Okay the weirdest thing happened to me today. I’m just going about my business, and chatting with a few people online, when all of a sudden everything I type goes in backward. The cursor would stay at the start of the line and the letters would just go in normally, albeit in the wrong order. At first I really didn’t even notice, because I was typing and looking at my other monitor. Then it started worrying me. What could have caused this? Did I somehow activate a international feature in Windows for languages that read right to left? Well I racked my brain, and also kept up my conversations on instant messenger, mostly because it was really funny seeing different people’s reactions to it. To my surprise no one at all had trouble reading the backward text, and they all recognized it immediately. Two people were cracking up while another was convinced I had downloaded some program to do it. The other possibility of course in the back of my mind that I had gotten a virus with a sense of humor. I suspected this doubly because I never get viruses in my email but today I received (and Norton caught) four of them.

Anyway, back to the mystery of the backward typing (gnipyt sdrawkcab), it turns out that when I had gotten a call I put an hard drive down on my desk, however it was on top of my wireless keyboard. Specifically, on top of the left arrow button! Try it, hold down the left arrow button with something and then start typing. It was a very chance thing as well, because if had been in Word or a text box like I am now I would have seen the cursor whizzing by and suspected a key down, but in the chat boxes there was nothing to indicated that the cursor being pushed to the left. Now I better go before they take my geek license away :). (Actually, I was installing GNU/Linux on said other machine so they let me keep it. Whew.)

Well as per my previous commitment, I’m putting my third paper for my Human Situation class online here. It is not my last paper for the class though, as I found out much to my chagrin today. Don’t you love it when they spring these things on you? You can read the text of the paper below as part of the extended entry, how I would highly recommend you read the PDF version of it instead because it captures not only some additional text that I haven’t put below, but also the presentation and layout, which I put a lot of effort and thought into. Also the raw text below doesn’t have citations and other things which are cumbersome to put into HTML right now. I’ve embedded the fonts and such so you can get the full experience as well. If you have any thoughts or criticisms let me know, because although this paper has already been graded and done (I got an A) I’m going to file it as a topic to examine again perhaps later in college. Again you can get the PDF here. Without further ado . . .

Continue reading An Examination of Group Forms →

Very seldom do I read anything on the web as well-written or as well-researched as Understanding Web Typography. It was a long read, especially with all of the juicy links, but I enjoyed it immensely. Via Anil Dash

Well I tried out everything, except Eudora which for some reason wouldn’t install, and I’m back to using Outlook Express, which in my opinion is simply the best IMAP email client out there currently. The application I’m going to start looking at closer is Outlook XP, because I think it does everything I want it to do, it’s just clunky. Perhaps with some more customization it could be what I need though. Honestly though I’m glad I don’t have to deal with Outlook’s bloat anymore.

Update: It’s now about a year later, and Mozilla Thunderbird is by far the best IMAP email client around for Windows. Give it a try.

So I actually went shopping this morning, and it was the first time I’ve really been caught up in a holiday rush like that. Everything I could find said that Best Buy was going to open at ten, so I set my alarm for 9:30 and decided to go to the one on 59 to get a 75GB Western Digital hard drive and 256MB stick of memory for $50 (after rebate of course). On the way over on the radio I heard them say essentially that all of the sale items from Best Buy and Walmart and Circuit City were long gone. I felt my heart sink even more as I pulled into the parking lot and saw it packed, obviously it had been open for a while. Cursing my lack of experience in this matter, I decided to head in anyway. I made my way through the throngs to the back where the computer things were. A few words to a frazzled employee later and he led me to another area, where they had several of exactly what I needed. The friendly sales lady remarked they had plenty and I didn’t need to get up so early next time. I was suddenly conscious of my just-rolled-out-of-bed look, but appreciative at her ability to keep a sense of humor in such a busy situation. Then it got interesting.

Where it took mere moments to get the hard drive and memory, checking out was another manner. They had the store roped off so half of the store was actually a checkout line. It was probably only about a twenty minute wait, so I’m not one to complain judging by some of the shopping war stories I’ve heard. Still, it was not what I was accustomed to. Overall I’m very happy with the deal, even though the memory is the wrong kind for my machine, the hard drive alone is a steal for that price, and I’m going to sell the memory to a friend. Now I’m tempted to head out to Circuit City, where they’ve been advertising $10 CDs, every CD in the store! I thought Best Buy was doing that but it wasn’t till I had painstakingly picked out some jazz ones for presents when someone told me it was only the advertised ones that were cheap, all the rest were list. I think CDs are overpriced anyway.

That was quite possibly the best Thanksgiving ever. I ate, probably enough to feed a small village, but not too much to make me uncomfortable. The day started at my Grandmother’s house with aunts and uncles. Because of several people being out of town, I got to sit at the “adult” table this year, rather than be delegated to the kitchen. The food was wonderful, thanks in part to my uncle Colin who is a wonderful cook. There was green beans with fried onions on top, corn with chile peppers and paprika, great dressing, very sweet potatoes, and of course the turkey. I must have gone back three or four times, but I forgot to plan for desert so I wasn’t able to try any of it . . . then. Rene was supposed to join us but couldn’t get a ride down, but once I got a chance to I picked him up and the plan was to head back down and we would fix him something at my grandmother’s house.

Well I ended up held up at Rene’s, because it turns out they were about start their Thanksgiving meal, which I actually thought they were doing later in the evening. So we decided to stay for the food to get started and I enjoyed my second meal of the day, barely an hour later. It was really good, and interesting because the style of food was very different. So we ate, and then vegged for a little bit. Then it was back down to my Grandma’s house, because my dad was still there and I had the car. My dad was fine watching the Washington/Dallas game and I managed to find room for some deserts, a strawberry angel food thing and chocolate rum cake, of course with cold milk. After that we played frisbee for a bit in the park across the street.

The plan was then to head back up to Rene’s to watch some movies, but first we picked up Kyle. Then we headed to Joe’s and chilled there for a bit, probably at least a half hour. He had family in from Michigan and his house was really packed. They were just about to start dinner so he didn’t come along, and then we left and picked up Josh. We decided we wanted to see Swordfish, which Rene hadn’t seen before, so we headed back to Kyle’s to pick it up. While there I had some wonderful pumpkin pie, and then we headed up to Rene’s. The movie was good, and Rachel joined us toward the end.

After that I had my final meal of the night, a very traditional mashed potatoes, turkey, roll, and rice from their leftovers. The turkey was a little dry but I found that with a little mayonnaise it was quite good. Everyone was so tired we decided to end the night with the movie Antitrust, which I like and hadn’t seen in a while, despite owning it. I ended up home around 3:45, ready for rest.

I am so full I don’t think I can stand up. Yum.

My Mom sent this to me, and even though technically it is now Thanksgiving, I haven’t gone to bed yet so it’s not yet.

’Twas the night of Thanksgiving, I just couldn’t sleep
I tried counting backwards, I tried counting sheep.

The leftovers beckoned, the dark meat and white
But I fought the temptation with all of my might.

Tossing and turning with anticipation
The thought of a snack became infatuation.

So, I raced to the kitchen, flung open the door
and gazed at the fridge, full of goodies galore.

I gobbled up turkey and buttered potatoes, Pickles and carrots, beans
and tomatoes.

I felt myself swelling so plump and so round, ’til all of a
sudden, I rose off the ground.

I crashed through the ceiling, floating into the sky
with a mouthful of pudding and a handful of pie.

I managed to yell as I soared past the trees . . .
Happy eating to all; pass the cranberries, please.

May your stuffing be tasty, may your turkey be plump, May your potatoes
and gravy have nary a lump.

May your yams be delicious, may your pies take the prize,
May your thanksgiving dinner stay off your thighs!

I hope everyone has a wonderful and happy thanksgiving.

Last night was great fun as a lot of the seniors who are in town for the holiday, and many who are in town anyway, met up at Diedrich’s an later Katz’s. It was really enjoyable seeing so many people who I often talk to online but haven’t seen for too long. The “Winter holidays” sometimes politically uncorrectly categorized as “Christmas” coming up should be even better. If you’re interested the pictures are now up.

Speaking of pictures, have been flooded with emails, calls, and just general in-person complaining concerning the updates to the photolog, or rather the lack thereof. The team here at Photomatt.net was experiencing some technical diffulculties, but things are under control now and I’ve caught up with a couple of the days I had missed before. We apologize for the lapse in updates. You may now return to your regularly scheduled programming.

Speaking of programming, okay, not really, but if you want a taste of how fast the new server is, browse over to mullenweg.com and click around. Isn’t that snappy? Also you may not have noticed, but the front page of this site used to take as much as two seconds to process, and now it is delivered to your browser less than half a second from request time. Other less heavy pages, like any of the jazz quotes the load time is neglibible. That just goes to show that the front page stands for quite a bit of optimization though, and I’m going to work on that a bit this weekend. Okay, that’s it!

Speaking of . . .

Well I think it’s appropriate that Winter has finally deemed to visit Houston, after flirting for so long. Monday was hot and I dressed in kind, apparently so much so that Alex remarked to me that “Summer is over!” However the next day when I headed out in my shorts and short sleeve shirt, I was blasted at the door by cold cold air. Even colder than was in my house, which is saying a lot. Today is similarly cold an it’s forcing me to dig out all my cold-weather clothes that haven’t seen the light of day since early January last year, when it got hot again. I absolutely love cold weather and the month we have it here is usually my favorite part of the year. Don’t tell anyone, but I’m a sucker for Christmas music too.

The other day as I topped out the first hill getting on to the freeway my car died, and I managed to roll to the shoulder to await a tow back home. My car is in the good hands of the mechanic right now, so hopefully I’ll be back in the Mattmobile any day now.