Greasemonkey Hacks

Foreword

It has been occasionally noted that Greasemonkey is a hacker's tool. I take some pride in that, since I come from a family of relentless hackers.

My father was a landscape contractor who moonlighted doing home renovation. Sometimes, he worked on other people's homes, but he mostly focused on our own. My childhood living arrangement was in a constant state of refactoring. At one point, it featured a giant saltwater aquarium mounted in the living room wall and a freshwater koi pond with live turtles in the entry-way. My dad drilled an eight-foot-wide hole in our home's foundation, dug a hole in the dirt beneath, cemented it, and filled it with water, rocks, and fish, without any training whatsoever. He read a few books and figured out the rest on his own.

My mother and stepfather own a landscape-maintenance firm, but they are also tireless improvers of their surroundings. At this point, I think their home is at least 50% custom-built. They are architecting the next one themselves from scratch. Finding that none of the canned blueprints for mountain cottages adequately addressed their lounging-on-the-front-porch-on-Saturday-morning needs, they determined they had no choice but to draw their own.

This desire to improve one's surroundings isn't limited to my crazy family. And despite our love for big trucks and Home Depot, it isn't strictly an American thing, either. Hacking can be traced all the way back to the first Homo sapiens crafting stone cutting tools. To hack is to be ...