I can finally select things accurately.

It’s “et al.,” not “et all.”
It’s “utmost,” not “upmost.”
It’s “per se,” not “per say.”
It’s “as yet,” not “as of yet.”
It’s “must have,” not “must of.”
It’s “en route,” not “on route.”
It’s “hear hear,” not “here here.”
It’s “would have,” not “would of.”
It’s “supposedly,” not “supposably.”
It’s “based on,” not “based off of.”
It’s “jibes with,” not “jives with.”
It’s “wreak havoc,” not “wreck havoc.”
It’s “doesn’t jive,” not “doesn’t jibe.”
It’s “many a time,” not “many of times.”
It’s “so to speak,” not “so to speak of.”
It’s “case in point,” not “case and point.”
It’s “lo and behold,” not “low and behold.”
It’s “have a field day,” not “have a heyday.”
It’s “in the throes of,” not “in the throws of.”
It’s “all of a sudden,” not “all of the sudden.”
It’s “if I had done,” not “if I would have done.”
It’s “nipped in the bud,” not “nipped in the butt.”
It’s “raises the question,” not “begs the question.”
It’s “pored through them,” not “poured through them.”
It’s “all intents and purposes,” not “all intensive purposes.”
It’s “800-pound gorilla,” not “800-pound gorilla in the room.”

I love Goran Bregovic’s music. Unfortunately, I can’t say the same for my experience at Paramount Theatre. Lest you think I’m just a complainer, Bregovic himself stopped playing at one point, because the crowd were milling about and having full-voice conversations, to ask, “Am I doing something wrong?”

He wasn’t doing anything wrong.

That was excruciatingly embarrassing moment. Paramount’s staff were utterly ineffectual, and I (and the handicapped patron behind me) couldn’t see a thing as revelers jumped up out of their seats and danced at the slightest provocation.

I can understand feeling moved to express oneself, maybe in the aisles (though I understand that's probably a fire hazard). But there are those of us who paid for the most expensive seats in the house because we wanted to sit (in the seats we’d paid for) to enjoy the performance. Not only was my experience tarnished by drunken revelers, but I’m afraid that I would *never* recommend the Paramount to my friends, knowing now what passes for normal there.

It’s a lovely venue, but serving alcohol was a bad decision, apparently. Next time Goran Bregovic comes through town, I’ll happily pay to see him at a more civil location.

Let me speak for all of Oakland: I apologize, Mr. Bregovic. Please come back… maybe to San Francisco, next time.

The knuckle on my right middle finger catches when I flick my finger just the right way. Since I was a kid I’ve relied on this to determine right from left — clicky-hand is on the right. Needless to say, if my hands are unavailable to me for click-testing (like if I’m holding heavy groceries) I get lost.

If you’re ever having a conversation with me and happen to say the word “left” or “right,” glance down at my hand and you’ll see me flick my finger unconsciously. (I’ve caught myself doing it.)

I don’t have many heroes. Apple depicted many of them on its Think Different posters.

Jobs stands among them.

Today I tried to paste my account number from my cheat sheet into ING Direct’s form, only to find that they’d disabled the Paste function. Circumventing this by turning off Javascript isn’t an option, since their Submit button is also Javascript-reliant. This puts users in a bind.

This practice is inherently user-hostile, so here’s one way to get around it. (It works on the Mac, but I can’t vouch for other platforms.)

If you have the account number in a text document, select it, then drag it from your document over to the ING Direct form’s text field. Since this is a system-level event rather than browser-level, it cannot be blocked by Javascript (at least not as easily). It’s still not as convenient as Copy/Paste, but at least it saves typing, and about 15 seconds of your time. (Okay, so I’m numerically dyslexic.)

My response to John Gruber’s post:

Let’s see if you can tell where the following promo loses me:

I think John Gruber is right that Apple is trying, aggressively, to remove abstractions from the Mac UI.

It happens like this:

> Joe Frank @JoeFrankcom is now following you (@scamper).

Yes sir.

Now I can only tweet the tight, lucid, paradigm-shifting tweets. No more baby time kaka frivolous shit. This is The Show. Level up.

You know… or not.