Democrats and Republicans (3) Jul 20, 2005
Republicans are generally dumb, while Democrats are generally hateful.  Republicans try to focus on the positive aspects of things, which usually means ignoring the negative ones.  For example, a Republican would say how well the war effort in Iraq is going.  A Democrat would say something like, "[insert exact number here] Americans have died since this 'war' began.  Is it worth that many American lives?  And what was the original purpose of the war?  To get Osama Bin Laden.  Have we found him?  No!  Therefore the war is unsuccessful."  While all these points are true, Republicans ignore them and focus on the fact that Saddam Hussein is no longer in power.  Democrats point them out and focus on character flaws in the leadership of our country.  Without Democrats and the American left, the country wouldn't be where it is today.  We wouldn't have things like civil rights, women's rights, and stuff like that.  The left has always brought about unpopular opinions and made them standard policy.  This is good.  It was a good idea.  But a lot of ideas are good.  Take the Catholic church for example (Politics and religion in the same post?  Bold!).  The Catholic church set up many things in the beginning that were great ideas.  The idea of catechism/confirmation was to teach young people about Jesus and to baptize them into Christendom.  The problem is that things change over time.  Nowadays, people blindly go through catechism to please their parents (or to avoid punishment from their parents) and make a significant profession of their faith without even blinking.  So anyway, back to politics.  Republicans usually don't have answers to Democrats' questions about the goals of the war.  They usually just ignore them or find a way around them.  And let's face it, President Bush isn't the most eloquent man alive.  I think he means well.  It just doesn't always come out well.  So then there's name calling, which Republicans and Democrats both participate in.  In conclusion, I would say that both parties in this two-party system have their problems.  But I also think it's obvious that I lean a certain way. #religion
Website rules (4) Jul 20, 2005
I spend a lot of time on the internet.  The person reading this can probably say the same thing.  In my internet travels, I've come across a lot of junk that makes my life difficult.  So I've compiled a list of things not to do when designing a website.
  1. Don't make things scroll.  That was cool when it first came out, but it's not cool anymore.  This includes stuff like news tickers and marquees that scroll across your screen.
  2. Don't make things blink.  Not only is this annoying, it's not compliant with HTML standards, meaning it works in some browsers but not in others.  Note to users:  you can stop things that blink by pressing the "Stop" button or escape.
  3. Don't use Flash.  Flash is a great tool.  I have no idea what it's capable of, but it seems to be a pretty cool thing.  Just don't clutter up your website with stupid annoying Flash animations that take forever to load.  The best way to drive users away from your website is to make it take long to load.
  4. Don't use ads.  I know this is a big thing for some people, but I think you'll find that the most useful websites in the world are ad-free.  I think even Google used to be ad-free.  If you have to use ads to support your site, use Google AdSense or something like that.  A few little text-based non-obtrusive ads are much better than a bunch of big banners that take up time and space.
  5. Don't use popups.  This is an obvious one.  The great thing about this is that it's an almost non-existent problem these days with all the popup blockers out there.
  6. Don't use animated gifs.  They attract unnecessary attention.
  7. Don't change the status bar.  It always causes problems.
  8. Don't change the title bar dynamically.  In other words, don't do those little DHTML and JavaScript tricks that have things moving around in the title bar.
  9. Don't use embedded videos or sounds.  They're just stupid.  Nobody likes to hear some stupid little MIDI song when they visit your site.
#technology
Refer Jul 20, 2005
When I used to work at Schering-Plough, my boss-guy always referred to one of my co-workers as "Joe, the heavy-set guy".  Every time he mentioned him, even after I had been there for 10 weeks, he still said the part about him being heavy-set.  Plus, this heavy-set guy Joe sat in the cubicle right next to mine, so I knew who my boss-guy was talking about every single time.  It makes me wonder:  what do people say about me when they refer to me?  "Go talk to Dave, the skinny nerdy one."  "I need to go see Dave, the one with stuff always hanging out his nose."  What if there's some major physical attribute or character flaw that I'm overlooking that people have adopted as my description?  And what about that day when I find out?  "You think I have a big butt?"  "I have tons of ear hair?"  That'll be a bad day. #psychology
Plane Jul 15, 2005
Things that airline pilots say are amazing.  Not only do they not know how to control the pitch or volume of their voice (Jacob Silj), they speak endlessly and erratically and give way to much useless information.  For instance, when you first take off, they usually say something about reaching a cruising altitude and how long the flight will take and that they'll make up time in the air.  When I get on a plane, I just want to read my book or take a nap.  I don't care about anything they have to say.  And what's the deal with making up time in the air?  How can they possibly make up time in the air?  Fly faster?  Why wouldn't they just fly that fast to begin with?  And then they keep ending their sentences with long pauses so that you think they're done talking and you start to read your book or magazine.  But then they interrupt and ruin your concentration.  My recommendation:  use as few words as possible.  Nobody cares how fast we're flying or the temperature of the airport we're flying into.  Another interesting and annoying thing is the language used by the flight attendants.  No longer do we talk about cups and napkins.  They're called service items, part of the beverage service.  We all know that there's no smoking anywhere on the plane.  There hasn't been for like 15 years.  Instead of talking endlessly about all these rules and restrictions and doing it in a language strange, try speaking english or maybe even street talk.  "Hey.  Don't smoke.  If we crash into the ocean, you can float on your seat.  If you can't work your seatbelt, get off the plane; you're not smart enough to fly." #travel
Foreigners Jul 14, 2005
People think they can do whatever they want.  In the airport the other day, a guy took his shoes off and put his foot up on his knee, so that his sock-covered foot was ominously close to the face of the person sitting right next to him.  I know people in other cultures can't quite grasp the idea of personal space, but this is more than just space.  People in America have a general hatred of feet.  A good way to insult someone is to put your bare foot on them.  You'll always get a "Gross!" 

I used to eat lunch with a guy who used to take a big bite of food and then just let the undesirable pieces fall out of his mouth and back onto his plate.  I had to try pretty hard not to throw up.  Maybe that was an acceptable thing to do in his homeland of Africa, but we don't do that here in America.  But it wasn't like having a big bite of spaghetti and letting some fall out of your mouth after you bite it in half.  It was like eating a salad and just pushing the romaine lettuce out of your mouth with your tongue, kind of like how a baby drools.  Or it's like eating meat and spitting out a piece of fat, but doing it in plain view. #sociology
Waste my time Jul 13, 2005
I have this thing with people who waste my time.  I had to get to a meeting this morning, so I had to leave the hotel by a certain time.  There's one other person on travel with me right now, so we were traveling together in the same rental car.  So I show up at the car at the time we're supposed to meet, and he's not there.  No problem.  Yet.  I wait a few minutes, and he's still not there.  Since it's first thing in the morning, I start thinking that he could've missed his alarm and overslept or something like that, so I walk to his room (which wasn't very close).  Just as I reach the door, he's walking out and ready to go.  I say hey.  He says hey.  Nothing else.  No "Sorry I'm 10 minutes late and might make us late for the meeting," no "I hope this doesn't ruin your career seeing that everyone will be watching as we walk in late."  Nothing like that.  Why do people think it's ok to be unreliable? 

While I'm on the subject of wasting my time, there's a guard shack at work.  On most mornings, I drive up, show him my ID without even opening my window, and he motions to drive through.  But recently, he made me stop my car and roll down my window, and he looked at my ID more closely.  Then he asked me to take it out of the little plastic case.  Then he took it from my hand.  Then he looked at the back of it.  Then he gave it back to me and motioned for me to go through.  Since this was an utter waste of time, it made me a little mad.  [Note:  For those of you who don't know, the easiest and best way to make me mad is to do something in the morning.  I always wake up in the morning feeling like I got about 15 minutes of sleep, so everything on earth gets to me.]  It was obvious that this guy's supervisor told him to look more closely at IDs.  I'm fine with that.  Do what you're told.  But I'd like to talk to that supervisor who thought it would be a good idea to casually glance at the back of an ID.  What were you expecting to find?  This same thing happened another time.  It happened to be raining harder than I've ever seen in my life.  It was about 7:40 am.  The guy at the guard shack made me open my window and take my ID out of the case, all the while rain was pouring in my window and onto me.  I was pretty psyched that morning. 

How about cops?  One of my friends is becoming a state cop.  God bless him.  I can't stand cops.  And it's not because they keep fining me for breaking the law.  It's because they do things that not only waste my time, they waste everyone's time and actually cause more problems than they solve.  Here's a bright idea:  let's set up a road block on Route 15 so that we can check if people are wearing their seat belts.  This was done by the cops in Dover.  I understand that seat belts save lives and that safety is important.  Just don't waste my time.  And how about this idea:  let's pull people over on the highway during rush hour traffic.  Let's park our squad car in the middle of an intersection and direct traffic.  Let's pull people over and park our squad car so it juts out into the road. 

And finally, I come to tolls.  Getting past the stupid idea that tolls are needed to pay for road improvements and upkeep because regular taxes don't pay for that, I still have a problem with tolls.  On the beautiful and wonderful Garden State Parkway in lovely and affordable and spacious (not overcrowded) New Jersey, tollbooths pop up every few miles.  My question is this:  What idiot came up with the idea to cause a stop in the regular flow of traffic traveling at 70 mph so that people can slow down to 0 mph, line up and pay to use the road?  EZPass is a great invention.  High Speed EZPass is even better.  What on earth took them so long to come up with that?  One day, some engineers sat down and said, "Hmm, these tolls seem to be causing traffic.  What if there was a way to collect a toll without having people slow down?  We could collect tolls when people exit the highway.  Nah!  That's what the Turnpike people did."  And thus we have High Speed EZPass, the long-sought-after solution to a made up solution to a non-existent problem. #lifestyle
Airports Jul 13, 2005
Airports are the hardest places on earth to concentrate.  There are a billion people walking around; people are talking to each other; people are talking on their cell phones (some conversations are literally one-sided:  there's no one on the other end); airline employees at the gate yell incoherent babble about certain people checking in and about boarding by zones; the recorded voice on the intercom constantly drones about not accepting strange packages from people (who actually does that?).  And I sit there, trying to read a book.  It's impossible.  But some people can do it.  I'm amazed by these people.  They're totally engrossed in what they're reading and wouldn't look up even if a bomb went off.  I wish I had that level of concentration. #travel
Travel Jul 13, 2005
Walking into your hotel room after a long day of traveling is probably the best feeling in the world.  It makes sense:  you spend all day in uncomfortably hot or cold places with little to no leg room.  You sit next to people who talk loudly to their co-workers or on their cell phones.  Kids kick your seat and stand in your way when you try to walk through the terminal.  You spend the whole day in a constant battle.  And then you finally get to that hotel room where you can close the door, close the window blinds, and finally have no sensory input.  Ah, the little things. #travel
Driving Jul 9, 2005
I think I have a problem.  Every time I'm driving, I speed, pass people, and get mad.  The reason is because I subconsciously feel that driving is an utter waste of time.  I have an origin and a destination.  The only thing keeping me from my destination is the time it takes to drive there.  I'm still waiting for someone to invent a teleporter that'll make travel instantaneous. #travel
Slack Jul 8, 2005
Some people don't like their jobs because they don't feel like they're being challenged, or because they spend a lot of time doing nothing.  I'm all about jobs like that.  I've been working hard my entire life:  I've been in school since I was 4 years old; I worked my butt off through algebra and Civil War nonsense; I actually did work during high school (unlike you slackers); and I spent many late nights in college getting work done.  My feeling is that I deserve an easy job.  Why should I continue to work hard?  I deserve a break.  Plus, we all know that the more you get paid, the less work you actually do.  So I figure I'll just coast right on to retirement and continue to get mandatory salary increases.  Ah, the joys of a diploma, that stupid little piece of paper that represents my entire college career. #business