Geek humor.

Why is it when I go to copy a 270+GB folder of stuff from one drive to another and the finder runs across a bad sector half way thru it just throws up it’s hands and quits? Why can’t there be an option that says “if unable to copy a file, note it and move on”?

I mean really, how hard would it be to just go ahead and copy all that you can, then throw up a dialog that says “These particular files didn’t get copied, and here’s why…”?

Oh, that’s right, it’s just easier to stop on errors rather than gracefully recover.

Ugh. Oh well, one for the wish list in Leopard.

And yes, Windows behaves this way too.

This is just about hysterical… But I can see it getting annoying pretty quickly… Ladies and Gentlemen, I give you… Tickle Me Elmo Extreme!

Ouch. FoxNews.com just implemented a redesign and boy, something’s broken. I found the “story” talking about their “totally new, crisp” format and found an e-mail address at the bottom for feedback. Here’s the $0.02 that I sent in:

I just flipped over to foxnews.com this morning and was a little shocked to see the new design… it literally looks like the stylesheet didn’t come down with the content. I had to refresh a couple of times to be sure. There are serious rendering issues (both with the home page and story pages) in browsers other than IE/Win (Firefox on both PC/Mac as well as Safari on Mac), many links do not work (over half the main menu bar, besides rendering half-wrapped, doesn’t allow clicks), text is cut off in strange places, etc. Overall, the site design looks incomplete and unfinished, not to mention untested in anything other than IE/Win. Even on that single platform the design doesn’t look complete, making the user think the whole page hasn’t loaded.

I’m sure you have statistics that indicate that the majority of your readership use IE/Win still, but other, much more standards compliant browsers are increasing in popularity, and with IE7 is released, this design will probably be broken there as well. The prior foxnews.com design was very consistent across browsers and platforms. This one looks rushed into production.

“totally new”? yes. “crisp”? not so much.

Please reconsider.

Yours,
Steve DeVoll
Plano, TX

As I told them, I did try the new design in a number of browsers both on Mac and PC. Internet Explorer 6 for Windows was the only browser that came close to rendering a complete design, or at least what I can infer they were going for. The rest were jumbled, had cut off or overlapping areas, or parts of the page that just didn’t work.

Completely unacceptable in this day and age for a major website to not even come close to rendering properly in Firefox, much less other CSS2 compliant browsers.

Of course, part of the problem can probably be attributed to the massive amounts of doubleclick supplied advertising on the site. It’s hard to say where the site ends and the advertising picks up… it’s all squashed together.

Ugh.

I’m sorry, is it just me, or is this thing that Microsoft is supposedly trying to kill the iPod with just ugly as all get out? Brown and Green? ugh.

And what’s up with that name?

I don’t think this is going to get completely off the ground. It’s bulky, pricy, and they don’t have the whole strategy.

I wonder if it runs Vista CE?

iPod killer? I think not.

Day 9 of our trip was upon us, and it was a bittersweet morning. Relaxing, but a little sad because our trip was coming to a close. We had had such a wonderful time, we didn’t want to go home. Ah, well.

We started the morning off with a takeout breakfast from Gasparilla’s Grill back in the room. After bacon, eggs, sausage, fruit and more, we started the process of packing. We packed. And we packed. I have no idea how we had brought that much stuff in the first place, but somehow it all had to go back on the plane.

After getting our things in order, I phoned down to the front desk to request a late checkout time, which they granted. Our plane wasn’t schedule to depart until 5:30, so we had some time to kill. We would catch the Magical Express bus back to the airport around 2:30, so we decided to go over to Downtown Disney to do a little last minute souvenir shopping.

After calling bell service to come get our bags and store them, we caught a bus to Downtown Disney. One of the primary goals was to visit the Lego store, which we located fairly quickly. They had remodeled it since we had been there last, it was larger and had some new features. One new feature was an area were they had just about every different basic lego piece you could think of individually categorized in little bins. The way things worked is you chose either a small cup for $7.99 or a large cup for $12.99 and filled it up with as many pieces as you could. Pretty cool.

The kids each picked out a Lego set and we made our purchases. Right outside of the store was a McDonald’s, so we took a break and got some fries and drinks. After that we spent a considerable amount of time wandering around in the largest Disney Store there is. Of course, we located a few souvenirs.

It was time to catch the bus back to the hotel, so we did, and made it back just in time to retrieve our bags from bell services and catch our Magical Express bus to the airport. We did have a few minutes to snap a few pictures in the garden area in front of the hotel lobby, and by the horse-drawn carriage and ‘38 cadillac they had parked out front. Our bus arrived and we loaded up and made the trip to the airport.

Once there, we checked in with the airline, went through security and hunted around to find something to eat. Turns out we didn’t need to rush, though… Our plane ended up being delayed just over 3 hours. During the long wait, the kids played with their new lego sets, and made some new friends with some other kids waiting for the same plane.

Finally we were allowed to board, and the flight back was uneventful. Once we had landed (around 10:30 Central time), we retrieved our bags and rode the shuttle to the parking lot, where we located the truck and headed home. We finally arrived, very sleepily, around midnight.

In retrospect, we had a tremendously enjoyable time. The kids loved the trip, and collectively we made some memories we will have for years to come. One of the neat things about WDW is you can go back at regular intervals, and still have a great balance of classic memorable things from the past and plenty of new things to experience. And while it is expensive as far as things go, I can’t think of many places where you get quite the bang for your buck, on the whole.

So all I have now is to edit some video together…

Day 8 was designed to be a “make-up” day, allowing us time to go back and catch any attractions we hadn’t visited yet that we wanted to hit, or to revisit attractions that we enjoyed and wanted a second (or third) go-round on.

The boys and I decided to get a jump on the day, and try to catch a ride on the sneak-preview of Expedition Everest, so we were up early and off to Animal Kingdom. We caught a bus from the hotel directly to the park and arrived about 20 minutes before park opening. The wait wasn’t log before the gates opened and we streamed in with the smallish crowd. Once over the bridge after the turnstiles and biometric readers, the crowd began to thin out as people went various directions, but we headed directly towards Asia. By the time we came around the corner to Everest, we were practically alone, which didn’t seem right since we were headed for a headliner attraction.

As we came upon the entrance for the attraction, I noticed A) no guests and B) several cast members manning ropes across the queue entrance. Not a good sign, seeing as there were approximately 1,000 people in line for the ride just a few days ago. Upon conferring with a cast member, it turns out that the ride was closed for the day for additional tweaking and tuning. ARGH!

Needless to say, the boys and I were a bit disappointed — we weren’t going to get to try out the newest attraction on this trip. Ah well, we got over it pretty quickly, and decided to head over to the dinosaur area and catch a few rides there before leaving the park.

The nice thing about being in Animal Kingdom on a Tuesday during value season is the crowd is practically non-existant. The dino area had maybe 50 people in it, so there were no lines for anything. We quickly located Primeval Whirl, a runaway mouse-type coaster with a twist (literally) — the cars spin around! We walked right on and took a spin, and had a blast. So much so, as soon as we got off, the boys wanted to go again, so we ran around to the entrance again and walked right on.

After our second ride, we wandered around a bit, trying to find the Dinosaur ride. We ended up finding it, and as expected, there was no line. The attraction is essentially a dark ride on a free roaming motion simulator. While the story line is interesting and all (go back in time to capture a baby dinosaur before the meteor hits and wipes everything out), we found the ride to be way too rough and way too loud.

After our ears stopped ringing, we had a short conference and decided that we’d make our way back to the Magic Kingdom and hit the big rides there. We headed towards the exit, stopping by a breakfast cart on the way out for pastries and juice. Afterwards, we walked out of the park and over to the bus stop. After waiting for several minutes, we determined that the bus directly to the Magic Kingdom would take entirely too long, and opted to take a bus to the Transportation and Ticket Center instead. From there, we took the Ferry across the lagoon to the Magic Kingdom.

After entering the park, we trucked it over to Tomorrowland and picked up a fastpass for Space Mountain. Then we headed across the park to Liberty Square and got in line for the Haunted Mansion. The boys were a little nervous that it would be too scary, but ended up loving it, especially the end where the ghost “hitchhikes” in your doom-buggy.

Next we took a run on Big Thunder Mountain, and then on to Splash Mountain. I got soaked. By then, it was time to cash in our fastpass on Space Mountain, so we did. All three mountains in 30 minutes. Cool.

Around the time we were coming out of Space Mountain, we heard on the radio from Cynthia that she and Madison were in the park, so we headed to Fantasyland to hook up with them. We found them on the teacups, taking another spin. After they finished their ride, we all walked over to Toon Town and toured Mickey Mouse’s house. Then we caught the train around the park to Frontierland for lunch. We had burgers at Pecos Bill’s.

After lunch, we went for a ride on the Jungle Cruise, a classic. Then a tour through the Swiss Family Robinson treehouse. We decided to head back to the hotel at that point, to relax and go swimming. We took a boat back to the hotel.
Swimming was nice, we spent some time in the big pool, and finished up with 15 minutes in the “little hot pool”, as Madison called it (the hot tub).

We planned that evening to head over to the Boardwalk and see what was up. It took a series of transportation maneuvers (monorail to the TTC, bus from the TTC to MGM Studios, ferryboat from MGM studios down the canal to the Boardwalk), but we finally arrived at the Boardwalk around sundown.

We walked up and down the Boardwalk, looking at the shops and looking for a place to eat, but everything was pretty busy. Turns out the Boardwalk at night is more geared towards adults, so we decided to hitch a bus over to Downtown Disney.

The first objective was dinner, so we found a little sub shop called the Earl of Sandwich. Afterwards, we walked by several of the shops, and then decided to visit DisneyQuest. Turns out our tickets for the theme parks included admission for DQ, which is essentially a five-story virtual theme park.

The neat thing is the admission to the building gets you into all the games and rides, just like at one of the regular theme parks. We took a ride on virtual Aladdin’s Carpets, where you wear helmets and ride around with 8 other people through a virtual Agrabah. Next, the boys and I did more traditional video games, while Madison tried her hand at a virtual paint game.

Next, Michael and I tried out Virtual Space Mountain, where you build your own roller coaster in the computer and then ride it in a simulator. We built a killer coaster, but it turns out I was too big to fit in the simulator so we didn’t get to ride it!

After that, we all strolled down a level or two and found a virtual Jungle Raft game. Cynthia and the kids did that one, where they all got on a raft and simulated rowing with a big screen showing them going down a river. It was a hoot!

We played several more traditional video games, and then took a turn at the Buzz Lightyear Astroblaster game. In this one, you get in what are essentially bumper cars and shoot dodgeballs at one another. I remembered that one being slightly more fun than it turned out to be, but maybe that’s because our dodgeball gun had problems shooting.

Everyone was getting a little tired by that point, so we went ahead and caught a bus back to the hotel and called it a night.

Today’s Apple Goodness:

• New iPod Shuffle (tiny)
• New iPod Nanos (in colors!)
• New iPod (80GB, 6.5hr battery)
• iTunes 7 (better organization tools)
• Movies and TV shows on the iTunes Store (640×480 resolution)

Oh, and the “One More Thing”: coming Q1 2007: iTV (set top box, wireless streaming)

Many other little details announced. Very cool.

There’s been quite a bit of “Dental” happenings around the house this week! On Monday, Madison lost her first tooth. It’s been loose for quite some time, and finally she decided we could try to go ahead and extract it.

Cynthia took hold of it and before Madison knew what was going on, it was out. Madison was most pleased with herself.

On Wednesday, Michael had his orthodontic appointment and they put his braces on! He already looks older, which makes me feel ancient. He’s taking the change very well.