I absolutely hate the word “blog”

And yet, here I go.

I recently decided that it’s time to move some portions of my site around such that they make more sense. Virginiaculler.com is going to be strictly professional, and I’m bringing on a new domain for my skincare/natural health stuff (which many of you Imaginary Readers may know nothing about), and I get a third domain name for free with my new hosting company.

So the blog’s going there. But I have no idea where that will be yet. So many good URL ideas are out there, and I’m torn between being practical, being overtly funny, being tongue-in-cheek funny, being fancy-shmancy and pedantic with something in Catalan or Latin (respectively, IMO), being short and concise, being long and unique, or just being boring and registering “Iabsolutelyhatethewordblog.com” or something.

If any of you imaginary readers have suggestions, I’d take ‘em. And furthermore, if any of you want a paid gig helping/teaching me to implement some of the changes when I switch hosting, that would be fab, because I’m lacking in PHP skills (as prior posts have indicated). But really, more than anything, I want to hear what domain name you think I should register.

…let the imaginary comments begin. Now that they’re up and running and all.

Okay, so for some reason my “img” code in my theme was automatically resizing width to 75 pixels, for no apparent reason, and of course the height was automatically resizing proportionally so… for those of you Imaginary Readers who were just FASCINATED by my Portland shopping antics, now you can truly see my bounty.

And, uh, hopefully you can expect more blog posts from me soon, since I have the most irksome issues (comments and images) fixed now. Thanks to Keith!

You can also look forward to an entirely new and separate blog soon, that’s devoted entirely to a much less diverse (and probably less generally entertaining) subject matter - natural skincare, cosmetics, personal care, household chemicals, food, and basically everything that potentially gives you cancer. Keep your imaginary eyes peeled.

Oh, yeah, here’s a test image…

Hey Imaginary readers,

Is there anyone out there who could help me implement a pHpMyAdmin query? Ever since figuring out how to set it up so that WordPress holds spam comments in moderation without notifying me at all, I’ve been a little delinquent about deleting spam comments from this blog. There are now around 25,000 of them, which is too many to delete using the normal interface. A WordPress help search yields the result that I need to enter the following query into my MySQL database:

DELETE FROM wp_comments WHERE comment_approved='0'

However, I’m not too familiar with phpMyAdmin, or MySQL in general, and even though I think I found the database and entered this into the query box, it doesn’t seem to be working. I could use any remote tech support that the blogosphere has to offer. I can always just contact my pal who helped me set up my blog in the first place, hehe, but I thought I’d try and be self-sufficient. And, ah, by that I mean, begging anonymously for help instead of targetedly. And, ah, he’ll probably just read this anyway. Dammit.

Worth a shot, though. Anyone?

With all the crazy technological advances that keep showing up daily, you’d think we’d all have our personal jet-packs by now. But barring that, there are a few advances I’d really like to see happen already. The first one (credit where it’s due) was stolen from my friend Ruth at lunch the other day.

- If only there were some sort of giant sensor that was linked to every cell phone, so that when you entered an area such as a movie theater or a conference room, your phone would automatically be switched to “vibrate”, and then switched back to its previous setting once you exited.

- If only there were sensors equipped for trash and recycling, that could automatically sense whether certain materials were recyclable or not based on their weight/feel/scan (I don’t know how it works, I just know it’s a good idea!). That way it wouldn’t matter if you got it wrong, or if some cities had different facilities than others - everything just goes into the same bin, and the machines take care of sorting out what’s what, so people wouldn’t feel guilty about throwing away a glass bottle if no recycling bin were present. I realize now that this is probably a somewhat Seattle-specific phenomenon, but hey…

- If only there were “fuel lights” in addition to “brake lights” on cars, so that idiot drivers who don’t realize that simply by removing your foot from the gas pedal when going up a hill, a car might actually slow down, EVEN THOUGH the brake lights weren’t lit up - that would make a lot of difference in my general stress level when driving. I drive a stickshift and am thus often inclined to simply “not accelerate” rather than “brake” in order to slow down, and by the following distance I occasionally get, people think this is a revolutionary new branch of physics or something.

- If only there were some sort of way to physically force patrons attempting to enter a bus or elevator to refrain from entering until those who had exited were clear of their path - perhaps some force field the driver would have to switch, or which would automatically activate when a “Next Stop/Floor” button was pushed, attached to a weight/motion sensor that could tell once the button pusher had successfully exited the premises. With a manual override for those times that the button gets pushed accidentally or by some obnoxious button-happy kid, of course.

-If only there were a way to account for checks you’ve written manually, and have their amounts appear subtracted in your online account balance, so you remembered that they were floating around out there uncashed. ING Direct does this when you use their system to write an electronic check, but that requires actually planning and forethought. The reason I need checks (rarely, for sure) is because I have no planning and no forethought whatsoever - I’m at a craft fair eyeing a gorgeous purse and I have no cash, or I show up empty-handed to a high school graduate’s party and figure I’ll just write her a check so she can pick her own present. Stuff like that. And of course, since these checks are so infrequent, and since I do everything else online, I immediately forget to deduct them mentally from my total, and almost inevitably screw up my own accounting. Just a simple form that allowed you to submit a check number and amount would be so, so useful. ING’s on the right track, but I’m waiting for the checking account that allows me to preemptively account for the inevitable error on my part.

- If only there were a reliable mobile telephone that could also function well for email, web browsing, and calendar-syncing, plus the other fun perks phones have nowadays like cameras and music players. Oh wait… (Have I mentioned I WANT ONE?)

Here in the MSFT parking lot, you see a LOT of alumni stickers and/or license plate holders. Like, I’d say more than 50% of the cars have them. I myself fall into this category - I pre-ordered my Bryn Mawr license plate holder before my new Scion even arrived, so I’d have it ready when I picked her up off the lot! I wish it actually said “alumna”, just so people wouldn’t think I was still in college, but I think I flatter myself in thinking I could still pass for college-age. Times are a’changing.

But as I said, I’m definitely not the only one proud of my alma mater here. The other day, I was wandering through the lot back to the incredibly crappy and far-away parking spot I had had to settle for, and I took the time to read all the license plate holders on my way. Cal Tech, Michigan State, Harvey Mudd, MIT… and then… I spotted a very sporty-looking BMW sedan with a clearly custom dark-tealy-turquoise flat paint job - it looked like a car that belonged to one of Grant’s coworkers in the videogame industry. And I got closer to see what the license plate holder said, and I was shocked and amused beyond belief.

DeVry University Alumni.

SERIOUSLY? I mean, I just find so many things shocking about this. Let’s see if I can come up with a coherent, bullet-pointed list:

•As I understood it, DeVry was the laughingstock of the “education” industry - only a quarter-step above a “University of Phoenix” program that you found via an annoying Flash pop-up ad. Or maybe even a few steps BELOW that. I read on an old best-of post on Craigslist from a hiring manager that he actually laughed at and then threw out any résumés containing references to this - his opinion was that one should not be proud to display this in a professional setting. What do I know - all I have to go on are cheesy TV commercials and Cragislist stereotypes - but this combo was enough to make me chuckle, I admit.

•This wasn’t an ITT Tech plate holder - that I could handle, because even though it’s an advertised-on-national-TV school, it at least trains people in technical fields, so it seems much more relevant. But DeVry doesn’t teach tech stuff, do they? They teach, like, inept middle management, as far as I understand. So what’s that alum doing at the tech corridor of MSFT? I mean, I suppose they need their inept middle-managers as much as anyone here, but my impression was always that said middle-managers tended to be unfinished doctorate students in cognitive science or something, ya know? Maybe that’s just my group here.
•There was another possibility, which was that this was just a joke. The guy (I know it’s a guy, I’ve seen him on my commute in) recognizes all the above points and thought it would be funny to poke fun at DeVry.

•If it’s NOT a joke, does a DeVry alum really make enough money for that (admittedly nice, though not my style) kind of car? Do you really attribute your earnings to your DeVry degree? If so, what did you major in?

•Lastly, a friend of mine, upon hearing me recount this tale, said there was a final possible scenario. That the guy had gone to DeVry (or not, I suppose) at some point, and he went to their PR office and said, “Look, I work at Microsoft now. Everyone there has really nice cars, and we all put our alumni license plate holders on them. How much would you guys pay me to put a DeVry frame on? It’s going to have to be a high figure - that shit is DAMN embarrassing!”

The jury’s out on this one. I just know I was perplexed, and I wonder now whenever I see that highly distinctive car touring around the Eastside. Someday maybe I’ll have the opportunity to ask him - though I’m not sure how one phrases that question. Maybe I’ll just pretend I went there too and ask him what year he graduated, and what program - after all, everyone out on the West Coast mistakes the Bryn Mawr College on my résumé for “Bryman College”, the local dental assistantship program. Maybe Bryman and DeVry have a sort of sister-brother relationship, like Bryn Mawr and Princeton allegedly do? I bet I could pull that off.

Upon accepting this MSFT contract position, I had to sign a ton of paperwork preventing me from disclosing too much to certain parties, from certain types of requests/contact with full-time employees, and barring me from working with any other contracting agency for Microsoft for a long time. There were tons of other clauses I don’t even recall, and I remembered there being something about not using open-source software. I was so disappointed, as Firefox has always been my browser of choice, but I duly installed IE 7.0 and sucked it up, delving back into IE for the first time since about 2004.

I figured it was probably for the best - I don’t know what the protocol is on using Microsoft stuff versus non-Microsoft stuff here, but I figured it had to be frowned upon. But after mentioning this contract provision to a tech-savvy friend and complaining about not getting to use Firefox, he pointed out that I had probably misinterpreted the clause of my contract having to do with open-source software projects - I thought it said I couldn’t USE any. Turns out I just can’t CONTRIBUTE CODE to any (like I would have any idea how to do that!).

So after having used Internet Explorer regularly for the first few months, I downloaded the most recent version of Firefox to start making the switch. And I actually discovered many things about IE7 that I liked better than Firefox, which surprised me greatly. All MSFT internal websites are password-protected or even unrenderable (?) in FF but can login automatically using IE, so I wound up switching IE to my default browser just to bypass that part, but I still use Firefox for certain tasks (both personal and professional). The two really both have their merits and their drawbacks, so I guess this is my first stab at a software review!

The two have really similar interfaces and settings now, and there are a few things that IE surprisingly does much better. The most specific two things I like from IE are simple user functionality things that make a MASSIVE difference in my personal ease in navigation. I am a tab-whore - I tend to have up to thirty tabs open at once (and I wonder why my computer occasionally runs slowly). I LOVE this feature that all mainstream browsers are finally adopting (I started using Opera before the others had gone tab-happy and I loved it back then, despite the fact that it barely rendered any sites correctly) - it’s so much easier to use, in my opinion. However, once I have thirty tabs open, if I click on a link to open it in a new tab, IE groups that tab immediately beside its source page’s tab, whereas Firefox puts it all the way at the end of the tab queue. I find IE’s approach much more intuitive and easy when I’m dealing with a tab overload scenario, which happens to me pretty much daily.

The other thing my tab-whoring polyglot tendencies love is that IE remembers your keyboard language setting for each individual tab, whereas Firefox does it globally across all tabs - and given that I test in Catalan and often have both Catalan and English pages open, it’s great to be able to have each keyboard set to the appropriate tab. The two keyboard settings have very different placement of all punctuation/character keys plus a few letters, and I find it insanely irritating to be composing English-language text in a Firefox tab that happens to be set to Catalan because I also used a different tab to look up a Catalan dictionary entry - it means that all my apostrophes turn into accent marks, my question marks into weird slashes, and my at signs into quotation marks. Helpful. And certain super-necessary functions like parentheses are moved just one character over, so if you think you’re opening a string you’re actually closing it, etc. In addition to a separate rant that would regulate punctuation placement, I just have to rant about not being able to set the language for each tab in Firefox - though to be honest, there are times when it’s more useful to be able to do a global tab language selection (such as for multiple Catalan dictionary pages open at once). Honestly, the best thing would be if there were a setting for this that you could change according to your needs.

Honestly, the only things that I dislike about IE are the bookmark interface, and the lack of add-on capability - boo hoo, I know, but I have a couple Firefox add-ons that make my life much easier. That, and Firefox has such ease in their “clear private data” function, whereas you have to sort of search in order to erase that kind of information in IE, and it takes ages to do so, and I’m not convinced it truly clears everything. Still, I was really, really pleasantly surprised as to how much easier IE has been than I had braced for. And even Vista and Office 2007 are more intuitive to me now after a few short months working here, and I can actually see how they’re built for better functionality overall, even if my learning curve is steep as I try to forget the old paths and methods and terms (while still retaining enough to be able to survive on my personal XP laptop at home). So even though I still cling to Firefox for certain reasons, more based on familiarity than functionality, I feel a little bad not being loyal to the company product (I know that sounds ridiculous as I’m just here on a short contract - perhaps more “guilty of being caught” than anything else). BUT, that all changed the other day!

We software testers in my group at Microsoft have regular weekly meetings with a few of our bosses, just to check in and go over strategies, new tools, etc. Recently, we were talking about searching for a certain computational linguistics programming term on the Internet in order to incorporate examples of these functions into our lexical testing. Here’s roughly how that conversation went:

Boss #1: “So if you need to find out more about the regular expressions relevant to your language, you can just Google the term and look at where it appears in the results…”

Bosses #2 and #3, joined by Testers #1-8 in unision: “You mean LIVE SEARCH it?!!!”

Boss #1: “……” (blushes furiously)

You heard it here first, folks. Not all MSFT full-time employees even use company products. Google still reigns, at least in part. Given that even some full-timer Microsofties still use Google as their primary search engine, and I’m with them on that camp at present, I feel more secure in using FF. Hopefully no one’s offended that I still have a little candle burning for the open-source stuff - back when I worked elsewhere, I would sometimes submit feedback about usability, and I like to think that they might’ve heard me at some point. And besides, until LiveSearch exists in Catalan, I’ll dig my heels in on that one, as I rely on Google searches in Catalan to be able to do my job here at Microsoft well! But overall, I’m shocked by how much I enjoy MSFT-based products now - it was quite humbling to discover that I actually prefer IE in some contexts, for the first time in years. Well done, Bill!

I played with my first iPhone this weekend. Turns out I do want one. Despite everything negative. I want one. Now. So does Grant. We are smitten. We are no longer interested in each other. We are only interested in this device.

But considering how cheap I am about paying for things like contract-termination fees, I’ll probably just wait a year until my contract with Verizon is up, at which point I imagine Grant and I will both dive onto the iPhone bandwagon together, thus negating the potential problem of having different service providers. See? We are even starting to rationalize our future purchase now. It’s best to be prepared.

Also, maybe they’ll have pretty colors and smaller sizes and funner ringtones and better functionality by then.

After reading Pogue and Mossberg and others mouthing off about the iPhone, I’m intrigued, but not actually interested in buying one yet. For two incredibly simple reasons:

1) You can’t copy and paste text.

2) The “period” key is on a different keyboard from the letters, so in order to punctuate your sentences, you have to switch to the “symbols” keyboard.

Despite all the great new features, and despite the fact that all the other stuff people complain about doesn’t bother me, I just can’t get past these two things. Fix this, Apple, and I’ll get on the 8GB bandwagon, I promise!

Yeah, not much of a blogger these days. The thing is, I now have actual *work* to do, which I find immensely satisfying and interesting. Plus, the couple times I’ve tried to upload something quick from work, there’s some weird thing in the Microsoft network that makes my entire post come up completely blank. At least I’m choosing to blame the network, it might be IE7, Vista, or, admittedly, PEBKAC. So far I haven’t been motivated to take the time to find out.

So what’s going on in VA land? Not much worth commenting on, I suppose. I have only a few real musings lately, but they are as such:

-I wish Google had website and email hosting like Yahoo does. I hate my Yahoo small business account and everything about their business practices, but it’s an easy interface that’s accessible from anywhere, so I haven’t ever bothered upgrading. But my small business account (which I access through a link in my regular Yahoo email account) has compatibility issues with Mobile Web 2.0, so I can’t check my email via my otherwise Internet-savvy Chocolate phone. (By the way, though, don’t go buying the Chocolate, this is NOT the only drawback). I’m sure Google would do a better job, for cheaper, with an even better interface and fewer tech glitches/”Server Temporarily Down” messages and whatnot. I can’t even upload files bigger than about 500k, I think, using Yahoo’s interface, so no MP3s, even though I’m paying for enough storage space to hold that sort of thing. Fucking Yahoo.

-I wish the LG Chocolate didn’t suck. In order to run it through my car stereo, I have to use a combo of THREE adapters - one to convert the Chocolate’s weird adapter port to a normal phone headset sized plugin, one to convert that to a normal headphone-size plugin, and a normal headphone-sized cord that runs from that into my car’s auxiliary device port. (Note: I could have paid some $300-$400 to have Scion install iPod compatibility directly with my car stereo, but since I have a Chocolate as my MP3 player and not an actual iPod, it didn’t seem worthwhile). So this multi-adapter thing wouldn’t be a big deal, except for a couple fatal problems. One: the Chocolate’s music interface is so sucky, hard to control, tiny-fonted, that I would nearly cause an accident every time I tried to adjust anything musically, were I to do so, but I don’t, so if I don’t like hearing an album straight through I’m pretty much screwed. Two: the volume, after all these adapterings, is paltry at best even with both devices turned all the way up, and then of course that leads to the sitcom-esque experience of forgetting that I’ve cranked it when I switch to playing a CD or the radio, and subsequently blasting out my eardrums when I first turn on the stereo. And the kicker, Three: It only plays out one side of my car’s speakers. I finally figured out that that issue is probably because the initial phone-handset adapter is designed to work with a one-ear handset device, so it’s not wired to accommodate two sets of speakers. MOTHERFUCKER. Of COURSE Verizon does not offer any such product to remedy this, and I don’t know enough about how to even describe the problem concisely to find a third-party vendor to sell me such a device, and pay double in shipping and handling what the device is actually worth, were it to work properly, all the while having no guarantee that that will be the ultimate outcome.

-Also, I wish the following existed: an adapter that would rig my stereo speakers (which use that typical red-black-bare-wires hookup) up to my laptop’s headphone port. Last night I was drunkenly bitching about this to a tech-savvy buddy who insisted that such a device does in fact exist. I believe him, as I think intuitively such a device would have been invented by now. But my beef: WHY CAN’T I FIND ONE? Not at Radio Shack, not at Circuit City, not at CompUSA, not at Best Buy. WHERE ELSE DO I HAVE TO GO? Or all the morons who work at those stores just incapable of understanding what I mean? Or incapable of memorizing, or unwilling to memorize, the entire store’s stock? Side rant: Why am I incapable of remembering the stylistic rule about which verb form to agree with - memorizing or memorize - so I have to rework the clause to include both? How did I possibly do so well on the GRE Verbal section? And back to my original rant: Or is it just that I’m not clear or articulate enough to accurately convey what I need? And if that’s the case, why don’t they just say so?

Goddammit. And I realized, I’m not even done ranting, because some more annoying things happened. COMPUSA = SUCK CITY. I heard from an ex-employee of theirs that they were closing something like 70% of their stores, so I decided to take my laptop in to get them to make good on the $200 extra service pack I foolishly purchased when I bought my laptop, since I had no good tech-savvy guide at the time. It seemed prudent. Turns out they a) pretty much guarantee that they’ll wipe my hard drive BY DEFAULT JUST IN CASE that’s where the problem is, even though I know enough to clearly point them to exactly where the ACTUAL problem is. Turns out they also will likely wipe the entire hard drive when doing a simple RAM install if I ask them to install it, because they figure things on the hard drive JUST MIGHT be the cause of why things are running slow, and not that I’m trying to run a program that requires at least 512 RAM using the factory 384 RAM in the machine. Even when I specifically pay for both the RAM and the install, they still say it’s “LIKELY” they will wipe the 60G hard drive JUST IN CASE. So, okay, I’ll install my own RAM, fuckers. But they could I please get the new battery promised in the plan? No, even though we battled shitty traffic on a busy Sunday with an accident to get down to Southcenter during some kind of hellish mall promo thing JUST TO GET THE LAPTOP TAKEN CARE OF, and it turns out ALL I WANT is a NEW BATTERY as STIPULATED IN MY PLAN THAT I PURCHASED FOR TWO HUNDRED DOLLARS, and even though there is one SITTING ON A SHELF BEHIND THOSE EMPLOYEES ONLY DOORS, their computer system was down so they couldn’t enter my INVOICE NUMBER to make such a transaction official. THEIR COMPUTER SYSTEM WAS DOWN. At COMP USA. Okay, I’m making my own head hurt. Fucking fuckity fuck fuck - oh, maybe that’s what I’ll do on my lunch break toa…. no, because I left my laptop at Grant’s place so he could help me install my own RAM later, since that’s the only way to NOT DELETE THE ENTIRE HARD DRIVE AS A PRECAUTIONARY MEASURE. Seriously, I think I know more about computers than these guys do, and I talk to my monitor when things are running slowly to reassure it. I mean SERIOUSLY.

So I guess the overarching theme of this blog post is, WHY DON’T THINGS JUST WORK BETTER? I mean, there are just so many reasons why they should, and yet…. not so much. It drives me crazy. All I can really do, I guess, is take one of the few good improvement ideas I have and run with it. And I am in fact planning on doing this, but for now, back to Catalan linguistics and technological frustration. Feel free to let me know if you know of any brilliant solutions to my whiny tech problems, or if you just want to weigh in. I feel like the most delinquent blogger in the world these days, but hey, I may be back soon, we’ll see. Once Grant and I move in to our new place, I’ll probably move from whining about crappy adapter cables to whining about crappy kitchen layouts and cabinet hardware and water pressure. Oh, but that reminds me - if anyone has a nice condo, etc. to rent out on Capitol Hill starting June/July, let me know!

Yeah, so it’s not exactly news that I’m a bit behind the times when it comes to the new hotness in technology. I didn’t get a cell phone in the US until I was about a year out of college, even though they were standard issue by the time I was a senior. I held onto my land line for MUCH longer than most cats I know, and I had still to this day have trouble reconciling using up valuable cell phone minutes on any toll-free call. I still don’t have an iPod, and my recently purchased LG Chocolate phone bewilders me more than it entertains me (though I DO occasionally listen to music on it - but I can’t figure out how to pause it well, or do any of the normal, simple commands that I would be able to operate just fine on a device that wasn’t the size of a baby mouse). And never, ever before have I found myself in a position to listen to these pod casts the kids are all talking about these days.

I dunno, it’s not like I couldn’t have. But two jobs ago my boss had the habit of talking to me over a cubicle wall when I couldn’t see her, plus I would always chat over the wall with my coworkers that I was friends with, so having headphones on was sort of detrimental to my professional and personal life. And I guess I sort of carried that into the next job after that, especially since we were allowed to listen to music through actual *speakers* so most of just elected to do that - even though there were generally at least four sources of sound in at least three different languages across our one-room office. But now that I share a small office with two other people, and now that I work somewhere that doens’t even supply speakers with the machines, and now that I’m in the midst of linguistic data-organizing tasks that seem to use a completely different part of my brain than the one I need to understand speech in English, well, it’s POD CAST TIME, baby.

But since I’m new to this world, I’m rather hesitant. I still only go for free ones, of course, and I prefer streaming/simple stuff that just opens up in my browser, to stuff that requires actual plugins or programs to be downloaded (partly because I’m not yet sure exactly what Bill is okay with us downloading over his bandwidth). I’ve already exhausted the Savage Love archives, and now I’m moving on to This American Life. And you know, people are right - Ira Glass *does* have kind of a weird voice. But I digress - what I was getting at is, this podcast thing is pretty neat. See? I don’t even feel the need to use quotes or italics anymore, I’m getting so comfortable with the term. Now THAT’S progress!

Anyway, if any of my imaginary readers have particular (preferably free) podcasts they’d like to recommend, EVEN ONES THAT REQUIRE ME TO ACTUALLY DOWNLOAD SOMETHING, please let me know, as I have a finite supply and sometimes like to mix it up. My preferences lean towards liberal politics and humor, but I’m pretty flexible. And I like that my learning curve is going upwards - maybe soon I’ll even get a DIGITAL CAMERA! For now, I’m content with listening to podcasts, occasionally operating my MP3able phone for something other than calling and “text messaging“, and watching complicated downloads on Grant’s Ten Foot Screen of Technology. When we move in together I’ll have to start actually learning how to operate some of his geek-machinery myself, so for now I’m enjoying my ignorantly blissful days. Okay, back to work and Ira now!