Posted on
by

I really liked the last two Five For Fighting albums, America Town and The Battle for Everything. “Superman” was quite possibly the only song I’ve heard that made me run out and buy an album without checking other songs first. So I was eagerly awaiting “Two Lights.”

Unfortunately, after listening through twice, I only actually like two songs on the album: “California Justice” and “Policeman’s Xmas Party.” Everything else is just too…sappy.

And “The Riddle” is everywhere. Radio, supermarkets, fast food, shopping malls. I can’t escape it. Worse, it’s one of those tunes that worms its way into your mind and runs around in circles.

But here’s the odd thing: Does anyone else think the verse sounds a little bit like “Weird Al” Yankovic’s “The Night Santa Went Crazy?”

Posted on
by

I spent a good chunk of yesterday afternoon playing The Bard’s Tale (the new one) after a many months-long break. This time I figured out the combat system, so I was able to get past the starting dungeon.

Anyway, after Katie got home, we watched an episode of Teen Titans with dinner. It was structured as a fairy tale, complete with a narrator. The narrator sounded really familiar, but I couldn’t quite place where I’d heard his voice before. The credits listed him has Tony Jay, which didn’t ring a bell, so she looked him up at IMDB.

Turns out he was the narrator on The Bard’s Tale, and I’d been hearing his voice all afternoon.

Posted on
by

Microsoft is really pushing for people to make sure their websites and apps are compatible with IE7. Apparently this is a real concern for a lot of people who relied on certain proprietary features, bugs, and quirks in IE6. I guess they figured they wouldn’t have to worry about future versions. (Hmm… I wonder where they got that idea?)

The fact of the matter is, I’m not worried. I tested my personal sites and the sites I’d built for work months ago, using the IE7 betas, and more recently with RC1. I made a couple of minor changes to some stylesheets, but that was about it.

Why? I’ve been writing standards-based code for years. I validate it from time to time, and I test to make sure it works in the latest versions of Firefox, Opera and Safari as well as IE. So the code was already portable.

Plus, anything new I’ve built since January has been designed with IE7 in mind from the beginning.

Most of the changes were to workarounds for IE6. Either stopping them from running on IE7 (if the bug was fixed), or keeping them running on IE7 (if it was done using a CSS hack).

Posted on
by

Received the replacement battery for the PowerBook yesterday. It was shipped out via DHL, with a prepaid return label for shipping the old battery back via regular mail.

Last night I drained the old battery, plugged the new one in, and packaged up the recalled one in the box. At lunch today I went to the post office to send it off.

As I was walking up the steps, I remembered the “Does this package contain anything liquid, explosive, or otherwise hazardous?” question that postal clerks are required to ask. If you’re mailing a defective battery that could theoretically burst into flames, how exactly are you supposed to answer?

I figured it would be best not to joke about it.

As it was, I just said it was a laptop battery straight out, so the question didn’t come up.