I love the iPhone. The design, the features, the functionality—it's as close to a perfect little device as you can get. Unfortunately I can't summon up the same level of enthusiasm for AT&T. Although AT&T agrees that, yes indeed-y, I'm in their coverage area, 50% of my calls consistently have been dropped since the day I brought my shiny new baby home. Some days I'd be better off sending homing pigeons or signaling from the roof with a lantern like Paul Revere.

For the past month or so, I've been playing around in my sandbox with an elastic layout. Things were coming along pretty well, when suddenly I threw a fit over the increasing slowness of my web host, DreamHost. I've been with them for about 3 years and we've had our ups and downs, but lately my patience has worn thin.

The technical savvy of today's kids sometimes leaves me flabbergasted. Yesterday my seven-year-old, who is in a combined second/third grade class at school, said to me,"You know Eli Hernstein, Mom?"

"Sure, he was in your kindergarten class," I said...

I have the patience of a gnat. I promised myself I'd wait 6 months before buying an iPhone. It was hard, though. So, around my birthday, I starting hinting broadly and got my husband to buy one for me instead. I love my new iPhone. The design is brilliant. It's a pleasure to look at, a pleasure to hold, and a pleasure to use. If it weren't for one thing, it would be as close to perfect as you can come. But that one thing is a big one thing. Believe it or not, the iPhone cannot be tethered to a laptop and used as a modem.

After coding a few dozen or more forms, it finally occurred to me one day that I was going about form creation the wrong way. Writing the code from scratch for every new form was a pain. So I created a list of the most common form elements that I can copy-n-paste for quick-n-easy forms.