I was just made to look like a fool over OKCCentral.com.  No, it was nothing Steve wrote, it was something I wrote, or at least attempted to.  I tried to drop a nice little

:)

at the end of my post. You know, to look cool and win friends by implying a bit of a joke, or some strain of light-heartedness.  And I did; I carefully entered ” :) ” expecting to see ” :) ” pop up on the screen after pressing submit.

Instead, I got this clown:

What the heck is that.  I thought Pacman was only intended to be viewed in profile.  Seriously, I feel as though this guy is mocking me, staring back and chuckling as if to communicate what the whole world will realize after seeing his worthless yellow face – “Blair Humphreys is a loser!”  No longer does it look like something cool a hacker invented.  It looks like something stupid I took the time to purposefully place at the end of my comment…like dotting my i’s with hearts or something.  They are called emoticons and I can not stand the little bastards.  In fact, it was to my horror that I discovered my very own imagiNATIVEamerica* has been breeding them for almost a year now.  Well no more!


FIXING THE PROBLEM

To the admin panel we go. As you can see, this clicked box – which is the default on wordpress – is the source of all our pain.




But luckily I intervened and after a few hours of difficult coding – ;) – I was able to fix the problem. So no more emoticons on imagiNATIVEamerica.  You can comment with the peace of mind that comes with knowing that whatever you type will appear as you typed it.


TRANSLATING EMOTICON

Just in case you aren’t already down with the emoticon lingo, I offer this handy matrix.  If you find yourself on a blog that still allows these twerps…ahem…OKCCentral.com…please feel free to come back here so you will have at least a small clue as to what the person is trying to say.

icon	text	text	full text	icon	full text
	:)	:-)	:smile:		:lol:
	:D	:-D	:grin:		:oops:
	:(	:-(	:sad:		:cry:
	:o	:-o	:eek:		:evil:
	8O	8-O	:shock:		:twisted:
	:?	:-?	:???:		:roll:
	8)	8-)	:cool:		:!:
	:x	:-x	:mad:		:?:
	:P	:-P	:razz:		:idea:
	:|	:-|	:neutral:		:arrow:
	;)	;-)	:wink:		:mrgreen:

* not sure why it hasn’t bothered me before