This possibly is the most disgusting story I've read in months:
Rachel Porcaro knows she's hardly rich. When you're a single mom making 10 bucks an hour, you don't need government experts to tell you how broke you are.
But that's what happened. The government not only told Porcaro she was poor. They said she was too poor to make it in Seattle.
It all started a year ago, when Porcaro, a 32-year-old mom with two boys, was summoned to the Seattle office of the Internal Revenue Service (IRS). She had been flagged for an audit.
She couldn't believe it. She made $18,992 the previous year cutting hair at Supercuts. A few hundred of that she spent to have her taxes prepared by H&R Block.
Filed under Blog by on Dec 7th, 2009. Comment. 
Semiologic Pro users with an up to date site will not be seeing it in their dashboard, since I've been modifying the way that upgrades are handled in recent months. But 6.0 has finally been released — fully 10 months after 5.7.1.
The key highlights for old time users who haven't upgraded in a year… (Those who did will find today's earlier post on Version Checker more interesting.)
Filed under Blog, Highlights, WordPress by on Nov 29th, 2009. 4 Comments.
I've released Version Checker 2.0 this morning.
This is a huge milestone for Semologic Pro users. Many thanks to all those of you who took the time to test it — in particular during the last round, when I've been fine-tuning the installer.
The new upgrader shows up prominently in the admin area when new versions of your active plugins are available:
Mass Plugin Upgrader
Simply click the button when you see it appear in your admin area, and it'll upgrade each of your individual plugins automatically.
I'm going to release a batch of other plugins in the coming days — almost all of it WP 2.9-related. So be sure to upgrade Version Checker first.
The new installer works a bit the same. I'll go through the details in Version Checker's documentation. Key highlights, though:
- WordPress, Plugins, and the theme are now installed separately, one after the other, rather than all at once.
- Everything you need is located under Tools / Semiologic, which is available once you've entered your Semiologic API Key.
- The mass plugin installer takes care of creating a .htaccess file, permission changes, and activating permalinks on your site.
The big news is, I've yet to see the new installer and upgrader fail on a single site. Crossing my fingers…
Filed under Blog, Highlights, WordPress by on Nov 29th, 2009. Comment.
Notice — hub.org, which hosts this site, is doing a special promo on December 1st, starting at 00:00 AST (i.e. 23:00 EST), and giving away 15 starter VPS' for free. (Over-usage charges still apply.)
Please note that this is NOT cPanel hosting … this is a real VPS with real support — of the kind you've probably never had — by the very best system administrator I've ever encountered.
The Entreprise HA plan, for instance, was created based on my own requirements: that is not one private, but a load-balanced environment instead, so as to minimize the number of single points of failure.
Anyway, highly recommended — even if you're not one of the lucky 15.
Extra note for my own customers: on hub.org, you get to install Semiologic Pro in one click using scripts that I maintain myself. (Non-Semiologic Pro users get to install WordPress using the same scripts.)
Filed under Blog, Highlights, WordPress by on Nov 25th, 2009. 1 Comment.
Now, this is a completely fascinating development:
[The adjustable rate bank note issued Aug. 4, 2004] is hereby canceled, voided, nullified, set aside and is of no further force and effect . . . the lender and its successors are barred, prohibited and foreclosed from attempting, in any manner, directly or indirectly, to enforce any provision of the mortgage loan.
– Suffolk County Supreme Court Justice Jeffrey A. Spinner
We never asked for this. I was shocked, honestly. It's not like we said, 'Judge, please throw the loan away.' We just wanted them [the bank] to be reasonable.
– Greg Horoski, East Patchogue Home owner.
From NewsDay, via Barry Ritholtz.
Filed under Blog by on Nov 25th, 2009. Comment.
ZDNet is reporting that exploit code for a critical (remotely exploitable) vulnerability in Microsoft’s Internet Explorer 6 and 7 browsers has been released on the Internet.
Be sure to upgrade to IE8 before a worm is in the wild.
Also, please do internet a favor, and spread the word to your readers. It would greatly benefit all websites if IE6 and IE7 usage dropped as a result of this.
Update: It seems that Opera users are hardly any better off, today.
Filed under Blog, WordPress by on Nov 23rd, 2009. 2 Comments.
Posting this in advance… A couple of plugins are going to be updated over the WE. I've uploaded betas for each:
- Smart Links v.4.2.1 fixes an erratic behavior for domain-less pages
- Mediacaster v.2.0.1 updates the flash player to 4.6
- External Links v.4.0.3 and Nav Menus v.2.0.1 get an improved local url detector
- Semiologic Fixes v.1.9.4 trims junk added by a buggy Skype plugin in FF
Thanks in advance if you test their bleeding edge versions.
Update: I'm finally beginning to find a few quirks in WP 2.9. (Why did I know that it sounded too good to be true?) Nothing's broken per say — until the trash gets used. You then get some random behavior here and there.
Anyway, a dozen or so plugins and the two themes will see their bleeding edge zip updated during the WE as a result.
Filed under Blog, WordPress by on Nov 20th, 2009. Comment.
You can't make this up…
Russian police have arrested three homeless people suspected of eating a 25-year-old man they had butchered and selling other bits of the corpse to a local kebab house. (…)
It was not immediately clear from the statement if any of the corpse had been sold to customers.
Filed under Blog by on Nov 17th, 2009. Comment.
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