This date with Rachel was sweet and simple. We went to Culvers and then to McHenry Community College. At the college, I met Paul Bayer, Communications Specialist, who described the audio/visual departments of the school. Rachel and I walked the halls looking at strange paintings from the students. A couple of photography students wanted to take our picture looking on into the photo lab. Rachel enjoyed the tour and concluded by watching a few boys playing catch with their “whistle football.”
Author Archives: Rob
Date with Rachel
Rachel and I went to Colonial Cafe for dessert. We ordered some ice cream and shared from the same dish. Rachel wanted me to sit right next to her in the booth and hold hands. We had a non-stop conversations and played lots of tic-tac-toe and dot games with the provided kiddy placemat.
Date with Alexis
For this date we went shopping at the Springhill Mall. It was very nice as Alexis played on the mall playground. She wanted to make friends with someone but was too shy. So she ended up shadowing another girl the whole time – the other girl seemed to like Alexis and allowed her to tag along. We bought Heather a scarf as a gift.
Captcha form spam
The predominant Captcha for eliminating form spam is “reCaptcha.” This works great on a blog but requires knowledge of Perl programming for simple HTML programmers such as myself. ReCaptcha is nice in that it helps to digitize books one word at a time whenever a person enters text. I was not able to implement it onto my site – even with the help of my programming tutor.
An easier to implement Captcha is “Snaphost.” This doesn’t digitize book but it does the same thing with a graphical key needed to submit a form. It’s free and no registration is required. Snaphost generates a new code each time using their servers. Plus, snaphost provides forms complete with javascript for varification. It doesn’t get any easier than snaphost. For the Captcha without ads a person can upgrade to the paid account.
Wikipedia cites the meaning of a captcha below:
The term “CAPTCHA” (based upon the word capture) was coined in 2000 by Luis von Ahn, Manuel Blum, Nicholas J. Hopper, and John Langford (all of Carnegie Mellon University). It is a contrived acronym for “Completely Automated Public Turing test to tell Computers and Humans Apart.”
Date with Alexis
For this date with Alexis, we went to Bath and Body Works in Crystal Lake. Heather had a coupon with which I purchased her Christmas gift. Then the associate gave me another coupon and helped me get a free stuffed animal for Alexis. Alexis picked a soft lamb and decided to give it to Rachel instead of keeping it for herself. Now that was the warmest feeling of love that I felt all day.
We stopped by Chuck E Cheese’s before going home – we did not spend any money.
Date with Rachel
For this date with Rachel, we went for a walk in the woods at Veteran Acres Park. Rachel is doing very well in her stamina as we walked almost the entire perimeter of the park. We were afraid that the wolves might attack us so we laid a string of cheese over a branch. Now the wolves are our friends. The squirrels will get a snack if the wolves don’t get the cheese first.
Cantiny Panoramic Photo
Here’s a fun panoramic view of a garden at Cantiny. Heather took the photos while the twins and I positioned ourselves in each shot. The effect is that there are several of me and Rachel in one photo.
Sitemap Generator
Search Engine Optimization (SEO) relies on many factors including having an up to date sitemap. XML-Sitmaps.com has a free generator that crawls up to 500 pages. It spits out a sitemap file that you can upload to your web server AND add to your Google webmaster account. Google and other search engines will read the site map. This aids in their crawling plus ranks your website higher in search results.
Lost a Netflix DVD
We lost Monsters Inc, a rented DVD from Netflix. The website has a spot where you can report a shipping or DVD problem. The choices are:
- I haven’t received the DVD yet
- I received a mailer without a DVD in it
- I received the wrong DVD
- The DVD is damaged, scratched or unplayable
- I don’t have the white sleeve or red envelope to return the DVD
- I returned this DVD, but Netflix hasn’t received it
- I have lost or damaged this DVD and would like to pay for it
So I called Netflix about the matter. By the way, they have an great feature on the website where a code is generated next to the telephone number. By entering the code, the customer service rep has my account information ready without a million questions to verify my identify. The lady said that a lost DVD would cost $14 charged to my account. I was hoping she would have mercy and waive the fee altogether. Here’s the good part, Netflix will refund the fee if the movie is found and returned at a later date. So, I charged the $14 and hoped for the best.
**Before I could finish this blog, Heather found the missing DVD buried under bills on our desk upstairs. We’re not paying the bills – just moving them.
Google’s Sesame Street Doodle – please stop
Google has been celebrating Sesame Street’s 40th anniversary for about a week now. Their doodle is one of the Sesame characters. Although they are quite cute, I was tired of it on day two. When will they stop? Probably Nov 10, which is Sesame Street’s anniversary.
It doesn’t matter the browser of course, as long as Google is loaded, you will get Sesame Street. Firefox, Google chrome, and Internet Explorer has the doodle graphics. There’s no escaping Google’s reach here. Fortunately, I turned on my iGoogle theme to escape the Cookie Monster. Hopefully the monster will run out of cookies soon so we can get back to a more sophisticated web environment.