That was a grueling game to watch:

• Filled with hope by Ghana’s victory over the Czechs.
• Dejected as Italy goes up 1-0. No one can sit on a lead like the Azzurri.
• Back in the game with Italy’s own goal.
• Hopeful after De Rossi’s Red Card gives US a man advantage.
• Anxious as Mastroeni’s Red Card evens the sides up.
• Dejected when Pope’s Red Card gives Italy the man advantage.
• Excited as time runs out.

And the US is still in the mix. We have to beat Ghana on Thursday and we need a good result from Italy vs. the Czech Republic. But we’re still in the game.

Most of us will never face a career defining moment of truth. Those who face one will rarely know it until long after the fact. And those who face it square in the eyes usually have the grace of privacy.

World class athletes face their moments of truth in the full view of the world. For some, the moment happens only once every four years - consigning those who peak in an off-year to the should’a could’a of time.

Today is the moment of truth for US Soccer. A bad loss to Italy will re-define the success of 2002 as a fluke and a win will cement its position as an up and comer. The world is watching.

We’re all guilty of it. When we’re optimistic we emphasize the good and minimize the bad. And when we’re pessimistic we minimize the good and emphasize the bad.

I was optimistic going into the World Cup. I remembered beating Mexico in the Round of 16 and I remembered scaring Germany in the Quarters. I managed to forget being dominated by Poland and backing into the knockout round with only 4 points.

Today was the kind of day that turns optimists into pessimists. The US was schooled by the Czechs. The Czechs had the room to make plays, the skill to take advantage, and the finishers to make us pay.

Your mileage may vary, but the easiest way for me to move from Radio Userland to TextPattern was to whip some Java. I opened the Radio Userland XML backup files with DOM and then wrote the entry data straight to the database. From there it was just a little bit of entry metadata cleanup with SQL and I was up and running.

Which was working well until I decided that I needed to fix all the dummy titles that I was forced to create during the import. Because I managed to fumble finger my SQL and clobber all my titles in one fell swoop. Fortunately, I had a set of good titles on my local database and it was just a bit of frenzied regular expression replacement in emacs and I had some SQL to set everything right.

Except for the dummy titles. Which I have just replaced with real titles. And just to be safe, I created an SQL script in the editor rather than just typing it right in.

It’s still a work in progress, but the layout here at Take the First Step is starting to take shape. The TextPattern default 3 column layout never really felt like home, so it feels good to have 2 columns again.

It also gave me the opportunity to some of the problems in my old CSS. All the my text is now sized with em - which should allow readers to control font size in any modern browser.

Once I add a bit of color and put the sidebar to work, it will really feel like home.

Steve Kirks is baaackkkk as product manager for Radio Userland. But while it’s nice to see that there is still some life in Radio Userland; it’s too little, too late for me.

Radio Userland was the right tool when I started Take the First Step some three and half years ago. But I’ve moved on and it hasn’t.

Big changes here at Take the First Step:

1. I turned off comments and trackbacks
2. I relocated from the blog sub-domain to the home domain
3. I made the move to TextPattern

I remember my excitement when Radio Userland added support for trackback. But the spam to content ratio was approaching infinity here at Take the First Step. And I really have better things to do than add rules to ban free web hosts.

Once upon a time, I actually thought that my weblog might be a sideshow to the main event here at ideoplex.com. Well, that’s not going to happen - it’s time to recognize that Take the First Step is the main event around here.

And I finally made the move to TextPattern. The old RSS feed should be redirecting to the new location, but I recommend that you try the atom feed - TextPattern’s RSS is back at version 0.92.

It’s time to take another look at TextPattern. I was almost there when I let myself get sidetracked, but it’s time to get serious about a move.

Radio Userland was fine when I was under-employed. But that time is gone and I just don’t have the time to boot the PowerBook to blog at night (I’m taking advantage of a business trip for my partner for my current burst of blogging activity). And it would be inappropriate for me to move Radio Userland to my work computer. Moving to a server-side solution would let me squeeze some blogging into the open nooks and crannies of my life.

Now, if I can just reconstruct my strategy for preserving my permalinks …

It’s hard to imagine, but Cablevision is actually doing the right thing. I didn’t have enough confidence in the Avs to add OLN to our cable package. So I was prepared to live with a handful of games from the Stanley Cup Playoffs. But Cablevision is picking up the games from OLNHD and showing them on INHD and iOHD.

Thank you Cablevision. I wasn’t expecting this of you. Thank you very much.

People should hurry up and post their MacBook experiences. I was waiting for the second generation MacBook Pro to come out. But the price/performance on the MacBook is hard to resist. I don’t really need the extra oomph of the Radeon graphics processor, 1280x800 is a nice step up from my current 1024x768, and I really like the ability to replace the hard drive myself.

I just need early adopters to identify any annoying version one problems, like the MacBook Pro heating problem. Then I make an educated decision.