Columbia Closings   What's not in Columbia anymore

There are no gas stations on Two Notch Road between Fontaine Road and O'Neil Court.

Main competitors?

Carl's Cones & Sam's Sawhorses

Some, if not all, of you will have already noticed a few changes I made to the blog while on vacation, but for the record let me just set them out here.

First of all, and invisibly, I've upgraded from PHP4 to PHP5. I had been putting this off for a good while because I was afraid it would be an ordeal, but it had to be done before I could update WordPress versions. In the actual event, GoDaddy provided a straight-foward way to do this painlessly from their control panel (though it did take some googling around to find out that it existed since their FAQs tended to imply it was a new purchase option).

Second, with that done, I was able to upgrade to the current version of WordPress, 3.2.1. This doesn't change anything on the readers' side, but from my point of view it means I can select from a greater number of themes and plugins and not just those that work with old WordPress versions.

Third, with that done, I was able to upgrade the spam filter Akismet to the current version. Spam is a constant arms-race and it's still not perfect, but I am actually having to kill fewer spam comments than before. Of course those that still get through remain annoying.

Fourth, with the current version of WordPress I was able to implement an idea proposed by Michael Taylor a number of months ago: Having a sidebar list of posts which have been recently updated. New posts, of course, are always on the blog's front page, but many times I will update an older post with new pictures or new information, and previously there would be no way for you to tell that unless I also posted a comment to that effect, something I don't usually do for small changes. Now, if you look on the left sidebar below the recent comments, you will see a new area called Recently Updated Posts. This section will list the ten most recently updated posts, and the date they were updated.

Fifth, also in the left sidebar below the Most Popular Posts section is a new area called Tags. This section is a tag cloud which takes the most common tags on posts and renders them in a font size relative to how often they are used. (Currently it appears that "Two Notch Road" is the most common tag..). If you click on one of these tags, you will get all of the posts which use that tag (which may not all fit on one page). I did not start using tags until well after I started the blog, so many older posts still do not have tags, and also I am not perfectly consistent on what tags I use (ie, grocer vs groceries etc), but the street name tags at least should be useful.

I may move these different sections around in the future, but I do expect to keep them.

What I did not do was change the theme for the blog. I actually did find a new three-column theme that I like quite a bit, but as it stands, it does not fit well with my 600 pixel wide photos (which I am not going to shrink). I may get around to figuring out how CSS style-sheets work and try to fix it to work in my environment, or I may find another theme that will work without a lot of futzing around, but for now the current theme (Andrea) stays.

Home Is the Sailor

Home is the sailor, home from sea:
Her far-borne canvas furled
The ship pours shining on the quay
The plunder of the world.

Home is the hunter from the hill:
Fast in the boundless snare
All flesh lies taken at his will
And every fowl of air.

'Tis evening on the moorland free,
The starlit wave is still:
Home is the sailor from the sea,
The hunter from the hill.

A.E. Housman

Normal posting resumes tomorrow if I can get recombobulated.

Read the rest of this entry »

Well, it's that time of year again! I've lined up my house-sitters and got my car packed. I'll be in and out of town over the next month or so and don't expect to make any relevant posts during that time (though I may weigh in with a few random words and pictures). I will be logging in every day or so to trim the spam comments and perhaps respond to the other ones.

Feel free to use this post as an "open thread" to discuss any ongoing closings or news (of course you can use Have Your Say too).

I also hope to have at least a few days of downtime during which I can upgrade the WordPress blogging software I'm using to the current version. That will let me run a better spam filter as well as some other features I've wanted to add for a while.

Fun is in!

Get out there and hold some truths self evident!

Well, Summer is back, and the Free Times' Best of Columbia poll is here again!

I'm not sure how they pick their categories, but once again local blogs are going up against WIStv.com, which is somewhat akin to The S.S. Minnow going up against The Starship Enterprise (Kirk's, not Picard's!)...

Still, if you like columbiaclosings.com, don't hesitate to vote in category "6": Best Local Website or Blog - News. Put in a good word for your favorite shops, restaurants, hangouts parks etc as well.

Both the Trenholm Plaza and Sandhill Books-A-Million have reduced their hours. I assume the Harbison and Lexington locations have as well, though I haven't checked them.

The Sandhill hours are even worse than the Trenholm Plaza ones, being, I believe 9-9 all week except for Friday and Saturday. I find this curious as the days are getting long and school just let out. You would think that there would be an influx of under 21s hanging in the cafe this time of year...

I remember when I first discovered "big box" bookstores in DC and Kansas City, I could take the Metro to Pentagon City or the rental car to Metcalf Avenue in Overland Park and browse and drink coffee from after work until 11pm. In Columbia the Richland Mall B&N cut its hours to the point I could rarely visit years ago, but up until now, BAM had been holding out.

Retail 101, you might think.

I need a gift for this weekend, and thought a pair of binoculars might be nice. As I was eating lunch at Ruby Tuesday, I decided I might as well check out K-Mart since it was right across the street, and on my way home. I didn't really expect a good result, but nothing ventured, nothing gained.

The place was like an uninhabited cavern, with seemingly about 5 employees in the whole store. The binoculars, as it turned out, were in Sporting Goods rather than cameras and electronics, and the section was completely unstaffed. Of course the half-way decent looking ones were all in a locked case, and totally unmarked as to price. (And all, even the best looking ones, were blister-packed -- Not the "classy" effect I wanted, or as easy to wrap as a boxed item, but I was willing to live with it).

I stood for about 10 minutes with no employees in the area and no bell or buzzer for the counter. When I looked further, there didn't seem to be any employees in that entire quadrant of the store. Finally I gave up and started walking out. As I passed Electronics the guy there asked me if I needed help finding anything, at which point I complained I needed someone to sell me something. He called on the PA for an associate to Sporting Goods, so I went back there and waited another 10 minutes, then left. That's a purchase going to Target, Wal-Mart or at any rate someone else..