Friday, April 23, 2004
Bagel and cream cheese for breakfast. While reading an article on slate.com today a Flash advertisement popped up over—and completely obscured—the article I was reading, did its animation song and dance. After it was over, I closed the browser window (without finishing the well-written article by Clive Thompson), then added slate.msn.com to my hosts file. After all, it's a lot easier to do that than to turn Flash or Javascript on or off. (Don't tell me I should be using Mozilla or Opera. I have my reasons.) Problem solved. I considered telling them what I did, but I remembered the last time I tried to send Microsoft feedback, and I recall I wasted about 10 minutes of my time because I eventually couldn't find a way to do so, so Slate won't ever know how their advertising strategy has lost me as a visitor. Coded new news stories for Susie to review. Chatted with Chris about elephants in rooms. Admissions changes for James. Lunch at home: leftovers from last night. Dinner at home: leftovers from last night. Patrick writes me the longest e-mail he's ever written anyone: 12,114 bytes. I stay up late writing him a long e-mail back: 33,425 bytes (but my reply includes his e-mail, so my actual reply was 21, 311 bytes).