In case you haven’t noticed, there’s a new poll over there in the left hand column. After you’re done voting, you might be interested in reading how I set it up. No database is required, and it’s a lot simpler than the comment system. (Which reminds me, huge apologies to those who wrote asking for assistance with the latter. I’ve been so busy moving hosts that I haven’t had much chance to really look at your e-mails. You’re my top priority though, I promise.) Oh, and in case you missed it, vote! 🙂

Let me tell you a story. This morning I was happily checking my new referrer logs when I came across a link to somebody’s personal page. I thought maybe they had linked to me so I fired up my browser to check it out. The site was the usual crappy Angelfire teenager personal page, but the design looked a bit familiar. In fact, it looked exactly like my friend Brigita’s site. EXACTLY. This person had copied her entire design, right down to claiming Brigita’s personality test statistics as her own. She even kept Brigita’s StorTroopers and relabelled them as herself and her boyfriend. Needless to say, this pissed me off. Not only was she ripping off my friend, but the StorTroopers were being hosted at my site – as a favor for Brigita – and thus my own precious bandwidth was being sucked away. (And y’all know how I get about that.) So I calmly sent this little fiend a letter, explaining that we were on to her and I’d appreciate it if she’d kill the image from my site. I didn’t get any answer, so I went back to the site tonight to see if she’d complied. What I saw was not pretty. See for yourself.
 
Am I being a bitch here? I really don’t think so. You’ll note that there’s no mention of the bandwidth issue… basically because there’s no excuse. As for her defense of “copying” – I wish I’d taken a screenshot so you could compare the sites. There’s a difference between viewing somebody’s source code (and maybe grabbing a few of their ideas) and co-opting somebody’s entire look & feel. Hell, I incorporate elements from practically every website I read here at web-goddess. I’m a big fan of that. I’m not a big fan of simply saving somebody elses HTML (images and all!) and calling it your own. I feel bad that this girl feels her “work” has been wasted, but given the disregard she showed for Brigita’s property, it’s her own fault. What do you think? Leave me your comments.

My mom and I were just chatting on IM and trying to determine which day my brother graduates from high school this June. While she was trying to phone the school corporation to ask, I entered “Lakeland High School Lagrange” into Google on a whim. And check it out! They have a website! There’s not much there, but I did get to see pages from some of my favorite teachers. Mr. Baumgartner’s freshman biology class looks as exciting as ever, and Mr. Schmidt sounds like he’s keeping busy. Mr. Hedstrom’s trivia question looks to be a stumper. (I’d guess Purdue, knowing him.) And what’s up with Mr. Baxla’s computer programming course? I don’t remember Lakeland offering that. I wouldn’t have minded taking it!

Well the standoff is over. Apparently that site I pointed to where you can apologise for President Bush got a bit out-of-hand, though.
 
Oh no… I’m becoming English! Did you notice how I spelled “apologise”? What’s more, I originally started out this sentence with the phrase “I just realised…” Next I’ll be writing “colour” and pronouncing “herbs” with a hard H! I’m turning into a pom!

Remember, May 2 is Free Cone Day at Ben & Jerry’s. Man, if I was in the U.S. I’d be all over that. Phish Food is the greatest ice cream ever.

Tons O’ REM News: A few days ago Ironminds featured a review of probably my all-time favorite REM album, “Out of Time.” If you’re a fan, the author does a fantastic job dissecting both the brilliance and the confusion of the album. (KRS-1? “Shiny Happy People”?) I’m definitely getting excited for the new album “Reveal“, which is supposed to be released on May 15. (Shhh! I got a postcard from the Official Fan Club the other day telling me that streaming tracks will be available at remreveal.com this weekend. It’s a secret!) And how fantastic is this? REM will be playing at the South Africa’s Freedom Day Concert in London on April 29! I’m going to call tonight and try to score tickets…

Today’s Disturbing Search Requests: “starwars nude,” “hammer crusher icons,” “Opera Gloves,” “statistics on whether or not we landed on the moon,” and “UK Photos of my sister naked.” (Amy, do we need to discuss something about that last one?)

Thanks Max! It’s great to be back. It’s weird that so many people in the States were able to see the new site before I could here. (Damn slow English ISP’s.) And on top of *that* greatness… this is my first official post using Mac OS X! It’s so unbelievably cool. I’m going to go stare at my desktop for a few hours. 🙂

Korean Feast Update: Since my mom asked, the dinner party went very well. My obsessive-compulsive need to fret and stress about every little thing was balanced nicely by Snookums’s chilled out attitude. For example, I was freaking out earlier that day imagining that I wouldn’t have enough food to feed eight people. Snookums came to my rescue by suggesting that we pick up some bread and hummus to serve as appetizers. (Mmmm, hummus.) In the end, of course, we had about three times as much food as we needed and we’ll be eating the leftovers all week. Which is fine by us, because my eggrolls are damn good. Overall it was a fun send-off for Kel, who should be arriving home in the U.S. about now.

Snookums and I had a laugh this morning reading “Boo! And the 100 Other Dumbest Moments in e-Business History“. His favorite was #70, but I have to go with Bill at #88. (I’m happy to report that none of my company’s projects managed to make the list.)