If you missed my July 4th post about the United States (youth) Soccer Team at the Under-20 World Cup after they dismantled Poland 6-1, check the news, because they beat Brazil (yes, Brazil) 2-1 to win their group and move on to the knockout rounds.

Brilliant!

This past week has been a waste, at least in a professional sense, but very rewarding in a “personal quest for knowledge” kind of way.

Much like last summer, I’ve used a week of my year to change the look and format of this blog. To do this, I had to import a WordPress theme into the format of the service that I currently use. This means I had to change a bunch of PHP code into SMARTY format and then make it all work properly. Now understand that I am by no means a programmer, nor did I have the slightest idea what I was getting myself into, but I am patient and persistent when I can be bothered.

As should be expected, it hasn’t all gone smoothly and at one point I became so frustrated that I actually posted a question on a programming/design forum but the folks there met my request with 5 days of stony silence. They better hope they never need to know how to resolve an Augmented Sixth chord because if they do, they’ll be sorry!!

I should have expected this because the FAQ at the top of the forum includes a link to a little gem of a document called: “How To Ask Questions The Smart Way”, or, as I like to call it: “How to tell everyone you’re not arrogant and anti-social but act that way anyway.” My favorite line?

If you decide to come to us for help, you don’t want to be one of the losers. You don’t want to seem like one, either.

Uh-huh.

Thankfully Brian is going to answer a few questions for me sometime this weekend, which means that I can iron out the last kinks with some expert advice and will try to roll the new design out sometime this weekend.