A common irritation for me, while moving files from one folder to another, is having to stop the move in order to open another Finder window. Springloaded folders help a bit, but not much, and only for immediate transfers. They don’t help at all for moving files to a folder that hasn’t been created yet –”woops, I forgot to make that folder!”

That said, XShelf is freaking awesome. Go get it now.

“XShelf enhances drag and drop in MacOS X by letting you “pause” drag and drop operations, as well as have multiple drag and drop operations in flight at once.

You can drag files or folders from Finder into the shelf and they will sit there until you drag them out. Once you drag them out, the drag operation will finish as if XShelf were never involved. You may drag individual or multiple files or folders, as well as text clippings and URLs to XShelf. With XShelf, you no longer have to shuffle windows so that both the source and target of a drag and drop are onscreen at the same time.”

I don’t know if there’s anything like this for Windows, but there needs to be. Having to keep multiple file-manager windows open sucks.

Does your top-of-the-line Pentium II 233Mhz machine beg for the the high-class ghetto look?

Upgrade its case to Lupo.com’s Boxmaster manufactured cardboard case!

Sorry, -nese only. English translation, anyone? Bueller?

Today, I experienced the Interview from Hell.

I applied for a job via AJC yesterday, and an hour later an HR rep for the company called me. She said the interview would take 30 minutes, and to be there at 9 AM.

When I got there at about 8:45, they herded me and 60 other people into a very small room, and gave us an application to fill out, and a huge test.

The test was initially no big deal: written communication (write out an email about something) and windows trivia (what is a 32-bit operating system?).

However, the majority of the test was the logic questions. Each question had a row of numbered boxes, and in the boxes were numbers, and you had to follow a flowchart that had instructions like ‘add the number in the first box with the number of the box that has the number of the first box in it’, and then ‘change instruction 2 to increment one number in the first numbered box mentioned’, and so on. There were fifteen pages of questions like that, and each question got harder, and progressively more complex.

Three hours later, everyone was still crammed into the room, working, and I decided I no longer wanted to work for this company.

I stopped answering the logic questions after about the 10th question.

Three and a half hours after I arrived, they finally called me in for the interview, and things went well … until the the tech support manager noticed that I didn’t complete his exam.

He asked me why I didn’t finish it. “I felt that the questions weren’t an adequate use of my time.”

He actually got angry, and said, in a hateful tone, “So you didn’t think the position was important enough to finish the questions?”

At that point, I probably still could have saved face, and even gotten the job, if I’d come up with a slick answer. However, I realized that this jerk who was yelling at me would be my boss.

“Actually, by the tenth question, I realized that this is not the kind of company I would enjoy working for. I’m sorry I wasted my time and yours. Thanks, though.” And I walked out.

I count this as another Life Lesson: “If you loathe the company before you get a chance to interview, just leave”. I’m sad that it took me a whole morning to learn that.

Tonight Laura and I were at Ruby Tuesday’s, and I saw this sign on the wall.
It was one of those old ads that some designer bought for fifty cents at a flea-market and sold to the restaurant chain for $500.

It was for “Mule-Hide”.

I immediately thought of some type of cream for a mule.

You know, to hide it.

“I say, Jim, that mule of yours is pretty darn conspicuous! You need some MULE-HIDE!!”

Then I went on to think that maybe it was for some terrible skin condition

“Sorry, Jane, but Betty can’t go out tonight. She’s got mules all over her nose.”

“Well, Mary, she should try the new Extra Strength MULE HIDE!!”

If you’re one of the unlucky few who’ve had problems with your iPod battery, you can buy a replacement iPod battery from iPodBattery.com.

Laura had some weird problems with her iPod. For some reason iTunes wouldn’t update the play count of songs that she’d listened to after she installed the newest iPod software. I wiped and reinstalled the software, and now it works fine.

I’ll try this TrackBack thing with a link to CGP’s post. If that doesn’t work, go poke CapsGetPeeled for some linky luvvin.

I find it interesting [and highly suspect] that the RIAA is suing a college kid for billions of dollars — money he will never be able to repay — when there are bigger, meatier targets available.

For years, NetIQ has had a product called MP3Check. MP3Check does just what Dan Pheng’s “wake” application did: it indexes a LAN and lists all the available MP3s.

So why isn’t the RIAA suing NetIQ for billions?

Oh, right. NetIQ is a Microsoft Partner.

One of the drawbacks of having a transparent Apple Pro keyboard is that when a bug somehow crawls into the shell of the keyboard, you can see it, twitching. The bug, not the keyboard.

After a few minutes of banging and futile attempts at debugging my keyboard [HA!], I’m left with a very dead and very visible bug, right there, in my keyboard.

I could disassemble the keyboard and remove the insect, but in some small way I find it grimly satisfying, as if my keyboard is some horrible machine that feeds upon the souls of dead insects.