BunkBlog

The statistics, in more detail than you can possibly need, for my website in the month of December: right here.

Things to note: search terms for this month are skewed heavily toward XXXmas and such; the CinPics and Lianna directories combine to be more than half the bandwidth for December. Go figure.

And, for some reason I’ve got a lot of hits from Saudi Arabia, but they’re all looking at Lianna’s Christmas Archive. Perverts.

OK, there is no way I’m going to make or attempt to keep any resolutions, but here’s the quiz result anyway:

Take the What Should Your New Year’s Resolution Be? Quiz

Added a page (now gone) of holiday photos, all taken Christmas morning.

Alex was being very greedy that day, go figure.

In other news, we signed the papers today that “petition” the court for me to adopt the boy. Not sure how long until the court date and all that, but it’s one step closer. Bio-dad has never even seen this little cutie, can you imagine?
current_music: Kevin & Bean – Swallow my Eggnog

Added a long-planned new thought on my site. If you need to explain to someone why ICQ is better than MSN (or Yahoo is better than MSN, or AIM is better than MSN), I’ve listed all the good and bad of each client.

Friday –

My older sister has discovered Instant Messenging finally. Of course, her
daughter has been using it for the past year and more, but you know old people
and technology.

This newfound interest in messenging (Or "using MSN Messenger" in
her case) caused me to evaluate the various IM clients. So, here’s a quick-and-dirty
review of the Big Four: AIM, Yahoo, ICQ, and MSN Messenger (or whatever Microsoft
is calling it this week).

When I started the test, I had 65% Resources free total. I’ll let you know
what the usage of each is and how much they let go when they’re done.

AOL Instant Messenger (AIM) v4.3
(62% resources after loading) –
0.9 seconds to load window, 1.2 seconds to populate window

• Features
• Seamless integration with the millions of morons…users on AOL
• Custom Icons per user, including yourself
• Remembers multiple user names and passwords
• Block users
• Save conversations as HTML
• Online alerts – global or individual (not custom per user though)
• Groups of “buddies”
• File transfers
• Limitations
  • No cam
  • Signs you up for Netscape email for some reason
  • Either on or offline or away, global settings only.
  • Closing window just signs off
• (65% free after closing)

Yahoo v5.0
(62% resources after loading) – 7.6 seconds to load window, 7.65 seconds to populate
window

• Features
  • Buddy groups
  • Offline messages
  • Webcam builtin (3% resource hit)
  • Invisible mode (global)
  • Block users
  • Option to auto-archive conversations, or manually save
  • Customizable “Away codes”
  • Links to Yahoo content (News, stocks, etc.)
  • Add personal info to profiles of buddies
  • Ignore filters
  • IMvironments
• Limitations
  • Signs up for Yahoo mail, which you can ignore
  • No individual “visibility” filter
  • The “Close” button minimizes the app only
  • Multiple users have to type in their passwords when changing over
• (65% free after closing)

ICQ 2000b
(59% resources after loading) – 6.5 seconds to load window, 11.1 seconds to populate
window

• Features
  • Dockable window
  • Personalized visibility filters
  • offline messages
  • Block users
  • Remembers multiple user names and passwords
  • Auto-archives all conversations
  • Multi-user Chat
  • Webserver
  • Hooks into other programs
  • Checks any POP3 mailboxes (multiple servers & deletion from a preview)
  • Buddy Groups (toggleable)
  • SMS, PC-PC phonecalls, file transfers
  • Customizable sounds
  • Closing window closes program
• Limitations
  • Nearly useless “find member” features
  • No built-in webcam
  • Can’t close from the tray, have to open the window
• (65% free after closing)

MSN Messenger 3.1(formerly Microsoft Messenger, soon Windows
Messenger or some darned thing)
(63%) – 4.9 seconds to load window, 4.9 seconds to populate window

• Features
  • File transfers
  • Offline messages go to email
  • Link to Netmeeting
  • Block users
  • Manually save conversations as text files
  • Customizable sounds (in Control Panel)
  • Closing window closes program
• Limitations
  • Attempts to sign you up to Hotmail
  • No built-in webcam
  • Global settings, not per-buddy
  • Users have to type usernames and passwords when changing logins
• (63% free after closing)

Let’s see what we can conclude from all this data…

The global vs. per-user functions are a pet peeve of mine, mainly because I
first started using chat clients when ICQ was the only alternative to IRC-Chat
(you newbies might call it mIRC, after the main client used to access it). Here’s
the deal with the difference: in ICQ, I can decide to be invisible, with the
caveat that some selected people can always see me. None of the other major
clients has that option, without removing people from the buddylist entirely.

The MSN client merges with the operating system in the sounds portion of the
Control Panel and when you access Hotmail via MSIE. There are good and bad things
about that, mostly bad.

The biggest things in my mind are speed and features. ICQ has the features
down, but AOL Instant Messenger is the one with the speed, both of loading and
finding your "buddies" online. MSN is next in speed, and right at
the bottom in features. Considering Microsoft’s well-known problems with privacy
and security, you may want to be careful using that one.

MSN has several unique attributes: it is the only one of the four which did not release its requested resources when exited; it is the only one which insists on keeping a task button on the toolbar, as well as the much less-obtrusive notification tray; it is the only one without groups.

Overall, each of the clients has something unique about it. Unfortunately,
since there is no standard for messenging, if you have lots of online friends
you’ll need two or more of these things to keep in touch with them all.

While the boy napped, I played with my forums.

There are now two skins available to choose from, with more as I find ones that don’t suck. There are also several languages: English, French, Spanish, Swedish, and Dutch (formal or informal options).

Next up – Klingon?

To go along with my new LJ Styles, I’ve also updated my forums with some new software. Feel free to wander over there, and please fill out the poll in the News forum.

OK, once more into the LJ Styles breach…

I’ve revamped all four styles on my Livejournal. The two biggest changes are, of course, “LastN” and “Friends” pages, since they’re seen most. Following a model I discovered on the community, those two pages have been rebuilt using DIV tags instead of nesting TABLEs. The reason? Speed. Now, when you load my pages, you’ll not have to wait for the entire meta-table of entries to load before you can read the top ones. The Friends page also loads progressively like that. You’ll know you’ve hit the end when you see the “skiplinks” block (Previous 15 entries etc.).

I’m assuming this will look funky on Netscape 4.x, but it should be viewable on it at least. The boxes will be out of whack, but you really should upgrade to NS 6.2 anyway. Or Opera.

Cheers.

I guess with the advent of Naked Parts and their ilk, we don’t really need to do another Nekkid XXXmas this year, but I will miss the fun from last year, checking the post every hour or so to see who else got up the nerve…

To my friends in Asia and Australia, Merry Christmas! Those of us in the States just have to wait till tomorrow. 🙂

Some random thoughts for you budding web designers:

• Validate your web sites against HTML standards, so every browser can see your site.
• Don’t waste your time on a “splash screen” to start the site. Look at the big sites (Yahoo, CNN, etc) – Nobody visits them for their intro screen. Most people will either blow your site off because of it or bookmark your real index page.
• Your site is not best viewed in any particular browser. Don’t tell visitors what to use, some don’t have a choice.
• Consider heading over to Bobby to check your site for accessibility issues. It’s a requirement for .gov sites, but a good idea for anyone. You don’t want to block some of your visitors, do you?
• Don’t use the following:
  1. Poorly contrasting colors
  2. Tiny fonts
  3. Fixed size fonts. Those 8-pixel high things look like dots on a high-res monitor.
  4. Flash as your only means of navigation. Ever hear of Lynx?

Just my pet peeves of the day. I’ve been surfing some “personal” sites today, made by folks who think they’re Picasso with a mouse or something. Ick. Not everyone has DSL…
current_music: Nickelback – Good Times Gone
current_mood: tired

WELL I had another conversation with someone about Microsoft V Linux
I would love to know why I get into some many conversations about it, it much be because I am willing to stand up for companies that many people put down Namely Microsoft.
I wish people would just realize that companies are not out there to give you everything you want on a silver plater.

Um, let’s see how many English errors we can count, and then subtract that from the level of seriousness with which to take the opinions expressed therein.

Again I say – If you want someone to take your opinions seriously, spellcheck, proofread and then re-think the entire posting. After you’ve thought about it and run it through “ispell” or some other such tool, then go ahead and post. Your views might still be stupid, but more people will listen to them anyway.
current_music: The Vandals – Christmas Time for my Penis

I’ve got two online instructors this semester, one in English and one in Economics.

The economics professor is actually a high school teacher who picks up the online course in his spare time. He barely interacts with the class at all, and his midterm included vital terms not defined in this edition of the textbook – way to review the test and book. He signs emails with “Professor Xxxxxxxxx.” The only assignments in this class have been ungraded discussions.

My English professor is in the forums constantly, emails whenever something of import occurs, and is basically a good instructor, considering the limitations of the medium. She also signs her emails with her first name. She has had 4 graded assignments so far.

Check out my wishlist at Amazon, or CDnow. Still time to get presents before Christmas.

OK, seriously, how about voting for my shirt designs? Or, maybe even visit my store and buy a shirt or teddy bear or some such? Those teddy bears are really cute with Origami designs on the front. 🙂

[organization] will be enforcing strong passwords to ensure that [network] logon passwords are compliant with current password policy. [network] password policy is based on recommended settings provided by the National Security Administration’s NT Security Technical Implementation Guide.

IMPACT TO CUSTOMERS: Each new password will be evaluated according to current [network] standards for robust passwords as itemized below. A new password that does not conform to these standards will be rejected and followed by a dialog box to explain why the password does not comply.
PASSWORD CRITERIA:
Passwords MUST:
1. Equal exactly 7 characters (no more, no less)
etc.

So, um, a password of a fixed length (rather than the much more common “at least 8 characters”) is strong security? Yeah, ok. Thank you for making it easier for crackers to break in. No reason to check for random length passwords, because they know they’ll all be the same length.

From an email received yesterday:

Hello Andy,
…yada yada yada…

At 04:25 PM 12/10/2001 -0500, you wrote:
Below is your form’s result. It was submitted by
Gary Bunker andy@andysocial.com on Mon Dec 10 16:25:23 2001.

Um, is my name not obviously Gary Bunker, based on the form results block? Why would I give my name as Gary and wish to be addressed as Andy? Morons.

I swear, I wonder about the logic used in naming government agencies. When I worked for the National Security Agency, the officers would bring virus-laden Powerpoint presentations into the secure area. Security. Yep.

Now, I work for the Defense Information Systems Agency, and nobody seems to understand computers at all. One of my 11 bosses (I have surpassed Peter in Office Space) doesn’t even know how to use Powerpoint, depending on an underling to make her slides for her. Apparently “Click here to insert text” is too complex a task and that help option is a complete mystery. Today, I get an email from one of my bosses, and he has sent me a URL to a password-protected website (the email was actually the “welcome” message forwarded through three guys), and wanted me to peruse it. Naturally, the site has no “click here to request access” option, and the boss was surprised at this. Way to check things before you forward them. Oh, and can I get more forwarded stuff with 800 headers attached please?

I’ve been assigned to one project that involves a secure network that I’d never heard of until I started working here. I’m not a network engineer, and about half of the terms used in describing the system’s problem did I even understand. But, apparently, since I “know computers” I was the obvious choice. Talking to that project’s bigger boss, he said I must have been selected for my common sense. Yeah, ok. So, after several weeks, I determine that the network is dead, irrevocably. The choices are a) put in new fiber or b) find a different path, such as copper plus fiber-copper connections at each end. Bigger boss doesn’t like these options, and wants to test the current line (which has been tested at least 6 times) and “get some answers” from the MIS guy in charge of the other end of the network. The answer is, of course, “It’s broken” but that is unacceptable and we must change reality now!

Information Systems Agency. pah!

This is hilarious. Cafepress runs a forum on EZBoard (questionable decision at best but whatever). This forum is “moderated” so the posts have to be individually approved by a CP employee. There was a 2-week period in October when no messages were approved, and the moderator eventually came up and apologized for not moderating the “previous week” (inaccurate) and they were just soooo busy they couldn’t handle the forum moderation as well as their new promos. I realize that CP can’t be a very large company, but they might be able to afford a couple IT folks, right? Now, there hasn’t been a single new post or comment approved on that board since the 19th of November. My opinion: unmoderated forums. You can always go in and nuke individual posts or users if they cross the line, but now nobody is reading, even though plenty of folks are talking. Bizarre, I tell you.
current_mood: bored

Johnny was a schoolboy
When he heard his first Beatles song
Love Me Do, I think it was
And from then it didn’t take him long
Got himself a guitar
Used to play every night
Now he’s in a rock ‘n’ roll outfit
And everything’s alright
current_music: duh?

I updated my Friends style, using one I discovered on the styles discussion group, modified slightly to suit me. I think it looks cooler than the Punquin-based one I was using.

I have too much time on my hands some days…