No grammar for you!

It's official. Jen is insane.

Last night, as we were going to bed, Jen told me that my last post was flawed by my inability to follow industry standard capitalization and hyphenation. I was somewhat surprised to hear that it wasn't the content of my post that offended her, so I asked Der Führer to clarify just what it was that I hadn't hyphenated or capitalized that I should've.

Little did I know that this was not the correct course of action to take. I should've just grunted and rolled over, knowing that only trouble would come from asking, but, like they say, hindsight is 20-20.

Without hesitation, she launched into a verbal assault on my lack of understanding of the principles that guide and give structure to the English language. She demanded that I recognize that internet is not internet, but the Internet! Capitalized! With an upper case I, dammit, not a lower case i. "It's a proper noun," she kept insisting with much shaking of the fist, "Damn you, it's a proper noun! And email? That's supposed to be hyphenated, fucker! It's two words!"

I was kind of snickering at this point and that may have been what set off the full attack. I'm not sure what all was said at that point, but I believe the words "rape of the English language" and "monkey speak" were thrown in there. There were citations, people. Citations. She cites verbally. Really.

The two sources I remember were Microsoft blah blah and Chicago bla blah blah blah. I told her of my hesitation to accept anything standardized by Microsoft but she wouldn't buy it. "But it's two words," she'd cry. It was awful. I tried to explain to her that the internet hasn't been the Internet since about 1999 or 2000 when the novelty factor wore off and that email doesn't need to be E-mail because it isn't necessary to emphasize the fact that email is sent electronically. We all know that now. They're both deprecated terms as far as most tech-oriented folks are concerned. No self respecting techy is going to refer to E-mail or the Internet. It's retarded.

But Miss Braun over there next to me just kept shaking her little baby fists at me. "Rape of the English language! You're what's wrong with this country!" Eventually my laughter and quotes of "Agree to disagree" and "When in Rome" settled the matter. Although her constant huffing and shifting told me that my ignorance displeased her greatly.

Isn't living with your fiancée fun?

...and She'll Cry if She Wants to

Poor Jenny. Our internets is currently semi-functioning and her computer is currently lacking any connection to the information superhighway. At the moment she's playing Civilization 3, pretending that the lack of internets connection isn't bothering her, but I know that she's really suffering underneath.

On a side note, I'd just like to give a shoutout to Todd, the helpdesk dude who answered my phonecall at 9:30 PM on Thursday night. You see, my company provides all of its employees with laptops, wireless routers, blackberrys and other assorted geeky items, so of course, it must also provide 24 hour tech support for its employees so that when their laptop, wireless router or blackberry takes a header, these employees have someone to call for help. So that's what I did. When the wireless router we use here at chez us went kapput and I couldn't fix it, I called Todd. Todd walked me through setting up a direct PPPoE connection to my DSL modem so that at least one computer could have a connection. And that was very good of him.

And that brings us back to the current conditions. My computer has an internet connection and hers does not. So that means sharing. Which isn't really desirable to either party. I mean, I pretend to be generous and understanding, but really I'm thinking, "I wish she'd hurry up and answer her goddamn email already so that I could get back to reading the news."

New Yohk

Oh my G-d (Thanks, Urs and your friend for the tip)! Best. Site. Ever.

Enter Sandman

My fiancée has the strangest dreams. Really. They're terrible. I would say that at least once a week she tells me about some awful event that occurred in her mind while she slept. People die. She gets chased through strange cities by killers. I leave her, but only after I cheat on her. See? Really awful stuff. One time she had such a powerful dream in which I treated her horribly that she punched me in her sleep. I'm not kidding! And then when she woke up in the morning she had to stop herself from hitting me again! In our house, we have to clearly distinguish between Dream Jeff and Real Jeff. Dream Jeff is an asshole, but Real Jeff is quite nice. And doesn't wish to be bruised.

I'm a different story. I hardly ever remember my dreams. Maybe three a year. And I forget them by lunch. And I think that even when I do remember them, they're not all that weird. I mean I have the same shifting realities thing and people becoming other people dreamy weirdness, but not that weird. Does that make me boring? Or do you think that because I lead such a jetset lifestlye while I'm awake that my dreams simply seem pedestrian in comparison? That's what I think.

Just checking...

You did notice that I'm posting titles in my posts, now, right? And it's HTML! It's a header, mmhmm. h4. Yep.

My Dirty Little Secret

So I know that my last post may have you all fooled. I know that you all think that I'm a total nerd. I admit, I relish the idea. I wear my nerdiness like an electronic keycard that I wear on a retractable clip that permits me access to all sorts of nerdy club functions that take place behind closed doors. Granted those club functions are all lame, but still.

And I'm not just nerdy, no! I'm a well-informed nerd! Which boosts be into the group of superior-minded nerd bastards that ridicule other nerds. I mean, being nerdy is one thing, but any 20-sided die loving, basement-dwelling, black tshirt-wearing shut-in can be considered a nerd. No, if one is a nerd, one needs to be on the cutting edge in order to reach the social status at which it is permissible to ridicule those animals. One needs to know of all emerging technologies, their consequences and applications and what group of nerds is most likely to be excited about that technology in order to gain that ability

And that's me! I was using BitTorrent when you all were still in short pants! I had half the world's music collection downloaded before Napster came out! I was overclocking my PC when you had to do it with jumpers, solder and elicit BIOSes! I was a nerd!

...

But now, that's all ending. My reign is through. I uhh, I have to admit something: I don't know what podcasting is. At least, I think I don't know what it is. And that's why I'm ashamed. I should know what podcasting is. And not just, "Oh sure. Podcasting. That's where you can stream online radio onto your iPod. Podcasting." I should have a 100% grasp on what the fuck this is and why people are excited about it. As it is, I just can't get excited about it. Mainly because the people that are excited about it are from all over. There's no way to categorize these people, so that renders me unable to determine the user base which would help me figure out just what the fuck this phenomenon is. But so far, nothing. I don't know. I don't know.

Are you excited about podcasting? Maybe I'm not missing something. Maybe that's all there is to it and only idiots are excited about it. That would be fortunate. Then I could ridicule them without even knowing what the technology is.

Let me know, huh? Nerd.

Extensions and Themes

The more I use Firefox, the more I love it. Up until recently, I even used it naked. Not me. I wasn't naked. The browser was. And I still liked it more than IE! The only Firefox-specific feature I was using was its tabbed browsing capability.* Now, however, I learned that the extensions and themes made for Firefox are not just your run-of-the-mill addons. No, these addons dramatically increase the functionality of the browser, and they do so without weighing the browser down or make browsing an unwieldy undertaking.

I now give you my favorite Firefox extensions in order:

1. Adblock - Nothing brings you back to the internet of 1998 like blocking all the Goddamn Shockwave, GIF, Flash and assorted banner ads that are peppered throughout your favorite websites. Now before you get all militant on me and tell me that the sites I visit depend on ads for revenue, let me ask you this. When was the last time you clicked on an ad? Hmm? Well I can tell you when it was that I last clicked on an ad. Ready? Never. That's when. I don't fucking click on those ads. They're not relevant 90% of the time and a distraction from the article I'm reading the rest of the time and I hate them. But now they're blocked. The best part of Adblock is that you have the option of either blocking the ad image, or even blocking the iframe through which any number of ads are served. Bliss.


2. Forecastfox - Now you never need to visit the pop-up filled, slow-loading, buggy Weather.com or any other weather website to see if you need to bring that sweatshirt with you to work.


3. NoScript - Although somewhat infuriating at first, this extension is well worth it if you visit a lot of unfamiliar (read: porn-y, pirate-y, or otherwise elicit) websites that may use Javascript to install malicious software on your machine. NoScript disables Javascript by default but gives you the option to permit Javascript on a site-by-site basis. Lots of initial investment for additional protection.


4. googlebar - Mimics the Google Toolbar for IE. By default, Firefox comes with a search box on the toolbar that uses Google, but doesn't have any of the other Google Toolbar features. Since Google hasn't yet created a Firefox-compatible toolbar (Didn't they hire the two primary Firefox engineers? What are they doing?) you'll need to install this open source extension to bring back your highlighting goodness.


5. ieview - Despite its wide acceptance rate and demanding nature with regards to W3C standards adherence, some pages just don't render properly in Firefox. For sites like those *cough*, ieview is your friend. It simply opens the webpage in a new IE browser window.
   

If y'all actually care about any of this (and even if you don't), I just may share some additional Firefox tips with you next time.

Oh! And to prove to you that my browser doesn't look all cluttered with these extensions installed (I hate clutter), check this out:




See that? That's an uncluttered, full-featured muthafuckin' browser right there!

*I now firmly believe that every piece of software should support tabs. There's no Goddamn good reason why they shouldn't.