This is how I know I live in the future

The backstory is that one of our routers died today, leaving us sans wireless network. Considering the number of internet-enabled devices in our home far exceeds the number of residents, even including the cats, this is a problem. (And how little am I looking forward to reconfiguring the home network? Gin may need to be involved.)

That's not how I know I live in the future. No, that's because after a long drive in pouring rain to get my first winter CSA share, I went to the mall to buy a new router. The Apple Store was packed to the gills with people, and the wait to talk to someone who could sell me anything was clearly going to be significant.

But I'd read this morning that the Apple Store had released its own app allowing you to check out your own purchases, so here's what happened:

1) Thread my way through the crowd to the back of the store, where they keep the routers.

2) Connect iPhone to store's wireless network; download Apple Store app.

3) Launch app; touch option to purchase something; get little rectangle in which I must line up the product bar code.

4) App recognizes bar code and asks me to confirm my purchase, which is charged to the credit card attached to my Apple account.

5) Receipt appears on my phone.

6) Leave store.

Total elapsed time in mall: five minutes.

And now, to go configure a network. If only it were as easy as buying the router.

Killing Twitter's stupid Activity sidebar

Twitter recently introduced an "Activity" feature that's supposed to show you what your followers and people you follow are up to. And I love you all, but I just don't care about every single tweet you favorite or who you've decided to unfollow.

Fortunately, you only need a tiny bit of CSS to hide that irritating sidebar area, so I ventured into the world of Greasemonkey and was able to pull together a script in a matter of minutes, thanks to a handy API that supports CSS insertions. (We shall not discuss the temporary foray into Google Chrome extension development. I may have nightmares about DOM scripting.)

Anyway, if you're as annoyed by change as I am, you're welcome to use my script. ( download and installation instructions for Firefox and Chrome users )

Standard disclaimer stuff: script provided without warranty or any guarantee of support. Probably won't make you or your browser break out in purple polka dots, but use at your own risk.

Finally, if there's demand and/or I get bored enough, there will probably be a future version that kills the Activity tab as well. If I make one, I'll update this post with the link.