http://www.cnn.com/video/player/player.html?url=/video/us/2007/02/25/teselle.ca.stacking.competition.affl&wm=11

This is insane.  We are the most competitive society EVER.  The things we do to feel competition.  Look at that kid crying!
I am all in favor of being competitive, but stacking cups?  Come on.  I mean…come ON.

My wife often tells me.  Never say anything bad about anyone or anything ever.  And ESPECIALLY not in print, email or blog.  She is wise.  It reminded me of the first days of commadot.com.

http://web.archive.org/web/19970618002257/www.commadot.com/beta/html/archive.htm

I am starting to copy in those posts and edit the timestamp to match the original.
http://www.commadot.com/index.php?paged=47

Hmm, I wonder why my old posts look so jacked up from wordpress.  anyway…

There is something about opinions in print that make people feel it’s important.  I usually babble on about random stuff and stay positive.  But once in a while something deserves “calling bullshit”.  The previous post, although it stirred the pot, also got the words RTFM and RTFS removed from the FAQ.  I consider that a significant thing. 

I remember when Mark Ghuneim put my Billy Joel page live from the floppy disk in November of 1995.  The lightbulb went off my head.  Who am I to be putting something in print???  It’s a great thing for everyone on the net.  I say, use your voice.  It wasn’t always this easy.

Ive been working hard trying to learn how to do what came so naturally and easy to me in jQuery in YUI and YUI-ext.  I have been scouring the forums and the documentation.  I can’t understand any of it.  It just isn’t designed for a non-programmer.  But I have no choice.  YUI-ext is the framework I must use.

So just now I found a YUI-ext manual and FAQ. Look at the question near the top, “How do I figure out what error X is and why it’s happening?“  The answers make me so angry.  RFTM?  RTFS?  This is the sort of answer that might as well say, “If you don’t know, then we don’t want you to use this software.”  It’s rude and discouraging.  It has no style.

On the other hand, jQuery has never ever done that to me.  They have tons of examples and tutorials.  The people have been so friendly and helpful.  They have style.

I am so bummed right now.  So discouraged.  I miss jQuery.

UPDATE: RTFM and RTFS were removed from the FAQ.  Thank you. :)  Long live the power of the squeaky wheel.

The jQuery team has announced that Jack Slocum is planning to release a 1.0 version of his impressive YUI-ext project and a plugin for jQuery. Jack Slocum is a force of nature in the JavaScript library community. Not only are his components feature-rich, but they are beautifully designed with a real sense of style and UX. I really like the work he has done, but have always struggled to figure out how to use it. (It’s more complicated than my non-programmer brain can handle.)

I am happy to see the joint project and can only hope that one day, I can be using jQuery again. I love the freedom of expression it gave me as a UX Architect and Designer.

By the way, this is my first blog post using Digg.com. I hope it works.

read more | digg story

The trip was a comedy of errors from start to finish.

Original plans: SFO to Dallas to Indianapolis then drive to New Albany Indiana (near Louisville).  Return Friday.
We get to the airport LATE as usual.  They tell us, "Doesn’t matter.  Indianapolis is closed.  Don’t go to Dallas."  We comply and get rescheduled for a few hours later.

Plans #2: SFO to Dallas to Cincinnati then drive to New Albany.  This is better than before because it’s a little closer.  Return SATURDAY.
We fly to Dallas.  Kids yelling, happy happy joy joy.  We get to Dallas and tell us Cincy is closed.  We are in terminal B.  Darcie has also landed and met Miriam, a American Airlines person who is helping reroute everything.  She tells us to go over to Terminal D.  We didn’t think about our bags yet.  (MISTAKE)

Plans #3: Sleep in Dallas.  Get 6AM flight (UGH) to Louisville.  This is the closest airport to New Albany.  Return from Louisville which is nice on Saturday.
But what about our bags?  Miriam insists that we find out bags that night before going to the hotel.  The search is on.  We met a Barbie looking woman named Shelly with a muppet voice (sorry Shelly) who tries to track down the bags.  At first she is rude, then she warms up.  By the end, she says, They have been sitting at Terminal B.  The policy apparently is to send all the bags of a canceled flight UP to baggage claim immediately.  They have NO system to track bags.  It’s all "What does it LOOK like?"  Are you kidding me?  Airlines have got to get a RFID or better tracking system.  This sucks.  So we go over to Terminal B which is a million miles away.  Everyone is gone.  I start looking around and find the bags!  But wait!  They are enclosed in a locked glass cabinet.  I can SEE them, but I can’t touch them.

How frustrating is that?  I wanted to break the door open.  In fact it would have been easy.  The hinges for the door were on the OUTSIDE.  I could have easily lifted the pins out and opened the door that way.  But I imagined being arrested for baggage terrorism and with my beard would probably have been tortured in Gitmo.  So I decided to pursue another course.  I stopped two employees clearly on their way home and begged for help.  "Please, we have children!  Our car seats are in there!!!"  Yeah, like I wouldn’t have driven them in a second without booster seats.  WHAT-evah!  But it worked.  They stayed, and made a few phone calls.  A few tense minutes and then BA-BAM, they got the key.  Woo Hoo!  We have all our bags.  Well almost, two of Ben’s bags were missing.

Well, at least we had most of them and high-tailed it over to the hotel.  We slept for 4 hours and then had to run and get back to the Airport.  We were running a little late OF COURSE and they had to check our bags in with hand written tags.

We arrive in Louisville and get over to the baggage claim VERY LATE.  All of our bags have been taken off the conveyor belt and put on the side.  There they all are.  Well, not quite.  MY BAG was missing.  Crap!  It had the charger for the cell phones and the laptop.  They take down all out information and put in a tracer order.

Needless to say, they never found the luggage, so I had to go to Target and buy some new clothes.  We tried to ration the laptop usage, so no more movies.  When the trip was over, we headed back to Louisville Airport and I stopped by the baggage claim.  I asked about my bag and she said, "You can look around here."  I lift ONE bag and there underneath was my luggage.  I was like, "WHA!  It’s right here!!  The whole time?!?!"  How could they NOT find it!  Apparently the tags had been ripped off and my little neon sign with our phone and name had been broken off as well.

With the recovery of my bag, I ran over to get on the plane.  We made it.  On the way home now.  Matthew fell asleep just as we taxied out of the gate.  Minutes ticked by.  I started to wonder, "Why aren’t we in the air?"  The pilot announces that the wing is leaking fluid and they have to turn around.  This was after being on the ground for an hour.  We have to get off the plane.  Switching planes takes an hour and we get off the ground FINALLY.  Matthew wakes up midstream instead of sleeping all the way through.  We land, get ALL out luggage and drive home.  Marvin and Debra even DETAILED our car.  It looks brand new!!

Well, that’s the story.  It was tragic-comedy.  It was fun.  The funeral was fine, although they had Alice propped up for everyone to see a little TOO publically.  Freaked me out.  Ethan asked, "Did they saw her in half?"  Because he only saw her torso.  It was a memorable trip.  It makes me think I should ask Ethan to keep a journal of his trips in a diary.

I installed Vista on Katie’s laptop and my desktop.  We had to upgrade Katie’s ram because it was running SO SLOW at 1G, so we went to 1.5G.  The installation was a pain in the ass.  First of all, it wouldn’t let me upgrade from XP Pro to Home Premium.  I had to do a clean install.  That is retarded.  Then its slow.  it doesn’t run Aero which makes me think I shouldve gotten the Home Basic Edition for her.  Then this stupid User Access Control thing is bugging the shit out of me.  I had to turn it off.  I have no idea who thought it would be a good idea to ask the user every 5 seconds if they want to do something.  USERS (yes you) DO NOT READ!  They do not read the prompts.  The UAC is not going to save anyone.  They won’t make a child NOT install something.

For crying out loud, this is retarded.  If it wasn’t for the fact that all my favorite software runs on Windows like MS Streets and Trips and MS Word, Excel, PowerPoint, Quicken, (Finally one from another company!).   I can’t switch to Mac, can’t switch to Linux.  I am locked in.  Nothing I can do.  The Aero glass interface is cool, but it runs like a dog.  I have 4G of ram on my machine.  What more do they want from me?!?

I have no idea what the answer is.  Damned if we do, damned if we don’t.  My advice to anyone with Vista.  Turn of UAC.  It’s annoying as hell and won’t protect you in reality.

Software I love.  Really love using.

1. Avast Home Edition (Free)
2. Tag&Rename (Cheap)
3. Gmail (free)
4. MS Streets and Trips (reasonable)
5. Firebug for Firefox (Free)
6. MS PowerPoint 2007 (expensive)
7. MS Excel 2007 (expensive)
8. Picasa (Free)
9. TrayColor (Free)
10. Virtual CloneDrive (free)

Alice (Katie’s grandmother) died this week. She was a feisty old woman. She would would have turned 100 this year. I remember so vividly he telling Ben at Christmas, "I’m a wrapper!!" and crossing her fingers in a gang sign. She told great stories like when the first car arrived in town. She spoke alot about Homer, her husband. He would always remind her to "Straighten Up"! (She had a bad stoop).

Alice was friendly to me and I liked her very much. I will miss her during the holidays. My only wish is that somewhere, somehow, she has been reunited with her husband Homer and is having a ball.

Randomly, Anna Nicole Smith also died. Overdose of anti-depressants. She never got money from her 87 year old millionaire husband. I hope this is a lesson to all you trophy wives. You gotta get the money in your own name before the lawyers show up. I pray that Anna Nicole also meets her old husband somewhere. Hmm…It doesn’t quite have the same emotional impact as the wish for Alice. Although Alice never pole-danced as a stripper, she could have if she wanted to. And she would have put Anna Nicole to shame. Have I crossed the line to disrespecting the dead? Im sorry.

I tried out Xinha 4 Wordpress, but it didn’t quite work the way I wanted.  I am unhappy with all of these editors.
Now I am trying Code Markup.  It supposedely makes it so I can put in code snippets easier.  Let’s try:

 Background should be pink now.

And the actual rendering:

Background should be pink now.

It worked, but I still hate this editor from WordPress. I need to find something simpler. Stay tuned.

Using Script tags in WordPress is a pain in the ass.  They have a visual tab and a code tab, but the code tab does some strange parsing.  I want a REALLY code tab where I can type it in exactly as a want it.  I now have to look around for different WYSIWYG Editors for WordPress 2.1.  Oh well.

I miss jQuery alot.  It made my job so much richer.  I am struggling with YUI and YUI-ext.  They are much heavier (both in concept and in file size) and I am having trouble getting past the “hello world” stage.  The dialog between the guys who are developing this stuff is awesome.  People like Dean Edwards, Jack Slocum and John Resig.  I am happy just to be a  fly on the wall.  They have speed tests and lots of comparisons. Jack Slocum made a really nice theme called Aero for his stuff and now I see copies of the style all over.  (To be fair, it’s really the Vista theme from Microsoft, but still, it’s awesome for the web.)

Ben Nadel (finally) made his first jQuery experiment. Rey Bango said some really nice things about Ben.  Ben is awesome.  I can’t believe how far he has grown.  I wish I had more chance to work with him.  Ben is the smartest, most thoughtful engineer I know.  I hope he makes some cool jQuery stuff.

In an off topic note: Congrats to the Indianapolis Colts.  Great season! Next year, however, will be the year of the Jets.  Hopefully, they will have a killer draft in April.