Aimless Wandering

So, in another one of those periods where I could probably be doing something a bit more productive at work I decided instead to go on a hunt for useful plug-ins, and as I have many times in the past, given up in frustration after about 30 minutes or so…

I’ve found a few that I like a lot and I’m using on this blog:

• Akismet: Developed by the folks that made WordPress, this plug is a fantastic comment spam catcher.  I’ve been using it for about a month now on the Cruise Planners site, and it’s caught every piece of comment spam thrown at it so far.
• Theme Switcher:  Ok it’s just eye candy, and I’m not sure if any of the small handful of readers to the blog have tried it out, but I think the concept is pretty neat.  Right now you have the option of switching between two themes that I really like.  If you’re not a big fan of the theme that I have on the site right now, check out the theme switcher in the tool bar and see if you like the other one better!
• Bad Behavior: This one I just downloaded and installed today both here and on the Cruise Planners site.  It’s supposed to look at all the incoming traffic to a blog and stop things like scraping the blog for e-mail addresses and other “bad blog visiting behavior.”  You can check it out here.

Call me greedy, but I want more!  Here’s some of my wish list, if you have suggestions for these plug ins (that work!) leave a comment:

• Spell Checker:  A friend suggested just installing a spell checking plug-in to Firefox, which isn’t a bad idea.  I use Firefox for about 95% of my web browsing experience at home and like it a lot…  The trouble is I don’t always use Firefox, sometimes it doesn’t play nice for me and I have to shift to Internet Explorer.  I also don’t have access to Firefox at work.  In those cases, having something that was part of WordPress would be nice.  I tried this Ajax based one and didn’t like it at all…  Any thoughts on one that works?
• Post expanding thingy:  The wife first showed me this on a blog that she reads (BTW Mir if you see this the wife thinks you’re pretty! ) watch what happens when you click on her “more” link…  I tried using this plug-in to do that, on the Cruise Planners site, and it worked kinda ok in Internet Explorer, and pretty much broke the blog in Firefox and Safari.

There’s probably lots of other cool plug-ins out there, but it looks like lots of them either do stupid things that I don’t want or are written for old versions of Wordpress…  Got a cool plug in that works with the latest version of Wordpress, leave me a comment and maybe I’ll play with it…

So, you discover an item that your life at work just wouldn’t be complete without…  Being that good steward of scarce funding $’s you scour high and low on the interweb to find that most necessary of necessary widgets.  Then you go and fill out the necessary requisition forms (in triplicate!)and submit them…

Then you wait, and wait, and wait…

Finally, after two months of waiting (or is it three now?) somebody returns your phone call…  It seems that despite the fact that vendor A is the cheapest around, they couldn’t order from them.  So supply folks used their list of alternate sources for stuff (after waitng two weeks to reject the order from vendor A) to try and place the order from a different Vendor.  Order gets submitted (after sitting for another week) and hangs around at Vendor B for three weeks, before Vendor B declares that they can’t get the item being ordered….

So after another few weeks goes by (and multiple phone calls and e-mails to the purchasing folks) we get the call from the purchasing folks, “hey we’ve got this two month old purchase request that we still haven’t filled, do you still want this stuff?”   So after several minutes of a one sided conversation (somewhat heated) about customer service, workflow management, with a few repititions of “GET ME MY STUFF” thrown in for good measure…  It seems that the most necessary of necessary widgets has FINALLY been ordered…  For about $50 more per unit than originally priced out at…  And you know it’s been so long since I first did the purchase request that I don’t even know any more just how many widgets I ordered in the first place!

So I ran across this story over on Valleywag…  I’ve got to say, the attitude this guy takes is just a load of crap!  Is there really anybody with half a brain out there that believes this bozo?  Is there anybody that doesn’t think that the real reason he got fired is because he is actually a worthless moron who wastes so much time reading blogs that he isn’t doing the stuff he’s supposed to be doing

A little digging reveals that not only was the dope reading the blog on company time, calling attention to the fact that he was on the blog on company time, he was also doing it with his boss looking over his shoulder!  HELLO!!!! 

Nah, couldn’t be because you weren’t making the slightest effort to even look remotely productive!  I may goof off at work, I my post on my blog at work…  But I still make sure I at least LOOK productive!

HEY PUTZ!!! I THINK THERE’S A CLUE ATTACHED TO THE BACK OF YOUR CRISP NEW PINK SLIP!!!!

However, since this goober started a website blaming Valleywag for getting him fired, and even has a PayPal donation link setup, something tells me he won’t find the clue…

Oh, and the ariticle that supposedly got this clown fired… not that funny.   It was slightly amusing, but I guess since I’m not a Silicon Valley insider I didn’t find all that great…

I’ve come to loath corporate supply/purchasing departments.

First there’s the whole budget process…  It’s great that they give you that big ole pot o’ money for you to spend… Of course with the caveat that if you don’t spend it all as quickly as they want you to then the money is going to get taken away…  And then since you obviously (to them at least) don’t need all the money that they’re giving you, next year that pot of money is going to be smaller…  Heaven forbid you carry ANY money over into the next fiscal year!

You know, I understand that it could be taken as a sign of inefficiency to not spend all the money in your budget, but maybe, just maybe, you need to purchase something that is so expensive and will take such a huge chunk of your budget that you need to spread the payment across your fiscal years, no that’s just inconceivable….

 Then there’s the purchasing process itself.  How hard is it for the purchasing person to accept the purchase request, confirm that we actually do have the money we’re spending, pick up the phone and place the order?  Seems simple enough doesn’t it, yet it somehow is a complicated enough process that the schmo who’s in charge of it can’t do it…

Let’s see, there’s the graphics pads that I ordered in April…  Still not in…

There’s the USB hubs that I ordered in May….    Still not in…

The books I ordered the beginning of June…  MIA

The chair I ordered the middle of June…  Showed up last week…  HUH!!!!

I could go on, but it just makes my head hurt….

I don’t mess with these goofy tests that you find online that often… I usually write them off as just pointless and silly, although being that it’s July 4th, I haven’t made a post in a few days, and well why not, I figured I’d try this one. It’s MSNBC’s recreation of the INS citizenship test, although there are a few key differences. First the test is typically given orally, it’s not a written test. Next, it’s normally not a multiple choice test, prospective citizens have to fill in the blanks, and finally these are just a small sampling of the questions that could be asked….

You can take the test here.…

I’ll share my score when you click below…

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