Wanderings

There it was – some noise as I lay in bed at 8 a.m. What was that? Oh…it was my cell phone stuffed in my pants pocket. Grabbed it just in time to see that the call was from area code 405 – Oklahoma, but too late to answer the call
It was Gladys and I missed the call!
She left a message as I stumbled out of bed to start another day. Before I could get that feeling out of my mouth and head, the house phone rang and Karen said “somebody named Jones.” I of course knew that it was Gladys not giving up in reaching me.
Thank goodness she didn’t. It has been over 40 years since we had seen or talked to one another.
Just so you get the flavor of history, Gladys was like my grandmother’s adopted daughter in Pauls Valley, OK. When I was a little kid (in elementary school), Gladys was like an older sister, and my grandmother would have he babysit my sister, brother and I. This woman was like a star singer in church, and sang in churches all around Pauls Valley. I have many memories of sitting in church (yes, kids set through church back then) and listening to her sing.
We had an absolutely amazing time talking about how we have been trying to find one another. At one time, she and her husband were even Pastoring in a church in Richmond – I just happen to find that 2-3 years ago on the internet. From Richmond, they moved to Carson, CA, and I could just never seem to make connection.
Even when we were in Oklahoma for a reunion in 2005, we tried to find anyone in Pauls Valley who knew anyone that I remembered, all to no avail.

• How Did We Connect Now?

While working on the move of my blog, there was a post about Bethlehem Baptist Church in Pauls Valley, and I wanted to test the link, and got to their website. Found that there was a new pastor, and that the history of the church was still posted. While re-reading the history, saw Gladys’ name, and started searching the internet again, but wasn’t able to find anything (not even the link that mentioned her in Richmond).
Went back to the Bethlehem Baptist website and saw that there were Newsletters. Started reading, and was surprised to find Gladys’ name listed as one of the “Mothers” of the church on the list of people who were presently serving (Deacons, Ushers, etc.). Okay, that meant she was alive and must be living in Pauls Valley. Found a link for Pastor Eaton with a FaceBook address, and fired off an email to him. Asked him that if Gladys was indeed in Pauls Valley, would you please let her know that an old friend was looking for her, and gave him my phone numbers to pass on.
So, there it is in a nutshell. This has been a fantastic day! Gladys had tried to find me, but been stymied, and was so glad to connect. We spent 20-30 minutes on the phone going over (as best we could) the last 40+ years of our lives. Her kids and grand kids have done well. In fact, one of the grandkids plays for the Indianapolis Colts (after attending Stanford).
Can’t wait as we begin sharing pictures and family information back and forth. So thankful that this time, I persisted in trying to find and contact her. There’s a lot of family history to catch up on, so I’m sure we will be spending a lot of time on the phone and sending pictures back and forth.
What a way to begin a day!

Back when I changed my blog software to Simple PHP Blog (see this POST). I thought it was the most fantastic thing running on my web server (other than my web pages). Especially after “Bloxsom”. Even then, it looked like the developer was still working on improvements, since there was a forum and other discussion groups. That turned out to not be the case when I started looking for some updates in early January 2010.

The software was still listed on SourceForge (the open source repository for software), but all links to the author or forums gave blank pages. Even messages directly to the author and others on his development team got no response.

And so the search began for a replacement. Did find another blog software that used “flat files” to store the information (you can read those with a text editor and don’t have to manage a database). Before jumping, I emailed the developer, and he actually responded and said that due to his work constraints, he had stopped development. He did recommend another blog software, but after checking it out, I kept looking.

Finally bit the bullet after discovering that WordPress would run on my server, and never turned back from that point. Both my blogs are up and running, although there is still some cleanup of my posts that needs to be done on this blog.

Looking forward to many years of posting all kinds of stuff – check out “ABOUT”

Got home from church yesterday, and was trying to tell Karen what Pastor Dave had to say. There were three key points, and I could remember “Repent” and “Repeat“…now what was the other one?

Did not have my sermon notes handy, and said that I would either have to find my notes (adding, that hopefully, I had remembered to bring them home) or listen to the recording very closely while I did the edit for the Podcast.

“Ha, Ha” on you Joe.

The first key point was “Remember“!

Okay, so I’ll have to work harder on that than the other two. Or, should I spend more time “repeating” what works. Well, if I can just remember what worked in the past, then the repeating it will be easy.

Finally, this blog is back in service. Still working on correcting the ‘code’ in some posts, and updating categories (the import did not put in categories), but by and large, Wanderings is back! Even managed to figure out what size the picture at the top had to be. Surprised my self at how easy it was to get the required size info. All of this happening as I continue to hone my Windows 7 skills (that’s another story) after upgrading my main PC. Still have to convert/import my technical blog to WordPress. Won’t be using the same theme, so that will generate some angst during the conversion.

At last, the conversion from my old blogging software to WordPress is complete. Well, almost…Seems that some links need to be corrected in the imported posts, and there there is the cleanup that had to happen. Most of it was accomplished before import with a text editor and some other tools like HeidiSQL or phpMyAdmin. Both are tools that let me work directly on the database. With 230+ post imported, there was no way I want my fingers to do all the typing. Even managed to get the pictures imported and put back in the posts. Enjoy!