Al's Blog-o-Sphere

I spent about four hours today working online because I installed Internet Explorer 9.

No, there were no problems with IE9. That time was spent fixing this web page.

IE9 installed smoothly and looks nice and sleek, seems to run fast and I’m told is much improved over older versions of IE. Microsoft would like to forget IE6, I’m sure.

But, as always, Microsoft’s vision of how HTML should work is slightly different from everyone elses’. Actually, all the major browsers vary in small ways. But as soon as I viewed this blog in it, I noticed the font I am using for the titles didn’t load and the default font was displayed. A minor annoyance, but I wanted to see why it didn’t, what it would take to fix, and if it was still working in the other browsers I have. Continue Reading…

Why is it that businesses in the service industry get so focused on their little piece of the world that they think they are the most important thing there is?

The emails I get from Financial and Insurance companies are, well not hilarious, but in need of a sense of humor to accept them. I get a typical email from my health insurance provider every month to advise me to log in to their web site to get an explanation of my benefits.

Why? Have they changed? Wouldn’t they tell me if they did? Continue Reading…

For those of you who might have noticed I haven’t written anything here recently, here’s what has been going on.

The last two months have been spent pretty much all with robotics. So much so, that I haven’t been skiing this winter at all. One day out to Holimont has been all I have done.

The robotics team finished their build season and we worked furiously up until the last minute when we had to seal up the robot in a big plastic bag until our regional competition in Pittsburgh. We spent the last weekend working on it at the Kenan Center, our local recreational center, where they let us use some space to practice and work on the robot while school was closed for part of the spring break. Continue Reading…