Matt Mauldin

Smallville’s Clark Kent is a weeny.  He’s such a weeny that we should call the show “Weenyville”

Tonight was supposed to be the season finale.    Instead it was a weenyfest.  This episode single-handedly destroyed the entire show for me.  Just a coincident that it was titles Doomsday… or is it?  Instead of a season capping finale, this was the dumbest, most idiotic, non-exciting episode ever. Bottom line: Clark is a weeny.

Important: From here on out there are spoilers, but the show has taken such a downturn this season that they can hardly be called spoilers.

Predictable Plot

Every freakin episode has the same story:

• some baddie either puts either the entire world or one of Clark’s friends (swap them out) in danger.
• Clark tried to save them but gets trapped by kryptonite.
• Some wuss saves Clark
• Clark pulls off some 8-year-old-in-superman-pajamas spoof and the episode ends to some dumb song (but you can buy the CD on the CW.com)

Clark (a.k.a. weeny-boy – see right) wrestles with the fact that Doomsday has a human side (Davis), and humans are all good.  Of course he’s come up against hundreds of human baddies over the past eight seasons, but whatever. Clark has been whining forever that he can save Davis and proves once again the depths of his weenitude.

Clark Rendered Inept… Again

So Green Lantern and his super-turd friends shoot Clark with a Krypto-dart.  Of course! Predictable and boring.

This time it’s Jimmy Olsen that saves him and learns that Clark is the Red-Blue-Blur.  What does that mean? Time to die, Jimmy!  Yep, Jimmy dies.  Stupid.  Even dumber, at his funeral Chloe walks up to a crying kid and says “You must be Jimmy’s younger brother.”

Time out… wasn’t she married to Jimmy?  YES. And you are telling me that she never met his family?  Stupid.  Chloe hands the kid a camera and tells him he may follow in the dead Jimmy’s footsteps.  Is that foreshadowing???

And this kid is supposed to be the Jimmy Olsen in the movies.  How does that work?  Were his parents dumb enough to name him Jimmy, too?  Or does this 8 year old kid take his older brother’s name to honor him now that he’s dead?

Crappy Ending. I’ll Skip Next Season

Clark ends the show by telling Chloe it is his human side, his emotions, that cause the problems.  Then he says goodbye and walks out.

I’ve never been this disgusted with a TV show.  It’s probably why I don’t watch much TV.  The only good outcome is that I’ll have less TV to watch in the fall.

Popularity: 36% [?]

I just added and configured a great 404 error plugin called AskApache Google 404. It changes my 404 error page from a simple “Page Not Found” message to an excellent page of links back to relevant pages on my blog.

I was playing around with some demo software on a subdirectory and there were a couple of times I typed in the wrong subdomain.  My default 404 error page popped up instead of what I expected.  After this happened a couple of times, it struck me how bland and absolutly useless my error page was. So I found the AskApache Google 404 plugin and just got it configured.

It works great!  See an example of my new 404 error page here,  or here’s a screenshot:

Installation

Easy!

I was able to download, install, and configure the whole plugin in less than 5 minutes.  It does require a Google AJAX Search API, but that’s easy enough to get with your Google account. (If you don’t have a Google account by now, you are seriously behind.)

Here are the install steps:

1. Download and activate the plugin
2. Add your Google API key in the given blank in the settings page and save.
3. Insert a line of PHP code to your 404.php file in your WordPress template, and a couple of lines of code to your .htaccess file.

Be careful, though.  There was an error in the PHP that is given to place into your 404.php file.  It was missing a “?” just before the final “>”.  I’m going to message the plugin author to mention it and to thank him for the great plugin.

Customization

The default width of the search results are 750 px wide with no margin.  I need 600 px wide with a 17px margin on the left.  Thankfully this plugin allows you to easily edit the HTML, CSS and JS that controls the search listing display from within the admin settings page.

I changed this line in the HTML:

<div style="width:750px;overflow:hidden;margin-left:0;">

to this:

<div style="width:600px;overflow:hidden;margin-left:17px;">

That fixed the width of the search results container to fit in my left column, but it also squeesed the text results on top of the video/image listings on the right.  That was easily changed in the CSS.  I found this:

#rDiv {width:500px; min-height:400px;}

and changed it to:

#rDiv {width:450px; min-height:400px;}

And that was it.  Now I’ve got a functional 404 error page that will help visitors reach relevant pages, search engines to find my content easier, and keep me from getting annoyed as much when I type a wrong URL.

Popularity: 30% [?]

I’m starting a new section called Random News.  Basically it will be a collection of news stories that catch my interest in some way.  I want to start off with a bang, so here’s the first one.

This story is hilarious.  I read the store titled Rotten office fridge cleanup sends 7 to hospital on the AP Press earlier today and had to share it with you.

Rotten office fridge cleanup sends 7 to hospital

SAN JOSE, Calif. (AP) — An office worker cleaning a fridge full of rotten food created a smell so noxious that it sent seven co-workers to the hospital and made many others ill.

Firefighters had to evacuate the AT&T building in downtown San Jose on Tuesday after the fumes led someone to call 911. A hazmat team was called in.

What crews found was an unplugged refrigerator crammed with moldy food.

Authorities say an enterprising office worker had decided to clean it out, placing the food in a conference room while using two cleaning chemicals to scrub down the mess.

The mixture of old lunches and disinfectant caused 28 people to need treatment for vomiting and nausea.

Authorities say the worker who cleaned the fridge didn’t need treatment — she can’t smell because of allergies.

Copyright © 2009 The Associated Press. All rights reserved.

I’m still laughing at this.  In college my roommates and I left a cooler with some beer and meat outside for a little too long, and after a week it made us gag.  What did we do? Yep, we dumped more stuff in there.  Old milk, cheese, sausage, a dead squirril we found in the backyard… whatever.  And for an entire summer it sat in the back cooking in the 100 degree heat of West Texas.  Early during the fall semester, we brought the cooler to one o the big classrooms and opened it up.  It was like a wave of nausea, and you could see it slowly roll up the room, row by row, until every person was out.

Too bad it wasn’t spring semester, when allergy season hits, because some of the kids in that room could have stayed.

Popularity: 24% [?]

• Just updated the featured video at http://www.mattmauldin.com/. One of the funniest I’ve seen in a long time. #
• saw @Lmphotos at a wedding last weekend – great photography. #
• Driving across DFW is a beating #
• Not crazy about the new twitter sidebar. Missing the website and profile bio. #
• ole. happy cinco de mayo #
• probably more stupid spammers #
• had a lot of followers on twitter over the weekend. When I look at their page, twitter says it is disabled #

Popularity: 21% [?]

(not a joke… seriously)

You’ve probably bought weird things in the past, but I am now budgeting to buy Fox Urine on a regular basis.

The story isn’t near as interesting as the post title, but it’s been on my mind a lot lately.

My house is close to the edge of town and backs up to a yet undeveloped city park, and over the winter I had a rabbit infestation.  There were times that I would flip on my backyard light and see over a dozen of these little critters jumping around my grass.  It’s caused a lot of problems.

Last summer, I had a perfect backyard.  My dog and I would play ball and roll around in the grass.  I could walk barefoot around the entire yard with no problem.

But all of these rabbits have been running around in the wild getting all sorts of week seeds in their coat.  They also eat all sorts of plants, seeds included.  But the seeds don’t digest very well.  So every time they take a little bunny hop, seeds fall out of their fur.  Every time they crap (and the crap a LOT), they leave seeds behind covered in their own fertilizer coating.

This summer, I haven’t walked outside barefoot because I have no desire to step on weeds – some of them are a little prickly – not to mention the rabbit pellets they have left for me.  My dog doesn’t want to play ball, and instead runs around the fence with her nose to the ground.  She’d love to catch a yummy rabbit.  It’s unfortunate that we are enjoying the yard much less so far this season.

Basically, if I was six inches tall, my backyard would be a scary jungle rainforest.  It would be a horror version of Honey I Shrunk the Kids.

After talking with a few people, I learned that I could sprinkle my yard with fox urine the natural instincts of the rabbits would take over and fear of being fox lunch would keep them away.  So a month ago I made a trip to the feed store and picked up a bottle.

The stuff stinks.  It is worse than six hours after eating asparagus.  But I got through it and sprinkled it in the half-dozen places where I have seen rabbits coming under my fence.

It worked immediately.

I haven’t seen a single rabbit since my fox urination. So I’ve added fox urine to my periodic shopping list for yard care.  You can find it here for $25.99 per bottle.  I’m planning on putting it down about once per month because rain and sprinklers will eventually wash it away, and based on my first use I expect to need a new bottle after every three uses or so.

So that’s about $100 a year for fox urine.  But that’s cheaper than re-weeding each year to the extent that I am doing now.

Currently I’m putting down weed-n-feed to begin nursing my yard back to health.  Maybe by mid-summer my dog and I can begin enjoying the back yard again.  Here are a few pics of the dog from last summer.  See how nice the grass was:

Popularity: 29% [?]