In the words of someone who can write better than I:
A make-believe character's make-believe diet isn't the problem here.
Instead, it's parents who let their children forsake the sandbox for the Xbox. And a fast-food industry that markets toys and lard-laden tasties directly to kids. And schools that sacrifice students' waistlines in exchange for proceeds from soda machines.
My contempt, I mean. Over time, it really makes me mad. Not mad as in "I'm going to go out and hurt someone" or "I think I'll blow up that shack over there" or anything like that. But mad as in "I can't believe people are so lazy". In the latest example, I received a comment on an entry. The entry itself is old. It has nearly 200 comments on it.
I understand that is a lot of comments to read, but the answer to this particular question lies, at least once, in the comments prior to the one they just left. And it lies in at least one other place on my blog as well.
Now if you had to read everything, be it all those comments or all those entries, then perhaps you'd have a point. That's a lot of reading to get to a very simple answer, and asking if someone knows the answer may be faster. But there is a search on the site. There is a search function in every major browser that I've ever used.
Why can't these people actually make use of those things and realize "hey, the answer is right there", instead of expecting people to point them to that conclusion?
The other day as I was re-categorizing entries, I happened across this old post where I talked about downloads from the site. I figured it was time for an update.
I just read an interesting post about Movable Type and plugins (specifically Workflow). In a nutshell, the argument is that Movable Type is a product - one which costs money - and having to buy add-ons to provide what is perceived as core functionality isn't a good thing. It's an interesting argument, and one that I can understand as a consumer.
Today I added two new categories - Epicurious and Hall of Shame.
The first category will contain entries containing some relation to food. This isn't necessarily to say there will be recipes, but there might be. There will also be information about restaurants we go to, or even just quips that have something to do with food.
The second category is more of a meta-category in that you aren't likely to find any one subject within. Rather, this is just a way to highlight a particular sort of entry from all of the other categories. What sort of entry, you may ask? Entries about things that just don't make sense to me. Injustices. Ridiculous laws. Bad customer service. Pretty much anything, just so long as you can point a finger at it.
During the process, I actually went through every one of my entries and updated the categorization of them. As I did this, I found five things along the way.
The first is that I had developed a habit of trying to fit each post into a single category. That no longer makes sense to me. Most every post will have more than one category, and many will have three or four. This should help you to better find things that interest you.
The next thing I noticed was that I've been writing a lot more lately. Prior to November of last year, each month took up perhaps 2 pages of archives (meaning less than 20 entries each). Since November, the average has been more like 4 pages (something less than 40 entries) and that's moving rapidly towards 5 paqes.
I don't know that this means a anything, but I did find it interesting. I also noticed that I've been writing a lot more in each entry. Many of the earlier entries were two paragraphs long or thereabouts - the last few months have seen many (including this one) that are much longer than that!
Then I noticed that I like to point out stuff that just seems wrong. The brand new Hall of Shame category already contains 47 entries or something like that, across pretty much every other category on the system. I guess that should tell us something.
Fourth, I found that my archive navigation needed work. I first duplicated the nagvigation bar at the bottom of the page, so that if you are scrolling through the archives, you won't have to jump back to the top to visit the next page.
I've also updated this navigation a bit, so that instead of seeing only three pages (and two arrows), you will now see as many as seven pages (again with arrows as necessary). This means that you will see a list of possible pages for navigation that is often much closer to all of the available pages, rather than just a tiny subset of them. This in turn should speed navigation through any archive by allowing faster access to any given page.
I'd also like to integrate some next category/previous category navigation, but I haven't figured out how I'd like to do that just yet. It definitely would have helped to have links directly to the next and prior months (perhaps categories as well), so I'm going to figure out how to best integrate those.
Finally, I decided that I really like dynamic publishing. I think I'm going to convert my individual archives to use dynamic publishing as well.
On Thursday, I ordered three licenses for McAfee's managed VirusScan solution. It sounded quite impressive. Within a few minutes of submitting the order at shopmcafee.com, I received an order confirmation. Strangely enough, I couldn't find a bit of information on downloading the product. I submitted a request at their customer service site.
Again within a few minutes, I received a response. It was a canned response, that told me all about how to download the product. But I couldn't actually do it, because I didn't have the alleged "download button" which they talked about. I submitted another request. Again, a canned response very quickly. Since there was nothing else, I also replied to that email, as instructed.
Fast-forward to today. I still haven't received anything useful, but I did get the Grant Letter from McAfee. Figuring perhaps this was they key, I tried again. I was able to get signed into the customer support site using the Grant number, but still unable to find my way to the download. Eventually I found the site I needed - mcafeeasap.com - and tried again.
Now the site wouldn't let me in using the email address at which I've received an order confirmation, two support confirmations, a Grant Letter and the online customer support site. I called them. About 40 minutes later, nothing. So I found my way back to the support site and cancelled the order. It shouldn't be this hard.
Update: I talked with a Shannon at "McAfee Corporate" (whatever that may mean) towards the end of the call. She guaranteed me she would call me back with the information I needed. Thus far, I haven't heard from her (and it's been close to 12 hours). I'm not going to hold my breath.
Update: I received a call from Shannon just moments ago, roughly 16 hours after we got off the phone. Tell me - does it really take that long to find a phone number in today's world?
The City of Charlotte gave the NBA expansion Bobcats $300 million for a new arena. No, we didn't hand them a check, but we are building the arena for them and they get to reside in it, operate it and even keep the profits from it.
Charlotte is now wanting to pony up nearly $140 million to build a NASCAR hall of fame here in town. This one almost makes sense compared to the arena. At least it can reasonably be expected to generate the city some money, as well as perhaps keep the races we do have.
Movable Type 3.16 has been released! The upgrade was rather painless - most of the difficulty lies, as it always does, in making sure that I get the plugins in the old install into the new one (I typically install into a new directory rather than try and update an old one). Thus far, looks like it's going okay. Please let me know if not.
Ran into a problem today where a customer was receiving an odd message when they tried to login to the Trend Micro web console for OfficeScan: Your OfficeScan session has timed out. Please log in again. This message in Google didn't turn up much. Rather, it didn't turn up much in English. There were a handful of results in other languages, none of which would translate particularly well.
Luckily, I decided to venture onto the second page of the search results, where I found this page. Turns out that the IUSR user needed full control of the "Temp" folder under "pccsrv". Updated the permissions and it worked like a champ.
What I really didn't get is why the heck the Trend knowledge base articles aren't shared across languages. Those other sites were from Trend in different countries, and it was obviously pulling information from the knowledge base. Would have been great if, when I changed the domain name from one of those countries back to the US domain, if it just pulled the article and automatically translated it for me.
I've always been a fan of Reese's Peanut Butter Cups. Though for some reason, I don't like Reese's Pieces all that much. I can't explain it. In any case, the company recently introduced a "Chocolate Lovers" and a "Peanut Butter Lovers" edition of their classic peanut butter cups.
I didn't compare them directly, by measuing them or anything, but the "Chocolate Lovers" version seems to be quite similar, perhaps even identical, to the regular version. The "Peanut Butter Lovers", however, includes only a chocolate bottom - the top covering of the "cup" is a creamy peanut butter. It's not bad, but I think I like the complete chocolate "wrapper" around the peanut butter.
Incidentally, I think my favorite from them is actually the Fast Break bar - those things are great for a snack, and Wal-Mart has them for $0.44, so they don't cost a lot either. Great for a bite on the run when you just need something to tide you over.
It appears that the Associated Press has started a three-part story on the offerings of the Voice over Internet Protocol (or VoIP) world. I'd have to generally agree with the points they make. While there is an occasional issue with my Vonage service, it's usually just a "blip" - a word, or more often a part of a word - that doesn't come all the way through.
Moreover, such occurences are very rare. So much so that I don't think of them as issues - they just don't happen with enough frequency. I can only imagine things getting better, though Cringely may disagree with that assessment. We'll have to see how it goes, though Bob's point that ISPs could "tag" their own traffic to give it priority may make some amount of sense.
Nonetheless, some Bellsouth survey-takers came by yesterday. During the conversation, they seemed to assert that I could have two phone lines with umlimited long distance for $71 per month. I wonder why I would want to take advantage of such an offer.
First, I get that for nearly $20 less with Vonage. Second, Vonage doesn't give me the boatload of fees that Bellsouth does, inflating a bill from a cost of $44 to well over $60. Finally, and perhaps most importantly, why would I want to go with a company who apparently only sells their best plans in a door-to-door manner to unsatisfied customers, rather than offering that plan to everyone on their web site? That just makes no sense to me.
I've been landline-less once before, when I relied on my cell phone. For the last six months or so, we've had a Bellsouth line. That should end shortly, when the number is ported to Vonage. Then we'll all too happily go our own way from the company, and get back to the pleasure of an uncomplicated bill, without all the add-ons, fees and headaches provided so generously - at extra cost - by Bellsouth. I can't wait.
As a reminder - anyone looking to try Vonage, please let me know. I will send you a referral email that provides you with one month of free service if you sign up using the link in the email, and if you do continue as a customer, I get a credit, making my own service even cheaper!
In the course of about 15 minutes today, I received two comments that were in general agreement, yet each comment was left with a different name and email address. The incriminating evidence? The comments came from the same IP address.
Now it's likely that these commenters are simply of like minds and having some sort of party, and out looking for places to support their single-minded vision.
It's also remotely possible that each of these were users of the same ISP, who happened across my blog just minutes apart and commented on the same entry. Extremely unlikely, but possible.
The final option is that these commenters share the same view, and are in fact spammers of a new sort - ones that espouse their views in generally legitimate-sounding comments. This serves not to promote a link, but to enhance web results for a particular search.
As mentioned, this might not be the case - but it's a bit odd nonetheless. I'll leave the comments for now. But if it seems to increase, then it is a whole new frontier of comment spam - one that's going to be nigh impossible to fight.
