'd be in hot water for using not-so-legal software on company property.
4. Set up multiserver configuration using Apache2, not realizing it may cause issues since PHP4 is also on Apache.
5. Wait 20 minutes.
6. Freak out when you try to start the Apache server when an error comes up, only to find out it's already been started and it's a Windows bug.
7. Run configuration wizard.
8. Wait another 10 minutes.
9. Spend the rest of the day doing actual work. In the meantime, [incorrectly] shut down the multiple instances of JRun that are using up approximately 300 KB of memory. Stop Apache server while you're at it, that thing eats memory too.
10. Start Apache again, try to start JRun only to fail because "some JDBC thing wasn't defined in jrun.xml." (Not exact wording.)
11. Rinse, repeat, get multiple Internal Server Errors while trying to load the ColdFusion admin. Try to figure out why JRun isn't working, realize that PHP4 is probably also messed up since CF is now on the same port, etc.
12. Uninstall ColdFusion.
13. Try to reinstall, only to find out stupid JRun wasn't uninstalled the first time around.
14. 1 hour later: Finally get ColdFusion back up and running.

Go home, because it's already 5, I need to go biking, and there's no way I'm going to sit here another hour going through the tutorials.

After months of ignoring the "A new version of WordPress is available! Please update now" message on my dashboard, I finally took the time to download and install the update to v2.5.1. Bad idea. Not only did I immediately get a nasty undefined function call (remedied with a simple require statement), but the new version is really slow. Really, really slow. Like drunken turtle slow. I tried posting an entry, only to have the auto-save draft feature (which for some reason kept saving every 3 seconds instead of every minute or so) prevent me from publishing the post. After several unsuccessful attempts and three browser crashes, I said "F— it," and went in and uninstalled 2.5.1 and put 2.3.2 back in.

So, for the 0.00072 readers on here, just an FYI that all my smilies are messed up as I forgot to back up my functions.php file, which had all the shortcuts that called the smiley images. Will fix that eventually, once I edit the quicktags. (Also forgot to back that file up. Shoot.)

I need a new domain name. Rainypony is… well, uh, 8-year-old-girlish. When I registered the name during my senior year in college, it was one of those moments of desperation. I needed a "real" website for my resume, and I needed a domain name that was easy to remember. After many many many tries (including kendallchurch.com, kchurch.com, etc. — boring but simple, plus people never spell my name right), I chose rainypony in honor of Rainy, my first horse. She was a big, white draft cross that resembled an overgrown pony. There ya go.

I also learned an important lesson 8 years ago when I chose the name for the Bike Across America website - apparently (at least on Angelfire) capitalization does matter. bikeXusa != bikexusa.

Anyway, now that I've actually had some time to think about it, I need something a little more mature. I headed over to nameboy.com for some inspiration. Unfortunately, I didn't get far, as suggestions like these really don't do me any good:

• thekchurchster
• kchurchaccelerator

Well, that doesn't work — people don't know how to spell accelerator.

I was really hoping that kcdc.com (easy and clever, huh?) would be free, but it's not. Same goes for kcindc.com.

Looking over at my [small] blogroll, it seems that pretty much everyone has a clever, fun, non-humiliating name. Except me! Where are my creative genes when I need them?!

For some reason, I've stumbled across quite a few websites that have reverted to the old habit of using background music. It's quite alarming to click on someone's link, and 3 seconds later get rewarded with an earful of "Beethoven's Fifth" blasting out of your speakers. Better yet, Enya. (FOR THE LOVE OF GOD, MUTE THE SPEAKERS! MUTE THEM!)

It wasn't like I had found some random sites hosted on Geocities that hadn't been updated since 1999 - these were supposedly legitimate horse farm sites. Not surprisingly, they also came with magenta colored backgrounds and sparkles trailing from my mouse cursor, so I use the term "legitimate" loosely.

Seriously. The practice of having background music was dumb in the 90s, and it's dumb now. Especially when there's no way to turn the damn stream off since it's been embedded so nicely in the code. (Or, if you're like me and browse with multiple tabs open, trying to figure out which site you have open is piping it out.) If that's the case, I won't even look at the site, because dammit, I'd like to be able to listen to my Launchcast player (barking dog music or not) instead of whatever POS mp3 you thought would be cute to add to your site.

At least our internet connections have gotten fast enough to handle mp3s and the use of MIDI files has been pretty much killed off. I hope.

I was playing around with this great little app on Facebook called "Graffiti." It's basically a way to draw stuff and then "post" it to your friend's profile. Of course, I got sucked in pretty quickly as it's very similar to Paint (or Paintbrush, if you're of the old school type), just a little more limited.

Anyway, comparing Graffiti to Paint/Paintbrush reminded me of my favorite activity while playing on the family 386. (Which, I think, had 2 mb RAM and *maybe* a 30 mb hard drive. It was something about as powerful as one of today's cell phones.) I absolutely LOVED to draw pictures in Paintbrush. I think we have about five 1.44mb floppy disks full of our creations. Thinking back, I believe that was actually the only program that was geared toward kids on there… eventually Dad installed Math Blaster, Carmen Sandiego, and finally Oregon Trail. I remember hating Math Blaster because it exposed the fact I was not a math genius.

I'll try to see if I can find those old floppies at home and share my 7-year-old artistic talents with you all… because I know there are so many people actually reading this.