Adblock. Flashblock. And a handy-dandy list of prebuilt “rules” for Adblock, collected here. (One can only hope that the bloke in question moves off of Geocities some day.)

Why? Because I finally got sick and tired of the “shoot the monkey” kind of noisy, distracting Flash adverts, and figured that if I’m going to start blocking ads I might as well go all-out. And because I run Firefox, which already lets me block pop-up ads and other annoying crap.

Consider this part PSA, part note-to-self.

By the by: Flashblock can be configured to allow specific sites automatically, so for instance you can go to Tools —> Extensions, double-click on Flashblock in the list, and add in “www.neopets.com”. The really neat part is that Flash hosted on the Neopets site itself will still work, but off-site adverts won’t. Neat.

The anime site is now running WordPress 1.5, and so far I’m quite impressed with the product, the improvements, and the upgrade process. (Don’t worry, Matt. I’m not leaving MJ any time soon.)

I’m the same guy who pounces on every available update to video card drivers, Gaim, Firefox, Thunderbird, OpenOffice.org and… well, just about every other bit of software I run, server- or client-side. Versionitis? Yep. But in my defense, it’s worth pointing out that most of the software I use gets better with every release.

Besides, it gives me something to do when I’m bored…

This has not been a good week, as you may have noticed or been privy to the details of. Today was something of a capper to the trend, leading me to a state of aggravation and frustration.

One of the ways I deal with intense frustration is to build a computer.

I know what you’re thinking: “Gee, Karel. Building a computer can be a challenging, frustrating experience. Why would you do this to improve your mood?” I’m so glad you asked, neighbor. You see, I’m really good at building computers. Sure, it’s frustrating at times, but the frustrations of a computer build are generally fixable in some fashion. Mind you, sometimes the fix is to throw out half of the parts and/or start the install process all over again, but there’s almost always a fix of some sort.

Today I learned exactly how salvageable those HPs the company’s been buying really are. (In case you’re wondering, the answer is “somewhat.” Just don’t ask me to transplant the guts of any of those no-AGP-slot abominations they’ve been shipping us the last two years…) With an old Matrox dual-head card, a first-generation Soundblaster Live, a chassis I had laying around and a very large hard drive, I have something of an interesting piece of work cobbled together now.

Now, of course, I have to decide what I’m going to do with it. That’s almost as fun as actually building the thing…

So I took a good, hard look at my City of Heroes roster on the Protector server yesterday, and realized that at least two were never going to be much fun to play. (There’s a third that may or may not make the cut. I’m still debating on him.) Yesterday I blew out one of them, and this morning I blew out the other. In place of NeutrinoStorm and Myne alMyne are a new Defender and Controller (respectively) named R Ken Ettic and The Immaterial Girl.

Ken’s a Kinetics Defender, and Imma’s a Gravity/Radiation Controller. And now I remember why I didn’t play Myne very much: Controllers are hard to play in the early stages. Gah.

I’ll post screenshots eventually, but for now suffice to say that Ken’s a robot (as implied by the Asimovian naming scheme) and Imma’s in a getup somewhat similar to (but not exactly like) Sailor Jupiter, as Dawn noted upon first spying her costume in the game. Ah well. So it’s not like I’m ever going to win any costume contests…

I have to wonder what these spammers think, sometimes. Take, for instance, the following subject line. Please.

“Rock Hard Women!”

I don’t know about you but when I think of the attributes of my ideal woman, neither of the words “rock” or “hard” enter the picture. Come to think on it, “soft,” which is the opposite of “hard,” is one of the things that come to mind. As for “rock,” well, nothing should be rock-like if you ask me. Not her head, not her… well, anything else. Other words that come to mind are “curvy” and “smart” and “smell nice.” No geological terms arise at all.

In fact, usually you come across the words “rock hard” as describing some part of a man’s anatomy. (Abs, people. Get your minds out of the gutter!) So I have to wonder why I’m having rock hard women offered to me as if it was something I’d be interested in.

Bewildering, as is most spam. Funny, though.