The unavailability of Thai milk tea and other things that grate

Am I the only person who would kill for one of the chain coffee houses to start carrying Thai milk tea? I don’t know what it is about this creamy concoction, but I’m utterly addicted to it and usually order it whenever it’s available. I’ve found that it’s mostly relegated to Thai/Vietnamese restaurants, but I’ve also come across it at various boba shops in the area, though it’s always way overpriced considering its constituent parts and the ease with which it is made. OK, so that begs the question: why don’t you make it yourself? Simple, I’m lazy.

Speaking of lazy, I’ve been trying out McDonald’s coffee lately because, well, they have signs up that say, “let us add the cream and sugar.” You read that right, I go to McDonald’s because they’ll mix up my coffee for me, except when they don’t. You see, I’ve now gone three times, once through the drive-thru where something like this would make the most sense, and twice inside, and not once have they added the sugar and cream for me. The story is always the same: I ask for coffee, they ask if I would like cream and sugar, I say yes, they ignore the machine that’s right behind them that performs this wonder while standing under the sign that says “let us add the cream and sugar,” and then they hand me my coffee parts and I do the manual labor while screaming on the inside.

I’ve asked, in no uncertain terms, the meaning of the sign, and cannot, for the life of me, get a coherent, sensible explanation of why, after I fork over $1.50, I’m still made to mix everything up myself. I’ve even asked what that machine does, but the response I got back was one of confusion; I could tell this lady thought she was in trouble (I don’t speak whatever language she was whispering in, but she was scared) and so I backed off.

Remove the sign or add the cream and sugar for me!

WordPress 2.1

A few hours ago I updated this site to WordPress 2.1, seemingly without issue. Most of the plugins I use here were already compatible with the new package, and if they weren’t, their newest versions were, and so I basically just upgraded everything across the board. None of the plugins that I’ve written and currently use gave me any trouble, save Smart Archives, which I updated a couple of weeks ago to silence the unruly masses (just kidding, kinda).

Anyway, if you notice something funky around these parts, please let me know.

Minor site updates

Just wanted to quickly point out some minor changes I’ve recently made to the site. The bits are now included on the monthly archive pages (see last month as an example; the monthly archives now look/act just like the index page). Also, as per multiple requests, I’ve added permalinks to all of the bits (see the “∞” symbol following each bit; note that I’ve added these to the bits feed, the bits page, the index page, and the monthly archive pages). Not quite sure why I didn’t put these in from jump, but, well, there you have it.

As you were.

Smart Archives v1.6

I’ve just updated Smart Archives to bring it into full compliance with WordPress v2.1, which was released a couple of weeks ago. I probably would have sat on this for a while were it not for the constant e-mails from SA users alerting me to the fact that the latest WP update was breaking some things.

The problems were minute and I was able to whip up a fix in less than five minutes, which amounted to nothing more than changing all instances of $tableposts (which has been deprecated) to $wpdb->posts, and adding another argument to all of the SQL queries to draw a distinction between “posts” and “pages” (which are actually just a type of post).

Unfortunately, the changes have required me to ‘fork’ the code, and so from here on out there will be two versions of Smart Archives, one for WP 2.0- and one for WP 2.1+.

The new version is now available on the project page. Please e-mail me should you have any trouble.

Thank you for not feeling entitled

A few days ago I received an e-mail from someone I’ve never met requesting technical assistance from me. Now, this isn’t in and of itself odd as I seem to get similar e-mails hourly, but what was odd, and welcomed, was how this person framed the question/problem:

Because of these simple, appreciative sentences I’m almost compelled to move this person to the front of the reply queue. It’s a shame that something like this is cause for such highlighting, but if you saw some of the e-mails I’ve received I think you’d agree that this sort of acknowledgment and understanding is rare.