Blog Archives for May, 2007

I brokeddeddit :)

As Jessie used to say when she was little, “I brokededdit!” (pronounced ‘broked-dead-dit’ LOL)

I finally upgraded to WordPress 2.2 but unfortunately it seems to have fubar’d a few of my plugins, including my beloved WP-CaTT and the javascript slide/hide thingy on my sidebar, so guess what I’ll be doing tonight, tomorrow, or however long it takes me? ;)

In the meantime, things are going well with the new job. I endured “Diversity Training” yesterday which is (I hope) the last of my “newbie” training sessions. For now, anyways.

Now if only I could find where all the good gel pens are stashed! ;)

Today I was lucky enough to catch up with Glas, a friend of mine who also works for UAB. Had a yummy BLT and some faboo hummus dip ‘n pita slices at the always entertaining Mellow Mushroom on Southside. (YUM!)

I hopped on over to Zooomr’s site earlier this afternoon and saw that they are still experiencing technical difficulties in getting Release Mark III launched. :cry:

Poor guys. Keep your chin up! I still lub y’all! :grin:

In case you Firefox users hadn’t already been notified, the latest updates were quietly released in the early hours yesterday. So far I haven’t experienced any issues with existing plugins … I think most everything was either already compatible or already updated.

YAY!

At least tomorrow’s Friday. The annual Bluegrass Festival is going on at the Civic Center in Gardendale Saturday night, so I might go slink over that way and catch the show. Last year’s was a blast, and I’m hoping to get more pictures this time. :)

Posted by Nicki on May 31st, 2007 at 8:21 pm

I’ve been Wii’d on

Last night Jim and I were playing around with the Wii online and browsing our sites to see how well the Wii browser handled them. His did much better than mine, LOL! I found it hard to navigate to/around small hyperlinked objects and apparently the Wii browser didn’t like my Lightbox’d images, so those are something to think about when designing my next theme. (Because you know me, I can’t just pick a theme and actually STICK with it! LOL)

When I left to go to bed, Jim was still playing around with stuff. When I checked my messages this morning, this was in my Inbox:

From: jim
Subject: wii……

you’ve been Wii’d on.

—————————————————————————-
Sender info:
IP: ((snip))
Browser/OS: Opera/9.10 (Nintendo Wii; U; ; 1621; en)
—————————————————————————-

LOL, what a goober. :)

Posted by Nicki on May 31st, 2007 at 6:39 am

Resistance to RSS?

A friend of mine recently sent me a very heated email, chastising me for not visiting his forums more often. It’s not that I don’t want to, I just never have the time to sit and navigate from one set of forums to the next. In all honesty, if he would only enable his RSS (atom) feeds, I could easily subscribe via Google Reader and pick and choose which threads I’d like to read and/or respond to. His argument against this was that if he did that, I wouldn’t go visit his site to access the forums.

:shock: Uh … helloooooooooo???? That’s why I don’t come around as often, you numbnuts …

He furthers this argument by saying that enabling feeds would open him up to “exploits” and “serious security risks” but I have yet to see anything published for his forum software packages. :roll:

What seems painfully obvious still escapes him. He sees RSS as damaging to his traffic. Of course he hasn’t at all studied his logs, he just watches the freebie counter at the bottom of his forum’s index page. I’ve tried sending him several “pro RSS” articles and varied plumes of market research touting the positive effects of using feeds, but he refuses to budge.

I say if your content is good, visitors will both subscribe to read AND visit to respond/engage, but he disagrees … and so the argument continues.

The thing is, I am a member of dozens of forums that I would *love* to sit and peruse at my leisure; but sadly I do not have the time any more to do this. With the availability of subscription feeds, I could subscribe via my reader and interact more – essentially making both me AND the forum owner happy. I want to email each of them and scream, “For the love of God, PLEASE give me an RSS or Atom feed, a plain XML file or an RDF … ANYTHING!”

LOL

So what do y’all think? Am I wrong? Are feeds too much trouble?

Posted by Nicki on May 30th, 2007 at 9:33 am

Me want!

*gasp* I *MUST* have some of these! (courtesy of LifeHacker … have I mentioned that I love that site? :mrgreen: )

USB rechargeable batteries

USBCELL rechargeable batteries are NiMH (non-alkaline) batteries that plug right into your computer’s USB port to juice up.

USBCELLs recharge from your tower, monitor, game console or keyboard’s free USB port; or you could turn a USB hub into a battery recharging station. These suckers reduce waste, keep batteries on hand, fully recharge in about 5 hours, and cost £10 (approx. $20) for a pack of two.

URI: http://usbcell.com/

The website says that right now all they have available is AA, but coming soon is:

  • C/D size
  • AAA format with a mini-USB connector and also with a folding full-size USB, and with convertors.
  • 9-volt cell format and other prismatic forms
  • Major phones, Smart PDA and portable devices

They also have a form where you can request to be contacted when a battery size/type is available for your phone.

Neeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeat-OH!

Now, if only I could find some USB-powered cookware, I’d be all set! ;)

Posted by Nicki on May 29th, 2007 at 4:40 pm

You too can get no respect

Growing up, Rodney Dangerfield was one of my favorite comedians. A friend of mine, knowing this, sent me an article about his Las Vegas condo that has recently gone up for sale. There were no pictures, but I’m pretty sure that it was swank as hell. (As I recall, “The Rod” had good taste!) Part of the article reads:

“Located in the exclusive Las Vegas Country Club and offering everything from 24 hour guard gated security and concierge services, a PGA golf course and valet parking, Regency Towers represents the new world of luxury Las Vegas real estate. Privacy, luxury and security within minutes of the world famous Las Vegas is something which has transformed life in the valley region of the Sonoran desert.”

Sounds peachy to me! :lol:

Ok, so I’ll never be rich and famous, and I’ll probably never own anything that was ever owned by anyone rich and famous, but it’s still pretty interesting to read about that stuff and wonder about the people who actually BUY these things! :)

(For instance, I wonder who owns the cute little gopher props from Caddy Shack 1 & 2? I wouldn’t mind having one of those! ;) )

Posted by Nicki on May 29th, 2007 at 3:07 pm