The Super Bowl

I didn’t do anything exciting for this Super Bowl, and nothing exciting happened to me, unlike previous years. I’ve been sick for the last few days so I just wanted to chill at home and try to get better. The game was an exciting game. I wanted to see the Cardinals win because Warner is a former Ram and because the Steelers have seen their fair share of Super Bowl victories. Sadly, it didn’t happen. The Cardinals had plenty of chances to win, but they just couldn’t do it.

The commercials during the game were pretty boring. Nothing great. In fact, only two stick out in my head. The first Bud Light commercial in the office meeting was decent and so was the Hulu advertisement with Alec Baldwin. Other than that, the commercials sucked. AB went traditional with the clydesdales in an attempt to make people forget they are now owned by a foreign company. Too many horse commercials guys. One is enough. And did anyone actually see anything 3D in the 3D commercials? I know I didn’t. Maybe my eyes don’t work with the glasses. I’ll try them out again with tonight’s episode of Chuck. Also, did Hollywood forget that original ideas in movies are better than remakes? Transformers 2, The Land of the Lost, G.I. Joe… Yep, it seems so.

The halftime show I didn’t even watch. Why? I’ve never been a fan of Bruce Springsteen. I’m not Courtney Cox and this isn’t the 1980’s. I will admit, the short clips I did see were better than Paul McCartney’s half-time show, but that’s not saying much.

Overall it was a decent game, and while I didn’t have to hear Warner praise Jesus for his win (I guess he didn’t pray hard enough), I did have to hear Santonio Holmes explain how great he is and he wanted the ball for the last play because great players always want the ball so they can step up to make great plays. If his head was any bigger he might have floated out of Raymond James Stadium.

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Please Stop Using Internet Explorer

Dear Internet Users Across the World,

Please stop using the horrible piece of software that came pre-installed on your PC known as Internet Explorer. Not only do you make the job of web designers a lot harder each and every day you use it, but you also leave yourself more open to attacks from malicious websites. I recently spent several hours over a few nights fixing a computer for my sister and brother-in-law because they were infected with a nasty bug that they got while using Internet Explorer. If they were using Firefox they would not have installed the ActiveX and gotten the bug, but they weren’t so they did. IE fails at security and fails at complying with web standards.

My beef used to be with the people who still use Internet Explorer 6, even though 7 has been out for well over a year now. Now my beef is with anyone who continues to use IE at all. I’ll tell you why. Microsoft had the chance to make IE7 standards compliant. What that means is it would properly render pages that were coded to the standards and rules set forth by the web development community to make the best looking and most usable websites possible. They didn’t. While it was better than 6, it was far from the other web browsers, such as Firefox or Safari. The first release candidate of IE8 recently came out. Again, they had the chance to make it standards compliant. They failed again. That makes the job of web developers harder. Now they have to support 3 versions of IE, each one supporting different standards that Microsoft decided it wanted to follow, and not true web standards. Please do yourself a favor and see the web the way it was meant to be seen. Use Firefox (or Safari, Google Chrome, Opera, etc). Thanks.

Your friendly neighborhood Web Developer and Family Computer Help Desk,
Mike Schepker

PhoenixBlue Widgetized

Thanks to Kris Britt at Silente.com the PhoenixBlue theme has been widgetized.  I’ve also made a few other minor tweaks to a theme that seems to still be very popular even though I’ve not had time to update it in over a year.  Post meta information now includes what tags are used in the post and the theme now supports WordPress image captions that came out in WordPress 2.6.  You can check out a demo of PhoenixBlue Widgetized here. You can download the PhoenixBlue Widgetized theme here.

Thanks again to Kris for widgetizing the theme.  If time permits I may add support for threaded comments, but I’m not entirely sure I will yet.  If anyone else wants to add the functionality, feel free, just let me know.  Also if you find issues with the theme and want to help fix them let me know.  The theme isn’t exactly my main priority right now so if any help is greatly appreciated.  I know one area that needs some work is the tag cloud styling so if you want to take a crack at that feel free.

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John Mozeliak – Very Unprofessional

John Mozeliak recently gave even more St. Louis Cardinals fans a reason to hate him. I guess he figured that since people are already pissed at him for not doing anything to strengthen the Cardinals this season that he’d go ahead and throw professionalism out the window and insult Cardinals fans.

In a recent online chat Mr. Mozeliak fielded insults from disgruntled Cardinals fans. I am not defending the insults against Mr. Mozeliak, but he certainly should have taken the higher road and not responded with his own insults. He needs to understand that fans are unhappy with his job performance and instead of insulting them back he needs to explain his philosophy of waiting for the future. St. Louis has some of the best fans in all of baseball. We are very passionate about our team. If Mr. Mozeliak can’t understand this and handle these types of situations with some class and dignity, then he deserves the insults he receives, especially since he’s creating another disappointing season for Cardinals fans by “saving for the future.” The future won’t matter when you’ve driven away all the fans Mr. Mozeliak. When a team finishes 4th in the division we expect a little more action to make us contenders again, and when that happens we, rightfully so, get upset. Do not insult us. We pay your salary. We pay for the salaries of everyone in the organization, including players, we pay for the new stadium. Don’t bite the hand that feeds you. You can read the chat transcript via STLToday.

Thankful Thursday – Week 2

Wow, I’m a slacker. I didn’t stick with my things I’m thankful for like I wanted to. I’ve just been so busy at work and at home the past few days and I missed a couple. Have no fear though, I do have some to share with you. Here are my 4 this week.

  • The Budweiser flag in college that I wore as a cape and my roommates for telling our neighbors that they rented me from AB for the night and I was called Bud Man.
  • BBQing at the park with my family when I was a kid.  However, I’m not thankful for the time my dad broke his finger on the super death slide.
  • Instructions on the back of David Sunflower Seeds telling you how to eat them.  Why am I thankful for that?  Because I think it’s so funny that people actually need to be told how to eat them.  Funny.
  • Waking up Sunday morning and turning on the TV only to see one of the best Nintendo tie-in movies starring Fred Savage ever made.  (yes, there was only one Nintendo tie-in movie starring Fred Savage).  The Wizard ftw!