So, are you down with

Of course there’s all those features I can’t live without, that I don’t know how I even bothered with the internet before these tools were at my fingertips. Tabbed Browsing. Smart Popup Blocking. RSS. Form submission and password remembering thingy. The real power, however, lies in a really great scrabble word, “extensibility.” If you’re still running Firefox stock… well, baby, you’re missing out!

The extension I just installed this week displays my Tmobile wireless plan usage in the status bar – and you thought the status bar was just for the status of computer-type things! The same developer also wrote one for Verizon. Slick! If you use Cingular, no extension for you, but you’ve got rollover minutes so you don’t care anyway. If you’re still using Sprint, you probably don’t even know what the internet is.

Google hackers like myself and internet nerds of all kinds will appreciate SearchStatus, another status-bar hanger-on that is basically the Hot-or-Not for search engine page rankings. Handy enough already, but it doesn’t just stop with telling you how much Google loves the site you’re currently viewing – it also lets you figure out why, giving you quick access to meta tags, indexed pages, and even reverse links. Don’t optimize your keyword targeting without it!

Discover what paranoid web surfers have known for years, with NoScript. This small wonder lets you selectively enable javascripts on each site, per domain, and remembers your selections for next time. You won’t believe how many different servers it takes to build your favorite site (and how much client-side scripting is involved) until you see all the entries in NoScript. I became enamoured with this extension one day when browsing a web forum whose webmaster had installed a no-right-clicking script. I’m not really sure what this is meant to help, especially when you’re trying to build a community of users and encourage return visits (end of soapbox) but it kept me from right-clicking and opening a window in a new tab – a Firefox principium – and i would have none of it. Enter NoScript. I disable scripting from their domain, and voila! I’m free to right-click just like the founding fathers envisioned.

No Firefox extension list is complete without my final entry, Adblock Plus. I’m not trying to advocate anything illicit here – i work in online advertising and in know how much of the internet is supported by those banners. But i also firmly believe that ads which are annoying, tasteless, or disruptive to a site’s content are completely unnecessary, and the data i work with every day tells me that advertising which doesn’t make viewers hate you performs better for your company in the long run. So go ahead and block that hideous animated pig in the clown makeup trying to sell you a mortgage refinance offer. More significantly though, use Adblock Plus to fix things that annoy you other than ads! Does someone on the web forum you haunt have a repulsive image in their sig line? Adblock it. Or that dolt who uploads images without scaling them, filling your display and breaking the page structure for you – Adblock them. You can wildcard your filters, but be careful when wielding this mighty power; if you block *.capitalone.com because their ads are gross, it’s going to be difficult to log into their site and pay your credit card bill. I think i adore this extension so much because it puts the power back in my hands, instead of feeling so powerless to deal with whatever garbage a web pages throws up at you and expects you to look at.

Okay, that’s my list. Download, configure, and enjoy. The internet is yours to manipulate as you please! Bwah ha ha ha!

Up late on IM with Julia, cracking each other up with our clever pun-sterisms. Someone we know – it’s important in this case to make the distinction between “friend” and “someone we know” – just named their kid a ridiculously weird name that was just begging to be manipulated for our amusement. As luck would have it, this name rhymed with plenty of unflattering things, and was easy pun-bait for unlimited late-night witticisms.

This got me thinking about parents who give their kids weird names. I’ve known some people with unusual or downright odd names, and often pondered what on earth their parents were thinking.

Sarvas Barry. One of my cousins went to school with this kid, and i remember being floored by it at the graduation ceremony. If your last name is Barry (or worse yet, Berry) you don’t name your kid after anything that is edible and can be picked off a shrub. For those of you not familiar with the botanical reference, sarvas berries are like choke cherries and are common in the rocky mountain region.

Forrest Green. I’ve known several guys named Forrest, and although it’s an uncommon name i wouldn’t call it unnecessarily odd by itself. But if your last name is Green, or Grove, or Lawn… parents, “Forrest” should not be on your short list.

Crystal Chanda Leir. I swear i’m not making these up. I saw this in the credits for a movie a while ago, and had to rewind and read it twice. It wasn’t one of those comedies where they pad the credits with last-minute jokes, either. Leir seems like a pretty normal surname… the rest of that, i can only venture is drug-induced.

Jermaine Jackson’s entire family. If you can’t be the weirdest Jackson (since Micheal totally has that covered) you can at least be the Jackson with the most ridiculously named kid, and that seems to be the title Jermaine’s shooting for with his son, Jermajesty. Not to be outdone by a landslide, Jacko’s offspring go by Prince Micheal Jackson I and II.

Fifi Trixibelle. I looked this one up, and apparently Bob Geldof and Paula Yates actually attached this moniker to their human child, and not a purse-sized dog. A shame, too, because it would have looked so cute on a studded collar.

I am of course not the first person to document this trend, and i found some interesting compilations elsewhere that spawned a few guffaws. Some are so jaw-dropping that i can’t believe they’re true. Sparkle? Delicious? Spontaneous? Misty Amber Day? What are the excuses these people give to their families who (hopefully) question their sanity?

What i find to be the most ridiculously pathetic – and yet, totally American – new spin on this is naming children after brand names. According to the social security administration, children named Timberland, Reebok, Camry, and Gouda are walking the streets as we speak. In 2000 alone 49 kids were christened “Canon”, and there were 11 Bentleys, five Jaguars, and a Xerox. Xerox?? I knew a girl in elementary school with a last name that started with “Zu” and she hated being at the end of every list. Can you imagine what it’s like to be named Xerox? You can’t even type your name into a telephone keypad.

Then there’s the mis-spelling technique. Also characteristically American; where else would people be so proud of being poorly educated that they pass the legacy on to future generations?

Tada (pronounced Today)

Yestrada (pronounced Yesterday)

Tamaro (pronounced Tomorrow)

Orangejello (pronounced O-Ron-Gze-Lo)

Fasy (Like Fozzy bear)

Imunique (sound it out, license-plate style)

Aldo Sachs (like the instrument)

As a person with a pretty normal name, i’m still constantly plagued with incorrect spellings (with a “y” instead of an “i”), transpositions (i’ve received gifts from my family addressed to “Brain”) and plain butcherisms of my fairly simple 9-letter, 3-syllable, first and last name composed of normal, english phonic sounds and devoid of any action verbs, excessive alliteration or obnoxious pop culture references. I can’t imagine what it must be like to function as Tinkerwhistle Fluffbutton or Bluekoolaid Rogershammerstein or Englebert Humperdink. I just think it’s all getting pretty ridiculous, and maybe parents need to let their kid just be unique of its own accord, without turning unique into weird by branding them with a lifetime of ridicule, misspellings and “i’m sorry, could you repeat that?”

Lunching in the shadow of marvelous modern engineering.