My setup’s just a bit different. My sidebar’s on the far left side instead of right, but that’s really just the tip of the iceberg.

I don’t have a taskbar.

I hate the taskbar. Seriously, I do. I hate it’s uniformity, I hate the way the start button looks, I hate everything about it, and I hate that it doesn’t MOVE. So I took it off. Now, other people do this as well; but mostly, people HIDE their taskbar. And then when you hover your mouse at the bottom edge of the screen, it pops back up again!

Mine’s gone.

Instead, I have a program called Object Dock. I paid for this program many years ago, along with WindowBlinds and several other Stardock products, because I’m a customizing freak – but really, the only one I find irreplaceable is Object Dock.

And therein lays the biggest problem people find, sitting down cold at my computer.

There are no icons on my desktop. I like to see the picture. Therefore, I have what’s known as a tabbed drawer docked at the top of my screen, and more shortcuts than god EVER intended to sit on a desktop will fit into it, neatly tucked away, sliding out whenever I hover over it.

This doesn’t solve the issue of the taskbar, but that’s my favorite part. I have a dock, far right of the screen, attached at the top, piling down, of all my open programs. This, in fact, is the major reason I will probably always use Object Dock. Always, always, always: I can reorder the icons so that like programs are together, or stuff I want to get to in a hurry are easier to reach. Do you understand? I can drag and drop the icons into any order I want.

But that’s not the best part!! I spent a lot of time IMing, and you know how a window blinks a color at you when you get a new IM on a normal taskbar. It blinks a bit, then stays lit, and there’s this bright color glaring at you…and that I missed after the first four times, since I got used to random programs doing that.

These icons bounce. Why? Because I told ‘em to. They can do any number of things, but it really gets my attention when an icon starts dancing around at the top of my screen, looking for my attention.

And of course, I have a small dock at the bottom of the right edge of my screen, with a start button.

Apparently, this is where I confused my friend. They sat down, stared at the screen, and couldn’t find Start. I clicked it, and eyes got somehow wider. Apparently, it’s completely unnatural, and horribly evil to have a start button in the bottom right corner. I was unaware of this fact.

What this has brought to my attention is that I clearly cannot sell this computer to buy a new one. See, I’d have to write down what every single shortcut in my tabs were, and redo them by hand and just…hope they’re right. There’s no way. So I have to figure out a way to get a new computer before I sell this one. At which point, there’s no much use in selling this one – I can hand it off to my mother, so she can take it to her classes.

OH! Speaking of classes! Head over to Claudia Suzanne’s site, and check out her early bird special for Ghostwriter Certification Training! If you want to make a living as a writer, there’s no better way!

And I promise, when she walks in with a computer, it’ll be a perfectly normal setup. But that’s likely the only normal thing about her – just a warning.

Of course, a .gov is the US government, right? And .edu is for educational organizations only. (specifically, actually, it’s for “post-secondary institutions accredited by an agency on the U.S. Department of Education’s list of Nationally Recognized Accrediting Agencies*“) A .mil is only for the United States Military. If you’re REALLY into the nitty gritty, you might be aware that anyone can get a .info domain. It’s not restricted either, despite it’s appearance.

Y’all remember the ARPANET? It’s what the Internet grew from. It’s the starter. Blond jokes shooting around on the ARPANET. Which still exists, in the form of anysite.arpa

But are you aware that if you had a  cooperative organization, you can get a .coop? Betcha didn’t.

IN FACT!!!

With enough money, you can have any top level domain you want.

Now. Here’s my issue – certain things are obvious, right? If you’re trying to get a .mil, it’s not gonna let you. No one wants the wrath of the combined U.S. armed forces knocking on their door. And there’s a sponsor of record on each top level domain, so yes, technically, someone could come after you if you try to register under their gTLD (general use top level domain) without meeting the criteria. But sometimes that criteria is vague. And what if you’re in the U.S. and they’re in…Myanmar? Or vice-versa? How is this enforced? While you do, indeed, have to register a domain through an approved domain server, it’s all automated most of the time.

I’ve taken the time to sift through all the country code top level domain names to find all the rest, currently existing, gTLD (yes, ALL, at the time of this posting) and their purposes.

.AERO is for members of the air-transport industry

.INT is for “registering organizations established by international treaties between governments”

.JOBS is for human resource managers – and this is where it gets dicey and I start to wonder. WHO’S HR managers?

.MOBI is for consumers and providers of mobile products and services. Consumers AND providers. WTH? Isn’t that ALL OF US now?!

.MUSEUM is for…well…museums. That one I think is obvious.

.NAME is for individuals. Yes, that’s right. Individuals. No, you didn’t see that wrong, and I didn’t mistype. All this time, your homepage? Probably coulda been “JohnSmith.Name” – or more creatively, “Whatisyour.name”. Hey, which ironically doesn’t exist, but the title bar says “Hello. What is your name?”

.PRO is “Restricted to credentialed professionals and related entities”. I use the legalese because I swear to god, no matter how many times I read it, it looks like if you have a degree after your name, you can have a .pro domain, and I’m sure there’s a lawyer out there who’d argue if I just said that instead of the actual wording. (keeping in mind that I’m pre-law)

.TEL is for “businesses and individuals to publish their contact data”. I have to ask. Using this logic, couldn’t FaceBook and MySpace, etc, all have been .tel instead of .com?

.TRAVEL …legalese again: “Reserved for entities whose primary area of activity is in the travel industry”. Dude. I travel a lot, thus I use the industry…I wanna put up a site with thousands of slide shows. I can have a .travel! Likewise, I’m a travel agent…I can have a .travel! Hey, I’m an online booking company…what, use a .travel? No, no, that’d make it TOO EASY TO REMEMBER!! -headdesk-

Now, seriously, this is it. Plus the ones I mentioned in the first paragraph, that’s ALL OF THEM. Anything else in existence right now is a country code.

So, each of those gTLDs has a sponsor. For example, .TRAVEL is sponsored by Tralliance Registry Management Company, LLC.

I assume that if you register a .TRAVEL and instead post something about construction work or something, they’ll be all over that like ugly on a bear. But the point is, they paid, and got a top level domain. Now, I’m sure there’s more to it than that. Like, paperwork and forms and approval, etc, etc. But basically, here, have cash, gee thanks, my new site is www.trinitylast.bleh

Before you ask, all this info is available for free from the Internet Assigned Numbers Authority, linked at the bottom. In fact, if you wanted email Tralliance and ask what exactly they went through to get a .TRAVEL gTLD or just what kind of site they WOULDN’T sue for using it, there’s an email and everything on the site. I won’t post it here, that’s just mean, but dude, I’m looking at it, and it’s not even admin@…it’s a person’s NAME.

Heh. And of course, their site is www.travel.travel

The fairly sparse design is excused by the awesomeness of buying a gTLD just so their site would BE www.travel.travel

It’s like the days of alt.binaries are back.

Anyway, to end this fairly geeky PSA, I would like to post this question: if you could have any top level domain you wanted, what would it be? Comments are open on this blog, or just twitter it and I’ll line up the answers in another entry.

*All information on top level domains and quotes regarding such are taken from http://www.iana.org