Crying church babies Mar 12, 2006
Sometimes when I'm at church, babies cry.  They're known to do that, so it's not that big of a deal.  But how long should a mother wait before she leaves the church service because of her crying baby?  My lack of children (and understanding) forces that number to be about 10-15 seconds.  If the baby doesn't stop crying or making noise in that amount of time, the parent (not necessarily the mom) should leave.  And lots of churches have "crying rooms", which are sound-proof booths that have a view of the pastor and speakers piping in the sound.  Unfortunately, many parents have a different point of view.  They try their unsuccessful techniques, like saying "Shhh shhh", rocking the baby back and forth, or forcing objects into its mouth.  Most of these techniques fail because the baby knows it'll get what it wants if it just keeps making noise.  It's worked in the past; it'll work again.  So the parent waits around for a while and hopes that these noises will stop. 

I hate to sound selfish, but I pretty much am.  When babies make noise, it's distracting both for me and for everyone in the room, including the pastor.  I suppose some people can block out this noise, but like I mentioned, I lack children and understanding.  So I think the parent should take the baby out of the church service for the benefit of everyone else in the room.  Maybe it's just not a good idea to have young children in church services.  Or maybe these people should take advantage of the almost always prevalent "child care".  Whatever the case, the number is 10-15 seconds, and that's what I'm sticking with. #religion
Redirects Mar 11, 2006
I finally set up several .htaccess redirects so that search engines will point to the newer locations of certain files and directories.  The biggest one was that there were several things that pointed to /blog/ instead of the root directory, which was a change I made back in September, 2005.  So there should hopefully be less 404 errors now. #technology
Interface not registered (4) Mar 10, 2006
If you stupidly use Windows Media Player to burn CDs (like me) and you get an error that says, "Interface not registered", there's a simple solution:  Download and install the latest version of WMP, even if you already have the latest version.  For some reason, this magically fixes the problem and it allows you to once again burn CDs. #technology
Amazon review Mar 10, 2006
I was looking around Amazon and found the funniest review I've ever read:
Remember that one time, you went to Sea World, and you waited at the dolphin tank hoping at least one of those stupid fish would swim up to you, because you were some how special?

But instead, they would swim up to the little Mexican girl with the pink conciera dress for some weird reason, who totally didn't deserve to have ALL of the dolphins' attention.

And then finally as you gave up and secretly flipped the bird to the dolphins underwater, so your grandma wouldn't find out and hit you with her wooden shoe in front of everybody like she probably had just done a few minutes before that, one of those stupid dolphins finally swam up to you and you got to touch it, just for a moment.

Remember that? Do you remember how it felt? Like a rubbery wet balloon, filled with meat.

THAT'S how your face will feel when you use this shaver. Like a perfectly smooth, rubbery wet balloon, filled with meat.

Perfection.

If you aren't careful though, this thing will cut you... much like that little girl would have, had you dolphin-blocked her one too many times.
This might persuade me to buy it. #products
Kids selling stuff Mar 10, 2006
I keep seeing kids selling stuff outside the supermarket.  It's really annoying.  I really don't like when people harass me and try to get me to do/buy things.  My feeling is that everyone should just leave me alone.  I'm at the store for a specific purpose; not much can change that.  But as I brutally say no to these kids and make them cry (not quite), I feel a little bad.  And that's how they get ya.  Middle-aged men don't sell candy outside food stores for a reason:  Nobody wants to buy things from middle-aged men (not to mention the fact that most middle-aged men work for a living and would have no need to sell candy).  But my point is that people tend to do things for kids, and adults know this.  So these adults set up candy-selling fundraisers because they know they'll sucker some poor old jerk into buying something from some snot-nosed little kids (that's really the best way I could put that).  That's how the Girl Scouts stay in business.  And God bless those Thin Mints. 

But I still say no. #business
Rename files Mar 10, 2006
I just found out the most awesome way to rename multiple files at once.  Select a bunch of files, right-click on the first one in the series, and click on Rename (or press F2).  Rename it something (and put "(1)" at the end of the name if desired) and press enter.  And blammo, Mr. Windows automatically renames the rest of the selected files with the same name but different numbers at the end.  I just used it to rename a bunch of my pictures.  Amazing. #technology
Bear arms Mar 10, 2006
This picture shows a woman on the subway exercising her right to bear arms.  (via Kottke) #lifestyle
Bad Behavior Mar 10, 2006
It's been 3 days, and the spammers found me.  I've been getting an increasing number of referrer spams every day, and I was getting several per minute today.  My .htaccess keyword list was no longer working because the spam was coming from domains with Spanish names and things like that.  I looked around and tried out a few solutions, but settled on this one:  Bad Behavior.  It's a simple plugin that does magic things to block spam.  It's been working perfectly for the past hour or so, and I'm hoping that continues. #technology
Firefox find Mar 9, 2006
One of my favorite things about Firefox is its find function.  All you have to do is press Ctrl+F and start typing, and Firefox finds things as you type.  Or you can just start typing (without first pressing Ctrl+F), but that doesn't always work.  It works a lot better than the Internet Explorer find function, which requires you to type in what you're trying to find, press enter, and then wait for it to tell you it couldn't find anything.  Firefox is a little more intuitive in that way. #technology
Faster computers (2) Mar 9, 2006
Something I've been noticing lately is that computers aren't getting any better.  Well, maybe they are getting better; it's the programs that aren't.  I have one of the most powerful computers in the world (slight overstatement) at work.  It's got a Pentium 4 3.2 GHz processor and 1 GB of RAM.  Nothing can stop this thing.  Except big, stupid, obnoxious programs like SolidWorks, a 3D modeling program.  Or even AutoCAD, a 2D lines-and-circles modeling program.  Why is it that software writers can't make their programs run faster?  I don't think they've made any major improvements in quality over the past several years.  The programs I used to use on Windows 2000 are pretty much the same as the ones I currently use on Windows XP, except everything ends in a slightly larger number, indicating a later version.  So why is everything so slow on my super-fast computer?  And why is everything so unfathomably big?  I had to install a 3 GB program that performed the same functions as it's 500 MB previous version. 

Answer these questions and I'll give you a cookie. #technology