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[ Internet Explorer 7: downloads ]

It seems to dislike the Google Toolbar, or the IE Developer's Toolbar, or both.

Or alone:

One of the things that I’ve been missing in Visual Studio 2005 is the user-configurable sound that played when the build succeeded or failed. In VS 2003 I had set up the sounds so I could switch over to another process while the build happened, and the sound would tell me when it was done.

From reading newsgroup posts, blogs, etc, it seems that the VS2005 just doesn’t support these sounds (even though the sounds can be set via Control Panel | Sounds). It just makes for a quiet build.

[ Silent Visual Studio 2005 > Codefez > Blogs ]

At least not on this subject. It drives me bonkers, I just want my "ta da" when it is successful and a "buzz" when it isn't. Not too much to ask I don't think. I had to alter the macro a tiny bit. I used the commenters suggestion to use the registry settings, which seems more finesse; and I altered the replacement to replace "==========" with "~~~~~~~~~~". I'm not sure why replacing 10 equals with 11 would do anything but loop endlessly (which is what mine seemed to do).

Update: I see now why they altered the 10 ='s to 11, but that doesn't explain why it just hangs with 11 =, but with my modified code it will not hang until the 3rd build or so. Any which way the code eventually (and usually quickly) causes my IDE to freeze, so I am on the hunt for another method to "fix" this.

Apparently there is a lot that I don't know about gateways for clearing credit card transactions. I was under the impression that there were only 2 real players in the space, Verisign and another which I could never remember. Apparently I was off by a few, and apparently John Conde is willing to share his notes with me:

I've researched some of the more popular gateways; I'll break down their features, costs, strengths and weaknesses...

Some of these gateways offer different features -- charge different prices -- depending on which method of integration you choose to use. I've listed each of these offerings separately, classifying each as its own, unique product for the sake of easier comparison.

[  eCommerce ]

If only I wasn't under a deadline, I'd have time to absorb this. Perhaps if I blogmark it, I'll remember to return and read the whole thing.

I wonder how you just read that. I read:

My 'o-t&-mO-"bEl and 'mO-b&l phone allow me to be 'mO-"bIl. (pronunciation guide).

And I'm guessing that most Americans, excepting Southerners, would do similar. I'm also guessing that most English speakers outside of the US would not.

Why? I don't know the answer to that, Yaty, however I will agree that it is totally inconsistent.

I have outgrown my current living space, and I require more. This means moving to a larger place, and it is the ideal time to relocate if I ever plan on doing it, before Iman makes so many friends that it becomes painful to move. After an exhaustive search of what is out there, how much things cost, what kinds of schools there are, etc. etc. I have come to the conclusion that I wish to live in Twinbrook, which is in the southeast corner of Rockville, MD.

I have found some very nice places to live there, and I like the feel of the neighborhoods. The area seems diverse, and the schools are the at the top, nationwide. There are a few requirements that I have, which I have become accustomed to, and do not desire to live without (or at least a suitable replacement). Some I have already located:

• My bank
• Favorite restaurants:
  • Taco Bell
  • Chipotle
  • Pollo Campero
  • Shilla Café
  • Silver Diner
• Plenty of Korean Markets
• The Metro

What we still don't seem to have found are:

• Pho as good as Saigon Citi
• Kabobs as good as Food Corner
• Thai, but it appears there are plenty to try
• Mexican and/or Tex-Mexican, though there is a Guapo's in Bethesda, but I've heard it's not as good as the one in Shirlington.

So any and all suggestions by people in the Rockville area are welcome.

And in this case DC gets to keep the best:

The man named two weeks ago to be the new editor in chief of the Village Voice has announced he will not take the position.

Wemple said he will remain in his current job as editor of Washington City Paper, a position he has held since January 2002.

[ Wemple Decides Against Voice Editor Job ]

I had the fortune to work with Erik in the past, and I can say that the City Paper has one of the finest editors that it could ever hope for. I certainly hope that the WCP doesn't take this serendipity for granted, and works on making Erik pleased with his choice.

Props to Tom for noticing the article and asking, "Is that THE Erik Wemple" or something like that...

Right in the midst of some work, I lost Internet connectivity again.

Looked to the corner to see if there was another truck gone crazy, nope just the cables on fire. I'm not sure how something like this happens. This morning when I left the house there were 2 trucks working on the repairs with large quantities of cable, and a "fiber optic toolkit". Wonder what else can happen to the wires on my block.

Working from home today, and this is what the "wall" of my "home office" looks like.

'course if it were raining, I think I wouldn't be right next to the railing...

Update: New View

Some truck drove down my block hitting power lines all the way. Big bang, bright light, and no cable. Thus no Internet. So I've relocated to the Panera, I figured I'd try their new pizza-thing. Pizza-thing only available after 4^pm. Crap. Got salad. Also not so impressive. Green tea is pre-sweetened? Crazy. Something about this Panera just doesn't make much sense to me...

Ah yes,

pregnant (comparative more pregnant, superlative most pregnant)

1. (not used in the comparative or superlative) Carrying developing offspring within the body.
2. Having many possibilities or implications.

Synonyms

• (carrying developing offspring):
  • (standard): expecting, expecting a baby, gravid (of animals only), with child, fertilized
  • (colloquial/slang): eating for two, having a bun in the oven, in the family way, knocked up, up the duff
  • (euphemistic): in an interesting condition
• (having many possibilities or implications): meaningful, significant

[ pregnant - Wiktionary ]

Up the what? Apparently UK slang. I'm sure there is more ways than this to suggest that someone is preggers.

There are a number of colloquialisms for pregnancy, usually regional. The action of impregnating a woman or girl is called 'knocking (her) up' in Canada and some parts of the U.S., and the state of being pregnant 'knocked-up'. The term 'lady-in-waiting', meaning a pregnant woman, is used broadly in the U.S. The word 'gone' or 'along' is used to represent gestational time, e.g. 'she's really far gone' or 'about 6 weeks gone' or 'six months along'. In the southern U.S. the euphemism of a water well is occasionally used to represent pregnancy (e.g. 'drink out of the well', to become pregnant), and a baby almost ready to be delivered is 'on his/her road'. Eastern Seaboard slang describes the woman as being 'in a fix' or, occasionally, 'preggers'; the Southern U.S. equivalent is 'in the family way'. An alternate term not slang or colloquial is 'with child'. 'Having a bun in the oven' is another frequently used phrase to indicate that a woman is pregnant. In Australia, it is commonly held that a pregnant woman is "up the duff".

[ Wikipedia via Answers.com ]

That cleared that up, espeically that "drink out of the well" bit that makes no sense...

And our favorite Phở place, Saigon Citi, has a second location on Beauregard, just off of Duke St., where the Pizza Hut used to be. Same menu, same taste. It goes without saying, we're super happy about that.

And, they have a full menu, not just Phở, so if you are in the mood for Bún, or the best lemonade, or super Vietnamese drip pot coffee with flan, or whatever, they've got you covered.

Something comes out on June 11th, I wonder what it was. Oh yeah:

This Lite is heavy on features. The new Nintendo DS Lite shines in the U.S. on June 11, and with it costing as low as $129.99, picking one up is a no-brainer.

[ Nintendo.com News ]

Done.

And it is better in so many ways. Perfected everything that fell a tad bit short on the first one. And that means everyone in the house has one now! We can play against each other! Of course that is if we could ever finda  game that all three of us enjoy playing...

But after spending $20 million in marketing, Lions Gate has taken in only $17 million at the box office. Lions Gate executives privately say the white viewers they were counting on Starbucks to deliver never showed up in great number.

...

Starbucks maintains that the campaign resonated with customers, although it did not conduct polls to determine how many people saw the movie.

"How we measure our success is not always in terms of box-office receipts but our customers' reception," said Ken Lombard, president of Starbucks Entertainment, who will remain in Seattle.

[ Starbucks Hires Music Veteran - Los Angeles Times ]

Starbucks is apparently making so much money off coffee that they can count a tremendous failure as a success. I had hoped that Starbucks had learned its lesson, because I go in for coffee, sometimes food, never CDs, or marketing, or lifestyle, or any of the other crap they're trying to shove on me.

Wait, what the freak is a dibs?

Dibs ... is a common convention used among friends or siblings to reserve or declare full or partial ownership of a community resource, such as a chair or communal food. As an example, when deciding who gets prime seating in front of a television, if there is one chair that is particularly desirable, an interested party can call "dibs" on that chair; as long as no one has previously called the chair, then it is agreed that the caller is entitled to sit there.

[ Dibs - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia ]

OK, so we now know (since we've all read that wikipedia article) that more rules and thought went into "dibs" then any of us could have cared for, but where does that word come from?

Most writers seize on what seems to be the most relevant older use of dib as a word connected with childhood. This refers to an ancient and very common game known by dozens of other names (jacks, fivestones, knucklebones, hucklebones; pentalithia in classical Rome), though the name dibs is recorded only from the early part of the eighteenth century.

[ Q&A: Dibs ]

Oh, pentalithia! I love that game. Wait, never heard of it. Cool Words points out that pentalithia means five stones. But if it is the pre-cursor to jacks, where did they find the rubber stone?