Jakob Nielsen's Top Ten Web-Design Mistakes of 2002

"We're trying to teach little Susie to use the telephone, so I'm putting her on now." and other ways to end conversations with telemarketers, prostitutes, missionaries and more, from the Washington Post's Style Invitational.

I saw a particular IP requesting a bunch of pages from a server I work on and found an interesting hostname...

nslookup 165.13.72.250
Server:  xxx.xxxxxxx.xxx
Address:  xxx.xx.xx.xxx

Name:    Cache-Cow.usaid.gov
Address:  165.13.72.250

For those times when you need an ASCII chart and don't feel like using man ascii, take a look at asciitable.com

Here's the text of spam I received today.

Hu's on first (I got a version of this by email and found a copy on the 'net to link to.)

I'm don't really recall how I got there... but I was reading a thread on wineaccess.com (ex-ArsDigita client) Best $100 Bottle of Wine and somebody suggested "20 bottles of thunderbird for me doc....and some pepto bismol to go with it" and the thunderbird theme continues in later posts. (Yes, I know that "ex-ArsDigita client" is redundant.)

Was the moon landing a hoax? (Flash). Found in a discussion of a slashdot story, "NASA Wasting Time and Money on Moon Landing Doubters".

I received a summons for jury duty. I'm trying to figure out how to avoid it. This site might help. Some highlights:

• A prospective juror in a Dallas District Court was surprised by the definition of voluntary manslaughter given the panel: "An intentional killing that occurs while the defendant is under the immediate influence of sudden passion arising from an adequate cause, such as when a spouse's mate is found in a compromising position." "See, I have a problem with that passion business," responded the jury candidate. "During my first marriage, I came in and found my husband in bed with my neighbor. All I did was divorce him. I had no idea that I could have shot him." She wasn't selected for the jury.
• The last time I served on jury duty, the judge in Martinez, CA told the 100 perspective jurors, "...and I don't want to hear any O.J. Simpson the jury system doesn't work excuses. If O.J. was in my court he would have been guilty as hell!
• A woman brought her boss along, who said that he was a building contractor, that his business could not operate without the woman, and that if the woman reported for jury duty she would be fired from her job. The judge ordered the woman to report for jury service the next week, and ordered her boss to do his jury service upon his employee's completion of her jury service, and that if he fired the woman he would be held in criminal contempt of the court.

Whoa. In 1994, we had Thanksgiving dinner with friends who deep fried the turkey. Underwriters laboratories thinks this is a bad idea and there's a movie to show you why.

DougDay - "Every Doug has his day."

It really is possible to gain useful knowledge on slashdot. In the article "Mac OS X to Get Journaling FS", one reader explains how journaling file systems work with a nice analogy that involves a librarian falling out of a window.

There also a tangential discussion comparing features of linux vs. OS X which includes the line "Damn that apple and their embracing of open standards."

All this has me seriously thinking about getting a mac. We bought a video camera this weekend and iMovie seems like it'd be a nice way to share some movies of Marney.