the blog

With FF3 now out, and me upgrading quite a few versions of Wordpress, I'm going to release a new theme. Look for it in a week or two.

And for those who don't know - I'm getting married! The date is August 30, 2008! Hoorah!

My blog has been hacked - my apologies if it has been sending you spam like crazy!

Working on an update to security to get things fixed. Not sure how this happened.

I've finally got ubuntu 8.04 on my laptop. It's fantastic and I love it. That is all on that topic.

I got a question from Nick, who asks why I've given up on Livejournal and moved to my own blog. I haven't given up on Livejournal; I just don't have that much time to write these days. I have been reading more than I've been writing on either. But the reason that this blog gets updated more than any of the other blogs I contribute to is t…

I just read The Top 5 Reasons Why the Customer is Always Right is Wrong and it's interesting, but there's a whole part of customer interaction that they have kind of skipped over, and I think it's important. I'm going to add my #6, which is really just more on #5.

The Customer is Frequently Not Right.

It's kind of a simple th…

I went to Turtle Jack's in Guelph with my lovely ladies earlier this week. It was an interesting trip. Full disclosure: I used to frequently dine at TJs, and really enjoy it.

We were seated immediately and solicitously cared for by our waitress, who was a very good, bordering on great, server. She was great with our 2 year old (which frequently makes or breaks a dining experience for us). She took our drink orders right away and brought…

I frequently frequent the website Reddit, which is a great source of interesting news and long-tail internetisms. I find it more enjoyable than a lot of the other 2.0-ish news sites out there, for a variety for a variety of reasons that are unimportant, but have to do with community, content and usability.

A small, but entertaining, part of the Reddit experience is the Reddit Alien. There's a staff ar…

Today has not been good.

Item the first, for your examination: I am ill. Not well. Sick. Though, to be fair, I'm much improved from yesterday and many yesterdays before then. I have a chest cold. It's a really unfriendly one that makes me feel like crap. I've been coughing up multi-coloured sputum for a week.

Sorry for the imagery.

Item the second: we have but one baby seat for the two cars that my partner and I own. This …

It's a wonderful day for a neighbour! I've got some great neighbours and I'd like to talk about them briefly.

Directly to the south of us, there's a Mabel, who is 94 and lives alone. She's very active, has lots of guests, enjoys gardening, and is just generally very nice. She's delightful to talk to and is just generally impressive. I hope I'm half so active when I make it to her age. Come to that, I hope I make it to her age.

To…

My little girl is almost 2, and her language acquisition is stunning. She has used sentences with up to 7 words in them, and we stopped counting the words in her vocabulary months ago. It is an incredibly interesting thing to behold and can be phenomenally hilarious.

Earlier this week, I was coding away furiously at the computer, while the little one was eating crackers and playing. I was somewhat paying attention to her but, for the mo…

I had a question from a coworker the other day and it became obvious to me that they did not really understand what the word Cascading meant in the phrase Cascading Style Sheets.

Let me 'splain.

No, no. There is too much. Let me sum up.

From the OED defines a Cascade thusly:

1. A waterfall. a. Usually, a small waterfall; esp. one of a series of small falls, formed by water in its desce…