Archive for June, 2004

Quote

Wednesday, June 30th, 2004

“You sound like a porn commercial for Burt’s Bees.” Bryan Schwegler, in response to my lamenting that my lips were so smooth and soft and, unfortunately, not being put into action.

Calling Lynchburg

Tuesday, June 29th, 2004

I am working part-time at a market research firm this summer. In an average night, I make approximately 200 phone calls. The call center usually has about 30 stations staffed. Everyone on the same project shares the same phone list and numbers are randomly assigned to interviewers. So what are the chances that I not only call Virginia, but Lynchburg? And not only Lynchburg, but one of my very good friends living there? Well, tonight I phoned none other than Shawn Story of LiveWire fame and asked him about, among other things, his satisfaction with the customer service at his property insurance company. I was all grin after that. ::awesome::

Unleash the Apple Zealots

Monday, June 28th, 2004

Steve Jobs just wrapped up his WWDC keynote with amazing things coming to the next version of Mac OS X, codename Tiger. But because Mac zealots are never satisfied, here are my predictions:

  1. They will claim that Apple is killing third party developers.
    Sherlock = better Watson
    Spotlight = better LaunchBar
    Dashboard = better Konfabulator
    Safari RSS = better NetNewsWire Lite

    Advice: Apple may take a concept from a third party developer, but the company always improves upon the concept and makes it accessible to everyone. Many of these one-feature applications exist purely to fix a usability deficiency. Integrating them into the OS and allowing them to interface and integrate seamlessly just makes sense.

  2. They will complain that it costs $129, $69 for students, (“full price for *another* upgrade”) and that is isn’t shipping immediately. They will then tell you why Apple is not accepted in IT industry because Apple doesn’t pre-announce products early enough.

    Advice: It’s cheaper and better than a Windows upgrade. How many Windows upgrades have improved performance on existing hardware while adding features? None. But every version of Mac OS X has.

  3. Users with 5 year old Macs will complain about how they won’t be supported.

    Advice: Get a new machine. Those of who us with new machines really don’t want Apple wasting development time on the lowest common denominator.

Countdown to Mac forums exploding with these stupid complaints. 3… 2… 1…

Public Service Announcement

Sunday, June 27th, 2004

Since launching Curiously Jeremiah, Internet Explorer use to my site has dropped to only 18.5% of all visitors, compared to over 30% before, while traffic to my site has increased 15%. My detour is working.

I do not want to beat this issue to death, but a very very very serious Internet Explorer vulnerability is being exploited on a large scale.

This insidious worm has been placed on numerous popular websites (running Microsoft IIS 5), ones you might visit every day, that will exploit an Internet Explorer vulnerability to install keylogging spyware on your computer, which will grab any sensitive data you type, such as your bank account passwords. It appears that organized crime syndicates in Europe have hacked into these major websites and installed this worm. The Internet Storm Center is advising Internet Explorer users to switch to another browser until Microsoft has patched the security hole and you’ve installed that patch.

I recommend downloading Mozilla Firefox as your temporary (and maybe even permanent) browser. It’s reliable and secure.

Think I’m just crying wolf? Major news media outlets report:
FOX News: Latest Computer Virus Nastiest of All
BBC News: Web browser flaw prompts warning… to avoid using Internet Explorer
News.com.com.com: Researchers warn of infectious Web sites
Techdirt: Don’t Visit Websites With Microsoft IE
US-CERT: IIS 5 Web Server Compromises

Happy Birthday Smurf!

Friday, June 25th, 2004

The birthday girl!
Me and Aoife

Several Irish students are working in the call center for the summer. They’re chill. And I was invited to Sarah’s (a.k.a. Smurf) birthday party at Phi Kappa Sigma. Yay for Irish pop music!

Quote

Thursday, June 24th, 2004

“Well, it’s spring fever. Everyone tries to sleep with everyone they know who is mildly attractive and then they take photos of flowers.” –Nick Rhodes, in response to my appreciation (?) for the virtual monsoon of digital macro shots of flowers in the spring.

iTMS Success, RIAA Failure

Wednesday, June 23rd, 2004

Apple iTunes Music Store Europe announced that it sold more than 800,000 songs in one week. (For those playing along at home, that’s 16 times more than Apple’s nearest competitor!)

In other news, the RIAA still does not understand why single sales are wildly popular, so it sued another 428 people today.

Listening to

Tuesday, June 22nd, 2004

They by Jem

Curiously v1.1

Tuesday, June 22nd, 2004

Curiously Jeremiah version 1.1 includes small improvements:

Coming soon in Curiously Jeremiah 1.2:

As always, Macromedia Dreamweaver MX 2004 and Panic Transmit totally rock my world.

Shout Out to Europe

Tuesday, June 22nd, 2004

Here’s to my friends across the pond!

USA Today: EU adopts constitution, faces substantial hurdles
Europeans worry the EU is taking too much of their national sovereignty. Turnout for this month’s parliamentary elections was 45% of eligible voters, the lowest turnout on record. Maybe Professor Roush’s theory of pacifist anarchy is accurate. Regardless, the EU is just a power trip for nations who are jealous of America. Oh, and they still hate Jews. (My advice: Come to America where every religion that excludes Jesus is tolerated.)

C|Net News.com.com.com: What Europe (still) doesn’t get
One unsung benefit of the Internet is how beautifully it illustrates why the technology climate in the United States is superior to the one in Europe.

iTunes Music Store comes to UK, France, Germany

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