Technically Speaking

I’ve made a few improvements to my blog recently. Read below to find out more

Gravatars

This blog is now gravatar enabled. Gravatar is short for “globablly recognized avatar.” An avitar is a small picture that is used to identify a specific poster on a blog or forum. My gravitar looks like this:

You’ll see the gravatars in the comments section of this blog. When you submit a comment, there is now a check box below the submit button that, if checked, will allow you to upload a gravatar to gravatar.com. This will work for all gravatar-enabled sites.

Here’s how it works: you submit a gravatar at gravatar.com. Whenever you fill in a gravatar-enabled comments form and use the e-mail address associated with your gravatar.com account, your gravatar will be shown. Your e-mail address is safely stored in a database and isn’t ever publicly available. (I hate computer SPAM as much as the rest of you!)

So, if you are interested, create a gravatar today. As soon as it is approved, it will appear next to any comments you make in this (and many other) blog(s).

The gravatar plugin “Gravatar Signup” is provided by Skippy.net.

Comment authentication

There was a security hole in the blog software that allowed users to submit a comment using the e-mail address of a registered member, including the blog administrator. That means if you knew and used my e-mail address in your comment form, the blog would assume you really were me.

I’ve implemented Skippy.net’s “Impostercide” plugin to prevent this. You don’t have to log in to post a comment unless you try to use the e-mail address of a registered blog member. If the e-mail you try to use belongs to a blog member, you’ll be prompted to log in before making your comments.

Subscribe to this blog

Back in January I added the ability to subscribe to this blog. However, due to a bug, when you subscribed to the blog, you received 10 identical subscription notification messages. A new version of the plugin is out, and now when you subscribe to the blog you only get ONE subscription notification message.

This plugin is also brought to you by none other than the folk(s) at Skippy.net, and is implemented as the Subscribe2 plugin.

If you haven’t subscribed to this blog, I encourage you to do so. You can read more about subscription options here. A subscription option is shown to non-logged-in users below. (Logged in users will see a link to their profile to modify their subscription settings.)

“Beware the Ides of March!” warned the soothsayer in Shakespeare’s Julius Ceasear.

Most of you are probably aware that the “Ides of March” means the 15th of March. But did you know that you can use Ides to refer to days in other months as well?

It turns out that the Ides of March, May, July, and October are on the 15th day of these months. For all other months, the Ides are on the 13th.

Now you know.

As you probably know, we moved from Spanish Fork about a year and a half ago. While we were still living there, we had a friend from Germany who came to visit. I’ll call her “L” for two reasons. First, it protects her privacy. The second (and more truthful) reason: I can’t spell her name.

L’s family was very close to Christina while she lived there. Christina spent a lot of time with L’s family since there were kids her age who were members of the same church, etc.

Anyway, now L’s parents are coming to the USA to visit, and they are planning on spending a weekend at our house. Trouble is, they didn’t know we’d moved to Midvale. All their contact information for us was at our Spanish Fork address. They had our SF phone number, and our mobile number from our Utah County days.

When planning their visit, I guess they called our old number and, in German, asked for Christina. Funny enough, the number’s new owner speaks fluent German, but had no idea who we were. It was probably pretty funny for both groups. For L’s parents, it was probably weird that they randomly lucked out and found a German speaker answering our old number. For the guy who has our old number, it was probably weird to have some random person from Germany calling and talking to you in German.

Luckily enough, Christina’s BYU email still works, and they were able to find us using that address.

It’s happened to you before, and you hate it. You sit down on the crowded bus (or, in this case, train) on your way to school (or work or whatever), and the guy next to you sneezes, then snivels, then coughs. He’s very polite about it. He apologizes with that stuffed-up nasal voice, and you think “Please don’t breathe in my direction.”

Then you think to yourself, “Why is this guy even going to work (or school or whatever) today? Shouldn’t he stay home sick so that the rest of us don’t have to get sick from him? How rude is that?”

He sneezes again. You bless him.

Then again you think, “I hope he doesn’t breathe on me. Why was this the only available seat?!”

Well, I have a confession to make. Today I was the sick guy. I apologize to everybody who was on the train going to whatever (or school or work).

Some days you just can’t stay home now matter how much you want to.

Don’t worry. I’ll try hard not to breathe on you. Excuse me while I sneeze again.

Just in case you were checking, it is still winter up here in the land of the salty lake. Spring like weather is at least a week away again.

At work today, the water cooler broke. There is a big sign on it: “Out of order.” This is not a sophisticated piece of machinery. Yet it is out of order. And the tap water is terrible.

Its a temptation to try and lure me into drinking a soda. I will resist!!!

At least until I get thirsty.