Yep, that’s my mom being scared of Conficker. Sooooo annoying since I set up a Ubuntu machine in her office when her other computer was “slow” (it just needed more RAM). She wouldn’t use it because it didn’t have MS Office on it.

Can you tell how aggravated this makes me?

Look: >:-| This is my angry face.

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There, now that I’ve said that, lets talk for a second about facebook. Facebook has been the golden child of social networks for a short while and looked poised to stay in that position. I was so excited when they opened it up to select companies and I was able to create a profile. Then they opened it up to everybody but somehow avoided the spammy problems that plague other networks. Woot! The addition of the newsfeed? At first kind of scary but then they fixed it and it was a useful tool for keeping up with what your friends were up to. Enter facebook apps. Great idea in theory. In practice? Hi, if I get bitten by a vampire or superpoked again, I think I’ll have a coronary. Okay, that may be a bit much but a lot of those apps were super annoying and did some really shady, spammy stuff. Thankfully facebook cleaned that up and was the great social network it started out as. Whats the recurring idea here? Facebook fixes what it breaks for the better.

Recently facebook introducted a new ad platform that included a “feature” called the facebook beacon. Another great idea in theory, but in practice? Well, not so much. A brief description of how the beacon works: a company puts a small javascript snippet on their website. This small bit of code will tell facebook what you’re doing on the companies site. “In theory,” you can choose whether or not these updates will appear in your facebook newsfeed. In practice? Again not so much. Some people have reported that the notification about the update only appears briefly then disappears. Some people report not seeing the notification at all. Mind you this is not a yes or no prompt, it informs you about the transmission of your data then asks you if you’d like to opt-out. If you miss the prompt because you look away/switch tabs/etc, there are your activities displayed in your facebook newsfeed. This wouldn’t be such a big deal if only one or two sites were beta testing this feature to work out the bugs. Unfortunately there is a long list of big name websites participating in the facebook ad network. Try on Yelp, Epicurious, and Zappos for size. A partial list of participating sites is as follows according to this facebook press release:

AllPosters.com
Blockbuster
Bluefly.com
CBS Interactive (CBSSports.com & Dotspotter)
ExpoTV
Gamefly
Hotwire
Joost
Kiva
Kongregate
LiveJournal (people with secret LJ accounts, watch out!)
Live Nation
Mercantila
National Basketball Association
NYTimes.com
Overstock.com
(RED)
Redlight
SeamlessWeb
Sony Online Entertainment LLC
Sony Pictures
STA Travel
The Knot
TripAdvisor
Travel Ticker
TypePad
viagogo
Vox,
Yelp
WeddingChannel.com
Zappos.com

This list will continue to grow as facebook has made it super-easy for any site to add the beacon. It’s done well to broadcast your whole life thus far though, yes? What you eat, what you wear, what you buy, what you blog, where you travel, etc, etc, etc.

As I said before, facebook has a tendency to fix things they’ve broken. Right now they seem to think there is nothing wrong with the beacon. I won’t go far as to say they’re blowing it off because I want to believe a company thats done such awesome things in the past wouldn’t blow off member privacy concerns. What can they do to fix it? Make the beacon updates an opt-in instead of an opt-out. That way unwanted updates won’t accidentally appear in ones newsfeed. Maybe even add an option in the privacy settings to globally opt-out of all beacon updates (which was apparently included in the beta versions?). In any case, make it so that I completely control the information about me that gets shared, both with facebook and my facebook friends.

What can you do to avoid the beacon until facebook fixes it? If you’re a Firefox user, go to this helpful post written by Nate Weiner for instructions on how to block the beacon. If you’re an Internet Explorer user, stop whatever you’re doing, install Firefox, then go to the site referenced in the previous sentence. Also never use Internet Explorer again, you’ll be better off for it.

Speaking of personal privacy and security, I was thinking about something the other day that I’m sure many people have pontificated about; account security questions. I was transferring a vBulletin license to someone and the Jelsoft staff asked me to answer my security question: What is my mothers maiden name? It made me think of exactly how many sites use this question as a way of authenticating people when they’ve forgotten their passwords. Imagine, if you will, someone has used a some analytical skills mixed with a bit of game theory. They search your name online and find out your mom and dads name. They search for your parents names on Ancestry.com and instantly they know not only when your parents got married, but also your mothers maiden name, both of their middle names, their anniversary date, if and when they divorced and even the dates they remarried. All public record, all up for the asking. So is your information really REALLY secure? Go back and check the security question on your accounts and make sure the answers can’t be easily searched.

Hey, we landed while I was writing so now I’m at home. Though I thought I’d never say this, I’m glad to be back in New York. My  Thanksgiving vacation in Florida was marvelous but my family stresses me out (I still love you family). I got some relaxation in by going to the beach a couple times and also taking some pics with the DIY $10 macro studio. That was so much fun I’m going to set it up again here it at home. Before I do that, I need to go find some food since I haven’t eaten all day. Someone pester me to write again in 2 weeks.

I just got back from a week in Chi-Tucky. Suffice to say, I had a less than stellar trip. It started with 2 good days, then the next 4 days were ass, followed by a good afternoon (thanks J!). We won’t go into details about that roller coaster, for the sake of your faith in humanity.

Moving on, in case you weren’t already aware, Chicago pizza is a far cry from the floppy slices I enjoy in NYC. I tried the much hyped Giordano’s first and was not impressed. Thankfully my Chi-Pizza experience was saved by my fast acting coworkers. Sensing my displeasure with Giordano’s (okay I told them about it), they took me to lunch at Gino’s East. To say it was a far cry better is an understatement. The sauce:topping:crust ratio was almost perfect which is key, though this was helped by an experienced Windy City dweller suggesting we get extra sauce. All in all, I like that city a lot and would consider moving there if it didn’t get ridiculously cold.

Right, so I’m home now. I must say, I love flying Jet Blue. One crappy experience aside (I think the rude flight attendant may have had PMS) it is the one airline I look forward to flying. They really aren’t lying about the extra leg room. My 6’1″ self can sit in a seat and not have the seat in front of me touch my knees, even when its reclined. Anywho, my flight home got mega delayed due to fog overtaking NYC. No big deal, we boarded an hour and a half after the scheduled time and once we’re all aboard the captain comes out of the cockpit and tells us why we’re delayed and how long we’re going to be on the runway. He said an hour but “I wanted us to board just in case we can get out of here any earlier than that.” Turns out he made a good call and we were in the air in about 20 minutes. Bonus: I ordered my customary white wine (calms the nerves) and as I offered the flight attendant a Lincoln she gave me a smile, held up her hand, and KIM. Jet Blue would do well to implement an in flight survey system. The survey could run while the plane is taxiing with survey choices displayed on the headrest TV screens while using the volume buttons as an input method. They could collect instant, relevant feedback about passenger experiences. That idea is a freebie Jet Blue, please make it a reality so I can give props where they are due.

Meanwhile, in online life, 4 former Googlers released FriendFeed. Can I just say, loves it? Okay thanks, LOVES IT! Remember way back when I used Pipes to make a huge mash of all my feeds? Yeah so FriendFeed does just that for most of the major social services (glaring omission: Facebook). The difference is that FF makes it easy and it looks waaaaay better doing it. It also adds in a social feature in that you can follow the FriendFeeds of well…your friends. I think this thing has huge potential. Imagine, if you will, that there is a person out there who listens to the same things on last.fm as you do, shares the same Google Reader stories, Diggs the same stories, and reviews the same places on Yelp. Imagine if FriendFeed allowed you to find that person and recommended them for you. Just imagine…

Its nice huh? You like it don’t you? I know you do. Too bad its in beta (real beta, there are lots of bugs) so you have to sign up to get an invite or be invited by someone. Do you know anybody who already has an account?

Finally, Ron Paul is Pro-Life (or anti-choice whatever you want to call it). Just in case you didn’t hear me the first 500 times I said it.

Have a Happy European Invasion Day peeps! Enjoy the extra day off if you get it.

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Blog wise, I started futzing with my feed. I used Yahoo Pipes to mashup my Twitter and Blogger feeds and subsequently annoyed the people subscribed to my blog. I apologize for that and have since un-mashed my Twitter feed.

That being said, I’ve become a Twitter fiend which is probably why I haven’t been blogging much lately. Writing small blurbs as they come to me is more my style. I think I may try to find a way to make a blog post out of all my Twitter entries (tweets?) for the day.

So back from Italy, that was an interesting trip. I’m glad to be back in a place where I speak the language and generally know what to expect when I order food in a restaurant. Photographic evidence of my trip exists if you care to partake.

I’ve acquired a new toy and have been posting the products of my playing over on flickr. Someone asked me why I use Flickr vs. Picasaweb and my answer was that I use both. I use Flickr for the community features and I use Picasaweb for sharing pictures with my family. While I love Flickr’s openness and community interaction (really where else will you find a group dedicated to people posting pics of themselves in the 80′s?), it’s a little disconcerting to have a picture get hundreds of views in a day and not know where they came from. Flickr could stand to incorporate a little analytics goodness or better yet, allow folks with Pro accounts to use the tracking tool of their choice.

I bought a Wii and won an Xbox 360 so I’ve been playing a few video games here in there. The Halo 3 beta == love. I can’t wait until the full release. Wii tennis is crazy addictive. Shame I’m never home enough to play against real people.

Since being back from Italy, I’ve gone to California for a few days. It seems I always end up in the Bay Area when there is a crazy heat wave going on. Luckily this time I had an AC to cozy up to when it got too hot. During my trip there I learned a little Python and had dinner with one of my years long online friends.

Web wise, aside from being in love with Twitter, I find Facebooks apps to be quite dope. Good show Facebook. I love iGoogle’s new themes, but I am not so much in love with the name change. To each their own I guess. The new autosave feature in Blogger is awesome, doubly so because I accidentally closed the lid of my laptop during the composition of this post.

I think I’ll stop typing now as my heart is not in this post. I’ve been spoiled by the brevity required by Twitter. Have a good holiday weekend all!

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• No control over what gets imported. If you import things that are in draft status in WordPress, they will be in published status in Blogger. However, control over what to import is being worked on.
• The script uses XMLRPC which means if you have characters in your posts that XML can’t parse, it will throw errors.
• Even though the posts are imported correctly in the blog, they still show up at the top of the feed. This isn’t a fault of the the script, nor is it a big deal, its just kind of annoying. (Note to AG: I’m not even about to touch Vista again, that was an old post.)

I’ve held off on the full import until controls are inserted for what posts get moved. I’m not a fan of my old ramblings in draft status being added to this blog. You probably wouldn’t want to read them anyhow.

Since I’ve moved to New York, I haven’t traveled *anywhere* which is a big change from the amount of traveling I used to do when I lived in Atlanta. While I like visiting new (to me) locales, it’s nice to be in one place for a while. That’s about to change as I’m headed to Italy in the not so distant future. It will be my first time in Europe since I was 2 or 3 years old and I’m really excited about it. I’ll be in Italy long enough to visit some other countries so I’d like to hear where you 78 readers (growth!) think I should go. My main interests are taking cool pictures and visiting historical sites but I’d like to do a wee bit of shopping while I’m there as well. Of course I’ll be sampling the food and hopefully scoring some good bottles of wine to take home.

Last but not least, I’ve been thinking of changing the template of this blog. I’m not sure whether I want to change a few colors here and there or just overhaul the whole thing. If you notice template weirdness that’s a good indicator that I’m tinkering with it. I’m also trying some new things with the feed. If you find any of the changes annoying, sorryforya! I kid, I kid. If you find something annoying by all means let me know and I’ll see what I can do.

1. Up until I was about 15 (1995), I always thought I’d be a lawyer. After that point, I was focused on working with computers. You remember 1995, right? The beginning of those beautiful days leading up to the dot com bust? Funny thing though, even after the bust, I still wanted to work with computers.
2. During school, I worked on an Army post and I was married for about a year and a half to a guy in the Army. I can say, with conviction, that the US Army does not give a hot damn about the families of it’s soldiers. Despite the propaganda that they attempt to force on soldiers and their families (how many “Soldiers and Families First” posters did I frame?) they would rather all the soldiers be single.
3. I hate flying. Well not so much the flying part as the idea that the plane could fall out of the sky due to any one seemingly minuscule thing that can cause extremely bad things to happen. Yes, yes, my chances of being in a car accident are greater than my chances of being in a plane that crashes. However, my chances of living after said car accident are far greater than my chances of living after a plane crash.
4. Getting my job at Google was kind of a fluke. I was on Craigslist looking for something random (I’m always scouring for old computers and good deals) and decided to look at the jobs section. I saw Google was hiring in Atlanta and I said “Oooo cool,” sent my resume in and here I am today.
5. I wasn’t born in the United States and for a while I had dual citizenship with the country I was born in. I got rid of it when I had some issues with financial aid in college. What I mean by issues is “We don’t think you’re a citizen of the US, therefore you can’t have financial aid.” Silly, yes. However arguing with people in power who think they’re right can take a long time, time I didn’t have.

Welp there is my 5. I will now pass the torch on to…

Gayle
Darla
CJ
Liz
AG

BTW Amazon fixed their mess. Finally.

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I’m returning from San Diego where my beautiful cousin GiGi got married to a wonderful guy. The wedding was gorgeous, despite a few snafus. For the record, if you’re in the Southern California area planning a wedding, please don’t book Clawson Photography. They’re scam artists who use a fake sample book (with pics stolen from a good photographer) plus a low price to take your money. They either never show up for the wedding or do show up but never send the pictures. They tried to scam my cousin but luckily she did some research and was able to book a great photographer at the last minute. I don’t know their names but once I find out, I’ll update this post. The rehearsal dinner was iffy due to an issue at the Dave and Busters in San Diego. Apparently medical conditions do not override their policies on headwear inside the establishment unless the general manager gets involved. Really bad form in my opinion. Aside from that drama, all went well. Congrats Gi and JR!

On the tech tip, I’ve still been playing with the new thing mentioned in my previous post, also known as the Google Apps For Your Domain Start Page. I used to work at an educational institution and if I was still there, I’d set the Start Page as the homepage on all my Firefox deployments. That would be a great way to keep students up to date with current info. Anywho, with this addition to Google Apps For Your Domain and the fun new features added to Gmail (all hail the Murd…errr Mute function!), the Google fangirl in me has been cheering loudly lately.

In other news, my move to New York is fast approaching. I go to look for apartments next weekend and I move in early December. It’s a little nervewracking but luckily its the only worry I have right now. I have some anxiety about not having a car anymore but I think I’ll get over it in time. It’s really hard figuring out which neighborhoods are the “good” neighborhoods and which are the not so good ones. I’m leaning towards parts of Brooklyn, Astoria, and Jersey City though I’ll probably end up with something I wasn’t even expecting. That just tends to be how things happen for me.

So I’m home now and just got the pop up to switch to new-ish Blogger beta. Sooo, here is my first post from new Blogger world. Everybody have a great day!

I flew home from NY the other day and I got my hand sanitizer and my tube of lip gloss taken from me going through security. No matter, I still had my backup jar of lip gloss in my purse. Well, I had it until the TSA came to our gate before boarding and had people randomly going through all carry-ons. So they came to my backup jar and said it couldn’t go. I didn’t understand so the TSA guy and I had a little conversation. This is how it went:

Me: So how come this can’t go?

TSA: Because its a liquid.

Me: No, its pretty solid actually. Here feel it (this was acceptable because he had gloves on).

TSA: No, its a gel so it can’t go.

Me: I thought they said that lipstick and the like were okay.

TSA: Solid lipstick in a tube is okay, other stuff is not.

Me: This is the same as lipstick though. Like if a took a tube of lipstick and smashed it into a jar, it would be the same consistency as this.

TSA: Yeah but its not in a tube.

Me: So what you’re saying is, if I were to take all my lipgloss out of this jar and put it into a tube, it would be okay?

TSA: Yeah.

Me: Ooookaaaay.

I figured I wasn’t going to get anywhere in this conversation and I wasn’t about to argue logic with a kid who was just repeating the foolishness passed down by the US Govt. I got on the plane and licked my lips the whole way. Ugh. Thank goodness I have backup backup lipgloss at home. Yes, I have a lot of lip gloss because my lips tend to get dry. I should probably drink more water or something.

Meanwhile, I ended up doing the touristy thing while I was in New York. Statue of Liberty, Empire State, the WTC site, then finally dinner in Times Square. You can check out my touristy pics if you like:

BigApple

Aug 21, 2006 – 186 Photos

Of course I got my New York Pizza the night before tourist day. Pizza 33 (Thoity-thoid and thoid) is the best pizza I’ve had in NY. Everyone was telling me to go to a Ray’s pizza but I couldn’t find one in the area I was staying in. Maybe next time.

Meanwhile, speaking of pizza, remember my post about pizza and chocolate? Well it looks like Domino’s took that post to heart (yes of course Domino’s monitors my blog, thank you very much) and have introduced brownie bites as a dessert. Three cheers for chocolate!

Tags:

• pizza
• chocolate
• New York
• lip gloss

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Rewind before the flight for a second. I arrived at the airport 3 hours before my flight, fully prepared to wait in line to have my bags thoroughly rummaged through. No such thing happened though, I was checked in and through security in less than 30 minutes. Fast forward to when I landed. I noticed something was sticking out of the back pocket of my laptop bag…whats this? My hand sanitizer. In my laptop bag. That went on the plane. So now I know why security was a breeze…they apparently weren’t really checking things.

I have to revisit my post about the best WiFi hotels in 2006. Once again, that widely quoted article was wrong about Kimpton hotels. Sure they have WiFi but it sure as hell isn’t free. Try $10.95 per night, the same as their wired internet access. So far this is 2 Kimpton hotels I’ve stayed in that charge for wireless. I don’t want to stay in anymore to find out if the trend continues.

So I went to see SOAP (Snakes on a Plane for those of you who have taken up residence under a rock again) on opening night with a group of coworkers. That movie experience was quite possibly the best I’ve ever had. The movie itself was as camp as everyone expected it to be, however, when you’re in a theater full of hissing, laughing, yelling moviegoers who are there for the camp, its not bad at all. One guy I work with called it this generations Rocky Horror picture show and I tend to agree. I wish I would have had the foresight to bring rubber snakes to the movie though. That would have been the icing on the cake snake.

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Yesterday was fun, I got to do lunch with Matt Jr. Adam (I kid Adam, I kid). Adam is a great guy (he didn’t pay me to say that) and pretty funny to boot. The food was great as usual. Who knew curried salmon would taste yummy? Anyway, yesterday I also almost hit a Very Important Individual with a door as I was walking out from getting some breakfast. Tres embarrassing but they seemed not to notice and/or care. I apologized and we both kept it moving.

Well, time for me to start today’s adventure. Oh and congrats and good luck to Liz! Later folks.