You know this stuff, it’s everywhere now. It’s soap, only it comes out pre-foamed for your convenience. I’m supposed to make some wry comment now about how lazy our society has become when we can’t even rub our hands together to lather soap (to say nothing of actually washing our hands to begin with) but I can’t make that comment because I have a secret:

I really like the stuff.

We have the Dawn antibacterial foaming stuff in the Kitchen, it lasts forever and smells vaguely citrus-ish. They just replaced the soap dispensers at work with foaming versions, so I decided I had to know what the big fuss was all about. It’s not particularly mysterious. A refill lasts a lot longer since the perceived amount dispensed is higher. The dispensers take sealed 1L bags of the liquid, so there is less mess when refilling (just swap bags) and also less risk of contamination. This is a nice idea, since I have always secretly suspected that the nastiest part of any public bathroom is probably the inside of one of those pink-tar soap dispensers, which has probably been topped up for the last 5 years without an actual cleaning. And of course, in a corporate setting, anything that decreases absenteeism by encouraging people not to track their flu-infected feces all over the building is a good thing for the bottom line.

None of which is cause for a blog entry. My readers should understand that I thoroughly filter and inspect any candidate material for this blog before posting. That which makes the front page is really only the metaphorical orange that learned how to pole vault with a straw, in the (metaphorical) Tropicana Orange Juice that is my blog. My soap ravings, enthralling though they may be, would not have made the cut, were it not for the good people at Parish Maintenance Supply, a commercial/industrial janitorial company. If you feel that my own fervor on the subject has been somewhat, shall we say, zealous, then you really need to check out their page.

People are getting excited about foaming soaps. They find the smooth, creamy feel very appealing and enjoy the convenience and total luxury of having their soap pre-lathered before washing.

Total luxury. Of pre-lathered soap. I think they say it best,

Users will think “Awesome!”

… to keep rocking and rocking and rocking.

I refer, of course, to Google Talk. I haven’t gotten on board yet, but for those who are interested, you can download the official client or check here for deets on getting GAIM, Trillian, and possibly other clients up and running. All signs point to it basically being a jabber style implementation server-side, with support for text IM and voice. Seems that all you need (other than the aforementioned usefully-configured client) is a gmail address, email me if you need one of those (does anybody still need one of those?) I think I need to get this up and running RFSN^[?].

On another note, I was rather displeased with the new google desktop client. People have been telling me for a while that GD is one of those indispensable-once-you-have-it technologies and I believe the desktop search capability might be. But their new client acts as a very-useful looking sidebar as well, with weather, news, todo lists, and a plugin architecture, I was ready to be quite excited. On inspection though, I find that auto-hide doesn’t work properly (it hides but won’t come back if you have maximized windows) and I couldn’t find an always-on-top switch. I think I’ll write them, they’ve been good about responding to email about search engine things in the past, so hopefully they have people paying attention. As I said, I’m ready to be very hyped about it, indeed to develop for it, but certain things need to work effortlessly or they aren’t worth using at all.