Ugh. I hate to be the grammar police, and I know I’m far from perfect, but this just shouldn’t happen. If you’re a big corporation and you’re going to email your customers about a sale, it is your responsibility to proofread the email.
But, maybe this is to be expected from a company that uses the tagline “We got it. We get it.” I’m assuming what they “got” are computers and not proofreaders.
Comment [1] | 
posted 12/08/2005 12:23 PM
How am I missing all of these things? Mozilla just released a new version of their Firefox browser – version 1.5. You can download the latest from Mozilla.com, which I guess is the replacement site for Mozilla.org.
I just downloaded the new version today and have only played with it for a few hours so far. There are two features that stand out. First, the browser seems to be a bit faster when surfing. The back button seems more responsive and the pages appear to render quicker. I don’t know if this is true or if I am just imagining it. The second feature, and the one I really like, is the ability to drag-and-drop tabs. I can get really anal when it comes to where my tabs are positioned within Firefox. When I accidentally close one, I end up closing them all and starting over. Don’t ask. Now, I can just open a new tab and drag it to wherever I want it. Very cool. I wish Microsoft would let me do this with the Taskbar.
If you do make the switch from 1.07 to 1.5, be aware that not all of your extensions will work with the new version. I’m a big fan of the SessionSaver and ReloadEvery extensions and neither worked when I upgraded. There is a workaround, however:
That should do it. At least it worked for me. I guess there are some errors with some of the extensions so this may cause problems with 1.5. If you run into any problems caused by enabling an extension, just disable it.
I modified the above instructions, which were taken from LifeHacker.com
Update
After further review, I don’t think SessionSaver is working yet with 1.5. I get the same number of tabs to appear when I restart it, but none of the pages load. I’ll have to keep looking into this.
Update #2
I found a newer version of SessionSaver that is supposed to work with Firefox 1.5. It seems to work just fine.
Comment [2] | posted 11/30/2005 06:26 PM
I’m pretty late on this – I think the 5.10 update to Ubuntu was released some time in October. I just found out about it Sunday night.
If you’re wondering what in the world I’m talking about, Ubuntu is a distribution of Linux geared more toward the home user rather than big time tech geeks. If you were ever thinking of looking into Linux or trying it out, I highly recommend taking a look at Ubuntu, especially the new 5.10 release.
I’m running it on an old Dell Inspiron 4100 laptop from 2001. The install was a piece of cake – just stick the cd into the drive, turn on the pc and watch it go. A word of caution, however, the install will wipe out your entire hard drive so make sure you back things up before you begin.
The distribution comes with the usual suspects as far as open source software goes. OpenOffice2 (a replacement for MS Office), Gimp (a great graphics editing program), Firefox, etc. Ubuntu includes the Synaptic Package Manager to make installation of new packagaes a, well, snap. There are also tons of add-on packages you can find if you look around enough. I found one called network-manager that makes it easy to switch between wired and wireless network connections, depending on what is currently available.
It took me some time to get my wireless card working, but other than that it was pretty easy. It helps if you know some Linux basics, but it’s not completely necessary. There is a lot of help available on-line and Ubuntu has a very newbie friendly community available.
Best part is, it’s all free. Enjoy!
Comment | posted 11/29/2005 02:20 PM
You might notice things look a little different here at the site. For one, I finally decided to do a link check and found out a lot of the images of the template I’m using were not being found. So, the banner looks a little different, and there are some rounded corners here and there.
Also, I updated the site to Textpattern 4.0.2 last night. I had a few scares with some broken links and old plug-ins, but recovered quickly and now everything works. I’m not really sure what 4.0.2 offers. I think I’ve seen some things about comments. 4.0.2 also handles 401 errors much better than the old system. Now you’ll see an error page. Just have to figure out how to customize it. Hopefully by having the 401 pages, I’ll be able to get rid of some of the old links that Google, Yahoo and MSN think are on the site. Right now when I run a site:jaydreyer.com at Google, a lot of my pages are not showing up. Hopefully this combined with some work using Google Site Maps will help take care of that problem.
Comment | posted 11/22/2005 03:53 PM
I just wrapped up the Local Treasure International web-site for my sister and brother-in-law. It’s a resort in Nicaragua – very cool. They are building bungalows, selling land and building furniture…not to mention you can go deep sea fishing or take a surfing charter.
It took a lot longer to build than I thought it would, but in the end I think it looks pretty good and my clients seem happy. Take a look and let me know what you think. There is also a pretty cool photo gallery using zenphoto where you can check out some of the amazing fish they’ve caught from their boat, Sancho. Very cool.
The site was built using Textpattern 4.01 for the CMS.
Comment | posted 11/18/2005 11:38 PM
Comcast increased the speed of our Internet connection to 6 Mbps from 4 Mbps. The upgrade was supposed to happen a few months ago, but some undisclosed technical problem prevented it. About 2 weeks ago Comcast sent out an email notifying me that the increase had gone through and all I needed to do was unplug my cable modem, wait a few seconds, then plug it in. That’s when the trouble started.
After resetting the modem, I jumped out to a few sites that offer broadband speed checks. Time after time my connection speed kept clocking in at under 4 Mbps, actually, it was usually much closer to 3 Mbps than 4. I tried a number of things – keeping the modem unplugged longer, resetting my wireless router, my VOIP router and my switch. Nothing helped.
I searched around the Internet to see if others were having the same problem. You might be thinking, “Why not just give Comcast technical support a call?” If you’re thinking that, you must not have Comcast. Anyway, after multiple Google searches I finally found a forum where people with the Linksys BEFCMU10 cable modem (the one I have) were having the same problem. It turns out that there are different versions of this modem. Mine was version 1, which I guess could not handle the increase in speed. People with version 3 did not have this problem. I went to TigerDirect and ordered a new one for around $60. It turns out the problem I encountered has something to do with DOCSIS 2.0 compatability. I have no idea what that means but evidently my new modem (same model number) takes care of the problem.
After swapping out the modems, resetting my network and giving Comcast a call to update the MAC address, I’m happy to report the speed increase now works. Problems like this are exactly why I tell my Dad to pay the $3/mo and lease the modem from Comcast instead of buying his own. If he has a problem, he can just call Comcast and get a new modem.
Comment [1] | posted 11/18/2005 09:43 AM
Google just released Google Analytics and Google Base, but all I really want is gCalendar to go along with my gMail. Yahoo has a decent calendar available for free, but I don’t want to deal with two separate systems – I’d like gCalendar to integrate with gMail.
Does anyone out there have a clue if gCalendar will ever come in to existence? I have to believe it will, but I have no idea when. The sooner the better, as far as I’m concerned.
Speaking of calendars, I desperately need something to organize this aspect of my life. I screwed up on an appointment yesterday (one day early…), I never know when birthdays are coming, and I’m always asking my wife, “When is this? When is that? We’re going where this weekend? Why didn’t I know about that? Oh, you told me. D’oh.” Etc.
I guess my feature wish list would look something like:
That’s about it. Any suggestions?
Comment [3] | posted 11/16/2005 03:25 PM
I’m using a script from Javascript Coder that helps me validate some xhtml forms I’ve written for a project. I guess I could have done this all by hand, but if someone else already has the answer, I might as well use it.
One of the features of the product (which is free, btw) is that you can use their built in validations, or you can pass in regular expressions. I was having a lot of trouble getting the regex function to work, until I finally figured out that the ’\’ characters all have to be escaped. So, in essence, every ’\’ has to be changed to ’\\’. Once I did this, every regex expression worked.
I submitted an email to JavaScript Coder but never recieved a reply. Hopefully this helps anyone out there who has run into the same problem.
Update: Prasanth from Javascript-Coder just replied to my email and verified that the problem was not escaping the backslashes. I think the biggest problem with all of this is that it’s difficult to use ’\’ in html. What I mean by that is if you just type in ’\’, when the page is rendered you will see nothing. You have to type in ’\\\\’ to see ’\\’. It gets confusing. Best advice is to always proof-read before you publish!
Comment | posted 10/28/2005 10:08 AM
I’ve been using Gmail for about a year now and I really like it. Having my email on-line is convenient, and I don’t have to worry about synching with Outlook anymore. Plus, they give me so much space I never have to worry about attachment size or returned messages because my in-box is too full. The interface is nice, too.
I have two minor issues with the service, however:
Other than that, I like the service. And you can’t beat the price! If you would like a gmail account, send me an email. It’s still in beta but I can send out 100 invites or something like that. If nothing else, you can lock up a decent email address before all of the good ones are gone.
Comment | posted 10/25/2005 12:08 PM
Cnet has come up with their new Blog 100 list, which supposedly identifies the top 100 blogs that are worth reading. There must be some mistake, however, because I did not see JayDreyer.com on the list. I looked it over three times and still can’t find it. It must have been an oversight on CNet’s part. I’m assuming that if they expanded the list to the CNet Blog 101, I would be listed.
After briefly perusing the list, I must admit that I feel totally out of it. I probably have been to a small handful of the blogs listed and only regularly read one or two of them. The good thing about lists like this, however, is that they introduce you to sites you might not be aware of. The only problem is, I’m running out of time in the day to keep up with all of these!
On a side note, CNet estimates there are currently 14,000,000 blogs in existence and 80,000 are created every day. Wow. There is a lot of useless information floating around out there.
Comment [2] | posted 10/11/2005 12:34 PM
Jay Dreyer's blog on whatever pops into his head...sports, tech stuff, Detroit, Minneapolis, etc.
