Not here! Pfew! So lets time travel here for a moment. About 2 months ago you are anxiously awaiting the arrival of your newest addition. But all of a sudden you notice a good sized lump down below on one of your boys. With this following post you are going to be whisked through my journey on what happened to me and what all I had to go through.

So first off, let me say that occasional self examination is very important. Breast or Testicle, either way cancer can spread very quickly so it is important to be on top of these things. For me, it was just by some kind of random itch that I noticed it at all. If you have any abnormalities it is very important to schedule a doctor’s appointment right away. Chances are likely that it is nothing, but because of the chance of spreading, procrastination is not an option.

So now you have gone to the appointment. After waiting in the lobby 45 minutes past your appointment time you finally get to be taken to a room where you wait another 15 minutes for your doctor. Oh well, thats the way things go. So you talk about what is going on and eventually you get the examination. This goes beyond the typical “turn your head and cough” that you would get with a physical. This will involve a lot more hands on squeezing and prodding by the doctor. Once the doctor confirms your suspicion, you must now have an Ultrasound. Yes, the very same thing they do on Pregnant ladies to see the Babies in their tummies.

So now you make a separate Ultrasound appointment that is so overbooked due to all the pregnant ladies and such that it is about another month before you can be scheduled in. Again, another very important reason to be very ahead of the game. If it is cancer, the sooner you start this process, the sooner it gets dealt with. If there is any worry at all, they Ultrasound both Testicles and your Scrotum. I know, you almost just want to sign yourself up for this just out of how fun it sounds so far right?

So the month+ finally goes by and you finally get in for the Ultrasound. This part really disappointed me. In my case, I was taken into a room. Got naked and put the frock on. Unlike with pregnancies, they do not allow you to have a “viewing” monitor. So everything is done and you get no point of reference or anything to look at while it is being done. This stuff was really interesting to me but to just lay there and have no participation other than the object being scanned, thumbs down. I know I’m sure it is just to save time and prevent a billion and 1 questions from the worriers, but come on, this stuff is interesting, show me! How often are you going to be in a predicament where your boys are getting scanned, might as well make the most out of it…

So anyway, the Ultrasound process consists of the following. You know that gel that they put on the woman’s stomach? Well guess what, you get a whole lot of it squirted down on your boys and elsewhere. In an effort to not displease the ladies that normally get it on their tummies for pregnancy, they keep the gel heated so that it will not make them cold. Well heated gel may feel okay on a tummy, but on my boys, yeah, not so much. Could have been a few degrees cooler, however, I do appreciate the fact that it was not cold. The situation is embarrassing enough so the last thing you need is shrinkage. So like I said, she sprayed that on me and then the exam started. Basically other than being asked to “bear down” a couple times, it was really just laying there for 30 minutes while she sensored me left, right, and down…she works her way all around saving images here and there for the file.

After that process is done, all of your Ultrasound images are sent off to a Radiology Expert that analyzes the images. 2-3 business days later that Expert contacts your doctor with the findings. If good, your doctor sends you a letter saying you have nothing to worry about, if bad, well, needle biopsy does not sound too good to me.

I got the letter on Friday, saying that everything was benign and that the lump attached to my buddy was actually cysts. So as cancer goes, I am in the clear! I am extremely glad that I did not ever have to describe what a testicular needle biopsy feels like. Overall, the experience was alright, I mean, it had to be done. Nobody wants to have all their “parts” touched left and right by strangers and such, well, at least in this way. But you have to set aside worry and such, better to go though this kind of stuff than have to find out you waited too long and now you have it in your lymph nodes or brain…

An FDA page I just googled real quick. If you want to do any further reading on the subject:
http://www.fda.gov/fdac/features/196_test.html

This post was my experience. Your experience may be much different than mine, however I did want to share mine with all of you.

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But I don’t just hate it for me, I really hate it for you too!
If you currently don’t have the huge header, you may still want to read this just in case you may think about it someday. I have noticed that some of the most popular wordpress themes these days come with the absolutely huge header areas. Sure, there is no argument that it looks cool, but why take up so much of your important screen space?

I was thinking about this, and I came up with what I think to be, a very good analogy. If you were a land developer, that sold land and properties to people, would you build a sign that took up half the property that you are trying to sell? That sign hides all of what you are trying to sell below it. Sure, you know people would definitely see your sign every single time they come by, no doubts there, but would they necessarily see the properties you trying to sell below it?

I personally think a header can be shrunk in height, width, or both and still be designed to look great! Just as long as it is placed right. Even if you are just extending one of your sidebars to shift your items up, I think that is a huge accomplishment. That original screen that you see which requires no scrolling is seen more than any other on your site. It is important to have content there that you want to be seen every time.

I personally have not monetized my site much as of yet, far too new. But what I have done is tried to give credit to the participants and commentators of my site. The community that is starting to form here. As you can see I have them all very high in my sidebar. Everybody who stops by here is sure to see everybody else that is participating. I like giving credit to all of them in that way.

Someday I may monetize my site even more, which is why I will always keep my header as small as possible to maximize the possibility of return and viewings.

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I liked this plugin so much I just had to fix it and use it!
Brian’s Threaded Comments is such a powerful tool to be used on a bloggers site. It really encourages interaction between yourself and all of your Commentators as well. In fact, on Saman’s site I was able to get into a great Haiku/Zen fight with Natron that was easily readable thanks to this plugin. I have seen the successes of it many times over on many blogs including the great Saman Sadeghi and the great John Chow.

So what on earth is my problem with this plugin? Well its really very simple, I’m a “tabber”. When I fill out a web form, I use my tab button to tab from one field to the next. I fill out my name, press tab, fill out my email, press tab, etc…. Well the problem with Brian’s Threaded Comments is once you hit tab after the Comment box, you are sent to the top of the page rather than being sent to the Add Comment Button.

Example:

The Problem:
Is actually very simple. When putting the code and output together, Brian assigned a tabindex to the four text input fields, but not the button. So your browser being the good little trooper it is follows in the tab order given, then resets back to its default for the remaining items. Your page itself is typically the first tab, when you override that, it waits its turn and than takes the soonest opportunity. Thus, that is why right now when you tab from comments hoping to be sent to the button, you get sent to the top of the page.

The Solution:
Or should I call it “a solution”. There are many ways to fix this, but perhaps the easiest way is to just assign a tabindex to the button. What you want to do is find the following line in your custom comments.php code:

<input onclick="if(typeof(onAddComment) == 'function') { onAddComment(); } else { alert('ERROR:
It looks like the website administrator hasn\'t activated the Brians Threaded Comments plugin from the plugin page'); };" name="addcommentbutton" type="button" id="addcommentbutton" value="Add comment" tabindex="5" />

Due to limited space, the above wrapped, but this will be just one line in the code (unless your coded editor wraps text). The location of it will most likely be different for everyone as we have all added custom code for avatars and such, but for me, this was at line 203. So my guess is it is in that general neighborhood for you too. As you can see by the code example above, I just added tabindex="5" at the very end. That fixed the tab order issue and now all the “tabbers” like me will love posting on your site again!

*Update - Turns out I was not the only one who was annoyed by this error. Ryan J Parker had also written a post about it too, it can be found here: Fixing the Tab Index with Brian’s Threaded Comments

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Surprise, Surprise - I like something else Google
Have you tried this out yet? If not, you really need to check it out if you have to manage many RSS feeds. Previously, I have always been using Thunderbird as I am a huge supporter of Mozilla products. But the RSS Reader in Thunderbird was never really what I was looking for. I had read about Google Reader a long time ago, but at the time it was not rating well so I did not try it - foolish me! It is exactly what I was looking for. An application that I can access on any PC since it is web based. Accessing all my feeds at once and sorting by newest rather than having to pull up each feed individually. It really is amazing!

Screenshot:

Just to Add to the Greatness:
If you are an awesome Firefox user like me, than you can add an “add-on” that will monitor when you have new feeds to read and give you a counter. The “add-on” is called Google Reader Notifier. Also I have loaded the Gmail Notifier, its great for letting you know how many incoming Gmails you have. I installed the Gmail Notifier add-on months ago and absolutely love it. Since I live in Firefox, I always know if I have new mail or not. Here is what they look like once you have them installed:

Conclusion:
I know Google only comes out with the greatest products because they indeed do plan to take over the Earth someday. I just hope the rumors are not true about them collection all data to help create criminal profiles for government agencies! Not that I have anything to worry about of course

Helpful Links:
Google Reader
Firefox: Google Reader Notifier
Firefox: Gmail Notifier

Have you tried Google Reader and have any comments about it? Or do you use an RSS reader program that you prefer over it? Please let me know below.

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I am a user note maintainer on the php Documentation team. I spend a lot of time everyday reading new notes and comments that have been added to the documentation. It is us maintainers that decide whether a user note stays in the documentation or needs to be removed. We simply just have to ask ourselves: “Does this note or comment truly bring a good amount of benefit to the reader, or is it just taking up space and/or repeating what has previously been said?”.

There are definitely some gems. A lot of passionate people out there come up with some excellent ideas, examples, and suggestions. If that was all there was, we would not be needed to help maintain the user notes. Unfortunately, the majority of the notes fall more into the garbage category.

I wanted to take this opportunity to talk about a certain php function that just does not get used in situations it ought to be used in. I am talking about strtotime(). I can not tell you home many times I have had to delete a note because it consisted of 10+ lines of code that in the end, determined what day was last Monday. With strtotime(), its as easy as writing strtotime(”Last Monday”) - and than bam, you are returned the Unix time stamp of last Monday.

Is strtotime() limited to just this use? - NO! They have packed in so many amazing string variables into this function that its ease of use is amazing. If you have a badly formatted date string that strtotime() does not understand, its easy enough to correct that date string and put it in a readable format with other php functions and still in the end, you have coded so much less than you would have if you were using some of the functions I have seen.

I guess I would understand if this function was a php5 only function, since it seems so many people are out there and not up to date with the latest php. But that is not the case, strtotime has been available since php4! This simple little function can be so useful. I highly suggest that if you code php and deal with a lot of awkward formed date strings, you need to look into this function.

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