Seriously, I miss the sugar dispenser.  I, like many others I would imagine, enjoy drinking my coffee with a fair amount of sugar.  But sugar packets are in every way designed to thwart my quantity preference for sugar in my coffee, and are therefore totally impractical for me.  Oh sugar packets, how I hate thee!  Let me count the ways: (1) you come in so many different sizes depending on the coffee shop, so I never know how much I need to put in to get that perfect, savory cup of coffee; (2) when you come in particularly small sizes, I try to minimize the amount of time you suck from my life by grouping you together, but that always, always results in disaster: (a) sugar on the counter top, (b) sugar stuck in the packets, (c) wrappers everywhere, and (d) my complete and utter frustration (as well as for the people behind me who have been waiting for this sugar debacle to end so that they can next partake  in the sugar packet madness!); (3) sometimes, instead of being partially filled with sugar so that I can easily grab and open you, you’re completely filled with sugar, making it impossible for me to open you without sugar falling out and/or flying in my face; (4) because I always have to use multiple packets to get enough sugar into my coffee, sometimes you fall into my coffee, contaminating it with all the putrid, unpleasant crap that was probably festering on your surface; (5) sugar packets make me think of raw sugar, which I absolutely, positively hate with a passion.  Everyone always tells me, “oh, you should use raw sugar!  It’s healthier and it tastes better!”  Folks, raw sugar is crap.  For starters, I don’t know why, but unlike white sugar, which evenly distributes throughout my coffee when I stir it, raw sugar always settles at the bottom of my coffee and sits there like a pile of undigested food, making 80% of the coffee sugarless until you get to the bottom 20%, when suddenly all the sugar hits at once and makes your coffee taste like Kool-aid on steroids.  Also, I have never once detected any difference in the taste of raw sugar as compared to white sugar.  If anything, it tastes worse because it gives me a headache since I always end up sipping it in a ridiculously concentrated state from the bottom of my coffee.  I will always go to whatever lengths I can to avoid using raw sugar, which is a horrible, despicable, pathetic excuse for a sweetener; (6) sugar substitutes like Sweet’n Low or Equal are designed to give you sufficient sweetness in a pre-determined, measured amount, and it therefore makes sense to use packets for these; but that reasoning doesn’t apply to white sugar at all!  If I want to add a lot of sugar to my coffee, I should be able to without being limited to a bite-sized packet.  Using sugar packets to add generous amounts of sugar to your coffee is like taking your clothes out of the dryer one by one instead of dumping them all out at once into a laundry basket.  It’s inefficient, and it just doesn’t make sense.

I could go on, but I think I’ve made my point.

This is a plea to bring back the sugar dispenser.  It’d be so much more convenient for you, other patrons in the coffee shop, and for the folks who work in the coffee shop who won’t need to clean up the mess I always leave from sugar packets.  I’m not claiming that my time is so important that I can’t afford to stand over a counter for a little extra time filling up my coffee with sugar packets, but it sure does add up over time if you think about it.   This is just an item of basic convenience.  It just makes sense.

Please, bring back the sugar dispenser.

• The other day, I downloaded Security Essentials, Microsoft’s new free antivirus program. Surprisingly, I’m rather impressed with it; it actually detected a virus (!!) that AVG was missing. Needless to say, I’m now using it instead of AVG. There are a ton of really basic user interface enhancements it desperately needs (c’mon Microsoft, there should at least be a button to pause scans) but I guess there’s something about having the might of Microsoft behind an antivirus program that makes me feel more protected than I would with AVG. Plus, the price is right.
• I’m currently engrossed in The Informant by Kurt Eichenwald. Inherent bias aside, this is an absolutely riveting page turner, filled with so many plot twists and surprises that I frankly cannot believe it is non-fiction. I also really like Eichenwald’s writing; he’s not flashy or overly descriptive at all, and he’s very good at getting straight to the point. I highly recommend this book!
• I’m also reading the Harry Potter series. Every dark and boding tale of corporate greed needs its dose of fantasy for balance, right?
• Where did the summer go?

Cheerio!

By the way, I think it’s amusing that Intel’s own CPU identification tool can’t detect its new ultra-low voltage processors. Just a matter of time, I guess!

New pet peeve. I discovered a new pet peeve over the weekend. I can’t stand it when drivers only switch on their turn signal as they are beginning to turn. WTF? The whole point of a turn signal is to let people know that you are planning to turn, so it’s a complete waste if you only switch it on as you’re turning. This gets particularly annoying when you’re coming up to an intersection and you have a choice of either getting into the right lane (where folks intend to go straight) or getting into the left lane (where folks may turn left or go straight) and you decide to get into the left lane because the person in front of you doesn’t have a turn signal on… and then the bum turns on his left turn signal and you proceed to wait, and wait, and wait. That is definitely detrimental reliance. Folks, use your turn signals.

New wireless router. While I was in Chicago, I setup a wireless network at my parents’ house, mostly because I wanted to use the internet on my laptop (their computer is painfully slow). I went to Best Buy, bought a Dynex DX-WGRTR wireless-G router, and enjoyed lots of high-speed wireless Internet goodness for the rest of my trip. In fact, this router worked out so well that I decided to bring it back with me to Seattle. Yep, I officially replaced my trusty Linksys WRT54GC (which, you may recall, I was pretty darn happy to get)! I decided to replace it because my old Linksys router was a “compact” router, which meant that, although I got the benefit of a small form factor (which I’ll admit was pretty slick), it unfortunately came with a really weak internal antenna, giving it a pretty short range. The Dynex is practically the same size as the Linksys and comes with a much more powerful external antenna; I was amazed at some of the distances I got with it while I was using it in Chicago. And–get this–while you can purchase an external antenna to boost the range of the Linksys router, the external antenna is actually more expensive than the Dynex router. Thanks, but no thanks. And, this finally gave me an excuse to catch up on wireless security and, I’m happy to say, boost the security of my own home wireless network, now coming to you live with WPA2′s AES-CCMP encryption! By the way, if you’re still securing your wireless network with WEP (I think most people are) you should really switch to WPA or WPA2.

IObit makes a great line of (free) system utility software that will do fantastic housekeeping on your computer. Advanced SystemCare will clean up your registry, clear out junk files, complete privacy sweeps, and much more. Smart Defrag, as its name suggests, is a hard drive defragmenter, but is far superior to Windows’s stock optimizer, with many more options and defragging modes. Both are great programs at a price you can’t beat.

Yeah, I did it. ‘Nuff said.

In case you haven’t heard, WordPress 2.7 rocks. In honor of WordPress 2.7 eptimozing all that is awesome in a publishing platform, here’s a look back at five years worth of WordPress goodness.

The Inauguration

Given the historical significance, I just have to say something about this. There’s truly a feeling of warmth and good will permeating the country right now. And it’s amazing. It’s so refreshing to see the country, at least for a moment in time, feeling so hopeful and optimistic about the future. It’s a wonderful feeling, and the energy is unlike anything I’ve seen or felt before. Let’s make history tomorrow!

Of course, the Inauguration has resulted in oodles of content at CNN, MSNBC, and many of the news networks. They have, among other things, assembled an amazing amount of historical presidental Inauguration content, such as summaries and text of past Inauguration speeches, and in some cases videos of those Inaugurations. Lots of American history there, for you history buffs.

In other news, thanks to some very helpful info provided by this site, I’ve finally gotten Shadowbox JS to display multi-line captions at the bottom of pictures in the gallery. So, no more clipped captions. Cool. Also, I confirmed that videos aren’t loading in the gallery due to a technical issue with kPicasa gallery, so if you want to see videos in the picture albums, you’ll need to view them directly through my Picasa Web Albums gallery. As further explanation for this, for those who didn’t realize, kPicasa gallery is a WordPress extension that allows you to display your Picasa Web Albums gallery through WordPress. It accomplishes this magnificent task through creative programming and the magic of PHP. If you want the full story, see this post. So, the bottom line is that the gallery on my blog is just my Picasa web albums gallery displayed inside my blog via a WordPress extension, and that WordPress extension does not, at present, support videos. All in due time, of course.

One last piece of news. I did an about face of sorts and decided to use a personalized iGoogle page as my homepage. Why, you ask? Because there’s too much content on the Internet to individually check every time you open your browser (which should be Firefox, by the way). iGoogle solves this problem by aggregating all of that content into one, convenient, customizable place. Of course, I added an RSS feed for my blog.

Next issue to tackle, should I join Facebook?

By the way, help? It’s kind of wet.

Although you can certainly view all the pictures from the gallery on my blog, in a very small number of cases where the picture caption is particularly long, they may get cut off (due, I believe, to a small technical issue with Shadowbox JS). Also, due to another technical issue (maybe kPicasa Gallery?), videos don’t seem to be working through the gallery (there are only 4 or so, so not a substantial amount). If you want the full, unadulterated viewing experience–i.e., no captions ever clipped, and videos–you can view the album at my Picasa Web Albums page.

The Dominican Republic was both fun and beautiful, all wrapped into one happy holiday tropical package, and punctuated with Cindy’s and Andre’s touching and dazzling wedding ceremony. Although things got off to a wet start, by the time the ceremony started, the clouds had parted, the sun was shining, and they were getting married under the most beautiful and remarkable rainbow I’ve ever seen. It was simply perfect. Congratulations to the both of you!

As for my experience in the Dominican Republic, since I won’t be going into excruciating detail right now (my creative juices have been flowing all night and I’m getting close to empty) I’ll just say that I think I squeezed in a good amount of leisure time and typical tropical resort activities–and yes, I don’t think those categories are necessarily the same thing! I spent lots of time lounging on the beach (with waters bluer than I’ve ever seen in my life), kickin’ it by the pool, getting a massage, lounging in the sauna, and enjoying the bottomless supply of food and alcohol. I also went snorkeling for the first time, hit the tennis courts, ran across the beach a la Baywatch style (for some distance, at least) and partied it up at night, all while coping with a mild case of news withdrawal (I suspect the lack of a meaningful supply of newspapers in the resort was an intentional decision). The resort was just beautiful; picturesque, spacious, loaded to the brim with all sorts of restaurants, activities and clubs; pretty much everything you’d expect from a resort.

All in all, it was a great and much-needed tropical vacation. So, now when I’m looking at those ads for tropical vacations in the back of the airline magazines, I can say, “been there, done that.”