When Web Clips go bad

Thanks, Gmail, for making spam filter maintenance even less appetizing.

Miles at Great Clips

Scene: I am seated in the waiting area of a hair salon, trying to read Men's Journal without snickering out loud at the sheer goofiness of the articles. My son Miles has just sat down in the barber's chair. Miles, being Eight, has the power to say things that everyone else just wishes they could say.

Hairdresser: Hoo boy you sure have a lot of cowlicks. Did your Grandma ever tell you that? That cow must have loved you, boy! That reminds me of the story about the brown cow in the hospital. Do you want me to tell you that story?

Miles: No.

Ask your dealer for MoPar

If ads still looked like this, I would have no cash left.

Take my ideas, please

So yesterday I created an account at Cambrian House. I've got a list of half-baked ideas longer than a Phish set list, so I figured it was worth a shot. If you haven't been to the site yet, you might want to give it a look-see.

And do the old man a favor -- pleeze vote for my ideas: betaBase, Federated Search Mojo, and Mizzessenger.

I have a dream

So here it is. I'm on my way to work, and my mom calls me, telling me that I need to stop by her place before I go in to the office, because Jesus has dropped by for a visit, and it would be nice if I said hello. I'm a little ticked off, because I'm going to be late for work, but what the hell. When you get a chance to rub elbows with a celebrity, even one who would willingly agree to appear in a Mel Gibson film, you have to jump at it.

I get to mom's place, and there, seated at the dining room table among a bunch of friends and family members, is the Big Guy. I notice that everybody's eating, but while most folks are eating sandwiches and other "lunch time" stuff, Jesus has a plate piled high with donuts.

(I want to break from the Freudian trainwreck for a moment and point out that this is NOT one of those "I'm in command here" dreams -- instead, this is one where I'm just a passenger, watching what I do instead of consciously choosing it. Think Being John Malkovich, but without Charlie Sheen.)

I say my hellos, and notice that Jesus is a bit perturbed -- it's clear that He just wants to have some breakfast, but everybody keeps pestering Him with questions of ultimate concern. "What is the nature of the universe?" "What should we do with our lives?" "Are we doing church the right way?"

I go over to the kitchen and start putting donuts on MY plate too; as I do this I say "I have a question, Jesus." This is how I know it's a dream, by the way, because after I say this everyone gets quiet and demonstrates a modicum of interest in what I have to say. "Jelly or Creme Filled?"

Jesus makes a face as though I've asked him if the Pope wears a funny hat, and says "Creme filled." I hear myself say "then you ARE my Lord and Savior."

So what the hell does that mean?

It's the DOM, yo.

So I've just finished making some changes to the ol' blog; now the more recent posts are larger than previous ones, my del.icio.us posts are displaying in the big three browsers (Firefox, Opera, and some goofy one called IE), and now the whole page smells like fresh parsley. And all of this glory was done with swanky DOM scripting, so the page should degrade quite well.

(incidentally, if you're a developer and you haven't played around with Unobtrusive Javascript yet, you probably eat puppies.)

Blogger is still kicking my ass, however -- no matter what I do, the page won't validate, because of some evil code that they're injecting into my pages. You get what you pay for, I guess.