dannyman.toldme.com

IKEA Flags, San Diego (Thanks, Juan23)

Don’t get me wrong, I mean, I love shopping at IKEA . . . the drive to the mega-store, the search for parking, the endless meandering through furniture and accoutrements, only to find yourself facing the stark reality of a giant warehouse, asking yourself if the Black-Brown BILLY bookshelf, which looks so black in the warehouse, is really the same color you were looking at in the showroom, and standing in line, wondering just what kind of crap they put in a 50c hot dog. But once you pay, and you’re rolling out the door, you know you’re not far from the actual joy of wrangling your heavy flat-packed furniture up the stairs and getting busy with the allen wrench.

But yesterday . . . well, I have officially given up on the Emeryville, CA IKEA. Here is my tale, as told in the call-and-response format that passes for “customer service” via the “Internet” these days: (more…)

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Upgrading WordPress to 2.0, which promises mucho new features . . . let us see . . . the site may be wonky for the next few hours?

Damn, that was easy. We’ll see what bugs crop up . . .

. . . well, I still need to figure out how to reverse the posts in some categories, but that is no biggy. Please chip in comments here, just to see if the new anti-comment-spam feature is doing its thing properly. :)

Cheers,

-danny

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Map of Ukraine, from the CIA Factbook, via Wikipedia.

So, first thing I did in 2006 was sleep in late, see of Yayoi and our houseguest Miyuki, who are going to spend the day in San Francisco riding cables cars and stuff, and make some toast and coffee and check out the Internet. And what do I see? Well, I see . . . Russia accusing Ukraine of “stealing” gas. And I ask myself “ugh . . . is this saber-rattling before a war?”

My thinking goes like this:
– Ukraine is not in NATO, it is with Russia’s CIS.
– The CIS is dominated by Moscow.
– Gazprom is effectively an arm of the Russian government.
– The “Orange Revolution” is believed to be viewed as a threat by Putin.
– War over natural resources is a popular theme. Iraq accused Kuwait of stealing oil . . . (more…)

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So, I discovered yesterday, that if one goes to Google, and types i am lame, then my web site is the first hit. Don’t that make me feel special?

But I didn’t drag you here for my inverse ego thing, here’s some cool videos that I have seen recently:
Internet Musical — World of Warcraft Monsters praise the Internet, in song. Best. Video. Ever!
Climbing Russian Kids — Man, talk about making good use of a post-utopian wasteland. Hollywood should steal these kids for stuntmen.
Sushi Documentary — Everything you shouldn’t know about sushi.
Devil Dogs — Lucian Reed went to Iraq to take photographs. This video is a valuable glimpse at how our folks are doing over there.

I have decided that Google Video is mostly tolerable. It’s not standard CODECs in files . . . probably they have some decent reasons, but unlike RealVideo, or QuickTime, they don’t require you to install spyware on your computer and watch the video in a little 2″ window. So, well, okay, maybe forcing you to stream . . . why? Maybe that is somewhat evil, but it is definitely less evil than “Video on the Internet” that has come before, and easier for the masses than Bittorrent . . . though it’d be neat . . . give it time . . .

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Ahhh, so in my getting to grips with, I have a few gripes about Linux. Some day I may cultivate these into a well-formed, coherent technical explanation, but just now . . . just now, I’ll share with you a special favorite rant of mine.

New install, right? By default, it wants to check the install media (who cares?) then there’s a screen that says “welcome to <version of Red Hat>” where you get the chance to say “ohhh, wrong CD …” then you move on to disk partitioning, and you have to intentionally select that yes you want to erase all data, and enter a bunch of other parameters … network … firewall, SE-Linux … altogether 10-15 minutes if you know what you are doing. Nothing onerous. Lots of “yes, a firewall, and these other things, these are all a good ideas, I’ll just mostly agree to what you suggest.” (more…)

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“There will not be crazy, flashy, graphical doodads flying and popping up all over the Google site. Ever.”

Posted by Marissa Mayer, VP of Search Products & User Experience “About the AOL Announcement”

Unfortunately, I don’t think you could hold them to that statement, legally.

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It would seem that the dinner sushi buffet is back for Walnut Creek, on weeknights, for a limited time only. When it first opened, the dinner sushi buffet was a wonder to behold! Giant servings of raw, delicious fish. It was too good to be true, and indeed when they realized how much money they were losing, they stopped it.

Well, tonight I was thinking “spicy tuna roll” and found the buffet back in action. But it is a far cry from “too good to be true” . . . more like “dude, what do you expect from a sushi buffet? Fool!” Oh well. Maybe Gourmet Sushi will actually re-open soon. The sign says he will open before Christmas, but last I seen, the windows were still covered with newspapers and there was an envelope from the IRS sticking out of the mail slot. If he skips town . . . well, restaurants come and restaurants go, but that guy has this intense aura about him that kind of reminds me of Basil Fawly, except with inscrutable Asian powers. I’m going to miss that guy.

I’m not feeling too good . . . but if I survive the indigestion I get to fly to Chicago tomorrow, and see the fam.

Happy Solstice Holidays to you!

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The January 6, 2006 issue of _The Week_ reports that:

“Atheists are suing the Utah Highway Patrol to remove roadside crosses erected to honor fallen officers. At issue are 14 12-foot-high crosses, each bearing the name of an officer killed in the line of duty. All the fallen officers were Christian, and their families are unanimously opposed to the crosses’ removal.”

(more…)

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You know . . . I have uploaded over 3,000 images to Flickr, and I occasionally like to check out which are most popular.

Of the images that I have taken, the second most popular is this: (more…)

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As far as I know, Tellme doesn’t have a “Tellme Labs” in the manner that Google does, though I did spend some time on my own researching the intracies of LDAP and of PXE bootstrap and OS installation.

So it was nice when I was recently clued in to Tellme Jazz. This creature doesn’t explain itself much, but I find:

• You can collaborate on a shared addressbook. For example, the “Former Tellmes” group, or set one up for you family, peeps, co-workers, and everyone in the group can help add or maintain the data.
• You can record messages, tossing in various “dazzlers” and send them along to individual friends, or groups of friends. (Think “audio Greeting Cards.”)
• Alternatively, you can send text messages . . .

(more…)

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I was tweaking the site navigation–and I welcome any feedback a reader may have–and I had to grab a plugin to allow me to link to next month / previous month / next year / previous year:

Next Archive Date / Previous Archive Date Plugin from scriptygoddess

I appreciate scriptygoddess’ work, as I’m using her paginate plugin as well. Unfortunately, the example on her site is kind of nasty. So, if someone is casting about on Google, here’s the code in my sidebar template:

    <?php if (is_year()): ?>
        <p><b>By Year</b><br />
        <?php previous_archive_date() ?>
            ...
        <?php next_archive_date() ?></p>
    <?php elseif (is_month()): ?>
        <p><b>Last Month</b><br />
        <?php previous_archive_date() ?>
        <p><b>Next Month</b><br />
        <?php next_archive_date() ?></p>
    <?php endif; ?>

Thanks for the code, Jennifer!

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So, Jakob Nielsen is the “cranky old man” of web design, but he’s mostly right. Still, when I saw the title “Weblog Usability” I scoffed . . . weblogs suck! Criticizing “weblog usability” sounds a bit like criticizing children for watching cartoons.

But, like I said, he’s usually right. How does my “weblog” . . . I call it a “web site” with an “online journal” that predates that awful awful word, “blog” but . . . I’m running WordPress, this is a . . . a . . . blog . . . well, how does dannyman.toldme.com stack up to Nielsen’s standards? (more…)

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