Cozmo's Dev Blog - Stupid Shite

Seeking recommendations for a drop down menu (tabs)

Tue, 19 May 2009 20:22:00-0700

I have a very finicky and non trivial CSS based layout that I have finally worked all the kinks out of. Actually it is only finicky in IE. Now the powers that be want to add drop down menus (tabs) the top nav bar that use the sliding door rounded corner technique. I have tried a bunch of menuing systems: Dynamic Drive menus, Spry, some jQuery plugins, Massimo's hiermenu and a bunch of stuff I found off of the Google and all of them have problems of one sort or another. I can't position it correctly, it trows off other page elementsm the drop down columns are mis-aligned etc... forever and ever, world with out end. Amen. I posted this to CF_talk a few months back (the site got shelved since then and it is back in production) and though I would hit up the blogosphere.. Has anybody out there had any luck with this and can recommend a tabbed menu dropdown solution? The primary requirement are:

It can have sub menus
W3C XHTML compliant.
Allows for text based links

These are the Menus that I have tried so far:

(ot) Pleas leave a comment below. Many TIA!!!

This is something I would do...

Sun, 03 May 2009 03:55:00-0700

And the same thing would happen to me. I have often said that I would write a script to wash my car if I could. It all starts out innocent enough until I have to explain it to the authorities. At times my life seems to be an exercise in taunting that Murphy's law fellow.

Baby Jesus, browser hell and Half Life 2 on a 42 in. screen

Wed, 18 Feb 2009 00:42:00-0700

My life sucks right now. All I can say is IE6 and CSS makes Baby Jesus cry. After three weeks of browser hell I am adjusting the sites on my sniper rifle and looking for a bell tower. Seriously, how (or even better WHY) can it take 12 hours to fix one pixel on 5 browser versions? Thank God for video games. I SOOOO need to kill something right now. 42 inches of flaming high def death is just what what the doctor ordered. Kill em twice.

Why does Comedy Central want me to break the law?

Sat, 22 Nov 2008 23:54:00-0700

I catch up on the Daily Show and Cobert Report every Saturday morning on the comedycentral.com site. It used to be Bugs Bunny and Daffy back when I was a kid. Now it is Steven and Jon. It is bad enough that you see the exact same commercial 4 times per show. Before, if I want to back up and see something that I missed that crossed a "commercial line" I see another commercial. Fine. Today I am seeing the same commercial, twice, for every commercial break AND every time I even *MOVE* the the little video progress bar. So now I have to start at the beginning of the clip and hope I don't forget not to touch the progress bar because if I do, I have to watch the same commercial again (TWICE) and start from the beginning of the clip (AGAIN). My other option is to get a torrent of it and break copy right law. And no, I don't have cable TV hooked up in my home, nor has it been for 15 years.

Mail Goggles - Beer Goggles for email.

Thu, 09 Oct 2008 17:55:00-0700

I have a 2 beer limit for sending email. This will help help enforce that limit. From the Google Blog: http://gmailblog.blogspot.com/2008/10/new-in-labs-stop-sending-mail-you-later.html "When you enable Mail Goggles, it will check that you're really sure you want to send that late night Friday email. And what better way to check than by making you solve a few simple math problems after you click send to verify you're in the right state of mind? By default, Mail Goggles is only active late night on the weekend as that is the time you're most likely to need it. Once enabled, you can adjust when it's active in the General settings." Some times Google is too cool for words.

Writing a super simple Login

Mon, 06 Oct 2008 01:03:00-0700

I have an old wiki that I really like that had no login. I wanted to lock it down with out having to write a bunch of code. Nothing super important but important enough to keep people out. Just add a couple random vars and poof - problem solved.

It just works.

Sun, 06 Jul 2008 05:44:00-0700

Today I loaded up some old video games (Battle Zone 2 and Half Life) on my new Lappy (running Vista). It has shared video memory on a fairly low end 17" home laptop so I wasn't expecting much. I thought that they would run like crap if they even ran at all. I used to game a lot so I know that it used to take a bit of messaging/patching/finagling to get some games to work. I have not played a video game in at least 3 years so I did not know what to expect. Much to my surprise they worked.... In fact they worked GREAT. Gordon Freeman... long time no see!! Yesterday was another story. I was trying to set up a *nix based Jboss/Java Dev Environment using a VM. First RedHat. I am a RedHat guy from WAY back... So I saw that they had an evaluation version of their JBoss Server stack for VMware and I thought: Sweet!!! So I signed up for an evaluation of the RedHat Enterprise server w/the JBoss AS via the Vmware site. I download everything and get the VM set up, and I have to run through a hoop after hoop trying to figure out how to get entitled so I can patch the RedHat VM. After an hour I just give up. I go to the VMware site again so I can get a Linux based VM to run Jboss and I D/L this one. http://www.vmware.com/appliances/directory/362 I try to unzip it and I get the "Unexpected end of Archive" error. So I think... OK it got corrupt. It happens. So I try again......and......FAIL!!! Then DL the both of the OpenSolaris VMs from the VMware site. I can't get either of those to work. Nice. Then I go to SUN so I can get a Solaris VM right from the source. 5 minutes verifying my account and getting user/pass. Now I have to wait until it downloads... approx 3 hours from now (it is now 10 pm). I have a 6 meg connection and SUN's download manager only DL's one file at a time. Then I find out I cannot run the Solaris VM on VMware player on a 64 bit system... Another 20-30 min to DL and uninstall VMware player then install VMware server. THEN the VMware tools install hangs. Fark it. I give up. 12 hours later.. No Linux. No Solaris. No Jboss. I D/L Jboss for Windows. It works the first time. How is it I can get a ten year old Video Game to work but not the latest "Enterprise grade" Software? Whiskey Tango Foxtrot? Bash MS all you want but most of the time it Just Works.

FireFox Sucks

Sat, 26 Apr 2008 01:32:00-0700

I have a love hate relationship with FF. The plugins are great. But it is a ram and CPU WHORE. This is what FF does when I surf on my 2.8 gig P4 laptop. See all those EXTENDED periods where the proccessor is pegged? This is me clicking on links on standard web plain jane web 1.0 html pages. So this is the crown jewel of open source? Is it me or is something very, VERY wrong here?

Money well spent?

Wed, 09 Apr 2008 01:55:00-0700

If you spend money for the sole reason of impressing someone (other that a potential mate) you are an idiot. You are putting other peoples needs and opinions above your own. IF their opinion matters more than your own.. you are making yourself their bitch.

In the market place of Ideas

Fri, 07 Mar 2008 03:05:00-0700

FOSS in it's "pure" form is communistic in nature and will fail accordingly. One Governing body will ALWAYS fail in light of a free exchange of ideas and the resulting competition. Don't think so? Get a history book and get your read on. Suck it freetards. Here endith the lesson.

Open Source my ass

Sun, 24 Feb 2008 01:54:00-0700

Open Source is starting to get on my nerves. I love open source about 90% of the time. But FF and Eclipse are turning into a bloated sacks of fark that makes MS's worst bloated sack of fark look like notepad. Let me see.... Right now FF is using 450 megs of ram and Eclipse is @ 358 megs. A browser using 450 megs of ram? I close out all but one browser window and it is still using 450 megs. Open what? Suck what? If a site has a flash video (like Youtube), FF pegs the processor of my 3 yr old (1.8 gig P4 - 1.28 gig ram) laptop and grinds it to a farking halt. Unusable. Flash videos also pegs my 2.8 gig duel processor HP box. Nice. No wonder I think that OSS zealots are idiots. "But OSS is FREE!" So is dirt. Blow me.

Attitude is everything.

Sat, 09 Feb 2008 02:29:00-0700

I was in a situation where I told two people that I had done something related to a technology. i.e. I made this technology do such and such. It was a nifty little trick, but nothing more than a little JavaScript 101. One person said: "Cool, show me how you did that." The other person said: "*This* I have to see". Say what? Attitude is everything.

The spaghetti monster from hell - and a mentor

Fri, 12 Oct 2007 01:49:00-0700

The intranet I work with at work is a nightmare. I hate it. It is the spaghetti monster from hell. I have written some crappy code in the past but this thing takes the cake. When I first started I thought that I just didn't "get it"... that the guy before me had some mojo I just couldn't get my head around. Now I know he was a bad coder and a horrible architect. Smart? yes. talented? Sorta. Good? no. Both my boss and myself DREAD having to deal with his code. My second thought: I want a mentor. There is no one that I work with that can bring me to the next level with Coldfusion. My boss is a gifted programmer but he is a VB Jedi and is still learning CF. He has taught me a lot but I want an Andrés Segovia type mentor. Someone who will not take no for an answer, whip me into shape, and teach me the ways of the code warrior. I am truly ready, willing and able.

Yahoo chat

Wed, 10 Oct 2007 01:25:00-0700

I love web dev. I love to talk shop. I went to the web designers chat room on yahoo chat. I asked a question. I was abused, ridiculed, tormented and mocked for asking a question in a forum that encouraged people to share knowledge. What I found there was a group of elitist, abusive, condescending, too cool for Christmas, jaded assholes. It disgusted me in a manner is beyond words. They are the most insecure, trash talking, gossiping, "look he is down, kick him" bitches I have ever seen in my life. If geeks conducted themselves in real life in the same manner that they do online, their bodies would litter the streets. I am ashamed that I even share genome with these cretins.

I got a Zune

Wed, 26 Sep 2007 02:04:00-0700

I am not sure what it is but golly gee it looks pretty hip with all those young people on the install screen. They sure look happy. It is a ms app and it failed finding the hardware. Go figger. Oh no's I am not one of the cool kids.... FUCK!!! All I care about is 30 gigs of tunes. If I was that young and hip, I would be as poor as I was back in the day, and nick their zune and sell it, and use the money to pay rent and use the left over money to buy pot and beer.