Pet Peeve: "Remember Me" Forms

Many online services have a little "Remember Me" or "Remember My Login" checkbox under their login forms. It's nice and convenient for frequent users that are on private computers.

For some reason though, many "new" sites seem to default to having this box already checked, and I always wonder what sort of brain dead person decided that was a good idea.

I forget the last site I saw this on, but it was within the last month. I had to explain the LOGIC FAIL behind pre-checking this box before, so there may be some people that don't see why this is an issue. I'll lay it out real quick – if a user wants to stay logged in to a service they can just click that box once. If a user doesn't want to stay logged in (shared computer, paranoid, many reasons why) they have to uncheck this box EVERY time they come to the site – and if they forget to log out when they're done, the next person on the computer is going to be logged in as them!

So, tell your web-app developery friends: "Remember Me" should NEVER be the default!

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The Spider Chronicles

Every morning for the last week or so, I've been greeted by an amazing display of talent and architecture.. on my car door.. in the form of a spider-web. The first morning the web was about 6 inches in diameter, a decent sized web, especially considering that it was made in one night – I'm not sure how fast spiders can build webs, but I was impressed by this one. It wasn't just the size, but the spacing between the strands was almost perfect. The web spanned from the outer corner of my mirror to the door. I left the web alone, assuming that the drive to work would displace it, I clearly underestimated the strength of spider webs – it was completely unscathed.

I think it's important to mention at this point that I absolutely hate spiders, they give me the creeps.

The next morning I removed the web. After work there was no sign of an attempt to rebuild the web, so I figured maybe he had found a new home since the last morning. But no, he was just waiting until nightfall to retaliate. The next morning the web was probably just over 10 inches in diameter, and was an absolute mess. The web could not have effectively caught any insects, it was clearly meant as a warning for me. It was quickly removed.

This trend has continued – me clearing the web off in the morning, him rebuilding at night, and me finding a bigger, and more precisely formed web the next morning. This morning he had picked different points on the door to put the corners of the web, making the web over a foot wide, and once again with the perfectly spaced precision between the strands. He's getting stronger, faster and more accurate. And on the way to work, he peaked out from my mirror to taunt me. I was picturing a little spider doing this amazing feat, but this guy was enormous.

Did I mention that spiders absolutely creep me out?

It's my determination that this spider has given up on insects and decided that I am not only his new enemy, but also his new prey. He is taunting me, his methods and skills are improving allowing him to create massive webs in short amounts of time.. he's training. And that is why tonight he must be removed. I'm not big on the idea of killing him, out of respect *cough* fear *cough*, so I have to come up with a way to out him from the mirror that he is now calling home. It's either him or me.

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