Daniel Pfeiffer

Life after the Honeymoon

Daniel Pfeiffer — Sat, 24 Sep 2011 20:43:57 +0000

Another major life change has come and gone. Although I suppose simply calling it a life change is an understatement. I called graduating college or moving into an apartment on my own “life changes” but marriage is in a league of own. As my friend Micaiah would often say, “expectations are your enemy, flexibility is your friend.”

The major adjustment aside, this has been the most pleasant journey I’ve had the pleasure of trekking. It’s been a lot of fun to adjust to life with Abby. Granted, it’s been easy so far. The last two weeks have been devoted entirely to learning how to wake up together–no distractions of work or responsibility. Unfortunately, that’s not real life; people keep asking when we “return to reality.”

It has suddenly occurred to me that life continues after the honeymoon. This isn’t the movies–there will be no fade to black and rolling of the end credits–in fact, I’m finding that a lot of things haven’t been the way the movies portray it. On the one hand, they leave out all the hard day-to-day stuff (you know, like who’s responsibility is it make the bed). But at the same time, no movie can really depict the uniqueness of each person and how wonderful and beautiful it is when two people become one through marital unity.

I always wonder what happens after the camera fades to black–and I’m about to find out!

The Invitation Saga

Daniel Pfeiffer — Tue, 19 Jul 2011 04:18:55 +0000

Wedding plans continue to march right along…even if sometimes it feels like they’re marching around in a circle.

The past few weeks have been focused on getting the invitations out. I’m thankful to say that most of the invitations went out today. I was beginning to think they would never go out.

Abby and I decided to print the invitations ourselves because after a little research, we determined that it would be the less expensive route to go and we’d rather spend the money on other aspects of the wedding. We figured we’d go to Walmart, find an invitation kit we liked, buy a bunch, get a design laid out in Word, and then print them all.

In theory, this was a good idea, but we ran into problems immediately. The invitation kit we ended up liking the best had been discontinued and the Walmart didn’t have enough of them. We called the Walmarts within a 50 mile radius and managed to track down enough.

I also severely underestimated the amount of time it would take to get all the margins and styles just right for the invitation. I thought it would take 10-15 minutes tops, but it took me an hour until I was happy with it. Getting them printed was another story–that took an entire Saturday afternoon. That wasn’t an overly painful process so much as it was tedious. With 3-4 different pieces to print on, I found myself spending a lot of time messing with the paper feed on the printer so it wasn’t getting jammed or printing sideways.

The most frustrating part of the process came when it was time to buy postage. Turns out the kit didn’t follow postal regulations in two regards: the reply envelopes were to small to be mailed at all and the main envelope was too big for standard postage. Perhaps this was a motivating factor towards the discontinuing of the product. At any rate, we got larger envelopes for the reply cards and just got the extra postage we needed to send the invitations.

All in all, I’m glad we got over this hurdle. However, as I go over the budget and consider the amount of hours that went into it, it definitely was not worth it to print the invitations ourselves. I will be strongly recommending to my engaged friends to just hire a professional. It will be well worth it.

The Story of a Point-Release

Daniel Pfeiffer — Sun, 29 May 2011 22:03:58 +0000

Been there, done that.

Detecting Internet Explorer 9 acting as Internet Explorer 7

Daniel Pfeiffer — Fri, 27 May 2011 04:09:08 +0000

As a web developer, I’m often forced to support for outdated browsers like Internet Explorer 7. This requirement forces my hand to add wonky code to code that was otherwise working fine everywhere else. To help test my sites in multiple versions of Internet Explorer, I use Internet Explorer 9 on Windows 7 and use the Developer Tools to change the rendering mode of the page between IE 7, 8, and 9. It’s important to note that this is not an exact representation of what a user with Internet Explorer 7 would see on the page, but it is accurate enough for me.

One thing I found pretty early on is that while Internet Explorer 9 is rendering a page as IE 7, it’s user agent string still identifies itself as Internet Explorer 9 meaning that browser detection in JavaScript is likely to return the wrong results. So in addition to testing the user agent string for MSIE 7 (which would work on an actual version of IE7), I also test the value of document.documentMode. This value represents the mode the page is being rendered in (returns 7 for IE7).

Here’s Microsoft’s official tech docs about this property:

http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/cc196988(v=vs.85).aspx

Learning to Love, Part 1

Daniel Pfeiffer — Wed, 25 May 2011 04:33:09 +0000

The best day of life will be arriving 109 days from today.

I know this because September 10, 2011 will be the day that I have the privilege of marrying my best friend (who, incidentally, also happens to be the most beautiful woman in the world).

Abby and I began premarital counseling a few months ago and one thing became apparent really quickly: I need to learn how to love Abby. Up to this point, I’ve done a decent job teaching myself how to care for her–learning her likes and dislikes, providing for her when I can, occasionally buying her gifts or surprising her, taking her on dates, or simply relaxing with her. All these things are important and I love caring for her in these ways, but are they the point of marriage?

In premarital counseling, we have been studying at Ephesians 5:22-33 where Paul gives specific instructions to wives and husbands. To husbands, Paul gave this instruction (v25):

Husbands, love your wives, as Christ loved the church and gave himself up for her,

Christ loved the church by giving his life as a sacrifice for my sins so I could have a relationship with my Creator; as Abby’s (soon-to-be) husband, I must love her the same way.

What does it look like for me to sacrificially love Abby? For one example, it means caring for her even when I don’t feel like it. The days I come home exhausted will be the days I will need to be most intentional about seeking for ways to care for her since my natural tendency would be to seek my own comfort at whatever cost. Constantly pursuing oneness with her above my own “comfort” will likely prove to be a struggle in the coming months.

Regardless, I am excitedly counting down the days until my dearly beloved truly becomes my dearly beloved.

Why Do I Need a Blog?

Daniel Pfeiffer — Tue, 24 May 2011 02:51:45 +0000

It’s a good question: Why do I need a blog? The short answer is that I probably don’t. I’m at a stage of life where I barely have enough time to shower everyday, much less take time to sit down and pound out a few words once a week. It seems to be a standard in my industry, however. Plus, during my time in school (and even now), I owe much of my knowledge to fellow developers who chose to take those five minutes and sit down and share what they learned that day or that week. I definitely am in a place to give back to that community, so I’m going to make an effort.

I often spend far too much time working on a design for a site, and then after spending days on it, end up not using it or deciding I don’t like the design anymore. mediabounds.com alone has been through at least 6 redesigns, none of which I maintained longer than a week. So, instead of spending a lot of time on the design now, I’m going to just worry about content. This blog will have to earn the right to a design.

So, that’s the journey I’m proposing. I’m going to share me: what I’m learning at work, what I’m learning at home, and what I’m learning everywhere else.