I am one of the few people on this planet who enjoys circus peanuts (though, given that multiple companies manufacture them, I can't be alone, right?). In fact, I bought a small bag of them tonight at the grocery store. My wife, who dislikes them immensely, tried a bit of one to remind herself of their taste. As expected, she still hated it. "It tastes like styrofoam," she said. I guess that means there's more for me!

I've been fortunate during this pandemic to be able to work from home the entire time. It has only recently occurred to me, however, that my current setup is lousy when it comes to comfort. My desk is the same one I've had since my college days, and the chair I use is a hand-me-down from my wife (which is a step up from the crappy cheap one I used to own). Why am I putting up with this?

My ideal desk would be a standing model, if for no other reason than to provide some height adjustability; my current desk is a fixed height, and it's rather low down in my opinion. The ideal chair, however, is harder for me to pin down. Should it have a head rest? Arm rests? Mesh or padded backing?

If you're reading this, what kind of chair do you use? Where can one go to try out office chairs before you buy? I don't recall seeing these in furniture stores, and office supply stores (as I recall) only carry the cheap stuff.

I'm not a car guy, but tonight I stumbled upon a great little video series (still in progress, as of this writing!) of a guy restoring a 1985 Pontiac Fiero. The car sat unused for 20 years and he's working on bringing it to life. Part 1 of the series is where to start. It's a real pleasure to see this guy's effort paying off.

There's nothing like a fresh batch of cinnamon rolls to make any day a great one:

Add some icing (made with powdered sugar, vanilla, and milk), and you've got one of the best foods of all time.

I'm going to try out something new here at the site; how well it does will determine if I continue to keep it up. Every so often (and I'll only do this on an occasional basis) I'm going to post a list of ten items pertaining to some topic. Consider it a "top ten" list if you will. This is just for fun, and is intended to foster some discussion. The inaugural topic: favorite television theme songs. I got the idea for this specific topic from a recent episode of The Jay and Jack Ramblecast (hat tip: Dustin). Here are my personal top ten, complete with links to each theme:

10. The Love Boat

This is definitely my dark horse entry, but I like it for one reason alone: it makes a great lounge singer song. I'm a fan of the lounge singer persona that Bill Murray did in Saturday Night Live, and this theme song would be great as sung by his character. As strange as it sounds, I think this would be a fun song to sing at a karaoke. At one point, I had this entire song memorized. I should also note that I never really watched the television show; I just dug the theme song.

9. Fresh Prince of Bel-Air

If there's one "rap" song that all white people know, it's this one. The Fresh Prince was one of the better shows of the early 90's. A memorable theme song made the show that much better.

8. Good Times

A classic theme song from a classic show. Any time I use the phrase "good times," I think of this theme song and usually bust out into a line or two from the theme. "Temporary layoffs; good times! Easy credit rip-offs; good times!" Dave Chappelle gave some props to this theme song in a sketch he called I Know Black People. Hilarious!

7. Sanford and Son

Of all the television theme show songs ever written, I think this one best fits the show it was written for. If you didn't know what Sanford and Son was about, and you only heard the theme song, you'd most likely say "that must be the theme to a show about a guy in a junk yard!" And you know what? You'd be right. The Simpson's made great use of this in the "Trash of the Titans" episode.

6. M.A.S.H.

This particular theme does an excellent job of capturing the sadness and hopelessness of war. For those who don't already know, the name of this song is "Suicide is Painless," and the lyrics are rather disturbing. An interesting fact is that the lyrics were written by a then 14-year old Mike Altman, son of the original film's director Robert Altman.

5. Airwolf

Who knew that a cheesy 80's television show about a super-helicopter would sport one of the best theme songs ever written? Airwolf was a show I wasn't allowed to watch growing up (I was far too young for it's content at the time), but the few times I did catch the intro really made an impression.

4. Knight Rider

If there was ever a reason to buy a giant sub-woofer, this television theme song is it. The bass line is incredible, and the show was nearly as good. I always wanted to be Michael Knight as a kid; having Kitt as your car would be totally awesome!

3. The A-Team

"In 1972, a crack commando unit was sent to prison by a military court for a crime they didn't commit. These men promptly escaped from a maximum security stockade to the Los Angeles underground. Today, still wanted by the government, they survive as soldiers of fortune. If you have a problem; if no one else can help; and if you can find them; maybe you can hire: The A-Team." An instant classic.

2. Doctor Who

Growing up, my family occasionally watched Doctor Who (I primarily recall watching Tom Baker as the fourth doctor). The theme music was as exciting as the television show. An interesting documentary on how the theme was developed is available on YouTube. Some of the effects used are pretty incredible (scraping a house key along a piano wire, for example).

1. The Dukes of Hazzard

This theme song, sung by country star Waylon Jennings, is my personal favorite of all time. I grew up as a big Dukes of Hazzard fan (it was probably my favorite show as a child), and I know the song by heart. The General Lee is still my favorite car of all time, and this theme song still ranks number 1 on my list. Oh, and Daisy Duke is was a real hottie.

So do you agree? Disagree? What television themes are you a fan of?

Several short thoughts for today:

The Java Popup you Can't Stop

A story over at Slashdot discusses a newly discovered means of bypassing popup blockers using Java. There are two proofs of concept available: an applet based version and a JavaScript version. The applet concept works in any browser, while the JavaScript concept works only in Opera and Gecko-based browsers. I couldn't get the JavaScript version to work for me, but the applet concept works surprisingly well. Pretty scary!

Bridge Collapse Alters Amazon Rankings

I noticed just the other night that the list of bestselling automotive items at Amazon.com yields some surprising results: 4 out of the top 5 selling items are "life hammers" designed to help you break out of your car as you sink into the water. The bridge collapse in Minneapolis is no doubt the cause of this interesting shift in the top selling list.

Michael Vick Dog Chew Toy

This is so great. Payback's a bitch! Thanks dad!

Barry Bonds is a Big, Dumb, Moron

Title says it all.

No programming tips here tonight. Just a few great stories I've recently found:

First Look at Firefox 3.0

Lots of love coming in 3.0. I simply cannot wait.

Mozilla Thunderbird 2 Beta 1

Firefox's little brother is moving forward.

Clinton in Action

This man is super great.

DS Buttons

A very cool marketing idea. I heart my DS too.

Amazon Sales From Recommendations: 35%

Can you believe that 35% of sales come from the recommender? I'm shocked.

If the list above looks a little funny, do a browser refresh; I've updated the site style sheet to make this type of list a little nicer to look at.

There are a number of things I've got planned for the next several months:

Googlebar Lite 4.6: Better context menu customization support, a stand-alone toolbar button to show and hide the Googlebar Lite toolbar, and allowing the user to customize the keyboard shortcut for setting search box focus are the items currently slated for this next release.

Born Geek Overhaul: I am slowly getting the pieces into place for moving Born Geek to the WordPress platform. I'm really excited about this, but it will definitely take some time to complete.

CoLT 2.3: A new release of CoLT would be nice, improving the "Copy Link Text and Location as" capabilities.

Advanced Toolbar Tutorial: I've wanted to complete this project for a long, long time now, but I have yet to even start it. Perhaps after I overhaul the Born Geek website, I can get this going.

I've got several disjointed thoughts for you today.

I'm going to make a valiant effort to pre-order a Nintendo Wii via my favorite online retailer, Amazon.com. The Wii looks like an incredible platform, and is the only modern gaming system that has gotten my attention. With any luck, Nintendo will really score with this system; I can't wait to try it out.

The new theme I'm working on for this site is moving along nicely. I've gone through a number of test designs, and I've finally settled on one that I like. Development work is still taking place (I only estimate it as about 75% completed), but I hope to roll it out here at the site in the next 4 to 6 weeks. Keep your eyes peeled.

Last month, I mentioned the new photo album software I was planning on writing. I've come a long ways with that project, but I still have a long ways to go. A number of design paradigms have changed mid-stream, so code rewrites are plentiful. I'm looking forward to rolling this out on my site. I estimate this at a 40% completion level.

I'll leave you with a great Kent Brockman quote:

Ladies and gentlemen, I've been to Vietnam, Iraq, and Afghanistan, and I can say without hyperbole that this is a million times worse than all of them put together.

I have several projects cooking at the moment, and the following is a brief rundown on where I'm at with each:

Googlebar Lite 4.0 The new search history system is working like a charm and is now feature complete. I am currently wrestling with whether or not I should include a fix for the highlighting system (disabling highlighting within input fields). Unfortunately, implementing this fix has been a challenge and I have yet to find an appealing solution. Some general code cleanup still needs to take place (a number of old search history code will be removed), and the "Paste and Search" feature needs to get turned back on. If I decide not to work on the highlighting fix, this might be available in a couple of weeks. Otherwise, it'll be somewhat longer.

Toolbar Tutorial Updates I have two more chapters to complete in the Firefox 1.5 toolbar tutorial. It was my hope to get that done this weekend, but it's looking more and more like that might not happen. Once the tutorial is done, I'll begin considering how to phase out the older 1.0.x version.

Born Geek Redesign My lack of artistic ability has been a real road block on this, but I've finally come up with a design that's fresh, clean, and simple. I'm bound to tweak it further, but I think I'm ready to port the design over to my localhost website replica. Once I see the design imposed on every page, I can get a better feel for how things need to be tweaked (and whether the design as a whole works or not). I'm estimating another three or four weeks on this one.

Miscellaneous Stuff Currently on the back burner are two more Firefox tutorials: advanced toolbars and a guide on profiles. Both are merely sparks of imagination at this point, but perhaps I can get something started in the next month or so. One day I'd also like to get around to updating my wallpaper application (Paper Plus). There are several needed features that I've been too lazy to implement.

I have had a number of unrelated ideas lately, all of which I'll share:

• I'm thinking about upgrading my processor and motherboard. Some of the latest games (the Lost Coast demo for example) have really shown a bottleneck in that region. I have no idea what to upgrade to, however. Suggestions are welcome.
• I hope to get a new build of Googlebar Lite out soon.
• I also hope to put together a downloadable version of my toolbar tutorial. After that is done, I'll begin work on the next incarnation of said tutorial (which should be a big improvement).
• This weekend, I'm going to begin playing with Movable Type. My ultimate goal is to move the main Born Geek website away from hand-coding, which would be very convenient for me. I may provide some links to my testing, so that you can see what's going on.
• The Lost Coast demo for Half-Life 2 has inspired me to play through the game again. I'm approximately 2/3 of the way through, and am enjoying every minute of it.

• I still have no connection to the internet at home (although our network has been set up). Running a cable up to my room looks like it will be too difficult, so I'm researching some wireless solutions. I hope to be up and running tonight (tomorrow night at the latest).
• Googlebar Lite development has been very slow recently. Once I get back online, I hope to make some progress on this front: version 3.0 is long overdue. Firefox 1.5 Beta 2 and Beta 1 support will finally be available in 3.0, so that should please a number of people.
• My 22" monitor got hosed during the move. :( I've gone back to my 19" (which can only do 1280x1024), and I'm looking for a replacement (I've got to have 1600x1200). Dare I go to the dark side and buy an LCD?
• I turned 25 yesterday. :D