Legacy.com is strict about entries

This site hosts guestbooks for families whose loved ones who have died. I've discovered they are very strict about their Terms of Use policy, and will not let you enter a copywrited poem. Yesterday I tried posting a poem my Dad read for the 3rd anniversary of my mother Barb's death. I copy/pasted the poem, which included the author's name, but Legacy.com didn't complete the posting. Oh well, now I know that only original thoughts are allowed (nothing copywrite protected). In any case, our family visited Mom's grave at Fort Snelling on Sunday, and it was unusually warm 40+ degrees. Miss you always Mom!

We Gotta Bingo

This is the title of a new interactive comedy show where the audience plays the "parishioners" at a bingo fundraiser for an Italian and Irish church that are about to merge. Bonnie and I went on Saturday night to see my friend Tom Lommel play one of the main characters, Jeremy. The show was pretty funny, with a large and boisterous cast. The set was very cool (a fictitious German brewhall) located at the Lowry Theater in downtown St. Paul. Overall, I'd give this show 3 of 5 stars. It definitely made you laugh, you get to play some real bingo during the performance, and you get a dinner out of the deal. However, drinks are rather expensive ($4-5 for a bottle of beer) and the meal was not very filling (a small piece of lasagna, a slice of bread, dab of salad, and a small bar for dessert). That's it, no seconds. If you have a big appetite, I suggest you plan to eat before or after the show. The regular price is between $50-60, but you can save some money if you can gather some friends and get the group rate. If you are looking for a fun night out with your spouse or friends, I'd recommend giving We Gotta Bingo a try.

Call in the Pied Piper

This morning I found our 5th dead mouse. This guy was killed by our basement trap, probably a few days ago as it was just starting to create an odor. So now the under sink and basement traps have each killed one mouse. I decided to get to work a little late, and finally get the holes sealed up where the deck boards enter the house and rest on the foundation. Hopefully the expanding foam stuff will end our mice problem once and for all, or we may need to get the Pied Piper over to play his flute.

Instant check deposit

I learned a new trick a few weeks ago when trying to understand when my funds were actually available from a check deposit at my bank, TCF. I learned that when you make a deposit, the funds are not instantly available. It takes a few days (up to a week) to clear the check. Even if they give you a receipt that shows your new balance, or you check online and see the new balance, it really isn't correct. However, you can circumvent this by depositing your check at an ATM machine. When you do this, the bank basically floats you the money and it is available right away. They take the risk that the checks are bad and the system credits your account instantly for the amount of the check(s) you are depositing. This was all explained to me by TCF customer support, so I'm taking their word on it.

Taco Bell - good experience, bad Web site

Last week I ate lunch at Taco Bell in Roseville. The same cashier, Leroy, has been taking my order for quite a while now, and is just an outstanding worker. I wanted to pay a compliment to him, and visited tacobell.com today. I found the "contact us" page, written in ASP, to be a piece of junk. First, it asks you to provide the date you were born, defaulting the fields to Nov 2, 2005 (no idea why it picks 12 days ago). I said to myself, "why do they need this?", and just hit the Enter button. Bad idea, it redirected me to a "Sorry, you need to be older to use this feature of the website" page and did not allow me to continue. What do they think they are selling, beer or cigarettes? No matter how many times I refreshed or clicked the link again, I was stuck. In order to get around this issue, I dug through my cookies in Firefox, and deleted the "birthday" one so I could use the page again. This time I entered my correct birth date, and got to the contact us form. The form does not indicate which fields are required with an asterisk or bold font, which is bad UI design. In any case, I filled in all the required fields, wrote my kind comments for Leroy at the Taco Bell store, hit submit, and blah...a nasty Internal Server Error message. After a few refreshes, my form did submit successfully (I think). I'm just very surprised that Taco Bell Corp., a subsidiary of Yum! Brands, Inc. would have such a cheap contact page almost 10 years after the internet became mainstream. Get with it!

Anit-Microsoft book

This one looks like a good read. It's called "Just Say No to Microsoft". Here's the abstract:
Just Say No to Microsoft begins by tracing Microsoft's rise from tiny startup to monopolistic juggernaut and explains how the company's practices have discouraged innovation, stunted competition, and helped foster an environment ripe for viruses, bugs and hackers. Readers learn how they can dump Microsoft products and continue to be productive. Includes full explanations of alternate operating systems, such as Linux and Mac, and outlines various software applications that can replace the familiar Microsoft products.
http://www.oreilly.com/catalog/159327064X/index.html

Javascript URL picker

The code below will create a drop down box, and selecting an option will cause the browser to open the URL of that chosen option, which is entered into the option tag's value attribute.

<form name="frmTools">
Select a tool:
<select name="toolpicker" onchange="javascript: window.location.href=frmTools.toolpicker[selectedIndex].value">
<option value="">(choose tool)</option>
<option value="login_stats.cfm">Login stats</option>
<option value="account_stats.cfm">Account stats</option>
<option value="training_stats.cfm">Training stats</option>
</select>
</form>

Ben's first steps

Each night Bonnie and I move about 3 feet away and try to have Ben walk between us. Tonight he literally took a few steps on his own during a couple different attempts. Then later, he was over by the window, and tried to walk off on his own, right towards the end table. He only got a few steps completed and fell to his butt, but it was quite a site. It looked like he'd go all the way and hurt himself on the table, so it was good that he plopped down. This is so exciting for us to witness Ben's first steps. It sure looks like he'll be a walker by Thanksgiving time for sure.

No more mice

It appears our mice problems are gone. Since Tuesday morning when I found our first mouse in the new trap, we have not trapped any more. Hopefully that is the end of that problem forever!

State code list

This is a helpful comma delimited list of the 51 state codes.
AL,AK,AZ,,AR,CA,CO,CT,DE,DC,FL,GA,HI,ID,IL,IN,IA,KS,KY,LA,ME,MD,MA,MI,MN,MS,MO,MT,NE,NV,NH,NJ,NM,NY,NC,ND,OH,OK,OR,PA,RI,SC,SD,TN,TX,UT,VT,VA,WA,WV,WI,WY

User Group Mashup

I found this link from the MMUG Managers List. This is a cool way to visually see all the Macromedia User Groups throughout the country. Steve Gustafson developed this using the Google Maps API ... Sweet!

1 Down, ? to go

Last night I bought two mouse traps at Menards. Home Depot didn't have any in stock (go figure), so I buzzed over to Menards and they had tons of various brands and price points. I picked up the DefCon model where the mouse walks into a little box and ends their life instantly when the spring snaps over their neck. Its nice because you don't have to touch the mouse, just pull the trigger and it releases the dead rodent. Before bed, I set one under our sink where we were finding the droppings, and this morning we had our first dead mouse. There he was with his stiff little tail sticking out the end of the box trap. We hope that is the end of them, but I set it again and we'll see if we can make it two days in a row. I also set a trap in the basement, and it was empty this morning. I hope they get the hint quick that mice are no longer welcome in our house!