I think I just participated in a Turing test.  I had a problem ordering a new cell phone from Sprint, so I did an online chat with a customer service representative.  They said they would e-mail me a transcript, but they haven’t yet.  Since the chat was in a Flash object, I couldn’t select the text to copy and paste it, so I just combined two screenshots, and added some annotations.1

Anathem by Neal Stephenson is the best book I have ever read.

If you haven’t heard lately, YouTube will be dropping support for Internet Explorer 6.  This is great.  I’m hoping more top-tier sites follow suit.  That is the only thing that is really going to force an upgrade on many users.  And more importantly, it might force more lazy IT departments to upgrade their users’ browsers (since many of them are locked out of better browsers).

Don’t get me wrong, Internet Explorer 6 was a great piece of software when it debuted, eight years ago.  I’m sure that 2009’s best browsers will be lacking many essential features in 2017’s internet.  Wow, 2017, that’s like a million years from now in internet years.

I received an e-mail forward today that contained something I felt had to be pointed out.  So I took a screenshot and added an annotation.  See if you can find it.

I recently put up a new photo album covering a brief visit by Stephanie’s sister, when Emma got to open yet another birthday present.  You can also see our newly-painted living room in these pictures—it’s a kinda tan color now, instead of boring white.  There are also some pictures of our trip to the beach, but we didn’t take that many pictures this year.

Longtime readers of this website probably remember1 that, when I created the current layout (nearly four years ago), I commented that the Homer icon beside the title of my posts was just a placeholder.  Well, I finally decided to do something about it.  I opted to just use my gravatar, as I started doing in the comments last year.  In case you’re curious, my current gravatar is from a doodle of one of The NiNjAS.  But if you were one of my true fans you would know that already.

The big controversy in the local news today is that Concord Mills Mall (which Wikipedia says Charlotte Business Journal says is the state’s largest tourist attraction) has decided not to renew the lease on Free Market Warrior, a kiosk that sold conservative and anti-Obama bumper stickers and t-shirts.  I’ve never actually seen the kiosk in question, since I avoid the mall whenever I can.  But I checked out their website after hearing about it on the radio this morning, with the intention of making a blog post saying something to the effect of “Look, of course you’re going to get kicked out of the mall if you sell this and this and this.”  But I can’t find anything that really seems that bad.  The site has two different lists of items they were told not to sell.  I’m not sure which is canonical.  In either case, I know I’ve seen anti-Bush bumper stickers that were just as bad (though I don’t know if they were ever sold in the mall), and you can find much more offensive (though non-political) stuff at HotTopic.  Maybe the fact that it’s a kiosk and you see it just by walking by, instead of having to go into a store, has something to do with it?  I don’t know, I’m not a mallologist.

Oh well.  I guess all I’m saying is that I don’t think they deserved to be kicked out of the mall, based on the items I see on their website.