This afternoon (via Camworld)
I discovered an
unintentionally amusing article on
making web pages accessible for disabled readers. Unfortunately for the author, his web
designers chose to set his font to “x-small sans-serif”. On Netscape, “x-small” corresponds to
an 8pt font at best. Not so readable for disabled people… or non-disabled people,
for that matter.

The interesting thing is that just a few hours later, I find that the site’s code has changed:
they are using a new stylesheet class that bumps the font size up a notch. I can only imagine
the number of snarky emails that these people must have received over the last day or so. (No,
I didn’t send one.) But really, I’d rather they adjusted the article’s content —
it’s really just a lazy pile of assertions at the moment.

Everyone and their mother is a “usability guru”, I suppose.

On the advice of Russ Nelson,’97 (congrats Russ on the engagement!), I’m rethinking my
staunch opposition to attending my college reunion.
Maybe it won’t be a tacky schmooze-fest. Or maybe I can avoid the people who
will make it a tacky schmooze-fest, and just hang out with my old friends. Or maybe the
my old friends and the people who will make it a tacky schmooze-fest will not, as I fear,
turn out to be the same people. Maybe, maybe.

Finally, I had to share this story about what the noxious British technology tabloid
The Register calls,
“the CAPS-LOCK Defense“:

During what was to be a routine proceeding to set future court dates, Heckenkamp challenged
the indictment against him on the grounds that it spells his name, Jerome T. Heckenkamp, in
all capital letters, while he spells it with the first letter capitalized, and subsequent
letters in lower case.

The judge was impressed neither with this nor with Heckenkamp’s motion to subpoena the “United
States of America” as a witness. And to think I was just about to send notice to friends and family
that I was changing my name to “eVA3n GOeR”
(the “3” would be silent, you see). Pity.

The other day I stumbled into the Quit Slashdot! home page.
All I have to say is: right on, brother. The thing about
Slashdot is that
every time that they post an article on a subject that I know anything about (such as
astrophysics or “nanotechnology”), the commentary is so riddled with inanity and
pseudoscientific blather that I can’t help but read it. Maybe some
people are hardwired to like awful, awful things. I wish I could get over it, like
that guy in that old Onion article,
“Aging
Gen-Xer Doesn’t Find Bad Movies Funny Anymore“:

Erdman, however, is not so certain about his changing sensibilities. “I used to be able to
take great pleasure in not enjoying things,” Erdman said. “But these days, the only things I
like are things I like. Christ, I feel so old.”

If only I were in Erdman’s (fictional) shoes. Sigh.

The sad thing about the Slashdot science articles is that occasionally some poor sap of a
graduate student gets fed up with this foolishness, damnit, and
posts a reasonably literate critique of whatever nonsense the Slashdotters are debating.
It’s irrelevant, of course. Like passing out copies of Our Bodies, Our Selves
at an NRA convention. I want to scream at these grad students, “Stop wasting your
time! Get back to work on your thesis!” But what’s the point? I can’t save the
world. I can’t even save the Johns Hopkins University Physics Department. Bleah.

What else? Saturday night I went rock climbing with Brian and about 60 friends from
One Brick.
I had never really done any serious rock climbing — not anything with ropes and all —
so it was pretty fun. However, it was a mistake to allow myself to get cajoled into
participating in the boys vs. girls speed-climbing race. Picture me in line, arms all noodley
from three previous climbs, hemmed in by seven or eight bad-ass climber dudes.
“You’ll do fine!” Brian said. Clever bastard — this was just his way of getting me back for
refusing to go to our five-year college reunion.

In the good-news department, I went to Target this weekend to buy a lamp for the
apartment — one of those mix-and-match the base and lampshade dealies. Anyway,
on my way out, the security guard complimented me. “Nice lamp,” he said. And as
I walked through Macy’s to get to the parking lot, one of the makeup ladies flagged me
down. “That lamp is so cool!” she said. “Where did you get it?” So things are
looking up, career-wise. I clearly won’t make a very good fireman, Army Ranger, or
Emergency Mountain Patrol Rescuer, but I might very well have the potential to be
a fabulous interior designer.

I ran into a funny bit by a man who feels that
Tic-Tac-Toe
deserves the same prominence as chess. I hope those snobs at the New York
Times listen.

Things I Like About Windows 2000 (in comparison to Win98 SE)

• The icons are a bit rounder and cuter.
• When you open and close menus and windows, they fade in and out rather than
  popping in and out of existence. That’s a nice effect (albeit stolen from Aqua).
• The power-off button works.
• The system doesn’t hang when you try to shut it down through the Start menu.
• It doesn’t try to install one and only one 2GB partition
  on your hard drive, leaving the other 38GB hanging out there in the Unaddressed Ether.
• It freezes up about a fifth as often.
• It has Freecell.

Things I Don’t Like About Windows 2000

• It has no Java to speak of, although this is easily rectified.
• Outlook Express 6 still has no capability to import mailboxes
  from a file or export mailboxes to a file (don’t let the “import” and
  “export” options in the menus fool you).
• It assigns all your devices (video, sound, modem, and others) to the
  same IRQ.
• It won’t let you move devices to different IRQs. Not through the Device Manager
  (the options are grayed out), not through BIOS (this is ignored), and not by
  physically swapping your cards around. Thus you cannot fix the screwed-up
  configuration that Windows handed you in the first place.
• Did I mention the “handing you a broken configuration and not letting
  you fix it” part? That really stinks.

I’ve been having all sorts of problems with technology recently.

1. My ISP, BowieNet (or as
   Sam liked to call it, SlowieNet —
   oh yeah, Sam, well pay for your own damn ISP then!)
   Oops, where was I? Oh yes, my ISP, BowieNet, has been
   down a lot. Well, OK, that’s not news.

2. The fuse for the circuit that controls my
   apartment’s bedroom and living room lights blew.
   I had always just had a halogen lamp and my computer
   on that circuit. And an alarm clock. Then I added 28W
   worth of compact fluorescent bulbs to the line. “We
   cannae take nae more o this, Captain!” Poof!

3. On Monday, someone in my company decided that my office
   phone was a fax machine, and set the fax on their end
   to “autodial”. So I got a call every minute for over
   thirty minutes. I don’t know who it was, because
   the person was dialing from one of our “flexible field
   offices” in Colorado, which is sort of a waystation for
   mobile employees. Nevertheless, stupid-fax-person, rest
   assured I will find you. I have plans for you. Oh,
   yes. Plans.

4. My PC is still freezing up, despite my fresh install of
   Windows 2000. As far as I can tell, this only happens
   when A) the sound card is running and B) when my modem
   is connected. I mentioned this to J.C. and he said,
   “Oh, you’ve probably got both devices on IRQ 9.” I
   checked, and holy cow, he was exactly right.

   Then I did some more checking, and it turns out that
   my video card and some other device are also
   on IRQ 9. What the heck? All I did was install the
   OS and let it recognize the devices by default. Why
   doesn’t Windows automatically spread out those devices
   to different IRQs? There’s like 16 of them, and most
   of them are free. I mean, how hard is that?

M’ris thinks she knows
why the technology gods have turned against me: “Have you been
neglecting them of late? Have you been playing fewer
computer games? Something like that? They need their
regular sacrifices.” Ay me, I admit it. I’ve played no
computer games at all for the last few months (except for an
occasional round of
Titan). I have
sinned, and perhaps I shall never be redeemed.

Well, on to good news. Last weekend I discovered that IKEA
is the greatest store of all time. I went there for
bookshelves and was simply paralyzed with the staggering array
of inexpensive, good-looking stuff. Good thing I have
such iron self-control, or I might have bought an entire living
room set. Bookcases! We’re here for bookcases, Evan.
Focus, man, focus!

It’s not like people haven’t told me that IKEA was great. I’ve
even been to IKEA before, but it wasn’t the the same; I wasn’t
shopping for me. Two years ago, my friend Derrick Chau
in L.A. dragged me with him. It was a nice Saturday morning,
and hundreds of young couples were wafting through the store.

Derrick: Do you like this coffee table?

Me: Oooh, that’s a nice one!

Derrick: How about these couch cushions?

Me: Well, they’re OK, but I don’t think they match your couch or your curtains.

(more of the same dialog for several minutes…)

Derrick (looking around): Dude, how about you walk this way, I’ll walk that way, and we’ll meet up later?

Me (looking around): Good call.

In Other News: in an upcoming Science journal article,
physicists at Oak Ridge National Labs are claiming to have seen
table-top fusion in acoustic acetone bubbles.
However, other physicists at Oak Ridge have been unable to
reproduce the results, and the
APS seems
unimpressed: “Perhaps Science magazine covets the vast
readership of Infinite Energy magazine.” Now that’s just mean.