But I went back and checked, and discovered something. For post #3, I went and looked at my settings, and the karma bonus modifier was set at 0. That surprised me; I changed it and hit save. At the same time I also changed my "No karma bonus when posting" flag, which has been annoying me since its introduction when I somehow got it set backward from where I wanted it. Then I made post #3, for which I also do not see a karma bonus.

Upon seeing your post, I went at looked at my settings again. Hmm, karma bonus modifier is 0! I changed it again and clicked save, thinking, "Maybe I hit restore defaults?" But, no, my other settings are there, including the karma bonus when posting flag now the way I want it. But after hitting save, I still have a karma bonus modifier of 0. I've hit it repeatedly, and it's not changing.

Something is stuck.

My friend Steve Dekorte suggested that I have a go at the old shareware game. He makes a comfortable living off a collection of Mac mini-apps that, he tells me, pull in about the same per year as he got working at a dot com. When I worked at dot coms I got paid above average so it sounds like a pumb to me.

Apparently Windows shareware developers make a lot more than Mac shareware developers, so I've cranked out a (hopefully) useful app called TcpSafe on Windows. It allows you to monitor where your computer is connecting and who is trying to connect to your computer. Good for catching spyware and trojans that "phone home" in the act, debuging sockets applications, troubleshooting network problems, monitoring the network for worms and hackers, etc.

I'm using Paypal for a payment system and I've integrated it into both my web site and the application. The licensing system is per machine. So if you want to use the registered version on multiple machines you've got to pay multiple times. As such, I've set the price really low ($9.99) and hopefully we'll make up for it with volume.

Steve had this great "I've Paid!" button idea which I've duplicated. So if you need to reinstall the software for some reason and it comes up in evaluation mode you can just hit the button and it downloads your license key automagically. Support costs are apparently the killer in shareware, so here's hoping everything runs smoothly!

My previous signature was:

I browse at +4 and add bonuses to friends(+1) and fans(+3), picking friends who've previously made insightful comments.

My new signature will be:

Why should I have to tell people whether I am a lawyer or not?

I have over 200 friends and foes. This puts me over the limit of 200 relationships. Go me!

During my second or third viewing of TPM, I found a useful reason for the podrace scene: it makes a perfect bathroom break. The biggest problem with AOTC is that there's no podrace for me to use for the same purpose. The action never stops.

The movie brings back all the Star Wars action we remember from times past, with a lot of other things we've never guessed at. I don't think any of the complaints about Episode I can be applied to Episode II. While I would not rank it a perfect movie, I can't imagine any Star Wars fan not liking it. I've heard it said several times that this movie is better than The Empire Strikes Back. While I currently wouldn't rank it there (my rankings are subject to change), I couldn't argue with someone who put it that high.

Of course, Star Wars is melodramatic. If you don't like that, you might criticize AOTC for it.

There are a lot of interesting similarities to Empire in this movie. I'll have to go see it again because similarities at the end were so interesting I forgot about many of the ones at the beginning.

I wish all you people who complained about Jar-Jar had just shut up.

I wound up watching this movie from the front row because arriving 30 minutes ahead of time was not early enough to find five seats together. It was a little disorienting, and I'm looking forward to seeing the movie from a better view. In particular, some of the lightsaber action was too bright and too quick to follow from the bottom of the screen.

Fans of the expanded universe novels will be surprised at the significant amount of material that is contradicted by this movie. You can throw a lot of those books out the window.

At any rate, there's only about 1096 days until Episode III. I'm looking forward to it!