Sweet tea (4) Jun 15, 2006
When Shara mentioned her sweet tea recipe, it got me thinking.  Man, I love sweet tea.  I don't know what it is about the stuff.  It's just iced tea with a bunch of sugar.  But there's just something so inherently good about it.  Maybe it's because it's a regional thing.  You can't get sweet tea in the northeast, so it's a bit of a novelty for me.  Maybe it's the fact that "sweet tea" and "iced tea" are two completely different things (I believe "iced tea" is equivalent to Nestea or another similar instant disappointment).  Maybe it's the fact that a sugary, icy drink on a blazing hot southern summer day just absolutely hits the spot.  Whatever it is, I love sweet tea.  And every time I visit the south, I order it unashamedly and often. #food
Visiting nurses response Jun 15, 2006
I got a reply about the visiting nurses thing:
Dear Mr. Hosier,

Thank you so much for taking the time and effort to inquire about our billboard campaign, "Insist on Visiting Nurses in Their 90's". 

This statement refers to the second line on the billboard,  "95% client satisfaction", meaning our visiting nurses deliver compassionate care that achieves top "grades" -- currently at 95% satisfaction. 

This grading of satisfaction is determined by random telephone surveys conducted periodically by a private firm on behalf of our agency. 

Visiting Nurse Association of Northern New Jersey (VNANNJ) is the premier non-profit healthcare agency serving the greater Morris area, so I'm very pleased to say that our overall client satisfaction ratings have always received top marks "in the "90's". 

One of the most difficult things to achieve in outdoor advertising is attracting attention to the message.  We clearly attracted your attention, but I'm sorry that our intent was not readily apparent to you.  I sincerely appreciate the effort you took to contact us. This is very helpful in our ongoing efforts to communicate the quality of our service to those in need of home health care.
So it appears that Mike and Britt are right.  I still don't get it.  I've read it about 600 times, and it still doesn't make sense.  As Britt said, it's spectacularly poorly phrased.  I'm gonna email the lady back and ask her about it. #entertainment
User-hated website design Jun 15, 2006
This article is about some of the things users hate most about websites.  On the list are the usual things like obtrusive ads and difficult navigation, but one additional thing they talked about was the use of Flash animations.  "Flash animations are an obvious, yet stellar, example of what users hate in a Web site; the skip intro button is the most used button on the Internet."  Amen to that!  Websites that use Flash as a means to display data are often slow, difficult to navigate, and just plain annoying.  Most movie and band websites consist of a ridiculously small amount of content and an abundance of animation, sound, video, and nonsense.  If a website needs to show a "XX%" for how much has been downloaded, it's definitely not worth my time.  (via Digg) #technology
Ubuntu in VMware Jun 15, 2006
I keep reading all kinds of stuff about Ubuntu Linux and how wonderfully great it is.  I've looked into it a few times, and I've even downloaded it and burned it on a CD.  But the more I learn about what's involved in the installation process (or the more I don't understand about it), the more I put it off.  I keep reading something about disk partitioning and reformatting, and I'm not completely comfortable with doing this to my computer.  All the websites I've read have said that it's no big deal, and all I have to do is "back up all my important data and have a fresh Windows install".  That's not as easy as it sounds.  Or, rather, it's not as simple as it sounds.  I have Windows configured exactly how I like it, and I have certain programs and certain settings that would take weeks to transfer to a new install. 

Enter VMware.  VMware is a program that runs virtual machines, which enable you to run an operating system within an operating system.  I tried it once in the past with some sort of Linux-on-a-stick or something like it, but I wasn't all that pleased with the size or speed of the whole process.  But then I found a downloadable Ubuntu Virtual Appliance, which seemed to make it pretty easy to try out Ubuntu without actually installing the operating system.  The download comes with version 5.10 (Breezy Badger), so it's slightly outdated.  But I quickly found that Linux likes to update itself, so I let it do its thing.  I just clicked on the little popup in the upper right corner that said something about updates, and everything downloaded and installed.  It found a network connection right away, and I didn't have to tweak anything.  One annoying thing is that it kept asking for a password to do things, but the password "ubuntu" seemed to work for everything. 

So the next step was to try the latest version of Ubuntu, which is version 6.06 (Dapper Drake).  The thing with Linux is that there's a steep learning curve, and no tutorial starts from the very beginning.  So here's a mini tutorial from my experience:  I clicked on Applications and selected Accessories -> Terminal.  I typed gksudo "update-manager -d" and pressed enter.  (This link shows a screenshot of this, but the text says "gksu" instead of "gksudo".  I have no idea what either of these things mean, but I do know that "gksu" didn't work for me.)  So then it went through some steps of downloading, installing, and cleaning up, and told me to restart.  There was one error in the middle of the installation, but I just clicked on "OK" (or "Oh Well").  After restarting the system, the username and password are both "ubuntu".  One thing that didn't work after the upgrade was the network connection.  So I clicked on System and selected Administration -> Networking.  I clicked on Properties for the Ethernet Connection and enabled the connection.  I changed the Configuration option to DHCP (don't know what that means) and clicked OK.  Then I clicked on the Activate button and loaded Firefox (blue globe icon near upper left corner) to make sure everything worked.  And it worked.  So now I'm running Ubuntu Dapper Drake from within Windows XP by using VMware.  And it didn't change my installation of Windows at all.  Not bad. #technology