Back when I was about 7, my favorite meal was pizza and root beer.  Not much has changed in 16 years.  I still like pizza, though maybe not as much as when I was 7.  But I'm definitely still a huge fan of root beer.  Barq's is obviously the best there is.  Its claim of "Barq's has bite" is completely true.  It does in fact have bite.  I wonder what that is?  It's probably a nearly-toxic combination of harsh chemicals.  Whatever; I like it.  A&W is like the Bud Light of root beers:  It's simple, cheap, readily available, and not the best.  But hey, sometimes it's all ya got.  I think some of the generic brands are better than A&W.  But you never really know what you're gonna get.  One thing you can count on:  An unhealthy amount of sugar and some cancer causing toxins to give you that "lift" you so unhealthily desire. #food

I wrote about TextPad a few months ago.  The one problem with TextPad is that it costs money.  You can still use it if you don't pay money, but you're reminded every time you start it up.  With that in mind, I started looking at other text editors.  I found a free one that seemed to get some good reviews:  PSPad.  It's pretty configurable and has some great functions, but it's kind of slow.  It takes a few seconds to start up, and when I want to view a tiny little text file, I don't want to wait a few seconds. 

Enter Notepad2.  I've been using it for a few weeks now.  It's a lot like Windows Notepad:  It's simple, small, and fast.  But unlike Windows Notepad, it has syntax highlighting and a few other goodies.  And it's open source, which means that people can edit it and do other cool things with it.  The one thing it's missing is system integration.  Never fear, Mr. Internet is here!  This link explains how to replace the Windows Notepad with Notepad2 (or really anything else).  This link explains how to add Notepad2 (or really anything else) to the right-click menu. #technology

Last May/June, I decided to sign up for Dish Network because they sounded like they had a great deal:  60 channels for $19.99, with a 1- or 2-year commitment.  I decided to go with it when we moved into our new house instead of bringing the old cable box with us.  That's when the problems started. 

When we were moving into the new house, the guy came to set things up.  He went up on the roof and performed some tests to see how strong the signal was.  He determined that we would need to put the dish on a pole so that it could get a clear view of the sky.  So instead of having an unobtrusive little dish on our roof, we have an unobtrusive little dish on top of an 8-foot pole on our roof.  "Don't worry, you won't notice it."  He was right, you don't really notice it.  Except when you look up at the roof and see an 8-foot pole with a little dish on top of it.  It's hideous. 

When we sat on the couch to watch some TV, that's when the next problem became evident.  When changing channels, there's about a 3- to 5-second delay.  It's not that big of a deal unless channel surfing is your method of choice.  Like all digital TV providers, Dish has a channel guide that shows you what's on so you don't have to channel surf.  That's cool and all, but why is there such a long delay?  There's even a delay when you go to a channel from within the channel guide.  I looked it up and found a few links that talk about the same problem but offer no solution to it.  One person even said, "Are you people in that much of a hurry to get to the new channel?"  To that I say, "Yes, you idiot."  Another person offered the explanation that it takes a little time for the receiver to figure out which transponder to communicate with.  That's all fine and dandy, but I want a solution, not an explanation. 

After about 3 months of Dish service, the bill suddenly changed from $19.99 to $31.99.  I think I called their tech support, and somebody told me that the low price lasted for the first 3 months, after which it jumped up to the normal price.  I looked through my papers and emails and tried to find the thing that I thought said that the low price lasted for a whole year.  I couldn't find it, so I'm still stuck in this prison they call a 1-year agreement.  Some may argue that $31.99 is cheap for any kind of TV service.  I agree.  But it's not $19.99, which is what I thought I was getting myself into.  Now we don't even have enough money to clean our Bentley with silk cloth.  That's just not fair. 

But in the end, I'll probably stick with Dish in the future because I don't see a better alternative.  As soon as somebody comes out with TV a la carte, I'll be the first person to sign up.  Plus, the damage is already done:  I've been paying the normal price for several months now; I've gotten used to the channel changing delay; and that big ugly pole on our roof really isn't that noticeable (until you look at it and can't believe you didn't notice it before).  The other solution is to get rid of TV altogether, which is definitely a viable alternative. #entertainment

I tried using WP-ShortStat in the past, but stopped because I was getting tons and tons of referrer/referral spam, and all this spam was filling up my database.  I looked into it and found a way to reject referrer spam by using .htaccess.  I tried a few things out and it seems to be working great.  I'll be continually updating the keywords it uses to reject spam, but that's something that I'll probably be doing less and less over time. #technology

I'm currently using Jeff Minard's WP-ShortStat plugin.  It's a great statistics plugin that shows recent referrers, browsers, operating systems, pages viewed, search strings, and hits.  It didn't work at first, and I found out that it's not completely compatible with WordPress 2.0.1, but there's a really simple fix:  On line 13, change "if (function_exists('check_admin_referer')) {" to "if (function_exists('user_can_access_admin_page')) {".  That's it.  It works fine after that. #technology