For the first time, however, Google (Google) is also killing a Gmail Labs feature: “Right side labels”, which allowed you to move your labels to the right sidebar to get them out of the way, is no more.

via Gmail Kills Right Side Labels, Adds Drag and Drop.

I woke up Saturday morning with what feels like a pinched nerve in my lower back. The pain is like lightening and it’s making it hard to do anything really. I am trying to keep things moving though and have managed to get to work the last couple of days.

I guess  I really just wish there was a real geek trick to things like this. “Well if you just take this annode and place it on your back, then take the other one and place it on your left ankle – with a flip of this switch your vertibrae will be realined and your back muscles will instantly relax”.

Perhaps I have watched too much Star Trek in my life! Dr. Crusher would have something for this that would help for sure.

Today I actually have to go offsite and that will be a pain in the ass. It takes a lot to walk and after taking some Robax Platinum I am really going to have to concentrate on the roads!

I always run my Software Update on my machines. I like to be up to date no matter what OS I am running. For some reason my OSX machine that is already at 10.5.7 won’t update any of the things that require a system restart to install. I am looking for alternative means to install the updates but it’s frustrating that they won’t just go

I will keep you posted on my woes but this isn’t the most interesting way to spend a Sunday afternoon. Lucky for me I am not too mobile due to back pain so this is appropriate activity.

*** Update – I was able to download the updates and install them manually from www.macupdate.com. Worked like a charm. Still is concerning though

I just spent a week up a the cottage with my family and away from the internet. It was actually nice to unplug and get some time to just veg out with the kids. My wife probably read 147 books and I tinkered around with stuff, spent time boating, did some fishing with my son and also had a chance for some father’s day golf

BUT it’s back to the grind today

I am going to have to do a lot of reading to catch up on what happened while I was away. Google Reader is going to be my main target tonight!

I was working on optimizing my site a little again and I had been told by a couple of people that inactive Wordpress Plugins tend to slow the site loading time slightly. I had a chance last night to go to some website load time testing pages (such as http://www.websitegoodies.com/tools/speed-test.php) and on average it was taking ~14 seconds to completelty load the page. Now this is pretty aweful if you look at the number itself but the majority of the website is loaded much faster than that. There are certainly things still loading but most are plugins that are accessing external sources.

So off I went and started to review what plugins I might want to keep and which were just a test to see if I liked it. After looking at my list with the intention of deleting the dead weight I was amazed that all of the plugins that I wasn’t actually running live were garbage. So a select-all and delete it was! A quick check back with the speed testing sites and now I am averaging a load time in the neighbourhood of 11 seconds. Still not optimal but a definate part of the problem.

Happy blogging lads!