Has no one ever told you about catching flies with honey?

I received a piece of mail today from The Economist magazine. I had let my subscription lapse and they've been trying to encourage me to resubscribe. Well after today they can kiss that goodbye. Their letter starts off:

"Dear Isil Flynn,
Your timing could hardly be worse.
Just as the world is connecting, opening up unprecedented opportunities...
...you go and break your connection to The Economist."

(Oh my! My bad! What was I thinking???? Please please please, forgive me and take my (not unsubstantial amount of money) for a half-year subscription. I am prostrate on the ground with grief at being unconnected. -- whatever!)

The final line is a little better:
"Won't you please use this opportunity to reinstate your subscription and restore your special world-connection?"

Well, no.

First of all, I'm already world-connected (it's call the World Wide Web for a reason) and secondly, I figure if you want money from someone, don't put them on the defensive from the get go. To be quite honest, The Economist is a great source of information but had I wanted to continue receiving it I wouldn't have let my subscription lapse.

By the time I reached the last line I was steamed enough not to care that they finally said "please".

Wheee! Thanks to Kyle for getting me the invite and thanks to Martin for sending it to me. Here is a link to a gmail app that you might find useful. (windows only)
Gtray - system tray gmail notifier

Ugh. I'm sick with a stupid cold. I haven't had a cold for over a year now and summer is a pathetic time to get sick. It started on Sunday evening with a raw scratchy feeling in my throat. I figured well maybe it'll go away so I took some Echinacea and went to sleep. The next day my throat felt better but I was starting to get sniffly. And so it goes. Sniffly turns into sneezy then clogged up then wooly headed, stuffy nosed, raw throated, achy cold. Blech. There must be a nasty virus going around because a lot of people are coming down sick. Well I've drawn up the battle lines. Armed with advil, echinancea, and orange juice I've added the big guns today - chicken soup and zinc. Hopefully I can blast this virus by the weekend. I hate being sick.

Today is a special day for another reason. Today D culminates two years of sweat and studies and graduates from Community College with a diploma in Electronic Engineering Technology. Not the easiest course to take out there (I'm like "physics? fibre optics? whaaat??? are you kidding????") but its a field of study he is interested in and hopefully it will serve him well. This was a difficult journey for a man out of school for the past 15 years or so but D is a determined guy and finally finished on the dean's list. I'm sure he's glad to be able to decompress a little now. Well done Mr. D.

Happy Summer Solstice day. I love summer. I really do. Probably because I don't like the mounds of clothes we need to wear to stave off the biting cold of Canadian winter. It's nice to be able to breeze out of the house without a jacket and I long for the days when I can finally fling off my wool socks and run around in sandals. The best part of summer is having the windows wide open and airing out the house. Living on the coast of the Bay of Fundy, in the early summer mornings everything smells crisp with the tang of superoxygenated air as it comes in off the bay. And now the lilacs are in full bloom and add their heady perfume to the air. If light purple had a smell it would be lilac.

We went to the community fair on Friday and when I saw the Skymaster I knew I had to ride it. It was bracelet day and the girls were running from ride to ride but always the Skymaster was flinging its arms around as if to say "Hey, over here - you know you waaaant to!" Now D doesn't care much for rides, nor do I usually (especially the spinny ones that churn you into a mass of sick) but the fast rides, the thrill rides - those I like.

Luck was with me that night because we ran into some friends completely unexpectedly as they've been in Auz for the past year or so. We knew they were back in town for a visit but assumed they were busy with family. But great because they're an awesome couple and we were really happy to get to see them before they head back and hey - now I had a ride partner yippiee!

Now the skymaster ride is one where you're clamped into your seat with a rigid over the shoulder harness that clips in between your legs. Then the cage doors are clamped down on your car which holds probably 16 people (8 rows x 2 seats). The cars are fixed on the ends of the arms which pivot 360 degrees and describe a 60 ft diameter circle.

Do you remember being a kid and being on the swings at the playground? Kicking higher and higher until all you could see was the blue sky at the end of your legs. And you wondered, if you could just kick a little higher would you, could you flip the swing around the bar? And you tried. And at the highest point you could reach you'd hang in the air just a bit then fall really fast and slam down into the seat. Well that's the skymaster, except you're caged and you do flip over the bar!

I love these rides but they scare the crap out of me too (which of course just adds to the thrill). Sean was beside himself laughing as he's yelling to me "Open your eyes you can see the ground!" as we're hanging upside down!! And I'm desperately trying to jam my feet under the seats in front of me to keep my sandals from flying off (advice: don't wear sandals on rides that flip you upside down), and hanging on trying not to get jammed up against the top of my harness. There's actually a sign before you get on the ride that warns that "excessively large people will not be able to get on the ride" but it should also warn that people shorter than this high (imagine a hand marking off about 6ft) will be shaken, yes shaken like a polaroid picture ;) )

All in all it was a blast. And the girls had fun (they actually went on the Skymaster as well) and we the adults grinned knowingly as they went on that one spinny ride too many and emerged clutching their tummies and moaning; it was time to go home.
For fun: 4 stars out of 5.

From the BBC news service "Teleportation Breakthrough made"

Making your website work with Win XP SP2 might be interesting for all those sites out there currently employing dhtml hierarchical menu systems (fly outs).

Q: What does Internet Explorer consider a pop-up window?
Internet Explorer will attempt to block any window opened automatically from:

• A script, with the exception of createPopup().
• Modal and modeless dialogs.
• DHTML elements overlapping content on the page

(A popup that opens as a direct result of user action will not be blocked.)

Hmmmm...and are we really that concerned about this? Personally I can't stand flyouts --- but what else would be affected?

And then there's this:
"MS confirms that Internet Explorer in Longhorn will not support XHTML or SVG." (from Hixie's Natural Log) So apparently MS has given up (yet again) on standards complience. Well, I'm not too overly concerned about SVG but I think XHTML support should not be dropped. Ugh! Let's not have to relive the browser wars again.

I so cannot decide between the Rabbi Punching Puppet and the Jesus Action Figure. And I'm crushed that The Fighting Nun is out of stock! ("Fighting for the Pope's Team, she's on a Mission to win!")

This is me feeling silly, heh! Yes I use a mac but not a ruby iBook.

Miriam finds the funniest links. You too can Draw your own portrait online. (Actually, Mr. Picasso Head is pretty funny too!)

Some interesting and useful articles from web professionals from the month of May:

(1) Getting client Sign-Off - (Stuff and Nonsense) -- or how to minimize scope creep.
(2) What's in a name - (Stuff and Nonsense) -- naming conventions for your css styles, a discussion.
(3) Onion Skinned Drop Shadows - (A List Apart) -- step by step.
(4) Ticked Off - (Collylogic) -- a truly awsome way to represent your visited links for listed items. You'll love this step-by-step!
(5) How to Size Text Using Ems - (Clagnut) -- and why.
(6) Put the Friendly Back in User-Friendly - (Asterisk)