(no subject)

Okay, this is just silly in a way even I can't handle.

VIRGO (Aug. 23-Sept. 22): Happy Valentine Daze, Virgo! After careful meditation about what advice might purify and supercharge your love life, I'm making this suggestion: For one week, concentrate all your passion and ingenuity on learning to love yourself better. Write at least one love letter and one love poem to yourself. Treat yourself to pleasures that relax your intelligence and open your wild heart. Gaze in the mirror and whisper a flood of sweet nothings. Give yourself thoughtful, surprising gifts. And finally, propose marriage to yourself and perform a wedding ceremony in which you promise to cherish and honor yourself until the end of time.

I'm seriously starting to wonder why I still subscribe to the list...

(no subject)

Okay, this is just silly in a way even I can't handle.

VIRGO (Aug. 23-Sept. 22): Happy Valentine Daze, Virgo! After careful meditation about what advice might purify and supercharge your love life, I'm making this suggestion: For one week, concentrate all your passion and ingenuity on learning to love yourself better. Write at least one love letter and one love poem to yourself. Treat yourself to pleasures that relax your intelligence and open your wild heart. Gaze in the mirror and whisper a flood of sweet nothings. Give yourself thoughtful, surprising gifts. And finally, propose marriage to yourself and perform a wedding ceremony in which you promise to cherish and honor yourself until the end of time.

I'm seriously starting to wonder why I still subscribe to the list...

death and taxes

Phew. My electronic withdrawal for my federal taxes went through today (all $15.00 of it). I was getting pretty worreid since I punched in 2/6/2004 as the date for them to withdraw when I filed by tele-file last week, and then it didn't show up. And didn't show up. And Wells Fargo assured me that the fact that when it repeated my account number back to me, it dropped the leading zero ("You have entered five-one-four...") was not a problem. And it didn't show up. But today the debit was there.

death and taxes

Phew. My electronic withdrawal for my federal taxes went through today (all $15.00 of it). I was getting pretty worreid since I punched in 2/6/2004 as the date for them to withdraw when I filed by tele-file last week, and then it didn't show up. And didn't show up. And Wells Fargo assured me that the fact that when it repeated my account number back to me, it dropped the leading zero ("You have entered five-one-four...") was not a problem. And it didn't show up. But today the debit was there.

work annoyance

I don't get what's so hard about remembering to return a checkout card when you're done with the computer. I put at least five notes a day in patrons' records that they left a card at the station and to tell them about it (that they could get a fine by doing so, etc). At least a fourth of these are multiple "offenders". Some of them are massively multiple - they leave cards again and again and again, despite being told over and over and over not to do so. Sometimes it's even despite having paid fines as a consequence thereof, and our fines are pretty hefty at $5 per hour, levied all at once at the start of the hour (net effect, 10 minutes late gets you a full $5). Yet I am always entering these types of notes. To me it seems a matter of simple logic: someone behind the desk gave you this card, so you should bring it back to them when you are finished with it. Am I missing something?

Addendum: Boxes on videotapes. I am willing to concede that it may sometimes not occur to someone that bringing the tape back in its original box is important, and that substituting another box is not okay, because they may not have noticed that it has special labels and stuff (they are otherwise ordinary commercial boxes, like the ones tapes come in when you buy them at the store). But bringing it back with no box at all? And when we tell them it has to stay checked out to them until they bring the box back because we can't check it out without the proper box, they try to tell me it shouldn't matter because the tape is what's important and therefore they shouldn't have to pay an overdue fine? I always liken it to bringing a book back without its cover. You would hardly expect the library to accept that, would you? So what made them think that bringing a tape back without its box would be okay? Unlike a book cover, we can cook up another box, but we charge $15 to do so because someone has to hunt up a box, label it, put a new barcode on it, and then change the item's ID in the catalog. You can bet they are always aghast at that one too.

work annoyance

I don't get what's so hard about remembering to return a checkout card when you're done with the computer. I put at least five notes a day in patrons' records that they left a card at the station and to tell them about it (that they could get a fine by doing so, etc). At least a fourth of these are multiple "offenders". Some of them are massively multiple - they leave cards again and again and again, despite being told over and over and over not to do so. Sometimes it's even despite having paid fines as a consequence thereof, and our fines are pretty hefty at $5 per hour, levied all at once at the start of the hour (net effect, 10 minutes late gets you a full $5). Yet I am always entering these types of notes. To me it seems a matter of simple logic: someone behind the desk gave you this card, so you should bring it back to them when you are finished with it. Am I missing something?

Addendum: Boxes on videotapes. I am willing to concede that it may sometimes not occur to someone that bringing the tape back in its original box is important, and that substituting another box is not okay, because they may not have noticed that it has special labels and stuff (they are otherwise ordinary commercial boxes, like the ones tapes come in when you buy them at the store). But bringing it back with no box at all? And when we tell them it has to stay checked out to them until they bring the box back because we can't check it out without the proper box, they try to tell me it shouldn't matter because the tape is what's important and therefore they shouldn't have to pay an overdue fine? I always liken it to bringing a book back without its cover. You would hardly expect the library to accept that, would you? So what made them think that bringing a tape back without its box would be okay? Unlike a book cover, we can cook up another box, but we charge $15 to do so because someone has to hunt up a box, label it, put a new barcode on it, and then change the item's ID in the catalog. You can bet they are always aghast at that one too.

Mozilla Firefox

Okay... I like Firefox in general (and rialian was right, I groove on the cute icon), but there are just some things about it that operate differently from Mozilla that annoy me. Some/a lot/all of these were in Firebird, too, and were deal-killers for me. It remains to be seen if they will be so again.

1. Single history list, rather than separate ones for each tab. Clicking Back in each tab works as I expect it to, but if I want to jump back several steps via the Go menu, the pages are listed there in order of most recently loaded overall, rather than most recently loaded in that tab.

2. Download manager doesn't give an option for "progress window only" (which is my preference), and behaves quirkily and inconsistently (notification of completion only pops up somtimes; that popup sometimes interferes with a new download and I have to cancel and restart; etc.), although I understand that may be partly because this is still a 0.x release.

3. No Bookmarks button on Personal Toolbar, only Bookmarks menu. (Then again, with my attempts to use the mouse less, I am often just keeping a separate bookmark window open anyway, getting there by alt-Tab and navigaing by cursor keys, but see #4.)

4. Pressing ctrl-B doesn't bring up the Bookmark Manager, it brings up a bookmark sidebar. No single keyboard shortcut for Bookmark Manager; you have to use the menu (although you can press alt-B-M to do so).

5. Pressing ctrl-D doesn't silently append the current page as a bookmark to the end of the bookmarks file; rather, it always pops up asking you to file the bookmark (which was only accessed by shift-ctrl-D in Mozilla). Though it does remember last location so you don't always have to pull the menu down to "Bookmarks" to file it there, it is an extra click/keystroke/steal of focus which annoys me.

6. Preferences are under Tools > Options, like IE, rather than Edit > Preferences like Netscape and Mozilla. (Minor annoyance; I can probably get used to this, although I haven't yet, in two days of using Firefox at work and at home.)

7. Preferences has some kind of bug, most annoying in initial setting of preferences, that if I change some settings, switch to another tab of preferences, change some more, etc., clicking OK at the end of it all does not close the window. One has to click Close and thus, lose all changes. Only workaround I know of is to set all preferences one tab at a time, clicking OK between each pass. Awfully annoying to have to go to Tools > Options six or seven times to get all the preferences tweaked.

Mozilla Firefox

Okay... I like Firefox in general (and rialian was right, I groove on the cute icon), but there are just some things about it that operate differently from Mozilla that annoy me. Some/a lot/all of these were in Firebird, too, and were deal-killers for me. It remains to be seen if they will be so again.

1. Single history list, rather than separate ones for each tab. Clicking Back in each tab works as I expect it to, but if I want to jump back several steps via the Go menu, the pages are listed there in order of most recently loaded overall, rather than most recently loaded in that tab.

2. Download manager doesn't give an option for "progress window only" (which is my preference), and behaves quirkily and inconsistently (notification of completion only pops up somtimes; that popup sometimes interferes with a new download and I have to cancel and restart; etc.), although I understand that may be partly because this is still a 0.x release.

3. No Bookmarks button on Personal Toolbar, only Bookmarks menu. (Then again, with my attempts to use the mouse less, I am often just keeping a separate bookmark window open anyway, getting there by alt-Tab and navigaing by cursor keys, but see #4.)

4. Pressing ctrl-B doesn't bring up the Bookmark Manager, it brings up a bookmark sidebar. No single keyboard shortcut for Bookmark Manager; you have to use the menu (although you can press alt-B-M to do so).

5. Pressing ctrl-D doesn't silently append the current page as a bookmark to the end of the bookmarks file; rather, it always pops up asking you to file the bookmark (which was only accessed by shift-ctrl-D in Mozilla). Though it does remember last location so you don't always have to pull the menu down to "Bookmarks" to file it there, it is an extra click/keystroke/steal of focus which annoys me.

6. Preferences are under Tools > Options, like IE, rather than Edit > Preferences like Netscape and Mozilla. (Minor annoyance; I can probably get used to this, although I haven't yet, in two days of using Firefox at work and at home.)

7. Preferences has some kind of bug, most annoying in initial setting of preferences, that if I change some settings, switch to another tab of preferences, change some more, etc., clicking OK at the end of it all does not close the window. One has to click Close and thus, lose all changes. Only workaround I know of is to set all preferences one tab at a time, clicking OK between each pass. Awfully annoying to have to go to Tools > Options six or seven times to get all the preferences tweaked.

letters to senators/representatives

Anyone who is considering writing actual paper letters to their senators or representatives about whatever government action they are upset about lately (given the liberal bent of my friends list, it might be a number of you) may wish to direct their complaints to local offices rather than those in Washington. While looking up Rep. Anna Eshoo's address to write about the ban-on-gay-marriage-amendment thing, I saw this on her website:

**IMPORTANT NOTICE REGARDING MAIL
SENT TO OUR WASHINGTON OFFICE**
Due to the recent ricin discovery on Capitol Hill all mail sent to our Washington, D.C. office is being destroyed. Please do not mail anything to our Washington, D.C. office as we can no longer expect to receive it. If you prefer to send mail rather than email, please direct it to our Palo Alto office.

letters to senators/representatives

Anyone who is considering writing actual paper letters to their senators or representatives about whatever government action they are upset about lately (given the liberal bent of my friends list, it might be a number of you) may wish to direct their complaints to local offices rather than those in Washington. While looking up Rep. Anna Eshoo's address to write about the ban-on-gay-marriage-amendment thing, I saw this on her website:

**IMPORTANT NOTICE REGARDING MAIL
SENT TO OUR WASHINGTON OFFICE**
Due to the recent ricin discovery on Capitol Hill all mail sent to our Washington, D.C. office is being destroyed. Please do not mail anything to our Washington, D.C. office as we can no longer expect to receive it. If you prefer to send mail rather than email, please direct it to our Palo Alto office.