Jenkins Online

It’s been a fun couple of days as all the blogs hosted here went through no less than three server migrations that ended up with a slightly hosed DNS listing for our URLs which played havoc with what IP address would resolve when you tried to visit one of our sites. As of this point in time, however, everything appears to be back to normal with the lone exception that Momma’s Corner isn’t resolving properly yet though we expect that to clear up on its own shortly as DNS servers are updated. Drop us a line if you noticed something not working quite right as there may still be a few bugs in the system.

We’ve had out little blog family grow to include two more members. First is Cherry Chik’s Place run by Les’s niece, Jazz. And then there’s D.J. Pickle’s Party Penguin Place run by Les’s nephew, Dakota. They’re both new to blogging so it may take them awhile to find their voices, but they’re eager to learn.

We’ve changed the script that we use to run the website. We’re now running under a package called ExpressionEngine. Not only will this open up new possibilities for us, but the Jenkins Online homepage will soon carry samples of entries from all of the other blogs we host here. Sort of a one-stop shopping for our whole site. Stay tuned.

Due to some issues with using Gallery we’ve switched over to using Coppermine for our photo albums here at Jenkins Online. We think the added features of this new script will make the change worthwhile and we hope you’ll enjoy it more. We’re in the process of moving all our pics from the old gallery to the new one so a couple of albums may be missing for a few days. You can check out the new gallery here.

I’ve removed the big zip file of photos from Bill’s funeral from the site under the assumption that everyone who wanted them has them by now. If you wanted a copy of the file you can send me an email and I’ll be happy to send it to you. Fair warning, it’s a 20MB file so it will take awhile to download on dial-up connections.

I’ve managed to undo whatever it was I did to the gallery section and it’s once again working as expected. Plus I’ve upgraded it to the latest and greatest version of the script we use to run it. Fortunately for me, I was able to do this without the need of re-doing all of the albums we had in place. Yay!

Looks like something got a bit munged in our online photo gallery so it’ll be down for a little bit until I can suss out what the problem is and fix it. I’ll post a note when I’ve got it working again.

Courtney has decided to give her blog another go so I’ve added it’s link back into the left menu. She’s got three entries up already. Now I just have to get her a nice template in place of the default that’s currently there.

At the request of friends and family I took a lot of pictures at the visitations held for Bill as well as the wake that followed the funeral. Mostly pics of friends and family and the numerous flowers the family received. A lot of folks have expressed an interest in having copies of these pictures so I’ve put them up on the website here so you can download them. There are over 60 pics and it totals up to over 18 megabytes of data so if you have a slow connection it could take a while to download. To get them just click here to download.

Visitation will be Friday, February 21st from 2pm through 5pm and 6pm through 9pm.

The funeral will be Saturday, February 22nd at 11am at the:

Pixley Funeral Home
322 West University Drive
Rochester Hills, MI 48307-1937
Phone:  248-651-9641
Click here for a map of their location.

If anyone is interested in making a donation in memory of Bill, the family has requested that donations be sent to:

Allie’s Angels
320 E. Maple Road #276
Birmingham, MI 48009
http://www.alliesangels.com/

If you want to contact me with any further questions you can send me an email by clicking here.

Our family has lost a very dear and close friend. Bill Owen was killed in an auto accident on February 17th after his car was struck by a police vehicle. In tribute to him we have set up a memorial album in our gallery section for friends and family to have access to photos and mementos of Bill that they may not have had before. If you are a friend or family member who has photos they’d like to share feel free to contact Les Jenkins to send them along. His email address is les@jenkinsonline.net.

Just a quick note to family members who want to know what Courtney wants for Christmas that if you’ve looked at her Amazon Wishlist prior to today that it was in serious need of updating. Seems she forgot about it as well as the password to it and her email address had changed since she last used it so she couldn’t get in to update it.

Well, a little phone time with the folks at Amazon this evening got it all straightened out and she’s currently busy updating it to remove anything she has already received as well as to add countless new items, I’m sure. So starting today you should be able to consult her wishlist at Amazon for ideas on what to get her for Christmas. Note that you don’t necessarily have to buy the items from Amazon, but the wishlist does make for a handy place to reference folks looking for gift ideas.

I’ve taken Courtney’s blog offline for the time being as she wasn’t really utilizing it much. Once she gets the itch to start writing on a regular basis I’ll go about putting it back up. Just thought I’d mention it in case anyone was wondering where it went to.

Not that we’ve been updating this part of the website on anything close to a regular basis, but I’ve switched the main JO.net page over to MT. Coranto, the script we were using previously, has all but died in terms of being actively developed. Combine that with the confusion of using a different script for the main page as opposed to what we were using for our blogs and it becomes clear why this part of the site isn’t updated more often. Now that it’s on MT I think both Anne and I will be a little more likely to actually update it.

Bear with me for a bit as I’ll be working on a custom site design for it soon.

We’ve updated the script package we’re using to run the forums from phpBB to Invision Board. This new package appears to allow for quite a bit more customization by the users as well as flexibility at editing the templates. If you’re a regular visitor to our forums you’ll need to login on your first arrival at the new system, but should find that your old passwords have migrated just fine.