This is an actual, non-photochopped photo from a pro-Palestinian rally in New York Monday.

Dude! Why is everybody hatin’ on the juice? (For those of you who did not wear diapers in the 90’s, here’s a little flash back.) All we want is to wheez the juice!!

(Warning: Web-geek content. Non-technical personnel need not bother reading this post.)

I read about a new CSS framework (still in beta) that’s supposed to help you standardize your site and make CSS management easier. That’s great. But heres what makes it blog worthy.

“SenCSs stands for Sensible Standards CSS Framework, but if you want, you can pronounce it ‘sense’, which makes it sound pretty cool.”

SenCSs stands for … wait, what? S.S.C.S.S.F. and you came up with SenCSs??! See. This is why engineer types (like me) have such a hard time taking art types seriously.

Dude! You can’t go just making up non-acronyms like that just because it “sounds pretty cool.” Come on!!

“Hi. My name is Kevin, spelled G-I-W-7-@-Y-[clicking noise].”

“Nice to meet you Kevin. You must be an art major. Here’s your paper hat. Don’t touch the hot fry grease, mkay?”

Seriously though, check out SenCSs and see if it makes SENSE for your site.

Oh.. Em.. Gee…

If you thought you could waste time on the internet, you have been fooling yourself until now.

Let there be no doubt. MTV is the bane of modern society. The cable channel has single handedly ruined the moral character of generations of Americans. And now, as if to add insult to injury, you can relive every wonderful minute of it for free.

Surf at your own risk: mtvmusic.com

Let me recommend some favorites:
Jacko was monster long before his surgeons turned him into one
Christopher Walken dances into history
Weird Al beat’s jacko (The original here)
Al parties like it’s 1699 (The original here)

… and so many more but I’m out of time!

Well, that’s pretty cool, but it’s not the chrome I was talking about.

By now, even non-geeks who pay any attention to the news should know that Google has taken another giant step towards ruling the world (or at least the world wide web) by introducing their own web browser, Chrome. They even released a very googlesque comic-book to educate you on why you need it.

There’s all kinds of talk about how this is the next generation of browser. How all other browsers will now have to play catch-up with Google’s Chrome (whereas that role was previously held by Mozilla’s Firefox). How this browser is designed for the internet of the 21st century (while all those old, crusty browsers you had before were so 20th century. Gaww).

As proud as I am of my geekness, I’m usually over-cautious on new stuff. I wanted a PDA so bad in 1999, but I waited. In 2007, I bought a Treo and now I get both the PDA and phone in one. I waited to start using Windows XP until my work PC was retired and I had no choice, thus sparing me from the trials of the pre-SP1 bugs. I still have not move to Vista. Instead, I’ll probably wait for Win08 which should have all the major headaches of Vista fixed.

The way I see it, the people who insist on living on the cutting edge of technology are consistently getting burned by it. Everyone I know who stands in line to get the latest gizmo the instant it’s available ends up frustrated by all the bugs and quirks that eventually get worked out in later versions or patches or service packs. I let the fools rush in to battle and get skewered, then I step over their corpses and fully enjoy the spoils of their pain.

But not this time. Because I make my living on the web (and arguably spend most of my life there) I figured I’d better jump on this early. As I type, the Chrome installer is ticking away, loading up the google-goodness. I’ll let you know if I run into any major hick-ups.

I already like how the installer offers to import all my bookmarks, settings, and even saved passwords from Firefox.

Regardless of my views on the origin of the Universe, Darwin has his place.

According to this snopes article, some teens have figured out that drinking bleach will keep you from contracting AIDS. I say, you can bleach the AIDS away and bleach the gene pool at the same time. Bonus!

Per the article, a capful of bleach with not save you from AIDS. However, I propose that a gallon of bleach will absolutely prevent the dreaded disease… by killing you before you have the chance to catch it.

Oh what fun it is to waste time on the internet!!

At ElfYourself.com, use any old JPG image of someone to create a jolly old elf version of that person which will dance merrily around your screen. You can have up to four elves, but I’ll give you this warning: The first face you enter ends up on a female body. Boy, that was embarrassing!

Check out the Trint and Tammy Elves! (Notice the Trint elf has absolutely no rhythm. How’d they know?!)

You can also go ScroogeYourself! (Hey, it’s not dirty! Get your minds out of the gutter, people!) I used a picture of myself in “evil Pharisee” stage make-up. It’s scroogeriffic!

I love Randy. I really do. But he should have at least warned me that the link he sent would cause my corneas to hemorrhage. So, as a public service to you, my faithful viewers: Don’t Click This Link.

Bonus points for the first commenter who knows what movie that poem is from. (Hint: I own it and love it.)

Double bonus points if your the first to tell me what Evan wants you to buy him.

I know that most of my readers are pretty tech-savvy and this will be old news to them, but phishing has become such a big problem that I felt this was still a worth-while public service.

It’s common knowledge that identity theft is a major problem in this digital age. We’re all taking extra care about our personal information even if our main motivation is to avoid spam, junk mail, and unsolicited phone calls. But ID theft is very real and being aware of what the bad guys are up to can eliminate 90% of the risk.

Wikipedia has a pretty good description of phishing. I even did some artwork for a phishing t-shirt for my buddy Dave. Phishing is broadly defined as deceptively gathering personal information. Almost all of the phishing attempts you will see will come to you via unsolicited emails.

I advise every internet user to set up a “spam” email account. Mine is on hotmail. Hotmail allows you to set up your account so that all messages that arrive are put into a “junk mail” folder unless I have expressly added the sender to a safe list. (So if you send an email to darkmanwork@hotmail.com, there’s a good chance I won’t see it for a few days because it’s sitting in a junk folder.) Any time a web site asks for your email address (more common now than ever), use this spam address. That way if the web site turns out to be crooked and sells your address to spammers, you won’t be affected.

Even if you’ve never gotten a single piece of spam email, you should always be suspect of emails you are not expecting. This one hit my hotmail account over the weekend.

Now, this looks like most every e-card notice I’ve ever received with one exception. Where’s my name? If I recall, when I get a notice from Hallmark.com, they put my name in the salutation. Hmm.

If you don’t have the status bar visible on your browser, make it so! (Usually, it’s in the “View” menu.) The status bar is the gray bar across the bottom of the browser window. When you mouse over a link, the URL of that link should appear in the status bar.

I moused over all the links in the Hallmark email and all of them went to Hallmark.com with one exception. The link to view the card (“To see it, click here.”). The “here” link looked like this in my status bar.

That is not a link to Hallmark.com! That is a link to some mysterious IP address that is certainly some villainous spammer or worse. This particular villain was not even smart enough to cover up the fact that he’s linking you to an executable file, which would most likely install spy-ware or some other kind of virus.

PayPal and eBay are the most common targets for this kind of identity theft. You get an email asking you to log in to you account for some reason or other and they provide a link to do so. The web site that the phishing email links to looks exactly like the real PayPal web site. It might even have some dummied up pages so you can click around and it looks like you’re really on PayPal’s site. But you’re not. Look at the URL. If it’s not paypal.com, you’re being phished. As soon as you “log in”, you will notice something wrong. You won’t be taken to your account. By then it’s too late. They have your PayPal login info. They can log in as you and access your bank info and start making fraudulent purchases using your PayPal account. (This is how my mom got phished. Later she received dozens of Dell credit cards in the mail. Fortunately the guys who phished her were pretty stupid and didn’t change the mailing address before they applied for the cards.)

If you find yourself in this situation, don’t panic. Go immediately to the real site; be it PayPal, your bank, or whatever; and change your password. Then check your account for any activity. It would not be a bad idea to notify the organization that you got a phishing email and that your account may have been compromised. It’s better to go through the hassle of getting a new credit card number than to go through the hassle of dealing with fraudulent charges to said card.

Now you know. And knowing is half the battle! (YO! JOE!)

I try to be a nice guy to everyone. But some people think I’m a bit of a word snob. (Tammy would say I border on word jerk.) You can blame my mom. She’s one of those folks that reads “Enriching Your Word Power” every month in Reader’s Digest. Growing up, she constantly corrected my grammar and worked on my vocabulary. I’m glad. I like being able to speak well.

But there are down sides. Often I’m told that people are intimidated by me; that I make them “feel stupid”. I haven’t yet figured out a way to correct someone’s English without coming off as a know-it-all jerk. And I’m way too Monkish to just stand by and let someone speak incorrectly. I can usually let one faux pas slide, but repeated abuse just eats at me.

Another thing I can’t stand is bad English in print. I’m honest about the fact that I suck at spelling. I use dictionary.com all the time. (I just looked up faux pas, for example.) My grammar is usually spot on, so that’s not a worry, but I try avoid posting anything that’s incorrect. I feel like it makes me look stupid. Thus, I feel I must question the person who puts something like this on a professional web site.

“Firstly”?? What is that? Yes, it’s a real word, but not a good choice, and where’s the “secondly”? I know that I abuse ellipses, but this, along with the weird word choice was just too much. You’re trying to convince me to use your service. Hire a copy writer, dude. Seriously.

This is why I refuse to write copy for a web site. I’ll give you a cool layout and neat functionality, but you provide the words. I’m a programmer. Never trust a programmer to write good English. (Not even one whose mom taught him well.)

Yesterday I won for the second time on Blingo. Blingo is essentially Google wrapped in a different interface and run by Publisher’s Clearing House. Every time you perform a search, you have a change to win a prize. The idea is that if you use their search engine, you’ll see preferred links and ads that are paid for. But there are no pop-ups or anything too annoying, so it’s really no pain all gain.

I’ve now won two Fandango movie tickets, so Tammy and I can go see Spidey 3 for free! (Which, from what I’ve heard, may still not be worth the money.)

You can sign up for Blingo by clicking the mini-banner at the bottom of my side-bar.