New job

March 27, 2006

Just thought it might be worth mentioning that I started a new job today as a Web Developer. Things went well and I’m looking forward to it. I got to really use a Mac for the first time in my life. I never really had anything against Mac’s, but I learned PC’s and just sort of kept on using them because they were what I know. I’m not sure that I’ll ever switch to a Mac at home, but it’s definitely a nice system. I can see why folks like them so much.

Anyhow, like I said, just figured it was worth mentioning. It’s probably all you’ll hear me say regarding it since my general policy is to never blog about work-related things.

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Boing Boing going for sensational headlines

March 22, 2006

Just read this article over at Boing Boing with the title: “Yahoo: if you use our ads, you have to block non-US visitors”

The problem is, here is what was said by Yahoo:

Item ‘11.l’ stated that I will not “display all or part of the Ad Unit to any user located outside the US”. In other words, I can’t allow users outside of the United States to view my pages if there is a Yahoo ad on the page!

Now, what that ACTUALLY says is you can’t display Yahoo Ad’s if the visitor is from outside of the United States. It does not say “You can’t show the pages contents to visitors outside of the states” which is what the Boing Boing article title says, and what the person who submitted the story seems to have taken it as.

Now I agree, the policy is pretty … stupid. But if you’re going to report it, report it accurately.

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gMail + gTalk = gFailure

March 20, 2006

GTalk FailureI’m getting so tired of seeing this error message (click to enlarge).

This along with the “Oops … we were unable to perform the operation” or whatever their cute-sie error message is has become all too common for the past week to week and a half.

It hasn’t come to it yet, but at the current rate of degradation in service, it won’t take long for GMail to be rendered useless for me. I’ve had to go back on my swearing off of IM clients. For now I’m using Meebo (neat IM client by the way) when the GTalk service is failing through GMail for me (oddly, I can still get on GTalk through Meebo’s jabber service just fine).

And for the record, I’ve been having these problems on multiple computers that operate on multiple networks. So I think it’s pretty safe to assume that it is particular to either the entire GMail+GTalk service or my account and not to my computer or my connection.

UPDATE: While trying to get things back up with chat in GMail, I got this. Hmm, maybe it’s time to try out Thunderbird again…

GMail Down

UPDATE: Now I’m really getting pissed. GMail is taking its sweet time in delivering email to me apparently. I’m receiving emails hours after they were originally sent. I’m pretty close to going back to using my own server for email. This kind of unreliability isn’t worth it.

UPDATE: Now a friend has received a “this message has been delayed” response when trying to send me an email. I’ve moved my email account now, so shouldn’t be an issue going forward. Bah, too bad, I really liked gmail, but I can’t deal with this.

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