Slimy Visitor (2 comments)
After returning from dinner with Brian tonight, I opened the door to the deck, intending to let some of the cool night air into the family room. I was greeted by a 5" great gray garden slug exploring the outside of the screen door. I called Mel over to see the wildlife and she declared herself displeased. While she recovered from seeing such an icky thing (and gossipped with Brian), I did some research and found out that UIUC has an integrated pest management department which offers information and advice regarding slugs, including this tidbit:
"For heavy slug infestations another possibility is to employ some neighborhood children to collect slugs and kill them."
I let the slug go on its way after snapping my photo, and last I saw, it was headed back down the house.
Before all that, I played some tennis with Pat, but this time with dire consequences. Shortly into our second set, I hit a routine forehand and the ball went into the net with an odd sound. I thought I'd just screwed up and hit the ball with the racquet's frame rather than its strings, but it turns out I snapped one of the mains. While cool (especially the globs of felt where I hit the ball to make it snap), it's annoying that I'll have to wait while it's restrung before I can play again with my favorite racquet. It might be for the best though, since I've played tennis five of the last six days, and my shoulder needs a rest.
And on a purely technical note, I've heard some rumors of Internet Explorer users having problems loading my page. I've removed the on-demand gzipping for MSIE users and now have another reason to complain about Microsoft not correctly using HTTP. gzipping is part of the HTTP specification and gzipped HTML data (as noted by the headers) should be deflated by the browser transparently to the user. It's unfortunately similar to my experience with Media Player barfing on HTTP 302 redirects.