Deezil.us

While discussing the upcoming Conficker worm…

What’s powering your Firefox experience?

Adblock Plus 1.0.1 – Perfect show of what Firefox developers are capable of. Subscribe to EasyList, and AdBlockRules.org. Trust me, worth it.
AutoPager 0.4.1.1 – Recently turned on to this by Andy. Automatically paginates things like search results or blogs that have multiple pages.
Better Gmail 2 0.7.3.2
Better GReader 0.5.2
Better Lifehacker 0.4 – The Better series, started from Lifehacker, just plain rocks, especially the flagship Better GMail 2. It’s Greasemonkey scripts rolled into an extension. Makes GM easy.
Delicious Bookmarks 2.1.018 – If you use delicious, this is for you.
Download Statusbar 0.9.6.4 – Keeps all your downloads handy at the bottom of the browser rather than a second small window. Keeps things nice and tidy on the taskbar
DownThemAll! 1.1.1 – Ever have to download all the PDF manuals on one page? Get this and it will cure your rapid onslaught of cursing.
Google Gears 0.5.4.2 – Get this to take Google offline.
Greasefire 1.0.3 – Finds Greasemonkey scripts for pages you are on.
Greasemonkey 0.8.20090123.1 – The end-all extension. You can take any site and modify it with javascript to make it do whatever you want.
InfoLister 0.10 – The cool extension that lets you print off your list of extensions to paste on your website to dote on .
Novell Moonlight 1.0 – Microsoft’s Silverlight ported to Linux. Not everyone needs this, but for those running Ubuntu, it’s wonderful.
RetailMeNot 2.2 – Trying to shop cheaply? Install this, it will alert you to coupon codes for the site. Great to save a couple of bucks.
Tab Mix Plus 0.3.7.3 – Tabs, the way you want them. This extension can do anything you want with tab actions or display of the tabs.
Ubuntu Firefox Modifications 0.6 – Firefox standard in Ubuntu. Makes things work all shiny.
Woot Watcher 1.0.6 – For Wootheads like me, this puts it down in the corner for you. And will pop it up at midnight if you’re awake.

What about you, what do you use?

Reading the other side of the meter.

http://www.theflynnfile.com/2009/03/lge-billing-changeor-how-e-on-will-fund-kentucky-derby-festival-sponsorship.html

Saw this shared in items from my Google friends inside of Google Reader, and I couldn’t read it without shouting things at my computer screen. A transcript of the shouting follows.

First off, the author makes several good points, and I feel that the objections are warranted. No one likes having pay a bill on a faster schedule than they have before. But for me, I also get a sneak peak into almost 300 utility districts and their monthly rituals. So let me enlighten you as to what I see on a monthly basis.

For most utilities I know, the bills are due in anywhere between 10 and 20 days, with the majority falling at 15 days / 2 weeks, but as I’ve seen, several of our customers are going with 10 day billing cycles, especially if they are smaller. With that, I don’t think 12 days is unreasonable. Sure, E-ON/LG&E is a huge corporation with lots of customers, so why the need to run things tighter? They want what everyone else does, a steady stream of revenue so that they don’t have surges and droughts in the income, when the out-go is fairly even throughout the course of a month.  As for them not being able to tell you what your bill is by looking it up on a website, that’s ridiculous.  Some of the most sophisticated adoptions of technology I have seen in my line of work have come from the most inept of people.  Tell LG&E to get their shit together.

Something not mentioned directly in the article as a point of contention was the late fee. When I saw 5%, I laughed. In my experience again, 5% is a godsend of a late charge. Most I deal with are 10%, and another common trend I am noticing is 18%. And yes, these are on bills as large as what LG&E are charging.

And the third thing on this is the issue of LG&E paying for a main sponsorship of Derby, and then complaining they have no money. This, I have a problem with, and rightfully so. Don’t blow everything you have, complain you have nothing left, and are left with a massive pile of debt when it’s all said and done. If everyone did that we’d have total economic collapse. Oh wait. Shit. Already happened.