Archive for December, 2004
Goodbye 2004. You’ll be remembered as the worst year ever.
Going to Asia and finding a decent job are the only positive points; the rest is forgetable, painful and unpleasent.
Here’s hoping 2005 brings better days.
I got back in town after spending Christmas in Hooterville. A white Christmas too which was really nice apart from having to shovel it. Sadly, the snowblower wasn’t running so it was a manual process though Mom gave me a hand on Sunday. I managed to start the snowblower but never got it moving. Then it ran out of gas.
I got a kick out of the security ‘process’ at Chicken Licks International airport. All sorts of Federal employees doing busy work it would seem. They had us lined up way out the door and gave everyone a serious look over. “Wait here.” I hate when they fire all your stuff through the x-ray machine before you walk through the metal detector.
I got pulled aside and they went through my bag after they scanned it, I assume due to the electronics. “Is this your bag?” “Um, yeah.” “Mind if I have a look through it?” Would my answer to that question have made any difference?
Buddy puts on latex gloves, empties my bag and looks at everything. He carefully examined the skeleton key on my bag and then moved onto the electronics. Nothing was turned on and he didn’t ask me to turn it on. My phone and camera could have been packed full of plastic explosives and I would have been on the plane. “Good job, you really look very busy. You can take your three hour break now.”
The cold that I have been dancing with for a week now seems to have peaked *touches wood*. It was never all that bad, just enough to be irritating. I spent most of yesterday in bed, stoned on cold medication which I think you’ll agree, is what the holidays are all about.
I came across this tip this evening and it really does help. No, no you’re welcome.
Here’s something for broadband people that will really speed up Firefox:
1.Type “about:config” into the address bar and hit return. Scroll down and look for the following entries:
network.http.pipelining
network.http.proxy.pipelining
network.http.pipelining.maxrequests
Normally the browser will make one request to a web page at a time. When you enable pipelining it will make several at once, which really speeds up page loading.
2. Alter the entries as follows:
Set “network.http.pipelining” to “true”
Set “network.http.proxy.pipelining” to “true”
Set “network.http.pipelining.maxrequests” to some number like 30. This means it will make 30 requests at once.
3. Lastly right-click anywhere and select New-> Integer. Name it “nglayout.initialpaint.delay” and set its value to “0″. This value is the amount of time the browser waits before it acts on information it recieves.
Go forth and hack.
From David Pouge
Attention to anyone who’s still foolish enough to use Internet Explorer:
As though your Web browser weren’t vulnerable enough to spyware, secret ActiveX controls and other hacker attacks, security experts have now unveiled an even more insidious hole. Phishers (people who try to intercept your Web passwords and private information) can now make any text they like appear in the address bar. They can, for example, make it look like you’re viewing the Web page of PayPal or eBay; when you “log in,” you’ll actually be sending your account information straight into the phishers’ databases.
So I was standing on Hamilton St. this afternoon and I notice the traffic is jammed. No surprise there as it usually backs up as people try to park. I had a look down to see what was going on and noticed a fish van and a Mercedes convertible were pretty close so I walked over to see what was up. The Mercedes had it’s drivers door half torn off and it was wedged against the van at a 90 degree angle. What fun!
I think the Mercedes driver had thrown his door open without looking as he wasn’t all that pissed and the other guy didn’t seem all that put out. What was interesting was that no one was honking, perhaps they felt the pain of that fine German engineering being twisted. I know it wasn’t Christmas spirit.
Um yeah. So what else? I had a coffee with Biff last night and he was pissed that I blogged about Stace’s Christmas cookies. “You ruined the surprise…”
Turns out that due to a shipping problem, the Dayments are up to their eyeballs in cookies. That’s a problem I’d love to have as they’re damn fine cookies. Stace, I think you should open a bakery/coffee house or something. Biff and I would be your best customers. Or we could just go to your place and hang out on weekends or something.
I guess more than a few people thought there was a big redesign coming when I took the site down. I might do something over the break. The good news is that I seem to have confused the comment spammers for the time being. It won’t last but it feels good now.
December 22nd and no declarations of festivity. Maybe tomorrow.
Ok, we’re back in business. After an ill-fated move to a sub-domain I’ve moved back to where I was all along. I would have been up sooner but I waited for the MT 3.14 upgrade. If you are running MT, you really need to upgrade lest your host pull the plug on you.
I’m getting so good at this that is took me about 45 minutes to do a complete install of MT. Now, I patiently wait for an upgrade to MT Blacklist.
I had an amazing meal at the Metropolitan Hotel last night. It was our Apple wrap party and if you every come into a ton of cash, I highly recommend it. I left there with a belly fully of lobster and fine wine. Fours hours seemed a bit long for dinner but it was worth the wait.
Lastly, thanks to Daymented who went beyond the Christmas card and sent cookies! How cool was that! I get my mail last night and there was Tupperware in the mailbox. “What the hell?”
After a bit of wrestling, I extracted the Tupperware and found homemade cookies! Thanks again Stace!
I’ve missed the Christmas card window and I’m feeling a bit guilty about that. I kept thinking that I should be getting some cards but never actually got around buying them. First year in a long time that I haven’t sent any out.
Ok, I’d better be off to work.
