The Good Life... a weblog about life, technology, and the Opera web browser

From a newsgroup posting:

I asked my Magic Eight Ball what email program to use. It told me Outlook not so good. Good ol' dependable Magic Eight Ball.

Today was yet another splendid Monday. This evening was our spring Handbell Choir concert. My parents (all three of them) and my mother's parents came down to see the concert. I even got to spend some time with my dog.

I think handbells is one of those things in life that is a simple joy for me. It's a heap of fun, lifts my mood when I'm having a bad day, and reminds me of my blessings when I'm already having a good day. I have such a passion for them and get a joy any time I'm involved with them.

Thanks to everyone that came. I hope y'all can make it to our winter and spring concerts next year.

My sister is 24 today (the 21st of April). Happy Birthday, Corri!

In my never ending journey to find the infamous perfect instant messenging client, I downloaded Psi, a client for the Jabber initiative. With Jabber, you can connect to other IM networks (ICQ, AOL, Yahoo!, MSN, etc.) and communicate with those users easily (at least, that's how it's supposed to work).

This system is still young and blossoming. Unlike other IM networks, Jabber has different servers that you can connect to with different capabilities (specifically, not all servers support communication with all other IM networks). The server you join becomes part of your username and cannot be easily switched, so be careful.

Like any young system, Jabber isn't without its problems. I've yet to find a way to simultaneously use my ICQ and two AOL IM accounts and importing contact lists is messy at best. However, Psi enables me to get in touch with the Jabber and ICQ users I needed to reach, so it does exactly what it's supposed to in that respect.

Given time, I think Jabber has what it takes to be the best IM network. However, like most open source software I've used, it seems to take forever for that to happen.

Do classrooms have a No Shirt, No Shoes, No Service policy? I'm thinking about going to class barefoot....

Jackie has a web log now. Check it out.

conniption

a fit of rage, hysteria, or alarm

Apparently, I went into one of those last night. Helen describes conniptions as a temper tantrum standing up. I believe I was imploring my fellow Movie Club members to shhhhh! Oh well.

Leslie Harpold's hoopla.com has been snatched right out from under her. According to various reports, this isn't all too uncommon. Hopefully she'll get her page back. And as if it wasn't already obvious, call your congressperson and lobby for the return of hoopla.com to its rightful owner.

I can't help but find a bit of irony in this situation. The person that stole the domain is named Hubert Sarah. As mentioned previously shortly after September 11th, Leslie decided to call the terrorist acts of that day Hubert (link obviously broken until Leslie's page returns). And now Leslie's domain has been swiped by Hubert Sarah....

Update (April 16, 2002): Some new information is now available. It seems that Network Solutions has admitted their error, but refuse to do anything about it. Ick.

triskaidekaphobia (noun)

fear of the number 13

Netscape 4.x is a horrible browser to code web pages using CSS for. It seems to have more bugs than correct functionality. Don't fret, though; there are plenty of resources available to aid you in working around the bugs and getting a web page that still works great in CSS-compliant browsers. The CSS Problems in Netscape FAQ over at All My FAQs is the most complete resource I've found to answer questions about Netscape 4.x's CSS support and work-arounds for its bugs.

Currently, there isn't a simple, standard-compliant, scriptless means of passing a separate stylesheet to Netscape 4.x and CSS-compliant browsers. I've resorted to using a hack--exploiting a bug in Netscape--to give Netscape 4.x a different stylesheet. I first got the idea from another web log with information on how to hide certain CSS from Netscape 4.x, though it didn't hide that CSS from CSS-compliant browsers. The idea is to use the non-compliant src attribute of LINK instead of the standard href attribute to reference the stylesheet. Only Netscape 4.x recognizes src, so there's no risk of its special stylesheet contaminating your stylesheet for standard-compliant browsers. Cool.

Unfortunately, none of the HTML where I'm using this hack validates now. Oh well. That's a necessary evil considering I have to support Netscape 4.x.