Internet Explorer tried to hijack my Thanksgiving
Microsoft's Internet Explorer browser has taught me that patience is a virtue I'm severely in need of. I spent much of my Thanksgiving break (probably almost a full workday) trying to figure out why the heck Internet Explorer was making the sidebar menu navigation on this site and List-en up! look like crap. I had no idea how horrific and unprofessional it all looked until I test-drove the sites on my mother-in-law's computer, running IE 6.0. The sites looked wonderful (in my humble opinion) in the Firefox and Safari browsers that I'd been testing on, but for some still-unknown reason, IE piled every single part of the sidebar on top of itself like so many layers of two-week old digital lasagna, as if the navigation didn't matter at all. (I guess it didn't matter if no one was visiting the sites.) If you're reading this, though, and hadn't visited the sites until now, you won't have a clue how bad it all looked, thankfully. Anyway, after tweaking and testing nearly everything I could think of on the sites, I decided to reinstall the display theme (K2), and voila! Everything was in its right place. So now I can sit down for some leftover pie, without worrying that millions of strangers (or none) are laughing what used to be my pile of worthless sidebar doo-doo. (Thanks to my wife and in-laws for tolerating both my absence from cooking duties and my obsession with fixing this wonderful CSS problem.) Mission accomplished!
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Sharon Jones and the Dap-Kings in Indianapolis

Sharon Jones and the Dap-Kings in Indianapolis, originally uploaded by Securis777.

Sharon Jones and the Dap-Kings took a funky funky trip to the Vogue in Indianapolis this past Sunday. Before the show, I'd wished it was Friday and my thoughts drifted towards work the next morning. But the appearance of the band onstage brought me back to enjoying the present moment. I'm a big fan of Ms. Jones & the Dap-Kings' analog recordings (throwbacks to labels and artists such as Stax, Motown, Otis Redding, Fela Kuti, etc. - the greatest funk, soul, R&B, and a hint of afro-beat), but I'm now an even bigger fan of their live show. At age 51 (she admitted this proudly to the crowd), Ms. Jones was strutting her stuff like the funkiest soul sister ever to walk a stage. She was non-stop movement with pitch-perfect voice. The band wasn't too shabby, either (my understatement of the week.) They performed for half an hour or so before Ms. Jones took the stage, and every note and beat was spot-on. Terrific stuff. James Brown is dead, but his soul lives on.

By the way, I've also posted two more photos from my Monterey trip, taken by cell phone from the plane. One is of the amazingly beautiful hills around Monterey (not sure what they're called), and the other is of the mass of humanity known as Los Angeles. It was my first time there, and I couldn't believe the size and density of the city. hills around monterey californialos angeles: mass of humanity
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Angie’s List blog and List-en up! podcast
It's April's and my six-month wedding anniversary! I can't believe it's already been half a year. I guess time flies when you're having fun :) I've written a new post at the Angie's List publication department's blog that touches on our wedding and home ownership. Also, the second episode of the podcast is up and running, about customer etiquette. If you order a cheeseburger but are rude to the waiter, you might get some spit along with the beef. Same thing with contractors: if you're rude to the guys doing your roof, you might end up with roofing nails "accidentally" caught in your car's tires.
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