Yesterday MINI issued a press release and many official photos of the “R56” – the 2007 model of the MINI Cooper and MINI Cooper S. Those who aren’t familiar with Coopers may have a hard time discerning the differences, but they are substantial. Right now I am not very keen on the appearance changes but they may grow on me. I am looking forward to the Traveler model that was shown as a concept car at the last Detroit Auto Show, because I need more room in the back seat for my growing daughter!

There’s lots of good info and pictures of the new 2007 MINI models at AutoBlog and MotoringFile.

Today I spent some time upgrading my installation of WordPress to the most recent (2.04) as well as installing some new plugins and updating others. All of this is in anticipation of migrating this web log from the CapMac server to my new host (WireNine) where my new domain is waiting.

Along with migrating this blog to the new site I hope to be more timely in my posts here. To keep me honest I’ll encourage several friends to visit and hopefully that will provide the necessary inspiration (or guilt) to be more proactive in my efforts to chronicle things that others might find interesting.

It’s easy for a half hour of WordPress maintenance to turn into an afternoon, not because it’s complex or difficult, but because there are so many cool plugins to explore and experiment with. When I see a cool WordPress blog that has a feature I’d like to have it’s time for a search of the WordPress Plugin Database. Inevitably I find not only what I am looking for but several other items that I can’t pass up.
If you’d like to see which plugins are currently installed at Rancho Chase click on the link in the sidebar which generates a list in real time with download links. Also, if you’d like to keep up with what’s new on a daily basis (I call this the “VersionTracker Syndrome”) add the RSS feed for newly added WordPress plugins to your newsreader.

For as long as I can remember I have used NetNewsWire as my RSS newsreader of choice. In fact, when my iBook was away for repair a couple of years ago I temporarily used a Lombard running Mac OS 9 to keep up with email and such. The Mac OS X-only application I missed most was NetNewsWire.
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Last year’s Land and Sea vacation to Disney World followed by a 3 day cruise on the Disney Wonder was quite a memorable Spring Break for all of us. Dinner with Cinderella and Prince Charming at the Grand Floridian, getting to ride in the pilot’s cabin of the monorail, seeing Fantasmic, the day and evening parades, and the Safari at Animal Kingdom were just a few of the amazing events we enjoyed. But whenever I asked Alison what she wanted to do for Spring Break this year she talked about Castaway Cay (Disney’s private island) and kissing Stormy the Dolphin at the Blue Lagoon Dolphin Encounter. So I began planning a return trip … Read the rest of this entry »