Few things on this planet can make me say "huh?" faster than code. However, as I've discovered, if I sit in my chair and only say "huh?" or "bwah?" only after testing out some new snippet of code, I eventually manage to turn "huh?" into "aha!"

See, for all you folks out there who are using a CMS that someone else wrote for you, chances are good that figuring out how to do XMLish pings for places like weblogs.com, wander-lust, and blo.gs could be best described as going to some publicity menu or other and just clicking "do this ping, baby!"For those of us who are currently the one-woman band of developers, beta testers, and code-breakers, it's several hours' worth of "huh?" followed by many many iterations of "well, maybe this change will work..." and hopefully, eventually, by an "AHA!"

...which is immediately followed by giggling madly, running around the room, and throwing handsigns at the computer (which is remarkably uninterested in your handsigns). For good measure, such rapturous silliness is usually also followed by apologizing to the cat for awakening him from his on-desk nap.

Right. So. Time to take a breath. The worst is over. It wasn't just a matter of setting up a ping. First, I had to streamline my code in the add/edit entry page, because it was rapidly spiraling out of control. No point adding any more code until I could manage the code I'd already written.

I needed a new table in the database, which necessitated minor changes in two other tables. That meant changes to the install script. After that, Quarto needed a page to actually edit the pings. Then, one at a time, the addition and testing of the pings (of which this entry is the first such on cat.net).

Assuming all goes well, this will put me at twelve of sixteen - enough that, even in my book, it would be time to close to book on coding for the night, scratch the cat, and head into the living room for a date with a late-night TV show.

Oh yeah, and Girl Scout cookies. That, my friends, is a definite reward for a day of successful coding.