LYNDA WEINMAN: The web-safe color palette is dead. It's true. Those 216 colors made sense five years ago, but the log files for my work site indicate that the number of visitors using 256 color video cards is down in the single digits. They'll just have to see dithered graphics until they spend the thirty bucks to upgrade to a new video card. I can't even feel guilty about that, since photographic images are going to dither on 256 color displays. Where's the harm in letting the navigation graphics and logos dither, too?

WEB SITE OPTIMIZATION: These guys have a new version of their page loading time checker. Awesome. The book - "Speed Up Your Site" - that accompanies the site is worth it. I used it in the last re-design at work. Best advice (other than keeping CSS, HTML, and image sizes small, and reducing the number of objects on the page) - keep each external object below 1165 bytes so that it can be transferred in a single TCP/IP packet. (An object is a file included in the page, such as an image, linked CSS stylesheet, etc.)

LINK CHECKING: I tried lots of link checkers. I needed one to satisfy these criteria for work: must handle lots of pages (>5,000), must handle dynamic pages, must handle secure (https) pages, must be fast, and must not cost a lot of money. The winner: Xenu Link Sleuth. It satisfies all of my requirements, and it's freeware.

I discovered one trick in finding broken links with a dynamic, database-driven site. Say you have a page called results.cfm. The output of that file is based on the storyid called with the file. So, for instance, you might have a URL like www.domain.com/results.cfm?storyid=1234. If the storyid 1234 doesn't exist in the database, you get an error in your database middleware, but you don't get a 404 file not found error at the web server level, because the file results.cfm is present. So how can you get your link checker to report the error?

The hack I use is to find the file containing the middleware error string and include a non-existent image. I used 404.gif. Xenu tells me that a file 404.gif couldn't be found, and shows me all of the files that referenced it, complete with the bad id numbers in the URL string. Sweet.

Melissa called me this morning just after I got to work and said she found a big spider. She didn't want me to kill it or anything. She just wanted to know what it was. "It's big and black."

"I don't know. Wolf spider, maybe." I told her where to find the Golden Guide to "Spiders and Their Kin."

She checked. "Nope. It's not a wolf spider. They're more grey and hairy. This is solid black and shiny." I suggested she take a picture so I could look it up when I got home, then forgot all about it.

I get home while Melissa's still in class, notice the digital camera, and fire it up. Holy arachnids, Batman!

I checked the Golden Guide. The closest match was to one of the crab spiders (family Thomisidae or Philodromidae) or a filistatid (family Filistatidae, duh!). In the Audobon guide, it looked almost exactly like the California trapdoor spider (family Ctenizidae), which is great, except I'm in Tennessee. Also various crab spiders.

Based on where it was found (the center of a zinnia flower) I'm pretty sure it's a crab spider. Some crab spiders hunt by perching on a flower and waiting for a pollinating insect to drop by. If anyone knows better, or can narrow it down further than the family level, post in comments.

LATER: Melissa got home, and we started talking about it. Tthe spider was in the flower bed and was crawling on some other flowers, but she got her to climb on some other flowers, picked her up, and put her on the zinnia. So the center of a flower might not be her native habitat. This might be the same spider that's been building webs on the cannies.

There's a report of a fatal shooting at the Guncraft Sports pistol range in Knoxville:

September 03, 2003 12:55 PM - FATAL SHOOTING AT GUN RANGE: Knox County deputies confirm that a person has been shot to death at Guncraft Sports on Dutchtown Road in west Knox County. Crime scene investigators and detectives were called to the scene around 10:30. There's no word yet on whether the shooting was accidental or deliberately self-inflicted.

Guncraft is the range where I shoot, and is about half a mile from where I work.

A FEW MINUTES LATER: I drove down to Guncraft at 1:19. There were five Sheriff's department vehicles and a video cameraman on the scene.

UPDATE: The Knoxville News-Sentinel reports that it was an apparent suicide:

A woman rented a handgun Wednesday at a West Knox County firing range and apparently fatally shot herself in the head, authorities said.

Knox County Sheriff's Office Capt. Larry Hunter said authorities were alerted at 10:48 a.m. that a woman was shot at Guncraft Sports Inc., 10737 Dutchtown Road.

Hunter said the woman, who had been in the gun store in the past, rented a pistol and proceeded to the indoor firing range. As at least two other people shot weapons on the range, the woman apparently shot herself in the head.

Hunter said detectives intended to review a videotape of the range shooters to ascertain if the woman shot herself. The Sheriff's Office did not release the woman's identity, but the Toyota Tercel she drove to the firing range bore a Knox County license plate.

Bob Wiest, co-owner of Guncraft Sports, said he had never had a customer commit suicide in the 56 years the business has operated.

WIRED: Swollen Orders Show Spam's Allure. A spammer left his order logs exposed. He had 6,000 orders for $100 each. The product? Penis enlargement pills.

WIRED: A Support Group for Spammers. A spammer's community web site fails to secure their mailing list, leaving the spammer's emails exposed. Gee, that doesn't give me any ideas. These guys have great security, huh?

FAST COMPANY: Catch Me If You Can. A scammer named Jay Nelson tricked eBay and Yahoo users out of tens of thousands of dollars before being arrested and convicted. He's scheduled to be released in 2007.

What slays me about this guy is that he started this while his wife was pregnant. Is that anyone's idea of a good plan? "Baby's gonna need an education IRA. I best commence to do me some robbin'." Paternity does strange things to some guys.