Matt Mauldin

Minivan drivers are the worst drivers in the world! It doesn’t matter who you are – if you are driving a minivan, you currently hold the title of Worst Driver in the World.  Who is to blame? You and your minivan.  Why? Because minivans are evil!

Proof: Minivans are evil.

I recently uncovered this photo of a minivan soon after birth.  The car companies would like you to believe that these evil vehicles come off the assembly line like other cars, but don’t be fooled.  This photo is undeniable proof that minivans are born and sent to the dealership straight from the gates of hell.

For practical reasons, the demon horns are removed from each minivan soon after birth and before being shipped to the dealers.

Minivans make the driver (bad).

How can I say that minivans are evil? Because there’s no rhyme or reason to the profile of a minivan driver, yet they all suck.  “Minivan driver ineptitude” transcends age, race, ethnicity, gender, past driving record, or anything else you can possible think of to categorize the actual person behind the wheel.  It’s not them, the demon minivan takes over the moment the ignition is turned on.

The only common theme among minivan drivers is this: they chose to drive a minivan!

Even I am not immune.  A couple of summers back, the family and I went to South Padre Island.  We flew into Harlingen and rented a minivan to make the hour drive to the Texas coast.  During that trip, I can honestly say that the honking I received over that 5-day period easily tripled all of the other honking I have ever received in over 15 years of driving.  What was different? Just the minivan.

It’s always a Minivan!

Every time I am driving peacefully down the road – sometimes even enjoying my drive – here comes a minivan to ruin my driving experience.  Have you noticed that minivans are always doing something to get in your way?

• It’s always a minivan on one of your bumpers: either the front one because they are driving too slow, or the back one because they can’t stop tailgaiting you!
• When you come up to an intersection and want to turn right on red, there’s always a minivan stopped in front of you waiting to go straight, blocking your way!
• It’s always a minivan that turns left from a parking lot onto a busy street, then uses the left-hand turn lane to  drive and squeeze in in front of you.
• It’s always a minivan that cuts you off on the highway, keeps you from getting to your exit or blocks you from getting on the highway
• It’s always a minivan that will try to pass you on the right lane of the interstate (and it’s so fun to speed up just a little and box them in behind some slow semi trailer, he he).
• It’s always a minivan that takes their sweet time getting into and out of parking spots.
• Minivans always squeeze into the tight parking spots because those sliding doors don’t require any room to open.  But when you get out of the store or restaurant, you have to compress your entire torso just to get back into your own car.
• Freakin minivans.

Solution to the Minivan Problem – DAM (Driving A Minivan) Law

I suggest that we pass the “Driving A Minivan” law, or DAM for short.  Basically, if you are caught driving a minivan for any reason,you can be subject to the following penalties:

• late dropping your kids off for soccer practice, gymnastics, or day care.
• search and seizure of all Starbucks coffee or diet sodas, slimfast candy bars, and ziploc bags of cheerios.
• sever thrashing with a bamboo cane.
• feelings of general disgust and loathing sent in the drivers general direction.

And passing the DAM law will give all us non-minivan drivers an opportunity to say, “Follow the DAM law and get off the damn road!”

Popularity: 31% [?]

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Popularity: 27% [?]

Wordpress is one of the most well-developed open-source software packages available on the net today.  I’ve used it for blogging, as a review site or an article directory, as a CMS, and even for a simple e-commerce site.  All of these uses are possible using the stock Wordpress install because of the huge selection of Wordpress plugins.

As of the time I write this post, there were 4,245 plugins available for download in the Wordpress Plugin Directory.  So the question is this: How do you decide which Wordpress plugins to use?

MattMauldin.com runs on WordPress 2.7.1 with quite a bit of custom work, but the main functionality on this site comes from my use of 15 Wordpress plugins (at the moment).

15 Best WordPress Plugins (because I use them)

Akismet – Keep your comments spam free (or damn near) with this plugin.  It will automatically remove comments marked as spam from your comment queue.  This plugin has saved me a ton of time weeding through jibberish, stupid “great post, admin” comments and sale notices at oversea pharmacies.  I mean, come on; I don’t want a stupid Viagra ad running on my website (unless it’s from my own affiliate link).

No Self Pings – This plugin keeps WordPress from sending pings to your own site.  It’s incredibly helpful if you record pingbacks as comments, or if you are trying to manage your internal link juice.

All-in-One SEO Pack – This is the #1 most popular plugin on WordPress.org.  And there’s a reason why: you can manage most of the lacking SEO items for your blog from a single settings page.  Set how your Title and META tags are displayed for each page and post, tag, archive, and category page.  Set the same tags for your home page individually.  Beyond that, you can customize the Title and META tags for each page or post if you choose to.

Google Analytics for WordPress – There are a few other plugins that integrate Google Analytics into your WordPress install, but none are as easy or as configured out-of-the-box as this one.  There’s also a great resource available from Joost de Valk here to help you with some of the more powerful (or complicated) tracking options Google Analytics offers.

Google XML Sitemaps – Keep your XML feed to Google Sitemaps up to date with this easy plugin.  Take some time to set your settings correctly, and then you can forget it – it runs itself.

FeedBurner FeedSmith – Manage your RSS feed with Feedburner.  Then use this plugin to ensure all of the subscribers subscribe through your Feedburner feed so your tracking is accurate.

PS Auto Sitemap – Use this plugin to quickly create a Site Map for your WordPress blog.  It comes installed with several CSS skins you can choose through the admin settings page.  In fact, there are quite a few powerful settings you can choose through the settings page to create a helpful sitemap.

Page Link Manager – Add additional navigation and pagination to your blog.  Although I’ve got an archive, categories, and a tag cloud, I thought it was important to provide the pagination at the bottom of this blog for usability.  The last thing you want is a blog that is difficult to navigate.

WP-PageNavi – This plugin allows you to choose which pages appear in your blog menu if you use the wp_list_pages hook.  It works will with the next plugin.

My Page Order – This plugin provides a drag-and-drop interface for changing the order of your pages.  It’s great to easily manage the menus on your blog.  Use it in combination with the previous plugin and you have almost total control over your blog’s menu.

Simple Tags – Simple Tags offers three powerful new options to manage your tags.

1. Manage your tags: search tags, rename tags, delete, add or edit a tag, change the sort order of your tags, and even see how many times each of your tags are used.
2. Mass Edit your tags: changes tags on multiple posts at once instead of going post by pont – a huge timesaver. and
3. Auto tag: this is by far the most powerful function of this plugin. Choose the tags you expect to repat among your posts and enter them here, then Auto tag will automatically apply them to new posts if they match the headling or content.

Popularity Contest – This plugin scores your posts by calculating the number of comments, links, and a number of other attributes.  You can then show the result in a number of ways.  My footer contains a “Popular Posts” that uses this plugin.  I also use this plugin to help rank my page importance in my XML sitemap.

Twitter Tools – The Twitter Tools plugin is just what I was looking for to integrate my twitter account.  I’ve scheduled a post once per week, early on Monday mornings, that pulls all of my tweets over the past week.  I also use it to post a notification tweet each time I publish a new post.

Contact Form 7 – Create multiple forms with a ton of options for input fields.  You can create forms with text fields, comment boxes, and even CAPTCHA support.  I use it on my contact form, and have used it on other WordPress installs for much more complicated forms with ease.

Note: You will notice that I do not use Sociable.  Instead, I’ve custom coded five social icons that show up inside The Loop beneath each post that allow readers to share my posts on Digg, Delicious, StumbleUpon, Technorati, and Facebook.  The only reason I bypassed Sociable is for style.  In many other instances, I’ve used it and it will work just fine.

If you have a suggested plugin, please comment.

Popularity: 100% [?]

If your job revolves around the internet like mine, then you probably have  amassed a number of email, IM, and social accounts over the past few years to connect to friends and colleagues, or to access certain services.  In my case:

IM: I have a username for chatting through Google Talk, Yahoo & MSN Messengers, and AIM.  I have a number of colleagues and friends who use each chat client, so it is beneficial to have more than one IM login.

Email: I have a gmail account as my primary address, but I also have a Yahoo email address to access Yahoo’s Site Explorer and some of their other services.  I have a hotmail account that serves as my MSN login, and I have a number of email addresses for the blogs and ecommerce sites I run.

Social Networks: Among others, I have a facebook account to stay connected with my friends, a LinkedIn account to keep connected proessionally with current and past coworkers, and a twitter account to tie all of my activities together, from personal, professional, blogging and miscellaneous.

So how do you stay connected with multiple IM accounts, social networking accounts, and a whole host of emails to check every day?

Digsby.

Digsby talks with each of your IM, email, and social accounts above, and I’ve found that really saves me time during the day, while still allowing me to keep up to date with what is going on in my network of connections.

Digsby offers personalization through different skins and window styles.  Choose how you are notified for each account through discreet popups in the corner of your screen, or through sounds.  You can even create a Digsby widget to put on your blog or website so visitors can chat with you directly, even if they don’t have you set as a friend.

You can learn more or download Digsby here.

Popularity: 86% [?]

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