First, you’ll see a fun Daily Cartoon about 1/4 of the way down the sidebar. Our cartoon, courtesy of Andertoons, changes daily and, almost without exception, is always good for a little chuckle.

Second, scrolling to the bottom of our sidebar you’ll see our daily quote courtesy of The Foundation for a Better Life. Their billboards have always inspired me (and almost caused me to lose control of my car) and having them join us at Beck’s Cafe is a nice treat, I feel, for all our readers

Enjoy!

(widget photo - yes that is what a widget is! - from our friends at Wouf_is_Wouf’s Photostream, used with permission under Creative Commons license).

7-14-2008 Update
Replaced “Foundation for a Better Life” quote of the day with “Quotes Collection” plug-in/widget under the side bar feature, “Inspiration and Thoughts”. Foundation for a Better Life was not responding to some tech questions and Quotes Collection gives us a wider library (a less spiffy look though).

1. Thailand: Some Transgender Views: How do those in Thailand view being transgender? Read this article to see the views of Thailand.
2. Gender Therapists, how do you chose? An article on how to chose a gender therapist and some links to some excellent helps, including guidance for teens.
3. Wedding Bell Blues: Who would know that my friends wedding would be the occassion for my first drink bought for me from a guy or learning that NJ really isn’t 8 hours away.
4. Simply Hired and Transgender Friendly Too: This article talks about the new search engine, Simply Hired, and how they can help you find a job.
5. CSI: Sarah’s Goodbye Letter: Perhaps the most sadly romantic moment in TV History. I cry buckets every time I see it.

Thanks to all our happy coffee, tea and cocoa sippers and swillers who spent the time to read

(Photo courtesy of Rachel Sian’s Photos, used under Creative Commons license)

Turns out the new options in Wordpress 2.5.1 required our barista’s to scarf down more espresso than normal to determine what went wrong and how to fix it. But fixed it ’tis so here we are now

Happy Reading everyone!

(photo courtesy of kylos and used with Creative Commons license)

Let’s face it no one cares…they just want you to write again ’cause they enjoyed your writing.

So, I won’t bore you all ‘cept to say were are swilling some java, munching on chocolate and moving things around here. First, you’ll see we have a new Wordpress theme. This might not be the final but, we like it so far though we have some work to do hacking the code a bit. It’s called Tarski and is nicely done and, as importantly, nicely maintained. Nothing like getting a theme you like and having the developer abandon it as Wordpress chugs along.

What happened to the cute past theme with the mugs? Well, we couldn’t get it to work right. The header started to come into shape nicely thanks to two of our readers Mandy and Sonia, but then we couldn’t move things around and, though the underlying structure of the theme, Sandbox, was muy macho we were a little over our heads frankly. A little code we can hack, alotta code and, frankly, we’d rather spend the time writing. A BIG THANK YOU goes out to our loyal readers Mandy and Sonia for helping us get the mug header down. Thank you both very, very much for going out of your way to help

So thank you to everyone for hanging in there with us! We’re slowly getting things back to normal so we can brew up the content piping hot….as you’d expect

(many thanks to Vrogy for letting us use the cute crayon pic for this post per his Creative Commons license)

This is a puzzler for sure. Stay tuned, I think we’ll be needing alot of coffee to solve this one.

So to reach us, at last for now, the underlying URL has to be used, http://susan.asmallorange.com/~becki/

You know I love you. I feel I’ve loved you forever.

Lately I haven’t been feeling very well. Truth be told, I’m tired.

Out in the desert, under that car that night, I realised something and I haven’t been able to shake it.

Since my father died, I spent almost my entire life with ghosts. We’ve been like close friends and out there in the desert, it occured to me, that it was time for me to bury them. I can’t do that here.

I’m so sorry.

No matter how hard I try to fight it off, I’m left with a feeling that, I have to go. I have no idea where I’m going, but I know I have to do this. If I don’t, I’m afraid I’ll self-destruct, and worse, you’ll be there to see it happen. Be safe.

Know that I tried very hard to stay. Know that you are my one and only. I will miss you with every beat of my heart. Our life together was the only home I’ve ever really had. I wouldn’t trade it for anything.

I love you…I always will.

Goodbye.

In a lot of ways I feel her letter says, from the heart, what alot of us must feel like … at least sometimes.

You can see the scene for yourself at You Tube by visiting You Tube here.

Thanks

But we haven’t stopped writing. Check our next post on First Event 2008 for news on where we’ve been perking up the prose in the meantime.

But it’s that front end…what is going on here?

Well, we’ve moved the cafe from a standard Wordpress theme to Wordpress using Sandbox. What this means practically is that Sandbox enables some basic Internet programming stuff that we’ll need going into the future such as:

• Advanced, semantics-based theme
• Beautiful clean coding on the inside for easier feature add (or remove)
• For WordPress 2.0.2 through 2.2.x
• Valid XHTML 1.0 Transitional
• Widgets plugin-friendly
• hAtom and hCard microformats (XFN was already built into Wordpress)
• Allows our readers to RSS subscribe to only one category at a time; so love Frugal Techie but hate the rest? You can subscribe just to The Frugal Tech RSS feed at Beck’s Cafe and just read those posts. It’s like 10 blogs in 1! We just love choices, just like a well designed handbag.
• You can totally customize it with CSS alone—no need (hopefully) to bother with the underlying php

So quite a bit really. Working with CSS has been alot easier than I’d thought it would be. I’d say tweaking a non-sandbox theme is actually more work. But there’s that learning curve on CSS so the changes will gradually take place here over time.

Sorry for making everyone crazy….now go have an iced cappucino and disregard all the plaster dust and plywood stacked all over the place

How would you like access to bags such as Louis Vuitton, Chloe, Jones New York and more for…$15?

Okay you can get up off the floor now.

The site works like a NetFlix for Handbags. They have a huge selection and you get to KEEP them as long as you want till you need to turn them in. Need a bag for that hot date? Need a bag for a night at the opera? Need a bag to go shopping with mom? No problem…they have bags, and good ones, for every occasion.

Swing your hips on over to Bag, Borrow or Steal to get in on this deal.

Thanks for hanging with us and probing our ample archives….thanks to YOU our readers we get 8,000 hits per month on average! And, thanks to YOU all we’ve won the following awards:

• Best of the Web Blogs: Transgender Category
• Spirit Magazine (Boston based GLBT magazine), Transgender Blog to Read

First and foremost though, Beck’s Cafe is not a “transgender” blog per se. It’s a virtual place to share ideas, get some love, tell a story, learn something new, and have a laugh and best of all, do it over a cup of coffee

Update: 6-24-07 : Archives are broken; repair in process; ETA based on how much free espresso I give my tech’s

The general way of choosing good underwear is to simply keep using what you have been using until it’s so thread bare that your “going commando”, (as an aside, the whole concept and prevelence of “Going Commando” i.e., wearing no underwear at all, has actually been studied. As reported in the Wikipedia at their site HERE, brief and bra firm, Fresh Pair, in 2004 conducted a study “…of 7,000 people which revealed that 9% of men and 7% of women go commando day-to-day. Those who do so semi-regularly are much more numerous, possibly around 25-30%”. You have to love our unquenchable thirst for knowledge).

But now, fair reader, we’ve got the inside track on a more refined way of getting your undergarments right. The Vote. Or more precisely, “The Undie Awards“. In the words of the lingerie ladden workers managing the contest:

Women around the world voted for their favorite lingerie and the results are here. The Underwear Awards, (The Undies) were decided in 13 categories including Favorite Bra, Favorite Panty, Favorite Shapewear and more.

With the vote tallied the Overall Winners are:

• In the category, Favorite Bra (overall) average figure: Wonderbra Gel Satin Push-Up Bra, model #7234
• In the category, Favorite Bra (overall) full figure: Le Mystere Tisha Bra-Full Figure Renaissance, #9955
• In the category, Favorite Bottom (overall): The Hanky Panky Thong
• In the category, Favorite Shapewear (overall): Spanx Power Panties with Tummy Control #004
• In the category, Favorite Shapewear Tops, “Select Award”: Nancy Ganz Body Shaping Camisole #3310

So there you have it, no more holey underthings, no more breezy briefs and saggy bras! You can read about all the winners and even purchase said garments by visiting the Undies Awards by clicking to their site HERE.