Kiss Me

Blogger friend Kapgar has been wanting to see my Chilly Willy collection. I thought starting with the Christmas ornaments and a snow globe would be a good place to start.

There were a series of these ornaments. I thought I had more than 2, but I guess not. Or perhaps the others got lost in the various moves I’ve done over the last 20 years.

Happy Holidays

You can’t see it from the front view, but the red hat round ball broke off sometime ago. You would think over the years sitting in the box for 11 months, these things would still be intact. But I guess maybe it got knocked off the tree and hit the floor.

the boxes for the above two ornaments

I really can’t recall when I got these. I want to say it’s been the better part of 20 years. There are no dates on the boxes. And they are worn from being taken in and out of the storage container they are kept in, even thought it’s only twice a year.

Snow Globe – Chilly

The snow globe was a good find. I believe I found this one at a Christmas gift shop. The front side shows Chilly Willy…

Snow Globe – Woody

….. and the back side shows Woody Woodpecker.

More Coming Soon

I have other Chilly Willy items that I’ve not posted out here before. Once I find them and take pictures, I will add another blog post.

Time to upgrade from PHP 7.2 to PHP 7.4

Back in May, I was forced to finally make the giant leap from PHP 5.6 to PHP 7.2. Now we are at PHP 7.4, which is still not the most recent version, but it’s at a stable and supported version.

A theme switch and tweaked settings inside the theme have this site back to looking better and more like a completed blog site than a work in progress, given that this blog has been around for almost 20 years.

The theme is now the same Point theme that I use over on my main blog. So that makes ongoing changes easier. And with a new post that is ChillyWilly subject-based for the Christmas holiday, maybe this long overdue cleanup of this blog will have more regular posts.

Time to upgrade from PHP 5.6 to PHP 7.2

When your web hosting company sends you an email with a date of when they no longer support PHP 5.6 AND your WordPress panel keeps reminding you that your PHP is out of date, it’s time to make changes. I’ve had the previous Theme in use for years and switching to PHP 7.2 broke the theme.

So now I have this theme that I am trying to customize to look good. In the meantime, it will not look so good. Once I can find the right options, I can get this site looking better once again.

Until the next PHP upgrade forces a switch to a compatible Theme.

At some point in collecting bonus credits, points and loyalty rewards, there will be expired points. Some expire after a year, but the most common expiration time frame is 6 months. Thus that’s what I experienced when I logged into my Buffalo Wild Wings rewards program called Blazin’ Rewards.

It’s not that I don’t like Buffalo Wild Wings, but more that I don’t make it there that often. There’s not a location near my work and the closest location to my home is just far enough away that makes it a choice that doesn’t get the up vote that often.

Restored

660 points is not enough to get most of the rewards, but I’d hate to always start from zero every 6 months.

I found the email form on the Blazin’ Rewards site to send a nice and professional response asking if there was an option to restore the points. And as the above image shows, I received a response a couple of days after I sent my email with a Goodwill Expiration points restore. I’m guessing this is a one time thing, so I must add a visit to Buffalo Wild Wings at least once every 5 months. And given their menu variety, I think I can find something I like.

Restaurants come and go over the course of time. Some last months, some last years and others have been in business for 50 years or more. The Judge Cafe, which officially closed up in February 2017, is one that was a local staple for many years in a 110 year old building in downtown Salt Lake City.

I’ve been in Utah for more than 30 years now, and have been frequenting downtown Salt Lake City for a good 20 years of that. I first started working downtown in February 2000 and that was my first visit to the Judge Cafe. They are known for their chicken enchiladas, which for a cafe whose specialty is not of the Mexican variety. But my first taste of those enchiladas set the bar pretty high for me.

Over the next 18 months that I worked downtown, I ate many a meal at Judge. Sandwiches, meatloaf, desserts of all kinds. I tried a lot of menu items, both static and specials of the day. Price wise, meals were under $10. Eventually, there were $14 and $17 meals, which I steered clear of, mostly so I didn’t end up spending $20 for lunches.

Fast forward to February of 2015 when I landed another job working downtown [which is my current job]. My office was literally a 7 minute walk to Judge. And while I’m sure chefs and cooks came and went over that almost 14 years I didn’t work downtown, the meals were always of high quality taste and portion size. So when I heard they were closing, I added more visits their last 20 days. The last day was busy. Lots of people stopping by to pay their respects to their favorite dining establishment, myself included.

It’s been well over a year since they shut their doors, and I walk past the building hoping to see a possible return, only to be disappointed. Regardless, I will always have great memories of eating at The Judge Cafe.

This popped up on my Twitter feed from Evernote, which is the main application I use to store notes. I do use multiple note taking apps, but eventually, all notes end up in Evernote. A consolidation effort.

This flowchart of how a sand castle gets built is very similar to how many of our ideas we get are played out. Granted, the distraction periods are absent from this display of 8 stages, but for me and I’m sure for most people, it’s very much a challenge we deal with on a regular basis. Perhaps the Lost Work panel could easily be the part of turning the idea into a reality as a distraction.

But I digress. I liked this image enough to save it off and view it a few times in the last week as a kind of fun motivator.

This is a question and test that my two cats ask of me on a regular basis.