Natural Selection

I was thinking the other day about the perceived increase in people with cancer. Let’s say today cf. fifty or seventy-five years ago. Maybe it’s fact, maybe it’s not. Let’s assume for now that it is a fact that today we have more people afflicted with cancer. And other serious diseases.

I was thinking that part of this is likely that since people with these diseases live longer due to advances in medicine, they’re more likely to reproduce and propagate their disease-prone genes. Interesting thought.

It’s probably also worth considering how much this would change if the treatments focused on the root causes of such diseases. Sure, someone can be prone to something but that doesn’t mean we can’t defeat that ailment if we address its exact source, meaning the person and their presumed-hereditarily-disease-prone offspring could be free of the disease despite genetic predisposition.

Lending Money vs. Lending an Item or Why Loaning Money is More like a Delayed Trade of Goods

I borrowed an HDMI cable from a friend today. I have a duplicate order of HDMI cables en route to me and I plan to “repay” him with one of the cables from my batch in a day or so.

This transaction led me to the interesting idea that when lending money, the lender is not interested in which bills he gets back (assuming a cash loan). Instead, he’s interested in a like-kind (of same or higher value) exchange.

So is a monetary loan more of a barter than a loan? I think so. You’re getting something of equal value in exchange (and extra value if you charge interest.) Usually when you loan an item (such as a CD or a shovel) you get the exact same item back. When you loan money, you get back money with the same or higher value. But not the same bills.

I wonder what the barter value (in dollars) of this small insight is.

Panasonic 50″ Plasma HDTV installed

I took our HDTV home last night, built the IKEA “LACK” stand we bought for it and set it up. Need one more HDMI cable to install our new (sellout.woot.com) Philips refurbished upconverting DVD player.

Bottom line: The TV is too big for the space. But it’s definitely a nice TV. Color mode = Cinema and it looks very nice.

Innocent persistence

This went down about thirty minutes ago:

Mother: “I’m going outside and you’re not coming with me, okay?”

Child: “Okay. Can I come?”

Algorithmic problems

Reading this Coding Horror article tonight, I was inspired to look for algorithmic problems to solve.

For example, even the Segway is an algorithmic solution, albeit to a questionably monetizable problem. But maybe Segway is highly profitable and I’m just not its target market.

The Air Today

The fresh, cool air hit me when I opened my front door this morning. The temperature of the still air was perfect for a motorcycle ride or a walk in the park with my girls. Anything outdoors. Today is not a day to be indoors. Weather.com says it’s 71 degrees in my zip code.

Behcet’s disease (not me)

A friend was just diagnosed with Behçet’s disease. He had a history of really bad mouth sores that came and went. He was diagnosed finally as thrush last week. Then, at the hospital this weekend, they confirmed the thrush diagnosis and raised it to Behçet’s.

Snow Leopard

I installed Snow Leopard just now. It was immediately evident that ScreenGrabber didn’t work. =(

And my <Caps Lock> key was un-disabled. =( Fixed that quickly with this article.

District 9

I saw District 9 last night. I’d seen a review for it on Dvorak Uncensored recently. Before that, the movie wasn’t even on my radar.

I loved it. One of the best science fiction movies I’ve ever seen.

Goodbye, NetNewsWire and NewsGator.

About a week ago, I got an email from NewsGator telling me they will soon (31 August 2009) discontinue their “Online” service and that I’d have to start syncing their iPhone RSS client, NetNewsWire, with Google Reader. But the catch: I’ll have to wait for a version of NNW that supports Google Reader? Huh?!?

So I moved my NewsGator feeds over to Google Reader via an OPML file immediately. And today, I started looking into alternative iPhone newsreaders.

I found this 8 September 2008 iLounge review by Charles Starrett, which was terrific. And after comparing a few readers by screen shots and features, I bought Newsstand for $4.99.

It’s immediately obvious that at least one feed, Dvorak Uncensored, which inexplicably wouldn’t show up in NNW is showing up in Newsstand. That’s worth five bucks!

Current iPhone track count: 11,501

That’s a big number.

iPhone 3G S

Went to International Plaza with Oscar and Spencer and bought my 32GB Black iPhone 3G S. Went smooth but took two hours, of course.

Then last night the Dev-Team announced the release of updated versions of their 3G S jailbreak (redsn0w) and unlock (ultrasn0w). (Previously, the unlock was very manual and for serious users only so I was waiting for something mainstream and hopefully already in use by many users and thus would have any kinks worked out.)

To ensure I’d always be able to unlock my firmware, I followed their linked-to instructions from iClarify.com on how to save my personalized and signed dfu/img3 files (two files). According to the article linked to in the previous paragraph, “As long as you have your personalized (signed) dfu/img3 files, you’ll always be able to jailbreak (even if you slip up and install stock Apple firmware in the future).” I don’t know how they’d be used but I went and acquired them and saved them. I’m even planning to commit them to SVN.

Leyna on Pizadillas

Eating the pizzadilla I made for her today, Leyna originated, “It’s so, so good, by [the] way!”

Leyna groks the concept of obvious

She opens the fridge while I’m cooking and I ask her, “What are you looking for?” Leyna replies, “Food, of course.” Uh oh.

“My Maggie”

Watching The Holiday today, which is a movie I really like to watch, Jack Black introduced his girlfriend thusly: “This is my Maggie.” I thought that was the warmest, most lovely introduction.

Moved!

Moved to Dunedin this weekend, both days. Had tons of help from friends and family. Dig the new place. Neighborhood is okay but not great. Last night was the second night I’ve slept here.

Called Tropicana Storage U-Haul dealer this morning at about 8:22 about the truck we dropped off last night. “Jeff” told me everything processed perfectly, no money due them nor me. Perfect.

Kindle

Last night my wife told me she found a gift for me. Expensive but she’d eventually get it for me. Did I want to know what it was? A Kindle. How’d she know what a Kindle was? In one of her magazines. She even knew that this was the second version. (The article was surely printed before the very recent DX — large screen version — release, which I read about on Amazon.com yesterday.) Nice.

I’ll try the Kindle books on my iPod touch (and eventually the next iPhone I buy) to see if that’s an acceptable (and already paid for and smaller) device for me to use for them than the Kindle.

My First Kindle Book

I’m not inclined to call them eBooks. Well, only a little.

Today a link from a Ramit Sethi (iwilteachyoutoberich.com) newsletter sent me to a Newsweek article on survival by the author of a book I was already interested in, The Survivors Club: The Secrets and Science that Could Save Your Life.

It was 14 bucks. So I decided to buy the Kindle version (for my iPod touch 8GB second gen) for $7.19 instead. That makes this my first Kindle book.

Goodbye, Grand Central. Hello, Google Voice.

I upgraded my Grand Central account to a Google Voice account today.

Now I see the likely reason they didn’t add support for new, arbitrary caller groups in Grand Central: It would have been a dead-end to enhance Grand Central.

Bugs so far:

1. One hangup I’m not going to bother reporting.
2. When adding a contact to a group, the phones that caller will ring when they call don’t match the defaults of the Group.

iPhone/AT&T: No service

I was clicking on Griffin Tunebuds on amazon.com on my iPhone at 3:44pm, just now, and phone said No Service. So that’s the moment at which it sent out. Interesting.

Steelcase Leap Chair Delivered

The nice FedEx lady delivered my used Steelcase Leap v1 black/black cloth chair today. The truck was in the driveway when I arrived home with my new iPhone.

So far, so good. The butt of the chair is definitely not as hard as that of the v2 model I saw at Sam Flax in Orlando recently, which is a relief.

New Office Chair

My six-month-old Office chair is hurting me. It’s a piece of junk, low-end high-back chair from OfficeMax. Junker I got for probably fifty bucks on sale.

The butt cushion has bottomed out, leaving two leg imprints on the chair and causing pain when I stand up after sitting a while. Damn.

Talked to my wife and she urged me to not skimp on the next chair.

After a lot of research and sitting, I bought a Steelcase Leap v1 black fabric, black base chair from a guy on eBay that ships them out of New York. Used but reportedly in “MINT Like New Condition.” Mint? Okay, here’s my $399 and nothing extra for shipping. If the chair works a long time without trouble and is clean, it’s a deal.

I wanted the v1, not the latest v2. I sat on a v2 at Sam Flax (store) in Orlando yesterday and didn’t love the seat butt part angle. The v1 lets you control that angle but the v2 doesn’t. Suck. And I’ve read the v1 is heavier and with better metal. I’ve also read the v1’s armrests are not as adjustable. The v2’s adjustable armrests — they move on two axes! — are simply awesome. I hope the v1’s wont’ be a letdown for me. But I definitely want a v1, not a v2.

The Leap’s butt pad is indeed hard, as I’d been led to believe by some Amazon.com reviews. But if I can pivot it (v1-only) to the ideal position for me, maybe that’ll be okay. And if not, I’ll get thin gel or foam pad to put on it. Or get it reupholstered if I must. Something very cushy. I like thick but fairly firm cushioning.

Steelcase.com says their warranty (lifetime) is nontransferable. Boo!

New Office Chair

My six-month-old Office chair is hurting me. It’s a piece of junk, low-end high-back chair from OfficeMax. Junker I got for probably fifty bucks on sale.

The butt cushion has bottomed out, leaving two leg imprints on the chair and causing pain when I stand up after sitting a while. Damn.

Talked to my wife and she urged me to not skimp on the next chair.

After a lot of research and sitting, I bought a Steelcase Leap v1 black fabric, black base chair from a guy on eBay that ships them out of New York. Used but reportedly in “MINT Like New Condition.” Mint? Okay, here’s my $399 and nothing extra for shipping. If the chair works a long time without trouble and is clean, it’s a deal.

I wanted the v1, not the latest v2. I sat on a v2 at Sam Flax (store) in Orlando yesterday and didn’t love the seat butt part angle. The v1 lets you control that angle but the v2 doesn’t. Suck. And I’ve read the v1 is heavier and with better metal. I’ve also read the v1’s armrests are not as adjustable. The v2’s adjustable armrests — they move on two axes! — are simply awesome. I hope the v1’s wont’ be a letdown for me. But I definitely want a v1, not a v2.

The Leap’s butt pad is indeed hard, as I’d been led to believe by some Amazon.com reviews. But if I can pivot it (v1-only) to the ideal position for me, maybe that’ll be okay. And if not, I’ll get thin gel or foam pad to put on it. Or get it reupholstered if I must. Something very cushy. I like thick but fairly firm cushioning.

Steelcase.com says their warranty (lifetime) is nontransferable. Boo!

Kindle Questions

Watching a Jeff Bezos interview by Charlie Rose about the Kindle (version 1, not 2) this week, I had some Kindle questions.

1. What sites can I browse from it? (for free) Anything other than Wikipedia?
2. Can I email from it? They mentioned emailing to it.
3. How much storage for emails?
4. What happens if it runs out of space? Bezos said it’ll hold 200 books. What happens after that?
5. Is the reading out loud any good?
6. Lifetime guaranteed internet?
7. Can I buy other Amazon.com things from it?
8. If I lose the device, do I lose my books?
9. Do I have to pay for periodicals on it?
10. Can I put PDFs on it?
11. Gutenberg texts on Kindle?

Ryan Adams, Musician

Browsing through Charlie Rose interview videos on charlierose.com today, I came across this interview with musician, Ryan Adams. I liked him very much. Bought a few of his songs on iTunes while watching the video.

iPass iPod touch WiFi Hotspot Plan

My youngest brother told me about iPass last week. He was thumbing around the App Store on his iPod touch and found it.

Traveling to the Pena wedding Friday, I signed up that morning. $9.95 per month, month to month plan.

It worked at the Grand Hyatt Tampa Airport hotel, with their non-free T-Mobile hotspot. I used it in the lobby bar to handle a little work email. So far, so good.

Now we’ll see where else it works. I was going to try it at Barnes & Noble last night, but I forgot the iPod touch at home.

Here’s a page where one can search for iPass hotspots: http://ipass.jiwire.com/

Windows Feedback Program pays off again

I received a WFP email today saying fill out this survey and continue sending them data for four months and I’ll get another copy of Office 2007.

Good deal! I filled out the survey. And I assume the invisible client app is still running on my XP machine. I see WFPAsiEve.EXE in my processes list. That’ll do.

What I Want From A Cell Phone

iPhone multitouch
GPS
Driving directions
Great OSX sync for address and calendar
Unlimited data (Internet)
Internet cheap — $20/month or less
Tethering allowed by carrier and easy to set up and use
Cheap phone minutes — 100 minutes per month or so. Or at least competitive rates for 300 or 450 minutes, unlike AT&T’s current rate of $40 for 450 anytime minutes, which is robbery. (They throw in 5,000 nights and weekend minutes here, which I consider a mere token gesture.)

I don’t want to be a cool parent.

Trying to get our daughter to chill out about something, my wife recently expressed to her something starting with, “I’ve been really cool with you…”

That got me thinking. I hope she’ll forgive me for taking her statement out of context, because I expect (at least hope) she’ll agree with me when I say that being cool is not a parental goal of mine.

Western Digital Passport 250GB, second failure

Returned from our trip today. Equipment was unplugged and off while we were gone.

First attempt to write to Passport 250GB, using iTunes, gave a message that nothing could be written to the drive. Unmounted fine. Mount gave me a warning that it was going to be mounted read-only so I could get my data off and that I should reformat it. Come on.

I ordered a replacement drive immediately, a G-Drive Mini Triple 500GB with overnight shipping from Amazon.com. I’m tired of screwing with this Passport drive — this is a replacement for the drive as it had a total failure once. And this replacement was obviously used when I received it, at least the enclosure.

Skiing Wolf Laurel

I’ll update this post with details at some point. Today is our first day back home.

SVN server switch

I switch my Xampp-based SVN server from my Dimension desktop to my new Asus desktop tonight. Couldn’t get Apache to start until I uninstalled IE 7. MWAPI.DLL dependency, I believe was the culprit.

Fenix Flashlights

I’ve misplaced my xenon Surefire 6P and G2 Nitrolon high-powered small flashlights. At this point, I don’t know when they’re going to show up again, though I’m confident they will.

I need replacements. And I want a strong purse torch for my wife. And I want to switch to LED-based torches. So I checked out surefire.com and found the E1B Backup. Nice. I really like that it has a clip and that it’s reversible. But I kept looking and found candlepowerforums.com and Fenix lights.

I decided on and purchased on Fenix PD20 ($57.95) and two Fenix PD1-Q5 super-mini lamps ($49.95), one of which is for my wife’s purse. The other is for me and I haven’t decided where it’ll go. I’ll probably buy another one some day, too. But not this day.

LAPoliceGear.com got my business this time. Good prices and free shipping with a coupon code I googled for (“SPECOPS”) on orders over $124.00. The lights already had free shipping but I threw in some off-brand (i.e. non-Surefire) CR-123A batteries that required shipping. — a 20-pack for $23.00.

Arai RX-7 Corsair helmet registered

I finally registered my lovely Arai helmet today. Online. I bought it from Action Honda in June 2008.

Shredder!

I have a huge shredding backlog. So I bit the bullet and bought a medium-duty shredder, Fellowes model MS_450Cs from Amazon.com. Thanks to Amazon Prime, I got it shipped second day for no extra expense over my annual $89 Prime dues. I did a lot of online research first. It arrived Monday (today is Wednesday.) I’m on my second binful of paper pieces. So far, soooooo good. This is for preventing any bottlenecks or backlogs, not just for the project of catching up my volume of old shredding.

Things I want from my government

I plan for this to be a running list. I?ll add and mark Done items as time goes by.

        ?        Repeal the Patriot Act.
        ?        Restore habeas corpus.
        ?        Dismantle the Federal Reserve system.
        ?        Stop violating the U.S. Constitution ([] too general — expand this.)
        ?        Give power back to the states.
        ?        Stop pushing the federal REAL ID Act or any variations of it. Perhaps write a law making REAL ID illegal.
        ?        Stop attacking foreign countries.
        ?        Stop occupying foreign countries.
        ?        Stop torturing people.
        ?        Cancel Extreme Rendition.
        ?        Fix the broken legal system, particularly the dependence on precedent law.
        ?        Stop restricting our rights to keep and bear arms.
        ?        Cancel corporate citizenship.
        ?        Dismantle the IRS.
        ?        Cancel income tax. Only levy constitutional taxes.
        ?        When passing laws, cite the law that gives you the right to pass each law.
        ?        Make lawmakers read the bills before they pass them.
        ?        Make lawmakers pass only bills that have one discrete law in them. No riders/piggybacking.

F4i GPS RAM mount delivered and installed

It was delivered at about 2pm today by FedEx Ground. We installed it immediately. Very nice! I might wish I?d bought the longer arm when I put my tank bag on. We?ll see.

Renewed T-Mobile-To-Go today.

I just renewed. Added $100, good for 12 months. Had 248 minutes left from last year. The year before, I had 700+ minutes left from my first year. So my usage really went up last year!
It was due on 26 Oct so I?m two days early. No biggie.

Transparent pricing for medical services

It is my long held opinion that when someone delivers a service, it should be possible to get an estimate of what that service will cost beforehand. Naturally, the accuracy of such estimates reduces as the scope of the service increases. An estimate for ten minutes of work will likely be more accurate than an estimate for weeks of work. That?s fine.

I?d like to be able to get a straight pricing answer at an emergency room or doctor?s office every step of the way. ?Okay, how much exactly is the next action going to cost?? This should be possible for many procedures. For example, stitching or gluing a cut without complications.

Read this Consumerist article. We had our own experience when our daughter fell and cut her head.

I want a programmable cordless phone.

As I mentioned in a recent post, I was disappointed by a disconnect between the address book and caller ID handling of some Uniden phones I purchased. If phone was programmable, someone could fix this without waiting for the vendor to release a new phone.

Such phones would also have a community of people working on them so details about exactly how they work (like how the caller ID ignores address book entries) would be relatively easy (vs. nigh impossible) to find out pre-purchase on the internet.

PathFinder 5.0.0 released! Dual-pane views!

I opened PF today and Sparkle notified me of an upgrade from (was it 4.5.8?) to 5.0.0. Cool. I downloaded and installed it, tried it and immediately paid my $19.9x upgrade fee. I wasn?t a big fan of dual-pane file managers until Directory Opus converted me.

New knife: Pro-Tech PT-105 Runt

At the gun show at the Florida Stat Fair Grounds today, I picked up an automatic knife for $80, a Pro-Tech PT-105 Runt. Very nice. This was the first gun show for my wife, daughter and youngest brother.

GPS mount for F4i

I went on a small ride to Ocala this weekend. Having the GPS in my tank bag?s map sleeve just didn?t work. Glare and shifting GPS made it difficult and even dangerous. Couldn?t see squat. So I bit the bullet and bought a RAM-Mount set for it. $54, not bad. Maybe a little shipping will be added when they process my order. Worth it. Trying to even just read the GPS inside my tank bag map sleeve while I?m riding is not safe.

I want a Toyota iQ.

About an hour ago, a Reddit article introduced me to the Toyota iQ, an attractive looking ?four? passenger car with great gas mileage (59/51). I want it with a six-speed transmission and the four-cylinder diesel engine. It?s not yet available in the U.S.

Uniden DECT 2060-2 cordless phone

Just picked up a Uniden DECT 2060-2 at OfficeMax for $59.99 today. Two handsets, no answering machine.

First defect: As mentioned in this Amazon.com review, address book entry names don?t override the incoming caller ID strings. Damn times three. Really crappy, Uniden.

Second defect: It was not possible (or not easy to understand how) to preview a ringtone when defining a custom ringtone while adding someone to the address book. Same problem when just defining the handset?s default ringtone. How do I preview these?

The ideal cordless phone

My ideal cordless phone would have

• Caller ID

• Headset jack
• Single-push (on/off) Mute button
• Ability for user to insert ?1? in front of caller ID numbers so I can call some people back
• Belt clip
• Speakerphone in handset
• Full duplex speakerphone in handset
• Address book that overrides caller ID strings so I control which names appear
• Big address book

And some subjective things:

• Feels good in hand
• Good microphone (for normal and speakerphone use)
• Good speaker quality
• Good speakerphone quality

I?m leaving out ubiquitous features like redial and number buttons and a screen backlight.

Microsoft Office 2008 microreview

It?s love at first sight. I love Microsoft Office 2008. I?ve used Office 97 since 1942. It?s fine. Really. I?ve use Office 2007 just a little. First impression: Ick. I?ve used Office 2000 — it is Office 97. I?ve used Numbers and Pages ?08. They?re okay. I?ve used OpenOffice and it?s alright. I?ve used NeoOffice (OS X Java port of OOo.) I used that for XLS and DOC files on the Mac until last week, when I got a totally legit copy of Office 2008 from Spencer as a gift.

Office 2008 is too legit to quit. The Formatting Palette is fabulous. Wow, I just realized I prefer using the Formatting Palette with my mouse (mouse == ick) to using the keyboard with Office 97! That really is saying something. All the tools I need on a regular basis are right there.

And the rendering of pages and GUI elements is superior to NeoOffice/OOo. Things just look good. Damn good. I?m hooked and totally surprised.

Edit: Reading this entry, I realized that if I like this so much, I?ll eventually want to move my meager VB macros into it from Office 97. That isn?t going to fly since there?s no VBA in Office 2008. Funny, I had to really love it in order to be disappointed by its lack of VBA. If I hadn?t liked it so much, I wouldn?t have considered moving my macros into it.

Bailout thoughts

I was just reading this article I found on Reddit. This scenario occurred to me:

If I?d had money in the stock market when Congress (and later the Senate and later Congress again) was considering the bailout, I would be damned either way. If I bet on them approving the bailout (to keep stock prices up temporarily) I?d be winning based on the government doing the wrong thing. So I?d definitely want to have pulled my money out so I could root for the thing thing that was best overall (no bailout) without conflict. So, theoretically, if I?d stayed in the market, I?d have been conflicted.

Amazon comes through.

I bought a my Nikon D80 body last week. I’m very happy with it. Yes, the meter overexposes for the shadows but tough.

Anyway, I bought it for, from memory, $776.94. A good price. Shortly after I received the D80, I checked Adorama and B&H prices, something I do often with things I’ve recently purchased. Their prices were around $729! That’s about $45. Problem. Did I check them before I bought from Amazon? Probably — I usually check all three of these sites before buying anything photographic. But maybe I didn’t. Maybe.

But it doesn’t matter because tonight, on a whim, I checked Amazon’s current price. I was heartened when I saw that it had one of the “add to cart to see price” links, which it didn’t have when I bought it — so the price was probably reduced. Yay. And it was! About $729. Great. Amazon will credit for thirty days after receipt so I called and got stuck in a long recording. Garbage. Then I found a means of having Amazon call me via a button

iPod tracks: 9502

Current iPod track count: 9,502. Whoah. Includes voice memos, but it always has and I haven?t added but a few in years.

Dvorak

I recently ordered some generic keyboard stickers in a Dvorak layout for my MacBook Pro. They arrived and I applied them Saturday. Now, in my down time, I?ll start getting used to the Dvorak key layout.

OS X 10.5.5

I upgraded to OS X 10.5.5 today.

I also started evaluating Yep, DEVONthink Office Pro and Yojimbo.

MacJournal test

How to remove entries from blog from MacJournal?????????????????????????????????????????????????????

How to hide/unpublish entries from blog from MacJournal (but not delete)??????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????

F4i for sale for the right price

Put the F4i up on Ocala Craigslist today. Probably won’t get any interest at that price since someone who wants new will be looking at dealers and not Craigslist (for a different bike, mind you, since the F4i is discontinued.)

Eating slowly

I eat slowly. I take a bite or two and then come back later for more. Lots of small meals throughout the day is my preference.

This Mercola article I read today ties in with that. Eating lightly and giving my body time to digest it and then send the “I’ve got enough energy now” message seems to be a good idea.

This probably has a lot to do with why I’m not a big porker despite my sedentary lifestyle.

Highly Recommended: HDClone

Yesterday I wanted to replace a drive on an XP Home box with a bigger drive. I didn’t own any tools (like Norton Ghost — media lost long ago) for doing this. This digg.com thread gave me a lead on HDClone.

I downloaded HDClone 3.6 Free Edition and used it to make a bootable CD so no files would be locked on the system drive I was copying. It went off without a hitch. HDClone made it totally clear what it was going to do and it did it well the first time. I have no complaints whatsoever. The new drive booted right up (I powered the old drive off) and that machine is running fine.

Wall-E

This afternoon, I took my daughter to her first in-cinema movie, Wall-E. We had a very nice time. She had her little popcorn-in-a-box with her little (huge) Coke and finished it all.

VPN, suddenly

We’re in C.R. now. The VPN back to the office hasn’t been working. I talked to two people at Bright House and they both confirmed that they don’t block any ports. They weren’t helpful. And today, unexpectedly, I was able to connect to the VPN. Nice! I hope it stays working. And it connects faster than it did from Holiday.

WoTD: Epicurean

http://tfd.com/epicurean

Goldfish rant on Cragslist

http://www.craigslist.org/about/best/nyc/24656546.html
RANT: The goldfish on my desk.
Date: 2004-02-18, 3:36PM EST

I’ve got a goldfish which lives in a bowl on my desk. It sits about two feet away from me. I feed it flakes everyday.

Just now, the damned thing took a shit, turned around, and ate it. I know I read somewhere that goldfish have a memory span of 3 seconds, but for real, you can’t remember taking a crap a millesecond before turning around and registering it as food?

Oh, god. He just did it again. He belongs in a toilet.

PostingID: 24656546

OS X, UNIX, comfort: Annual retrospective

I bought my MacBook Pro perhaps a year ago now. While Leopard has been disappointing (terrible upgrade experience with the well-known ownership problem and not infrequent enough total hangups) my overall experience vs. Windows is wonderful. I’m very at home and, well, content. Tons of truly excellent software available. This year’s MacUpdate Promo and MacHeist bundles are great. I use DVDRemaster Pro from the MUPromo about once a day average. I use Typinator (which I’d already bought, unfortunately) tons of times every day. I already owned Parallels (got another copy in the MUPromo) but I got it for $9 after rebates (which I did receive) with my MBP purchase. SuperDuper is simply great. Quicksilver is indomitable. iStat menus and MenuCalendarClock are just right.

Hardware-wise, my Kensington Expert Mouse is the best darned pointing device I’ve ever owned or used.

Hell, even Cover Flow in the Finder is pretty good. I don’t use it much but Path Finder is very nice. If it had an Address bar, I’d use it more. And if it could merge folders, look out.

1Password is actually pretty good. NeoOffice is not bad.

I’d like something like BeyondCompare for comparing directories full of files.

New motorcycling jacket: Joe Rocket Phoenix 4.0

I bought a Joe Rocket Ballistic (XL) for, IIRC, $169 in about 2002 for use with my R6. It was too hot for me in Florida summer riding. I cooked in traffic in it once and was down for about a week. And I wasn’t happy with the fit — the elbow pads were too far from my elbow, a problem that I couldn’t’ handle since the jacket wasn’t adjustable in the arms.

Yesterday, Saturday, I went to my local� Honda dealer to shop for a tank bag. I instead came home with a Joe Rocket Phoenix 4.0 (Large) for $115 plus they threw in a black bungee net. So I’d call that $105 for the jacket. Then it occurred to me to sell the old one. I put it on Craigslist. I sold it today to a nice Hayabusa rider named Danny for $75. Good deals all around.

F4i: Delivered!

It’s here. Nice guy named Mike delivered it. I didn’t talk to the second delivery guy. Mike said he’s getting a ZX-14 Ninja from a lady that she paid $15K for. He’s paying $8K. Nice.

I miss the sea.

I saw a picture of an iguana swimming with a stingray just now, the ray’s eye breaking the surface. I miss the sea.

F4i: Flemington, FL

As of 12:31pm today, the bike has made it to Flemington, FL. 119 miles or so to go. Whoah.

F4i is in Atlanta, GA

As of 7:47am today, the F4i has made it to Atlanta. That’s fast.

Iron Man

Saw Iron Man tonight. Holy cow. Best comic book movie I’ve ever seen. At least, no competitors come to mind. Better than Superman Returns.

35-105mm AF-D Nikkor (used)

I just picked up a Nikkor 35-105 AF-D lens (Condition: V) on Adorama.com. What the heck. Well regarded lens. I just hope it’s in good shape, especially optically and autofocus wise. We’ll see. I’m looking forward to it.

Strange internet acquaintances

———- Forwarded message ———-
From: x. Xxxxx <xxxxx@gmail.com>
Date: Thu, May 1, 2008 at 3:27 PM
Subject: Re: Nikon Len for Camera…SLR or Digital… – $25 (Town N Country)
To: Xxxxxxxx <Xxxxxxxx03@tampabay.rr.com>

Okay. Except that this message will be my last.

/x

On Thu, May 1, 2008 at 3:26 PM, Xxxxxxxx <Xxxxxxxx03@tampabay.rr.com> wrote:
>
>
> Please don’t email me again, I am NOT interested in shipping the Lens to
> you. That’s all.
>
>
> —– Original Message —–
> From: x. Xxxxx
> To: Xxxxxxxx
>
> Sent: Thursday, May 01, 2008 3:24 PM
> Subject: Re: Nikon Len for Camera…SLR or Digital… – $25 (Town N Country)
>
> Shipping isn’t the problem but you don’t want to ship it. Sorry, what
> am I missing?
>
> /xxxxx
>
>
> On Thu, May 1, 2008 at 3:22 PM, Xxxxxxxx <Xxxxxxxx03@tampabay.rr.com> wrote:
> >
> >
> > No that’s not the problem, but if I wanted to ship it out,  I would of
> sold
> > it on eBay.
> > Thanks anyways!
> > D
> >
> > —– Original Message —–
> > From: x. Xxxxx
> > To: Xxxxxxxx
> >
> > Sent: Thursday, May 01, 2008 3:19 PM
> > Subject: Re: Nikon Len for Camera…SLR or Digital… – $25 (Town N
> Country)
> >
> > I don’t understand. Is packing it up the problem?
> >
> > /x
> >
> >
> > On Thu, May 1, 2008 at 3:18 PM, Xxxxxxxx <Xxxxxxxx03@tampabay.rr.com> wrote:
> > >
> > >
> > > I will pass…not in a hurry to sell it.
> > >
> > > —– Original Message —–
> > > From: x. Xxxxx
> > > To: Xxxxxxxx
> > >
> > > Sent: Thursday, May 01, 2008 3:10 PM
> > > Subject: Re: Nikon Len for Camera…SLR or Digital… – $25 (Town N
> > Country)
> > >
> > > Xxxxxxxx,
> > >
> > > I forgot to mention: I was originally going to offer $20 but I left it
> > > at $25 to cover shipping.
> > >
> > > /x
> > >
> > >
> > > On Thu, May 1, 2008 at 3:06 PM, x. Xxxxx <xxxxx@gmail.com> wrote:
> > > > Oh, gosh, that’s far. Truthfully, the three hours that’ll cost me to
> > > >  get the 28 miles to your house, transact this, then return will pay
> > > >  for a comparable Nikkor lens.
> > > >
> > > >  If you’re willing to put it in the mail to me (what I had in mind)
> > > >  I’ll pay you any way you like. Paypal, cash in an envelope, whatever.
> > > >
> > > >  Let me know if you’re interested. Or if you’re going to be nearer US
> > > >  19 anytime soon.
> > > >
> > > >  /xxxxx
> > > >
> > > >
> > > >
> > > >
> > > >  On Thu, May 1, 2008 at 3:03 PM, Xxxxxxxx <Xxxxxxxx03@tampabay.rr.com>
> > > wrote:
> > > >  >
> > > >  >
> > > >  > Great! My address is XXXX Xxxxxxxx Drive….off of Xxxxxx ave and
> > > Xxxxxxxx
> > > >  > road..
> > > >  > If you need directions just let me know…When and what time are
> you
> > > coming
> > > >  > for the lens.
> > > >  > Thanks,
> > > >  > D
> > > >  >
> > > >  > —– Original Message —–
> > > >  > From: x. Xxxxx
> > > >  > To: Xxxxxxxx
> > > >  > Sent: Thursday, May 01, 2008 2:54 PM
> > > >  > Subject: Re: Nikon Len for Camera…SLR or Digital… – $25 (Town N
> > > Country)
> > > >  >
> > > >  > No problem. Where are you?
> > > >  >
> > > >  > /xxxxx
> > > >  > xxx-xxx-xxxx
> > > >  >
> > > >  > On Thu, May 1, 2008 at 2:41 PM, Xxxxxxxx <Xxxxxxxx03@tampabay.rr.com>
> > > wrote:
> > > >  > >
> > > >  > >
> > > >  > > Sorry no PayPal…I prefer cash when item is picked up.
> > > >  > > Xxxxxxxx
> > > >  > >
> > > >  > >
> > > >  > > —– Original Message —–
> > > >  > > From: x. Xxxxx
> > > >  > > To: sale-xxxxxxxxx@craigslist.org
> > > >  > > Sent: Thursday, May 01, 2008 2:28 PM
> > > >  > > Subject: Nikon Len for Camera…SLR or Digital… – $25 (Town N
> > > Country)
> > > >  > >
> > > >  > > ** CRAIGSLIST ADVISORY — AVOID SCAMS BY DEALING LOCALLY
> > > >  > > ** Avoid:  wiring money, cross-border deals, work-at-home
> > > >  > > ** Beware: cashier checks, money orders, escrow, shipping
> > > >  > > ** More Info:  http://www.craigslist.org/about/scams.html
> > > >  > >
> > > >  > > Ref: http://tampa.craigslist.org/pho/xxxxxxxxx.html
> > > >  > >
> > > >  > > You have a deal. Do you accept Paypal?
> > > >  > >
> > > >  > > /xxxxx
> > > >  > >
> > > >  > >
> > > >  > >
> ——————————————————————
> > > >  > > this message was remailed to you via:
> sale-xxxxxxxxx@craigslist.org
> > > >  > >
> ——————————————————————
> > > >

Semulov or Akdov Telmig

I decided to try Semulov today. It puts an item in my menubar from which I can unmount volumes quickly. Saves me having to open a Finder window when I want to do this. Very nice. It was a Mac World Mac Gem recently.

Last.fm update adds Growl

Today’s auto update of my OS X last.fm client resulted in Growl notifications each time iTunes plays a new song. I like this very much.

I don’t know if this was a change to default settings or whether Growl notification it totally new in this version. But I like. And this is a good example of when it is good to enable your new features by default, even when it changes how things work for existing users. This particular case is a safe one in which to do this.

Free copy of Microsoft Office Ultimate 2007 arrived!

I got this for some minor contribution to the Windows Feedback program. Totally worth it!

F4i title arrived!

Yes! Signed. Notarized.

I purchased a 2006 Honda F4i day before yesterday via ebaymotors.com. Shipping from another state.

Free Microsoft Office 2007 Ultimate on its way

I just got an email from Microsoft that they’re sending or have sent it, I forget which. Yay! I just wish it was Office 2008 OS X. This was for my participation in the Windows Feedback Program.

Netflix: from 3 to 6

I just upgraded my Netflix account from 3 to 6 simultaneous DVDs.

MacUpdate.com promo bonus — WhatSize for first 3,500 buyers

I just got an email from the MacUpdate.com guys saying that the first 3,500 purchasers of their bundle will get a copy of WhatSize ($12.99). I like this bonus for getting in early. I dig that.

I’ve used WhatSize a few times and it’s been useful. It is not as amazing useful as the Windows-only app DiskMapper from Micro Logic. DiskMapper’s graphical representation of files by their size is what makes it so fantasically, stupendously awesome.

Bought MacUpdate.com promo bundle

I bought the MacUpdate.com promo bundle today. $64.99. I needed DVDRemaster Pro as of today, so it was worth it. Too bad I bought Typinator recently for 20 Euros and it’s in this bundle. Oh, well. If they sell enough copies, we’ll get some additional serious stuff.

Typinator 3.0

Ergonis released Typinator 3.0 today — or, at least, Typinator notified me of the update today. It has lots of nice refinements. It adds the TidBITS autocorrection dictionary (available previously as an individual download but I didn’t know it) and, best of all, there’s no longer a dock icon but a menu bar icon instead. Terrific. I haven’t used it for a single correction yet but once I get rolling today I’ll use it a lot.

Goodbye, D70.

I gave the D70 as a gift this weekend. It was well received. Body only.

Custom knife

We visited my family this weekend. It’s not too long a drive. For my birthday, they gave me an exquisite custom knife by David Lang of Utah. I found nothing about the man online via a google search.

umeVoice theBoom v4 is back home.

My theBoom v4 headset was returned from the manufacturer today. No indication of whether they reproduced my problems with it. I’ll call them.

18-200 VR has landed.

My 18-200 VR was delivered. Works nice. I’ve been using just my 50/1.4 so long that this thing feels dark. Oh, well, it’s still great glass.

18-200 VR out for delivery

It should be here momentarily, fixed.

Repaired 18-200 VR shipped from Nikon

I don’t know when it left their hands but it’s on its way to me.

Wild things

I just read this new Paul Graham article, entitled You Weren’t Meant to Have a Boss: http://www.paulgraham.com/boss.html

I liked it very much. It not only discussed some things I’ve observed in an office/company environment myself but it even covered a little about diet and living like a wild thing.

Arthur C. Clark deceased

This AP article linked to from news.ycombinator.com just now reports that Arthur C. Clarke just died, at 90 years of age.

MondoMouse (finally)

Once the wallet gets warmed up, it’s easy to use it again.

I decided to bite the $14.95 bullet and buy MondoMouse today.

SpeedDownload upgrades

Today I got an email saying the YazSoft folks are offering a free upgrade to all MacHeist II guys (limited time only) from SpeedDownload 4 to a single copy of SD5 for free. No strings and no future upgrade to SD6 included with this offer. (I’m already on the SD6 free upgrade list but am not entitle to SD5.)

An alternative they offered is for $15 you can upgrade from SD4 to SD5 now and get a free copy of SD5. And a free upgrade to SD6 when it is released some day. I didn’t notice if this was an upgrade to SD6 for both SD5 licenses or just one but I didn’t care enough to go back to the page and check it out.

Forest Brothers

My friend and colleague DmitriK was telling me about the forest brothers and strong Nazism in easter Europe right now .He said they had growing nazism about five years ago in Russia but it was destroyed by the government. I didn’t know anything about those things.

Purchased iClip 4.0

I just purchased iClip 4.0 for $19.95 (a good deal) via MacUpdate.com. I’ve been evaluating it. I hardly have used it but I know that this kind of tool is very useful when doing certain kinds of work. PHPClipboard was ugly and caused a machine problem (maybe it was hangups — I forget) so iClip is the winner. I looked at iClipboard, too, but it didn’t appear to have enough keyboard integration. Too bad because I liked iClip’s GUI better — simpler yet still sexy.

Another WFP email

I received another email from from the Windows Feedback Program folks. All is well and I’ll get my complimentary copy of Microsoft Office 2007 Ultimate in 4-6 weeks.
Me likes.

18-200 VR still on Parts Hold, darnit.

Wow. I’m surprised they haven’t gotten the parts in and sent me back a repaired lens yet. Disappointed, too.

FogBugz On Demand Student and Startup Edition

Reading the FogBugz support forum today, someone in this thread mentioned a Student and Startup Edition of FBOD. Perfect since it’s just me right now. Awesome. A quick google search found this page that described it in a little detail.

I immediately converted from my free 45-day evaluation to a Student and Startup account in my FBOD settings.

Obsolete D300

I can’t wait until the D300 is obsolete. Because about six months after that I’ll be able to get one for a song.

D300 hands on

I was at Ritz today. Naturally, they didn’t have a 35mm/2.0 in stock. However, they did have a D300 body. I played with it. Twice. Big mistake. Wow. That thing is fast. And, boy, that LCD is a cut above. Holy crap. Just this morning I had resigned myself to the D80, telling myself the D300 just didn’t offer enough that I really needed for the price. And then I used a D300. They had an 18-135 on it. I used that and also put my 50/1.4 on it. Whoah. That thing was just impressive.

HR-2 hood and 52-to-77-mm stepup ring arrived.

They came at the same time as my FogBugz book, delivered by the man in brown.

I’m surprised at how slim the hood is when it’s retracted. Great! Nicely made, too. I expect it’s going to be a nice addition to my kit.

The stepup ring is just in case I want to use a future filter, such as a circular polarizer or neutral density grade filter (neither of which I own) with the 50mm/1.4 lens as well as my main zoom lens, the 18-200 VR.

FogBugz book

UPS just delivered Painless Project Management with FogBugz, Second Edition. Based upon FB 6, I’m glad to report, which is the current version.

Government schooling

I don’t think government should be relied upon to school my children.

Scary smart

I’ve never met someone so smart it scared me. I probably should have gone to university.

Push forward!

Today I decided to push forward and, despite any obstacles, make constant progress on creating my own software company and software products, starting with my first idea.

To this end, I installed Xcode 3 last night and today I ordered Painless Project Management with FogBugz from Amazon.com and got a 45-day demo FogBugz account and started filling it in with cases.

Nikon Parts Hold, 18-200 VR

My 18-200 VR is on “Parts Hold” presently. Ugh. Apparently it’s been so since 26 Feb 08.

Discovered and signed up for RescueTime

Reading my morning tech news, I came across this YC article from news.ycombinator.com. That led me to a list of recently launched YC startups. I signed up for RescueTime, hoping to see where I spend my time and thus help me economize on needless action.

Ghosts in the machine. 50mm f/1.4

When photographing my CRT television last night, I saw a consistent ghost image of the TV picture. Yeah, baby. I’ve read that that is not only an issue with the 50/1.4 but a common problem with very fast glass. Okay. Just noting this observation here — not complaining, since I knew what i was getting into.

I still wonder if I’d have been happier with the 35/2.

Oscar agrees. NCfOM brings home lots of statues.

No Country for Old Men won multiple Oscars last night. Cool.

Boy, the Cohen brothers just didn’t impress me with their warmth up there accepting their Oscars for Best Director[s]. Ick. Oh, well, they still made a fabulous film.

No Country for Old Men

I saw this last night. It is among the best films I’ve seen, perhaps the best.

Jove bless my TurboMouse, er, Expert Mouse.

CompUSA is going out of business. I just visited two of their depressingly-understocked stores tonight in Tampa. At the second one — the first had zilch of interest to me — I found a ton of Kensington TurboMouse trackballs (version 7.) Great! Usually about a hundred bucks, these were $40 apiece. I bought two and wished I’d bought more once I got home and spoke to the wife.

This trackball is just great. I’ve wanted one for years but $80-to-$100 was too much for me and I already had a Logitech trackball that was okay.

The best thing about my new TurboMouse is the software. I can change button assignments depending on what application I’m using. Yes!

Edit: Oh, they call it an Expert Mouse now, not a TurboMouse.

D80 arrived.

The Nikon D80 I bought from Amazon.com Monday night just arrived. Nice. The first surprise is that it’s not as tall as my D70. Good!

Battery arrived with one bar of three on it. Charging it now.

D40 is out of town with Jim for two months so I can’t compare those two directly at the moment. But I can say, compared with the D70, the autofocus of my 50/1.4 is fast. And it wasn’t bad on the D70.

18-200 -> Nikon

I sent it back today, insured, via USPS. I hope they repair it quickly. And, more importantly, I hope it never breaks again. It cost over $17 to send it Priority Mail, insured for $650 with return receipt+tracking number ($0.65.)

Photography gig and sudden camera shortage

A friend offered me a photography gig today. As I hung up on that call, the phone rang again and my father wanted to borrow a camera for a two-month road trip. Funny. So I’ll be out the D40 and 18-70 lens for a couple months.

Not a problem except my 18-200 lens needs to go back to Nikon, leaving me with just the 50mm/1.4 until the 18-200 comes back fixed. I called Nikon and they want an average of 7-10 business days to turn it around. Okay. I’ll ship it off tomorrow.

I’m presently selling my D70 to a nice-sounding fellow. He’ll have the money this Saturday. I decided to upgrade to a D80 immediately (tonight) rather than wait on the D70 sale. No reason, really, except being prepared for the photo gig which has an unkown date.

Meantime, if that photo gig comes in immediately (unlikely per my friend) I’ll shoot it with my 50mm f/1.4. And if it can wait a few weeks, I’ll have my 18-200 back to shoot it with, too, though the 50mm should be fine if a little inconvenient.

Typinator is Money.

I decided to buy Typinator today. 19.99 Euros. Whatever. It’s so much better for me than TextExpander (see earlier posts) that it’s any easy choice. I haven’t run into anything in Typinator yet that I would improve. Nor have I thought of anything yet, in regular daily use, that Typinator is missing. Wow. And software is my field so I usually have something I want improved after even just a little use.

Creative I-Trigue 200 speakers

I picked up a pair of these at Circuit City for $20 today. Then I saw them at Target for $40. When I got home I found them for $35.63 at Amazon.com. So I got a great price for them.

They sound pretty good. I have one on each side of my 24″ Gateway LCD. The stereo separation is nice. Somehow, the sound feels like it’s coming fright out of my monitor — dead center. So I’m pleased.

Now I won’t be limited to the weak volume of my MacBook Pro speakers.

Paul Graham: Six Principles for Making New Things

Great Paul Graham article on coming up with new things

Dramatic dream

I dreamed I was some place. It didn’t look like Best Buy but, perhaps since I suspected the employees to be doing something anti-customer and shady, I felt it was Best Buy.

I was there and someone (police with store personnel on hand, I believe it was) came to me and, without cause, were inspecting my messenger bag and perhaps even my person.

During and after this unlawful search, store employees were hiding the fact that they were watching me closely.

I got tired of it and marched into the office, told them they know why I’m there but I don’t and I asked for the top manager. Then I walked over to a nice manager guy that I remembered from some past cycle and asked him what’s going on. He was on the phone.

He handed me the phone and I put it to my ear. Immediately, a very familiar voice said, “<My name>, this is Joe. I’m with your mother.” Totally freaked, I woke up.

Bye, bye, Audi

I transferred title to my 1987 Audi 5000 CS Turbo Quattro today. Sold it to the nice gentleman across the street. I left the Alpine CD player in there because I told him I would. Bye, bye. I’ll miss the way that car drove!

I wooted. Jumbo-style.

Yeah, baby, I wooted. Twofer-Tuesday. I got a total of four of these sweet babies. I think I may give one of them as a gift. Videos were not included.

DNS-323 firmware 1.04 great so far

So far, the NAS responds so much better from OS X 10.5 than the old version (1.03) did. Yay! I’m going to guess that it’s because the 1.04 NAS firmware upgrade included an upgrade from SMB 2.0 to SMB 3.0.

Release notes.

DNS-323 NAS firmware 1.04 upgrade

I upgraded from 1.03 to 1.04 today. It seems that browsing is now faster from my MacBook Pro. Great!

BeyondCompare does support Word, XLS and PDF files!

Wow! I just found out that BeyondCompare supports XLS files. Someone mentioned it in their forums while I was looking for an update on OS X support.

So I went and downloaded some rules so I can compare PDF files (the text only), XLS and Word docs. Yay! This is fabulous. The rules export the XLS and DOC and PDF files to text and compare the text. So what — except that I can’t edit the files directly, it’s a great time-saver!

Nikkor 50mm f/1.4 arrived yesterday.

It’s here. I shot it a little. Pretty nice so far. Unfortunately, I don’t have my old f/1.8 around to compare to see if I really consider the extra 0.4 worth the 3X 2.5X price. So I’ll just enjoy my new fast glass.

Windows Feedback Program (free Office Ultimate 2007 offer) update

I got this email just on 1 Feb:

Thank you for participating in the Windows Feedback Program!

This message is to notify you that you are a registered member of the program, and so far you have met all requirements to qualify for the free product offer. Congratulations!

As a reminder, when you registered for the program, we stated that you will receive your product only after we have confirmed that you have:

· Entered a valid e-mail and shipping address.

· Fully completed the survey.

· Downloaded and installed the software on Windows Vista or XP.

· Used our software for at least 3 months on a Windows Vista or XP computer that is periodically connected to the Internet.

As part of the registration process, we indicated that if we detect your computer not to be sending data, you would be notified accordingly.

We are currently receiving data from your PC on a frequent basis, and as soon as you complete the 3 months participation term, your free product selection will be sent to the mailing address you submitted at registration. We will send one free product per person.

Your product selection:

Microsoft Office Ultimate 2007

Your address:

[redacted by me]

You may also receive an occasional invitation to participate in a Windows product survey, though this is not guaranteed.

If you have any questions, or if your mailing address has changed, please contact us at winpanel@microsoft.com.

Thank You,

The Windows Experience Team

Back to my desk

Yesterday (Sunday) I finally cleaned up my desk (unused as a desk for 9+ months and developing a deep piling system) and started using it instead of my wife’s desk. I even moved my new 24″ Gateway monitor to it from my wife’s desk where I’ve been using it since it arrived a month or two ago.

Now I’m using my Apple bluetooth (old plastic, not new aluminum model) keyboard for the firs time. I bought it right before Apple released their redesigned aluminum bluetooth keyboard. I didn’t like that the bluetooth model of their redesigned keyboard didn’t have a numeric keypad. In retrospect, I hardly use it so I’d have probably been just as happy returning mine and getting their redesigned one. But whatever.

Getting questions answered

I realized yesterday that something I like to do very much is get my questions answered.

Typinator works in NeoOffice!

TextExpander 2.0 doesn’t — and their support dept didn’t give me much hope that it ever would.

However, Typinator 2.1 (5672) works great pasting text (say, the current time) into a cell in a NeoOffice spreadsheet! And it’s fast!

Typinator

Today I discovered Typinator. I’ve been using an evaluation version of TextExpander 2.0 but its lack of date math, triple-click requirement to work in NeoOffice cells and a simple feeling that it wasn’t quite the right app for me kept me from buying it.

Reading a thread on the TaskPaper forum on HogBaySoftware.com, someone mentioned Typinator offhand. So I checked it out. Not only does it support date math (and imported my TextExpander snippets perfectly and easily!) but it’s noticeably faster at replacing text than TextExpander. Yay!

18-200 VR autofocus broke

I swapped my18-200 VR from my D40 and put it on my D70 today, taking my 18-70 from the D70 and putting it on the D40.

I then went to shoot the D70 with the 18-200 and… no autofocus. So I checked every possible switch on the lens and checked the settings on the D70 and nothing was wrong. I cycled the switches on the 18-200 and reseated the 18-200, no improvement. I put the 18-200 back on my D40, still no autofocus. Shit.

Where’s my local Nikon dealer located?

Here are some links about autofocus problems with this lens.

http://www.onexposure.net/forum.php?action=viewtopic&tid=1806&page=0

http://www.nikonians.org/forums/dcboard.php?az=show_topic&forum=138&topic_id=1904#1905

http://www.flickr.com/photos/dgwphotography/1385596731/

50mm f/1.4 D Nikkor

Adorama credited my credit card last night for the 85mm f/1.8 I returned. They didn’t have the 50mm f/1.4 that I planned to order instead, so I ordered it from B&H. B&H shipped it this morning! Yay!

Thinking while talking

I think well while talking. It’s not always the first thing that comes out of my mouth that’s the best, though. Sometimes it’s where the talking leads me, even if I’m monologueing.

In the morning

In the morning, three days per week, my wife takes our little girl to daycare. She wakes up, gets ready, goes to 7-11 for a coffee and then comes back to wake up, dress and put our little girl in the car. This morning, around 7:35, I got our daugher up instead of us sleeping in and got her ready myself, including brushing her teeth. How non-lazy. How nice.

She’s so deliberate.

I’m amazed how articulate, sensitive and deliberate my daughter is. Naturally, there may be some home team bias, but I’m amazed nonetheless.

Goodnight, Oly.

I sold my Olympus E-10 via Craigslist today. $195 with a bunch of accessories — a very good deal for the buyer and I’m happy, too. Enjoy it, Dave and Rose.

New iTunes rating algorithm

I changed my iTunes music ratings/iPod mini 4GB sync algorithm.
Each int is a star count.

- Move 4 to 5
- Move 3 to 4
- Change playlists from 3+ to 4+. This will leave 3 very empty. 3 will become place for “possible for iPod.“

So new rating system is

1: Hate it.
2: It’s okay but I never want it on my small iPod.
3. Stuff I may want on iPod sometimes — move to 4 when I do.
4. Put on iPod.
5. Always on iPod. Not subject to change of state.

I find it interesting to realize that I recently considered my old system of rating to be lacking in granularity. This new system effectively gives me even less fine control over ratings since it basically removes what I used to rate as 4 and moves those into 5. But I think it is definitely an improvement nonetheless.

33 new CDs -> iTunes

I ripped a stack of 33 CDs today.

Current iTunes track count: 7971

Goodbye, eighty-five.

I’m sending my 85mm f/1.8 Nikkor lens and 81A warming filter back to Adorama. I found that in the indoor light I wanted to use it the most (my home) at the distances necessary (3′ minimum focus and a very zoomy 85mm lens on an APS-C sensor Nikon D70) it was just not sharp. And, really, I didn’t like the focal length and crop factor of this lens on my DX Nikon. Bummer. I’m going to get a 50mm f/1.4 Nikkor instead.

Too bad I sold my 50mm f/1.8 right before I found my D70 deal. Darnit.

Mexico, suddenly

We got word yesterday that my wife’s maternal grandfather is dying at home and may have as little as a day to live. My wife was already planning a trip to Mexico in three weeks to visit her grandmother with her mother. So they changed their tickets to today and flew on an 8am plane from Tampa by way of Atlanta.

Disney marathon

Today is Monday. Yesterday I spent over 13 hours at Walt Disney World Magic Kingdom. That calculation is no exaggeration. We walked into the monorail boarding area before 10am and left that area for the parking lot after 11pm. Holy cow. I spent a couple hours reading Bill Bryson’s I’m A Stranger Here Myself in Ray’s Cosmic Food Something-Or-Other, listening to the automated entertainer Sonny Eclipse. I finally left Ray’s because the smell was just too much for me. Disney is not the place to sit in a cafe and waste half a day. That place is desigined to keep you on your feet and moving through the machine.

Mensuration, aethetics and context

The things I like most are immeasurable. To measure them would be to take them out of context. Like a summer’s day.

I miss my 50mm f/1.8.

Darnit. I sold it to a guy about three weeks ago, on the way to St. Augustine the Friday before Christmas. $90. Damn. Now I want it back since I found my D70 so I can autofocus the 50mm.

Huge roll of wrapping paper

Bombay Company is going out of business. We visited them while at Countryside Mall today. We picked up a gigantic roll of silver wrapping paper for $1.00.

85mm initial initial observations

I haven’t shot this thing much at all. I haven’t even left the house with it yet. But, for my own future recollection, I’m compelled to note the following:

IAt about ISO 500 and 1/30th of a second at f/1.8, this lens creates slightly brighter pictures than my eye.
I was actually hoping to be able to shoot such shots at more like 1/100 sec. but this is very good.

85mm f/1.8 Nikkor delivered!

It just arrived via UPS. So far, it looks great. The used B+W 81A warming filter I got with it from Adorama is scratched. That sucks. But at f/1.8, I doubt it’ll ever show up. We’ll see.

Maintenance and handling of hardware v. software (reboots v. rebuilds)

Hardware: You beat it first, then you put it in production. Be careful once it’s in because hardware can wear out.

Software: Software doesn’t wear out. You beat it first to get the bugs out, then you keep beating it forever.

For example, today I was thinking about regular complete software rebuilds (a good idea) vs. regular hardware reboots (not always a good idea). Just because that server booted fine this morning, doesn’t mean it’ll reboot fine right now. So watch hardware — it wears out. Software doesn’t.

Current iTunes track count

7585

P.S. I love Fergie’s song “Big Girls Don’t Cry (Personal)”. It’s just great.

Another big day for new utilities

One area of inefficiency in my daily computer operation is that I limit myself to one clipboard entry at a time rather than a clipboard history that I can choose (paste) from or just browse. I’ve looked into this a little in the past but never followed through. Today, I came across PTHPasteboard. Looks good. I’m giving it a try. So far, so good

I also came across SmallScreenX, a nice freeware app for creating an on-screen border of user-defined size. It is useful for seeing the screen area of various users without lowering my own screen resolution — handy for software development.

I found both of these from a page I got in my MacWorld Gems email today.

TaskPaper initial observations

TaskPaper is looking great. I’ve already got my personal and work todo.txt files in it and its use hasn’t slowed me down at all today.* It seems that TP is having some trouble parsing my large work todo.txt file, evidenced by it hanging up when I try to filter by @BZ or @QA tags.

* Okay, one thing: Pasting from TaskPaper into NeoOffice kept the font from TP, which I didn’t want — I wanted straight text. Oh, well.

Screencasts

I’m excited that I can now do screencasts. Most important is for documenting things to put in Bugzilla at work or documenting things to train people.

MacHeist.com bundle deal

I read a two-page ad in MacWorld magazine a few days ago about an annual “MacHeist” deal. The list of software last year was very good and the bundle cost only $50 so I was very interested in this year’s bundle, which would be announced on 9 January 2008 (today).

Well, this year’s bundle includes Snapz Pro X 2, $40 alone, which I wanted to buy anyway, so I was sold. I bought the bundle for $49.00. And TaskPaper is looking VERY nice. I moved my todo.txt file into it and I’m already up and running. The runway to figure out the basics and get back to work with TaskPaper is about 10 seconds. Wonderful.

Instancy and Patience in the Digital Age

I was thinking yesterday about how people expect their computers to be faster, faster, faster, with the goal of operating instantaneously in every regard. Others criticize them and label them power-hungry, bitter brides.

I gave this a little thought and saw that what people really want is for computers to be like the rest of the world. Instantaneous. When you turn the page of a book, you don’t wait for it to render. When you dig a hole with a shovel, you see the hole immediately and it is immediately available for use.

People that want their computers faster just want them to be real. It’s not a new standard, really.

Tripods

A week before Christmas, at a lunch party at my mother-in-law’s house, an old family friend told me she found two tripods and “a lens” in her attic and I was welcome to them. Cool. A week later, Christmas Eve, we had dinner at her house and she gave them to me.

Both tripods were heavy duty. One seemed a little brittle but the other looked great. And the “lens” was a small, white Meade refracting telescope. The one tripod is quite a nice one for my needs — I’m very happy with it.

Guinness draught

I went to Britain in 2007, in August, I believe. And I tried Guinness draft while I was there. Repeatedly. It was great. And cold. So I came home actually liking a beer for once. Then I tried bottled, U.S. (Fla.) Guinness. It sucked. But it sucked less than every other bottled beer I’ve had. So I drank it a lot for a while until I was sick of it. Corona still gives me a headache.

85mm hasn’t shipped.

Christ. I ordered it Tuesday. Today is Thursday. What’s the deal, Adorama?

85mm f/1.8 Nikkor

I want this lens. I want the bokeh and I want the speed for low-light, no-flash shooting. This lens is the main reason I bought my D70 last week.

I went to Ritz Camera at Countryside Mall yesterday and they had one in stock, albeit for $499, a high price. I shot it on my D70 and, boy, did I love it! Great bokeh and it let in so much light at f/1.8. Even at f/2.8 (also a new aperture for me on anything but my Oly E-10) it had good bokeh, though it was, of course, darker.

I was trying to explain this lens to my wife on the way home from the mall — she thought the 18-70 lens I got with the D70 was this 85mm lens. Nope. She encouraged me to just buy this 85mm. So I did — on Adorama, along with a used 62mm 81A warming filter since the D70’s pics are so cool out of camera.

D70 initial comments

Autofocus is sharp. Works fine with the 18-70 it came with and my 18-200 VR, through which I’ve shot perhaps 15,000 shots on my D40.

The color leaves a little to be desired by me. I would describe it as cool instead of warm like the color from my D40. The same thing I noticed when comparing my cousin’s D70 to my D40 earlier this year.

But it appears I’ve purchased a functional D70 at a fair price.

I closely compared pictures shot with BASIC, NORMAL and FINE JPEG compression and decided, as I did with my D40, to shoot in BASIC.

Why D70?

Why not a D80 or D300?

Reason 1: Because the D80 is presently ~$750 and the D300 is presently ~$1799. I can, and did, get a D70 (with lens!) for under $400.

Reason 2: Metering. According to Ken Rockwell, the D70’s meter is better than the D40 and D80’s. Wonderful.

What I really want is  D300 but I believe this D70 is an affordable step in the right direction. And I already wanted this particular lens (18-70) for times I’m walking a lot and my 18-200 VR is just too long to be hanging there, tipping my D40’s nose down all day. For those times, when I also don’t need the 200mm zoom, the 18-70 will be okay. I would also haven been happy with the 18-55 kit lens, but I sold that after I got the 18-200, desafortunadamente.

D70 + 18-70mm lens

I found a D70 with 18-70mm Nikkor lens for $500 on Craigslist this morning. I emailed the guy, offered him $430, heard back quickly and called him. Including a bag, battery, 2GB Ultra II CF card, some chargers and he threw in a USB CF reader.

The lens was scratched so I offered just $200 for the body. He asked how much for the whole deal including the scratched lens. $375. Deal.

I’m happy with the deal. According to Exif data from a pic I took, the D70 has about 7700 shutter actuations on it. Not bad — according to a D40 pic from about a month ago, my D40 has 18752 shutter actuations — and I’ve only had it since February this year (2007).

90-degree Gateway LCD rotation in OS X

Works great. There’s an option in the Displays preference pane for the Gateway 24″ monitor — found it today. Great. Rotated, it is ridiculously tall.

MacBook Pro -> me

My 15.4″ MacBook Pro is back from Apple. They definitely fixed the screen hinge clutch. Great. Had a little blue ink on top of the lid (not mine) but it rubbed right off.

I sent it back Monday and Apple got it back to me via DHL by early Thursday (today). That’s pretty good.

Gateway FHD2400 24″ LCD arrived.

The 24″ Gateway LCD arrived. It is very pretty. So far, I haven’t found a way to rotate the screen 90 degrees in OS X. Bummer!

How I rate my iTunes/iPod songs

Zero stars: Unrated

One star: Don’t like it. Uncheck it and don’t sync to either 40GB gen-4 iPod nor mini.

Two stars: Like it.

Three stars: Really like it.

Four stars: Love it.

Five stars: Totally love it.

Lost lens cap

I lost a 77mm Nikon lens cap Friday at Rumas restaurant. Bummer. I think they took it with the dirty plates. Bummer.

MacBook Pro -> Apple

DHL just picked up my 15.4″ MacBook Pro. Apple will fix the loose LCD hinge clutch and send it back to me. Today is Monday and I hope to have it back by or before Friday. In the meantime, I’ll use my Dell Vostro 1000 XP backup machine.

Gateway 24″ LCD

I just ordered a Gateway FHD2400 24″ LCD monitor for work. It’s about time. 1920×1200 and lots of inputs, including HDMI (mixed feelings about this interface) and DVI (good).

Ordered from Amazon, fulfilled by J&R.

FiOS is coming to my neighborhood.

I just got a notice on my door saying Verizon is laying fiber in my area. So FiOS is coming to my neighborhood!

Windows Feedback Program

Today, thanks to a link on stealdeals.net, I signed up for the Windows Feedback Program. The carrot was a free copy of Windows Vista Ultimate or Office Ultimate 2007. I chose Office. After three months, they say they’ll send me my copy of Office. We’ll see. If so, cool!

18-200VR report

I’ve been using my 18-200VR for months now. I’m very happy with it. Sharp, good color rendition, fast enough, no outward creep (creeps inward when pointed up but doesn’t creep outward when strapped to my neck. It could be faster but it’s already a miracle so I’m realistic about this. Auto focus is overall very nice. Sometimes the autofocus messes up, but I’m not sure what thats coming from. Could just be a low light issue.

Anyway, although I’d like something shorter for carrying around my neck (like an 18-70), this 18-200 really delivers for me. I can’t complain.

Funny Amazon review

http://www.amazon.co.uk/review/R3QR3AC2WXWHIT/ref=cm_cr_rdp_perm/

Speculating in manufacturers I use

If I’m going to do stock investing, I want it to include those companies that earn my business. For example, today I found that Garmin is doing great (stock value wise). I had never even checked into that.

Speed of XP in Parallels Desktop on MBP vs. Vostro 1000

I run Windows XP Pro daily in Parallels Desktop on a 15.4″ 2.16GHz Core 2 Duo MacBook Pro with 3GB of RAM and a 120GB hard drive. It runs just fine for how I use it (browsing VPN shares, editing Word document user’s guides, building things in Visual Studio. It runs great. Nothing I’ve tried feels slow.

I recently bought a backup notebook — a 15.4″ Dell Vostro 1000. 1.72GHz Athlon X2 with a 120GB hard drive running XP Home. I’ll tell you, XP feels faster in Parallels Desktop than it does on the Vostro. Nice!

Getting questions answered

I realized yesterday that I really like getting my questions answered.

First WordPress entry: I’m dumping blogger.com

I decided to dump blogger.com today. Bored like crazy with the templates, for one thing. Import to WordPress went awesome. I’m really considering setting up my own site again, this time using Joomla! But why suffer with Blogger.com in the meantime.

Bill Bryson, Author

Today I was introduced to the author, Bill Bryson, while reading this Jeffrey Friedl blog entry. Looking at his other titles on Amazon.com, I’m excited that here I might find a contemporary author I’ll really enjoy.

Sam Jones

Last night at BAM!, killing time before a film, I found the book The Here And Now: The Photographs of Same Jones. Holy cow! I loved it. I looked at every page. Unfortunately, I didn’t have $39.99 in my book budget. But Amazon’s got a better price, so perhaps I’ll pick a copy up there.

Auto ISO! (D40)

I just discovered the Auto ISO setting on my Nikon D40. Yes! I thought it was the same as the “Auto ISO” choice on the shooting menu. It really bothered me that I couldn’t choose Auto ISO in P mode. Well, it turns out I can! I just didn’t realize the darned camera had two identically-named but different settings. Awesome!

Thank you again, Ken Rockwell.

Firefox 3.0 beta 1

I just downloaded and installed the OS X version of Firefox 3.0 beta 1.

Nikon D300

I regularly dream of replacing my D40 body with a D300. But since I’m not presently making any money from photography, I don’t see how I can justify the $1799 price of a D300. Bummer.

Cyberduck OS X FTP client

I needed a real FTP client today. Instead of using Directory Opus (a great FTP client but Windows-only) in XP Pro in a Parallels Desktop virtual machine, I wanted an OS X client.

A quick Google search of “os x ftp” found Cyberduck. It’s donationware. I used it. It worked. Feature list on their website is pretty impressive.

If I wind up using it a lot, I’ll likely donate some money.

WOTD: nous (noos’)

Great word. In Britain, it means shrewdness.

Ref: http://reddit.com/info/61pnv/comments

Dell Vostro 1000

My Dell Vostro 1000 backup notebook arrived today. $399.99 plus tax (no shipping). Good deal.

AppleCare

The hinge of my MacBook Pro has been loose since about ten seconds after I got the Mac. So I’m finally sending it back for repair. I ordered a replacement box today. It should arrive tomorrow. We’ll see how long it takes to get it fixed.

Kayak

Yesterday I took delivery and paid for my new (used) Ocean Kayak brand Zest Two (not EXP model) ~16.5′ lime green tandem sit-on-top kayak. It is in great condition.

The person I bought it from will hopefully find (crossing my fingers but not holding my breath) a set of hully rollers and a saddle for it, too. I bought it for $425 from a nice guy in Homossassa. Found it on craigslist. Great transaction.

Took it out with JZ yesterday from the end of Ozello Road. Good day. After a couple hours of paddling, I expected to be really sore but I’m not.

Happy

I really enjoy life. I enjoy the freedom to enjoy life as I see fit.

I’m thankful for health, a safe, calm source of income to make many thing simple and my family. And friends. That’s the thing about money — it simplifies certain things.

Camino

I downloaded and installed Camino a minute ago because a guy mentioned it (http://www.mymacbookpro.net/) on his blog when I googled for “my macbook pro”.

AppleCare Protection Plan registered today

I finally registered my AppleCare Protection Plan for my MacBook Pro today.

Broken glass

Opening a one quart bottle of concentrated papaya juice, it exploded in my hands and cut them. It was a big surprise. The glass of the bottle was very thin.

Cat in the House

Leopard arrived. Going to install manana (Saturday). However, I found that the rock show I was going to didn’t start until 11pm tonight (not 9pm as I’d thought) so I installed Leopard (after a full backup) tonight. Went fine.

iPod battery replacement

Today my wife gave me her 4GB blue iPod mini. I set it up on my MacBook Pro. Nice.

I also replaced the battery in my 4G (fourth generation) 40GB iPod. It was easy.

First glimpse of Leopard

I ordered a Mac OS X 10.5 Leopard five-pack the other day. It hasn’t arrived. Today I went to the Apple Store at Int’l Plaza and checked it out. Very nice. Ran fast, too, on Macs comparable to mine. Great. iCal looks a lot nicer.

BlackBerry Curve 8320 GSM T-Mobile

My wife decided to take her paper calendars, paper address book and RAZR cell phone and roll them all into a smartphone. She wanted a BlackBerry Curve. (I showed her her choices about a week ago and she liked the look of the Curve above everything else I showed her.) Today she upgraded to the Curve.

My wife has a facebook account

I just discovered that my wife has a Facebook account. I don’t even have a Facebook account yet. Why did she get it? Because two friends of hers asked her to do it.

La Fonera Plus is live!

I took ten minutes — okay, fifteen — and plugged in my La Fonera + tonight. It’s working great. No hitches so far.

Fon arrived.

La Fonera and Fontenna arrived a few days ago. Faster than the three weeks I was told to expect when I ordered. Good deal.

3GB’s of RAM

My 2GB Crucial PC2-5300 SODIMM arrived today. Thanks, newegg!

I replaced the original 1GB SODIMM in my MacBook Pro with it. So now my MBP contains a 2GB Crucial SODIMM ($115) and a 1GB Crucial SODIMM ($25 after rebate, $45 before). Boy, does XP Pro run nicely in Parallels Desktop now!

The big reason I bought this extra gig of RAM was to run parallel XP Pro and XP Home virtual machines in Parallels. With just 2GB, my machine went absolutely nuts trying to do this. Now it works great — it’s one of the first things I tried.

iPod song count: 7259

I ripped perhaps 40 CDs into MP3s today. Current iPod song count: 7259

Loose MacBook Pro hinge

I’ve owned a 2.16GB Core 2 Duo 1GB 120GB 128MB MacBook Pro for about two months, perhaps three by now. Some time back the screen got a bit loose. It has a few degrees of travel that aren’t tight.

I brought it to the Apple Store at International Plaza mall in Tampa, Florida yesterday, Saturday, 6 October 2007. The guy at the Genius Bar told me there is a clutch in there that has to be replaced and Apple must do it — they cannot do it in the store. He told me to expect the computer to be gone 5-7 days. What!?! This is my work machine.

Dell will come to my house to fix a Dell notebook. I thought that getting a Mac would be great because I could just walk into the store and walk out with my notebook fixed if something should come up. I was wrong this time.

He said the condition is not degenerative and will not spread. That is, it will not get worse and so there is no rush bringing it in.

HP LaserJet 4 Plus (HPLJet 4+) fixed

I replaced the fuser roller in my HPLJet yesterday. Fifteen years or so and still going strong. About six of those years have been with me. It has a JetDirect 10BT network card and, if I recall correctly, 48MB of RAM.

Fon

I’d read about Fon some time ago. I’m not sure where. I was very interested. It works like this: You buy a wireless router for $50. You use it to share your wireless internet with other Fon users. Those users either pay Fon for the privilege or they have their own routers and they let people use it for free, in which case they can use any Fon routers for free themselves. Or they can get some money from Fon but then they have to pay (half off, I think) to use other Fon routers.

For me, they’re throwing in a wifi area extender antenna which is usually $20 for $2 when I buy the Fonera+ router at the same time. So for me, heck, if this just extends my home wifi signal, that has some value to me. But it’s really about sharing. What I’d really like to see is a countrywide (reasonable coverage, anyway) wireless mesh network connecting people to the internet for a small cost.

Fon is a step in the right direction.

[Not] Fingerprinted at Disney World

We went to Disney World in Orlando yesterday, Sunday, 30 September 2007. It was a nice day.

What surprised and dismayed me was the fingerprint scanner at the entrance. Just slide your card (ticket) in here, then put your finger (thumb, I guess) here on top. Uh… no, thanks, I’ll pass. And pass, I did. I tried putting the top of my bent finger on there (no print up top) a few times but it just spit out my ticket each time. So some guy came over and told me to put my finger on there. I told him, simply, “No.” He asked me at least one more time and I did not vary my response.

Eventually, he asked me if I have ID. Sure, I have ID. He asked me for my ID and to sign my Disney World ticket. Okay. I signed my ticket then handed it to him with my driver’s license and he inspected both in parallel, apparently confirming that the signatures matched.

Then he put the ticket back through the machine and keyed in something on a keypad on his side of the entrance-blocking, person-counting, ticket-confirming, fingerprint-taking machine. It didn’t work and the machine spit the ticket back out. He repeated this, reaching over and reinserting the ticket easily ten times or more. He surely tried every ticket orientation as he fed it into the machine — though, at my questioning, he told me he should be able to put the ticket in at any orientation.

Sometimes the machine held on to the ticket for a bit, probably expecing a fingerprint despite whatever he was keying in on his side. Sometimes it spit the ticket right out after it was inserted.

The guy then told me I needed a new ticket. So he brought me a new ticket and had me sign that new one then put it through the machine.

After we got in, a good friend we were there with remarked, “I’m already in the system.” And a few minutes later, my mother-in-law came up beside me and told me, “I didn’t know being fingerprinted was optional.” I replied, “Neither did I.”

I won’t be fingerprinted to attend an amusement park.

A quick google search of “disney fingerprinting” returned some interesting articles:

Google
Boing Boing
Engadget
http://newsinitiative.org/story/2006/09/01/walt_disney_world_the_governments

Canon ZR-200 camcorder battery

Ordered a new battery today. Camcorder sucks but its paid for and it does work. So I’m not going to buy a new camcorder at this time. But if I did, it’d probably be a Samsung jobbie that uses SD instead of MiniDV tapes.

Seiko SKX-031 arrived

The Seiko SKX-031K2 plus solid metal oyster bracelet arrived from Singapore today. The watch was disappointing but still nice. Not as nice as my SKX-007K2. The bezel spins in both directions (maybe okay) but it is mushy, not precise like the bezel on my 007.

And I thought the bezel would taper down at the sides, not be flat on top.

I’ll proably get this watch bead blasted and change the dial, etc. for fun. We’ll see.

NAS delivered

My D-Link DNS-323 NAS and Samsung 500GB drives were delivered today.
I’ll try to set them up tonight.

Empty Box Revisited

A few hours ago (Tuesday evening) I mentioned offhand to my wife that my DNS-323 order from NewEgg.com had shipped. She had no idea what I was talking about. After I leaned on her a bit, she said, “Oh, the empty box!” and laughed.

MacBook Pro Love

I love my Mac! I’m not ashamed to gush. I’ve had it a month or two now and I’m in love.

Path Finder isn’t everything that Directory Opus is in Windows. Oh, well.

TextExpander isn’t everything ShortKeys is in Windows (no date math in TE). Oh, well.

And the [Home] and [End] keys just do… I don’t even know what they do in OS X yet. But they suck in everything I’ve tried except NeoOffice.

The speakers aren’t loud enough. Oh, well.

I don’t really use Dashboard.

I just started using Expose for real today. And I assigned the top-right hot corner to it because sometimes (depending on what apps are open, I suppose) [F9] doesn’t invoke Expose. Using Expose is a lot nicer than my old method (c. yesterday) of minimizing things I didn’t want to use for a while, like three NeoOffice docs at a time.

The touchpad is tits.

The two-finger X and Y axis scrolling is awesome.

The keyboard isn’t bad. The backlit keys are nice, though I’ve only needed them just now (can’t sleep) for the first time since getting the Mac. And I’m hardly using them but they’re nice and they do help a bit.

I could use another gig of RAM to get me to 3GB (the max for this machine). Because when I have my normal set of OS X apps open plus XP Pro (in Parallels) and XP Home (in Parallels) things get slow. Boo hoo.

I’ll tell you what, I’m glad I came home to Macintosh.

"So it’s basically just an empty box."

I showed my wife a picture of the D-Link DNS-323 NAS (drives not included) a minute ago as it’ll be arriving soon. I told her, trying to keep it simple, that it’s, “basically a hard drive.” “How much?” “$171.00. And then you add the drives.” “So basically it’s just an empty box.”

NAS

I just bought a D-Link DNS-323 two-bay NAS enclosure and two 500GB Samsung SATA drives. I was very close (as in, waiting for my wife to wake up from her nap so I can go to Circuit City) to buying a Buffalo LinkStation Live 500GB single-bay (drive included) enclosure until I re-read the Amazon.com user reviews, some of which complained about customer service speed and device failures. I always take user complaints with a grain of salt, but I had a bad feeling here — the bad customer service reviews seemed, well, credible and representative.

I believe I made the right choice. I need

1. Fast reads/writes (not especially large files)
2. iTunes MP3 hosting
3. Backup to external USB drive automatically (don’t know if the D-Link does this but it’s mostly offset by the fact that I can put TWO SATA drives in it vs. one drive in the Buffalo)

Sesame Street

My daughter, by chance, is watching Sesame Street right now for the first time. Muted, since I’m working and I’d rather she wasn’t watching TV at all. But she turned it on herself, as usual, and it happened to be tuned to WEDU (public channel).

She is rapt. She occasionally turns to me with a big smile, points to the TV and says something happily.

iPod short

My 4G 40GB white iPod has a short-circuit. If you touch the top with a moist finger, you’ll get a little buzz. Nice. Maybe that’s related to the problem whereby I have to toggle the Hold switch on-then-off before I can use the wheel.

My Apple release hopes for today

Apple has an event today.

I hope Apple

1. Releases a touchscreen iPod with a hard drive.
2. Includes wifi in that iPod so I can use it instead of a Nokia N800.
3. Makes it the same price as current iPods.

Money v. contract services

Since when is money more important than services delivered for that money?

For example, a contractor may sign an NDA and a non-compete agreement to get a gig. And perhaps agree to binding arbitration instead of using the courts.

Why would someone sign away their right to communicate or compete or pursue legal recourse just to get a certain job? Certainly, I can see how there would be circumstances that would make it worth the contractor’s while to agree to those restrictions. But it’d have to be a sweet deal.

What could be done to balance such restrictions? What requirements could a contractor put in a contractor put in his agreement?

One thing this reaffirms: He who writes the contract wins. So maybe contractors should write their own contracts. That’s an idea.

If a client or employer won’t sign the contractor’s contract in lieu of their own contract, then the contractor needs them more than they need him. Maybe that’s a bad situation for the contractor to be in. Move on if you can afford to.

Harry Potter

My wife finished reading Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone today. She gets to work early and reads.

Path Finder 4.7.2

A few minutes ago I purchased Path Finder 4.7.2. for OS X. I evaluated it. I don’t like that it seems so slow to load (and thus slows my login process) and I had a little trouble with it conflicting with The Missing Sync (once) but it’s just can’t-live-without-it-ware. In Windows, I can’t live without Directory Opus. In OSX, I can’t live without Path Finder.

MacBook Pro

On Thursday, 19 July 2007, I found a buyer for my Dell 17″ XP Pro notebook and immediately purchased its replacement, a 15.4″ 2.16GHz 1GB Core 2 Duo 120GB OS X 10.4.10 Tiger notebook. Overnight shipping so I could start setting it up that following Sunday.

So far, so good. Parallels Desktop 3.0 runs great.

Ordered another 1GB of RAM (Crucial DDR2-5300 (667MHz)) from NewEgg right away. It arrived today and I installed it without a hitch.

The keyboard layout ( keys not next to spacebar, for example) is a hassle. But XP runs fast in Parallels.

MacBook Pro

Found a buyer for my 17″ Dell Inspiron 9300 notebook yesterday. Ordered its replacement, a 15.4″ 2.16GHz Core 2 Duo 120GB 1GB glossy screen MacBook Pro. I need to get hopping setting it up ASAP so I ordered it for overnight delivery today, Friday.

Ratatouille

Saw Ratatouille last night. Amazing.

Memory upgrades

Screw it. I upgraded the RAM in my Inspiron 9300 from 1GB (2 x 512MB) to 2GB (2 x 1GB) Crucial DDR2-533 PC-4200. This started with a deal from Frys I found on dealnews.com. And I need to upgrade the 256MB of RAM in the Dimension 4700 as it’s going to be a file server soon. And perhaps an SVN server. =) 1GB extra for that baby (Corsair).

Once the new notebook memory is working, I’ll sell the old stuff, I guess.

1TB MyBook World Edition II hard drive (Yuck!)

Today Best Buy had the Western Digital MyBook World Edition II hard drive for $329.99. That’s my breaking point. I bought one. I haven’t set it up yet. I’ll probably use it as a pair of 500GB RAID 1 (mirrored) drives.

27 June 2007 update: This kit has some serious problems.

1. The ability to share files over the internet is based on a service, which means if that company (MioNet) goes away or drops support for my device, I’m out of luck. No, thanks.
2. The MioNet software doesn’t recognize the drive, although I can browse it on the network with Explorer. I even mapped it to a drive letter.
3. The MioNet software won’t accept a password with any special symbols in it. the only chars allowed are alpha and numeric. This bothers me.
4. The delivered backup software (EMC2’s Retrospect Express HD) reports that there is no space on device, even when I tried repeatedly to backup a directory with just 118KB of files in it. Geez.
5. The best speed I got to this thing (up or down) was 1.9MB/sec. That’s not fast enough. I have a 1GB drive to backup daily. Even if I’m just moving deltas, it’ll be slooooow. But that’s moot if I can’t backup to this drive because of errors from Retrospect.
6. I’d like to have a swap-out drive on-hand. I couldn’t find this on WD’s web site. Nice. Perhaps I have to call Support to order one. No, thanks.
7. The fan runs constantly, though I have only been actively accessing the drive occasionally.

The good news: Setting it up as RAID 1 (mirroring) was easy.

This drive is going back to Best Buy. I’m going to get a Western Digital MyBook Premium (FireWire400/USB2.0) 500GB drive instead, from Amazon.com, for about $175 with free shipping and no sales tax.

D40 + 18-200 VR

I’m very happy with this combination. My Nikon D40 is a nice, inexpensive body for this better-than-just-nice 18-200mm VR Nikkor lens.

The lens would probably feel more at home on a D200 body, but I don’t have trouble with all that weight on the front of my diminutive D40 — I just keep a good grip on the lens.

I don’t yet have an opinion to share about the optical quality of the lens.

Nikkor 18-200 VR on the way

RitzCamera.com notified me via email on 11 May 07 that my Nikkor 18-200 VR lens has shipped! I didn’t see the email until today. I am e x c i t e d !

What’s so good about this lens? See what Ken Rockwell has to say here.

theBoom headset

I work from home. Sometimes I have my young daughter with me. She’s great. She plays around the house by herself. The only time she consistenly starts to make noise is when I’m on the phone. That’s not good for business.

Today was the final straw when my boss’s boss asked my wife when we were going to put my daughter in day care? Why?, she asked. Because I can’t talk to [your husband] anymore.

If my daughter was always as loud and needy as she acts when I’m on the phone, I’d find another solution. But the fact is, I get a lot done and she doesn’t distract me from my work. But I need a solution for when I’m on the phone — both for good relations/impressions and so she can’t interrupt my calls with noise.

Enter: theBoom. I’ve known about UweVoice’s theBoom line of headsets since August 2006 but I couldn’t justify the price to myself. I mentioned it to my wife today and we both immediately agreed that it was a must. These headsets are purported to have the best noise-canceling microphones going.

I ordered a theBoom V4, an over-the-ear headset (149.99), and a theBoom Quiet, a set of active noise reduction (ANR) full-size headphones with an removable theBoom microphone for telephone calls for $279.99. I’ll keep whichever I prefer.

It seems to me the Quiet will also let me tune out external noise allowing me to work uninterrupted in any part of the house, even if that’s on the sofa while someone is watching a movie. I don’t plan to use the ANR when I’m alone with my little girl but when we’re not alone (so she’s being watched by someone else) it might be nice to be able to tune everything out. The theBoom Quiet also come with a nice travel case, fold up nicely and will hopefully be very nice headphones for listening to music too.

18-200 VR advance accessories

I’m waiting on RitzCamera to get a Nikkor 18-200 VR lens in stock and fulfill my order. No rush but, really, please hurry, guys.

I want to have a UV filter ready when it arrives. But I want a 77mm UV filter as that is the professional standard, according to KenRockwell.com and at least one other source.

That means I need a 72mm-to-77mm step-up ring. Okay. $20 from Adorama.

Hoya HMC multicoated UV filter (recommended by Ken) on Adorama: $40 and change.

77mm Nikon lens cap: Almost $20.

Hey, while I’m ordering, why not order a Nikon ML-L3 infra-red remote for my D40. About $20 more.

Total bill: $101.90. Whew.

A Gap in sensibility

I was shooting flash photos of my one-year-old girl in Gap yesterday with my D40. I started snapping them over on the baby side of the store and followed her over into the adult half of the store through the wide connecting corridor. My wife was shopping a few feet from us at this point when a woman representing the store asked me not to shoot photos in the store. I asked why (more than once.) She said it’s “a legality” and offered no other data.

I honored her request and stopped shooting pictures. I made no effort to put my camera away.

Who else has experienced this with any retailers?

Nikkor 50mm f/1.8D

I just ordered this lens from Amazon. It won’t autofocus on my D40 but it’ll probably be a good lens anyway. And for the price of $109.99 it’s not worth waiting and hoping for an AF-S version.

iPod additions

I bought my wife an iPod Shuffle (blue) as an early anniversary gift. She wanted it. I was excited.

The levels of her CD-ripped MP3s varied enormously. And it looks like Sound Check isn’t supported on the Shuffle.

Enter: iPod Mini

Last weekend (today is Monday) we were visiting my family. I found my youngest brother had a Zune. So I asked him what came of his old 4GB iPod Mini (blue). He said the battery is totally dead. Okay, can I have it? Sure. He gave me the Mini plus a FireWire cable and the 110V A/C adapter it connects to.

I ordered a new battery for $17 from laptopsforless.com. I also got a battery for my 40GB 4G iPod for the same price and got free shipping, saving me $7.00. Good deal!

18-200 VR

At Adorama’s recommendation, I refused delivery of the 55-200 AF-S Nikkor lens because Nikon announced a VR version of it for $250.

But any 55-200 is really a compromise. What I want is the 18-200 VR. I placed an order for it with RitzCamera.com for $749.99 about a week ago. Free shipping and no sales tax. I hope to receive it in three months.

I’m waiting for Nikon to produce a 50mm f/1.8 AF-S. I need it AF-S so it will autofocus on my D40. I’m not holding my breath. Maybe I should just get a D200.

SB-400 flash

My birthday gift from my spouse is a Nikon SB-400 bounce-capable flash. It arrived today.

Fastidious

Today’s word is fastidious. Thanks to Maggie Gyllenhaal in Stranger Than Fiction. What a fine word, indeed.

Nikkor 55-200mm AF-S lens

I bought this lens just now from Adorama.com for $169.95 plus shipping, totaling $176.90. The same total price as at Amazon.com (who offer it for $176.94 but free Super Saver slow shipping.) I figure this way a) I’ll give some business to Adorama instead of Amazon; and b) I’ll get it a little faster.

See Ken Rockwell’s review and okay reviews from Amazon and Adorama customers.

This lens’ purpose is to hold me over until I can buy this 18-200mm lens without a six-month wait. The 18-200 will be $750 bucks but a) it will keep dust off my CCD since I’ll seldom need to change lenses; b) it will have VR (seemingly useful at 2oomm); c) it will have a slightly wider maximum aperture; d) it will have manual-focus-override-on-demand; e) it will have an easier-to-grab focus ring.

Shooting a lot with this 55-200 will show me which of those 18-200 benefits are really important to me.

D40 arrived

My Nikon D40 arrived last Thursday, 15 February 2007. I’m impressed. I still prefer some things about the D80 but for over twice the price (for the body) it’s not in the cards until I really increase my photography volume.

Phone headset

The Plantronics MX-150 that I picked up a few weeks ago at Office Depot for $10 (deal!) stopped working last week. I believe my daughter sucked it to death.

Replacement: $27.99 Plantronics MX-505 (skin color) from the same Office Depot. We’ll see how it goes. Presently, it seems to add some noise to calls.

Digital cameras

Digital cameras I’ve owned

1. Polaroid for $99 (junk, returned within days)
2. Kodak something ($250 or so, returned when I saw it had a feature to add a “frame” to images in-camera. Too Disney.)
3. Nikon Coolpix 800 (2MP). Great camera Made the mistake of checking it in my baggage going to Baltimore. Result: Broken Coolpix 800.
4. Olympus E-10 (4MP). Ebay $400 or so. Nice camera. But slow to shoot and horribly slow to review stored pictures. No removable lenses.
5. Casio S500 (5MP). Nice camera. But slow — we miss too many shots with it.
6. Nikon D40. Hasn’t arrived yet.

"Press Cancel when asked to enter your PIN."

When I use my debit/Visa check card at a retailer, there is a common thing that I considered a bug: It prompts me to enter my PIN and there is often no clear way — I have to ask the attendant — to perform the transaction as a Visa check card purchase. Well, apparently, the retailers prefer that I use debit — and they make it non-obvious how to use Visa.

http://clarkhoward.com/shownotes/2007/01/19/#debit

I love my cell phone plan.

I previously wrote about my great deal with Virgin Mobile in June 2004.

I now have an even better deal.

I bought a used, Cingular-branded Treo 650 on eBay for about $260. I paid about $20 to unlock it.

Why is it better? It is cheaper per call. Not exactly cheaper annually (for me) but cheaper per call for sure.

What’s on my Treo 650 smartphone

Phone
ChatterEmail (evaluating and loving it)
Docs2Go (free with Treo 650)
KeyCaps600 (really the misnamed 650 version)
LEDOff (free)
Lock Time (free)
PassGen (free)
PktQuicken
pTunes Basic
Radio State (free)
SharkMsg (not used yet) (free)
SoftReset (free)
SoundRec (free)
VeriChat (evaluating it) (free)
WatchM (free)

SD Card
BestBuy (free)
Converter (free)
Dir Assist (free)
FileProg (free)
FileZ (free)
FlightStatus (free)
GoogleMaps (free)
HolidayUSA (free)
LEDOff (free)
Minibar (free)
MiniTones (amazing) (free)
Minutes PLUS (free)
Noah Pro (free)
NVBackup (free)
Obfuscate (doesn’t work well for me) (free)
PalmPDF (not really used yet) (free)
pssh (not used) (free)
SharkBtn (free)
SharkMsg (free)
TCPMP (awesome) (free)
Tide Tool (corruption in my region’s maps. Boo hoo.) (free)

Car GPS

Today I purchased a Garmin C330 GPS from Amazon.com.

I did most of my initial research on this GPS for a friend who wanted a birthday gift for her husband, who is also a friend. This was in August or so.

I found it for her for $400 at CompUSA plus a $100 mail-in rebate, advertised in a Sunday paper insert. As of a month ago, they still hadn’t received the rebate.

About three weeks ago I actually used this GPS in my friend’s SUV. Wow! I was very impressed.

Now it’s time to get one for myself. Amazon has it for $299.99 (no anti-customerrebates) today so I bought it. The lesser model (C320) is okay too but I like having all the maps preloaded and I don’t like the idea of my maps falling out if the SD card gets jostled when its in a rucksack.

This GPS has two big drawbacks: No user-replaceable battery and no lookup or display of coordinates. It’s all address-based for the user.

And this GPS has one big missing feature: It doesn’t read the names of your streets/exits. You have to upgrade one model for that feature. For the price I’m paying, the thing should read to me.

Low-energy lighting

Reddit turned me onto this article today. That interested me. I googled and found this page.

I immediately loaded the family in the car and took off for Home Depot to buy some compact fluorescent bulbs (CFLs). They were cheaper than I expected so I bought enough for the entire house.

So far, very nice. We’ll see what it does to my electric bill.

Next step: Turn thermostat on my electric water heater down to low/120^.

Lead, not led

I want to have bigger problems. Specifically, I want to employ others to handle the small stuff. Then I can deal with only the amount of detail I want to. Create layers of survival.

Furthermore, if others’ survival depends on helping me survive, that’s great. That’s part of the employer dynamic.

Why carry a gun?

Someone who’d considered it himself asked me yesterday why I carry a concealed firearm wherever I go.

I’m used to this question from people who haven’t considered it themselves so I never bothered to formulate a cogent answer.

So yesterday I had to take my position apart and analyze it.

I also carry a knife and I’m not a small man so I have other things going for me in a altercation with a criminal or psycho. I also travel with a heavy flashlight or small aluminum bat to hand.

I prepare for various scenarios and degrees of danger, though I don’t pretend I’m prepared for every eventuality.

I want to cover the gamut. Constant awareness, avoidance, calling for help, voice, fist, knee to groin, fingers into eye sockets, bat/club, breaking bones, cutting and, if it comes to it, firearm to counter an unavoidable, comparable threat to my person or my family.

But to synopsize it: I want to be prepared for anything; and I want to be the most dangerous factor in my environment.

Capitalism, the Unfortunate Product of Capitalism

I was thinking about the unfortunate bloated, overreaching (domestically) state of the U.S. government. It has fallen so far from the goals set forth by its founding fathers in well-known historical documents like the Constitution.

And today I was having conversations with MarkT and ChrisB about the vast control business/corporations have over the United States government.

And I just realized something that may not be a big surprise. The effect of a capitalist state is: Capitalism!

The problem is we have a Republic. Did our founding fathers want corporations to run the goverment? Probably not. Did they put suitable (infallible) safeguards in place to prevent it? In my opinion, no.

What does the Constitution say about capitalism?

Plumber’s Bag

I bought this leather bag today.

I’ve been courting the idea of buying one for over a year now, since I read about it in some internet article.

Paulette told me, after I ordered, that it was the last one they had.

I’m looking forward to its arrival.

Treo duo

I inherited a T-Mobile-locked Treo 600 a few weeks ago. Very nice device. But, being used to the screen of a Palm TX, the low-resolution, low-color screen and read-only v6 of Documents to Go (instead of Professional v7 on Treo 650 and Palm TX) on the 600 bothered me.

I immediately bought a T-Mobile-to-Go Nokia 6010 for the SIM card and popped the SIM card in the Treo. It worked great. It’s a good little phone. The speaker reverberates a bit but that may be a sign of long, hard use before I inherited it.

The T-Mobile-to-Go prepaid cellular plan I got was quite nice. Much better than Cingular’s current offerings. For $100 (plus price of phone, purchased separately but on the same receipt) I have 12 months to use 1,000 minutes. For me, that’s ample. I’d rather see someone in person than talk to them on the cell phone. And I don’t like talking to people in public places — I think that belongs somewhere more private. So this phone is mostly an emergency and convenience phone.

I considered getting a second 600 for my wife. For a while, I planned on us using a pair of 600s. After a lot of consideration and searching on eBay, I decided the limitations listed above were going to bother me until I upgraded. So I picked up a Treo 650 used on eBay for a good price ($266 shipped). Cingular-branded so add $19.99 to the price to get it unlocked.

The phone arrived in pristine condition.

Talking to T-Mobile about the possibility of getting internet access on my prepaid plan, I discovered the T-Mobile-to-Go plan includes “T-Zones” for free, which is billed as including “email, mobile web” and more. But the settings T-Mobile gave me for setting it up didn’t work.

A major bonus: After spending hours on the phone with T-Mobile and searching the web (mostly Howard Forums) I found proxy settings that allow me to browse the web nicely. I’m very happy.

If eBay cared about buyers

If eBay really cared about buyers, it would log item Description and end price with every Feedback entry. This way after auctions have expired (no longer available) users would be able to distinguish between a seller who successfully sold 2000 $1 Dell coupons from a seller who sold 2000 high-price items successfully.

As it is, an unscrupulous seller can build up their eBay Feedback selling cheap junk perfectly and then, after waiting for those auctions to expire, sell a big ticket item and defraud the buyer who thought the seller was an established, reliable, major eBay player.

To fight this slightly, I describe the exact item and purchase price in every Feedback entry I write as an eBay buyer.

Nonfood

Does McDonald’s serve food? Depends. What’s your definition of “food”?

I recommend the film Super Size Me: http://www.supersizeme.com/

Don’t reinvent the wheel.

The fact that you can write your own software doesn’t mean you should.

For example, if you’re in the landlording business and you *happen* to have some database authoring experience, does that mean you should write your own software to run your business? Probably not. You’ll probably get more ROI from finding good software from someone else who makes a living developing the kind of software you need. Ex: http://www.landlordmax.com/

If you’re a software developer, you *should* eat your own dogfood. Meaning, you should use your software in-house.

But this is the flipside of that. It’s the food eating the dog.

If you need software for something, there’s an increasingly good chance someone makes a commercial grade product that will suit your needs. Just because they can make it profitably doesn’t mean you (with one customer) can do the same.

This also applies to software developers. If you can get a well-tested, off-the-shelf library to give your software, e.g. regular expression support, why not buy and use that? It’s probably better than writing and maintaing — forever — your own regex solution.

So the message for the would-be landlord and software developer is: Don’t reinvent the wheel.

P.S. If you can get the source, pay a little extra and get it. It’ll save the day in case your vendor ever goes out of business or upgrades their offering beyond what you need (and want to pay for). So you get the best of both worlds. Plus it’s helpful to see how things work.

More MP3s

Current iPod track count: 5318

Windows software recommendations

Text editor: UltraEdit
Windows Explorer replacement: Directory Opus
File/Directory comparisons: Beyond Compare
Text auto-typer: ShortKeys

AdSense approved

I just received the AdSense activation email from Google. Now my AdSense account is up and running.

Current iPod track count: 4978.

AdSense

I signed up for Google AdSense today.

Advice

Sneak out of work now

Public apathy

Talk is cheap

Show it, don’t say it. Don’t make excuses, fix your mistakes.

Kibosh the wash

Inspired by this article, I’m going to see how my hair does being washed with water alone for an extended period of time (weeks.)

Started yesterday.

Numeracy is key to computer literacy.

The heading is stark. My point is that numeracy — the ability to express oneself in quantitative terms — is a key mental barrier to deep computer proficiency.

I consider numeracy a barrier to entry to real conceptual understanding of computers.

The relationship between integrity and competence

A man with integrity cannot be wholly unreliable.

A man without integrity is worse than incompetent.

My scale of qualifications, from first to last, is

Integrity
Reliability
Competence (suitability)

A note on quality

To me, something that improves with use is truly a quality item.

For example, cast iron cookware.

This is a quality that life possesses too. The ability of living things improves with their experience.

Netflix discrimination may lose them their best asset: Mouthy customers

I am a big Netflix proselytizer. I pay $19.25 a month (after tax) to get “unlimited” DVD rentals per month, 3 DVDs at a time. My wife gets two of the movies and I get one.

I also take every opportunity to sway people away from Blockbuster.

My wife has repeatedly complained to me that the delivery of our Netflix rentals has slowed down this year. I brushed her off every time, attributing it to the speed of USPS postal service delivery in our new town.

Then today I read this.

Then I read a section of their terms of use stating

In determining priority for shipping and inventory allocation, we give priority to those members who receive the fewest DVDs through our service. As a result, those subscribers who receive the most movies may experience that (i) the shipment of their next available DVD occurs at least one business day following return of their previously viewed movie, (ii) delivery takes longer, as the shipments may not be processed from their local distribution center and (iii) they receive movies lower in their queue more often than our other subscribers. Other factors that may affect delivery times, include, but are not limited to, (i) the distance between the distribution center from which your DVD was shipped and your delivery address, (ii) the timing of your placement or adjustment of movies in your queue and (iii) circumstances impacting delivery by the U.S. Postal Service.

1. I’m pissed off that they’re throttling me.

2. I’m pissed of that I wasn’t notified of the modified terms of service.

3. I’m thinking about dropping Netflix.

4. I’m considering jumping ship over to Blockbuster.

Fix this, Netflix. The people who use you the most may not make you much or any money in their monthly rental fees, but they’ve got big mouths and a lot of friends who follow their recommendations.

You’re going to have a big problem if you don’t stop this customer discrimination. If you travel down this road, your customer satisfaction rating is going to go from sky-high to the pits — down where Best Buy is.

Most likely, Netflix is not going to get my money any more.

Netflix waste

I resolve to watch my Netflix movie the day it comes in and return it in the following day’s post. BOCTAOE.

Providence favors the provident.

Mark Cuban’s investing advice for 2006.

Peers vs. serfs (RAQ on minutiae)

I’m really not happy with an important thing: The stress on programming minutiae. See Paul Graham’s RAQ “How can I avoid turning into a pointy-haired boss?” at http://paulgraham.com/raq.html to find out how I believe things should run.

Clark on working from home

Work-from-home jobs on the rise
You are going to find more opportunities to work full-time or part-time from your home in the years to come. It�s known in the industry as having a �remote workplace.� Some employers, of course, won�t consider it at all. Others are at the other extreme and will do everything they can to encourage people to work from their homes. Companies that jump into the trend with both feet have come up with solid procedures to monitor your work and save tons of money with work-at-home programs. Sun Microsystems has about half of its workforce at home now and has saved $300 million a year as a result. The company doesn�t need office space, computer or phones, so it saves a ton of money. Another technology company, Agilent, has closed 50 U.S. sales offices and reduced their cost by 60 percent. About 12 percent of U.S. workers are now working remotely, and as many as 40 percent are expected to work at least part-time from home in the next few years. Everyone benefits. So, what�s the disadvantage of working from home? You may end up working too much. And, showing your face around the boss and other people at work is always advantageous. But the new mantra in the workplace seems to be: “If you want to keep them, let them go.”

Escapa is amazo

This is amazing. I was laughing out loud the whole time.

http://www.iol.ie/~dluby/escape.htm

"Not now, Ren."

12/16/2005 2:56:10 PM [me]: Ren and Stimpy were gay! Did you know?
12/16/2005 2:56:14 PM [me]: I thought it was just Ren.
12/16/2005 2:56:19 PM [O]: I know
12/16/2005 2:56:28 PM [me]: Funny. Stimpy didn’t look gay.
12/16/2005 2:56:43 PM [O]: Yeah only retarted
12/16/2005 2:56:52 PM [me]: yeah
12/16/2005 2:57:04 PM [O]: Yeah

Turn off the router at night.

http://www.pcmag.com/article2/0,1895,1886740,00.asp

iTunes tip

I just started using iTunes (version x) in Windows XP. I used to use GTKpod in Gentoo Linux. I ripped most of my CDs with Grip in Linux.

When I started using iTunes, I turned on the option to “automatically manage my music files,” which means iTunes will rename the music files to match changes made in iTunes (by you or by iTunes itself.)

For some reason, the MP3 file metadata created by Grip (maybe all, maybe only some of it) was not recognized by iTunes. So I had a good fifth of my music collection in iTunes show up with only song name, Genre and Track number. Bummer. But the real bad part is that iTunes more those files from their “artist\album” directory into “Unknown Artist\Unknown Album\” directory. =(

Checking properties of these files showed that the song information is still in the file. Good news! But a little late for perfection. I selected those songs and chose “Convert ID3 Tag…” Then I chose and applied it. It sucked all that great metadata out of my files, but too late for maintaining their original, perfect directory structure. Those files are now still stuck in “Unknown Artist\Unknown Album\”. Not good. I will probably move them eventually (by hand.)

Why is this bad? For one thing, it’s not consistent with the other files I have that are filed right.

But more importantly, I USED to have all my downloaded music stored in a unique folder (in Linux) named “gnutella” — named after the file sharing program I downloaded them with.

Now my paid music files are intermixed with those downloaded files. Not a good scene for me. I’m not a big music downloader. If I like an artist’s work (sampled from a downloaded file or files) then I usually buy their album. I became a big Coldplay fan through this model. But now it won’t be possible to differentiate these files with perfect accuracy.

Wait! It will — those files I ripped have a Comment value saying “Ripped by Grip.” I’ll know all the downloaded files (unless the person who originally ripped them used Grip too) by their lack of this tag.

Let that be a lesson to you.

Do a “Convert ID3 Tags…” on your music in iTunes BEFORE turning on “Let iTunes manage my music files.”

Today’s words

upset (v)

in-kind

manifold (adj)

Stranger in a Strange Land

I’m listening to Leon Russell’s Stranger in a Strange Land. Good stuff. Great lyrics:

How many days has it been
Since I was born
How many days until I die
Do I know any ways
That I can make you laugh
Or do I only know how to make you cry

When the baby looks around him
It’s such a sight to see
He shares a simple secret
With the wise man

He’s a stranger in a strange land
Just a stranger in a strange land
Tell me why
He’s a stranger in a strange land
Just a stranger in a strange land

How many miles will it take
To see the sun
And how many years until it’s done
Kiss my confusion away in the night
Lay by side when the morning comes

And the baby looks around him
And shares his bed of hay
With the burrow in the palace of the king

He’s a stranger in a strange land
Tell me why
He’s a stranger in a strange land
Just a stranger in a strange land

Well, I don’t exactly know
What’s going on in the world today
Don’t know what there is to say
About the way the people are treating
Each other, not like brothers

Leaders take us far away from ecology
With mythology and astrology
Has got some words to say
About the way we live today
Why can’t we learn to love each other
It’s time to turn a new face
To the whole world wide human race

Stop the money chase
Lay back, relax
Get back on the human track
Stop racing toward oblivion
Oh, such a sad, sad state we’re in
And that’s a thing

Do you recognize the bells of truth
When you hear them ring
Won’t you stop and listen
To the children sing
Won’t you come on and sing it children

He’s a stranger in a strange land
Just a stranger in a strange land

Musicians are my favorite people, after girls.

Girls, girls, girls

Girls are my favorite people. Really. They make no sense, but they’re god’s creatures. Heaven on earth. Men are just there to create energy by the space created between them and women. Else, things would be too alkaline to be interesting.

Waste

I don’t understand
Why replace the
Unbroken parts

If it aint broke
Don’t fix it,
Just throw it away

It don’t take
A new one to
Replace the shine

Replace your own
This one’s mine.

Song

I thought I’d write
A song for my daughter
A song I hope
Someday you’ll hear

…. dear

Our problems are few
And hopes are high

Waiting for you to come
Into and bless our lives

I thought I’d give
You a song as my first
Gift to you

Giving me the best gift
Is the first thing you’ll do

iBook

I want a Macintosh iBook laptop. PowerBook would be okay too, but if I’m paying it’ll be an iBook.

Skype around

I’ve used Skype a little. A week or two ago I purchased a $10 SkypeOut credit. I’m happy with that service. I’m looking forward to it including 911 emergency service.

Right after I bought the Skypeout credit, I bought three months of SkypeIn service (including a telephone number.) So far, that has been pretty good. I’ve missed some calls and voice mail has been at least a little delayed showing up as as a new event in the Skype console, but overall satisfactory for a Beta product. And a good price too.

Best of all: No hidden phone company fees.

What business can learn from open source

http://www.paulgraham.com/opensource.html

Comandante

I cleaned up a lot of ID3 tags just now. Going to see War of the Worlds at 11:30.

Current iPod track count: 2589.

Signing email

Is signing emails really necessary? I’m not referring to digital signatures which have clear benefits. I’m referring to putting my name at the bottom of every single thing I say.

That information is already in the From: field of the header so is it really necessary to repeat it? I like it for a few reasons:

- As long as it is personally typed (not auto-inserted like so many irritatingly large signatures accumulating redundantly at the bottom of long email threads) it shows that the person really finished typing and didn’t press the Send button too soon. Minimal benefit.

- It provides a little personalization. You may sign emails differently to different recipients in different contexts.

- In a long quoted thread, especially between mail clients which don’t indicate quoted text in same exact way as each other, it shows more clearly who wrote each passage since the signature is indented with its passage.

- It’s comforting.

I’m going to try not signing email for a while.

Dinnur

Had a nice dinner with Chris and Marr tonight at the Thirsty Marlin. I had the “CHOKER” — a 12″ hot dog. The name was even better than that, but it escapes me.

Driving along with Storm Front playing from my iPod was the highlight of my week.

Gentoo Linux wifi

Got an Atheros chipset-based 802.11g PCI card working in my desktop machine Sunday. That was painless (after toiling for seven hours Saturday with an 802.11b PCI card that I never did get to work. $60 well spent for the ‘g’ card — no hassle. Thanks, D-Link. It’s a DWL-G520.

$econd sonogram

My wife got an elective second sonogram today to confirm the baby’s health and gender.

Still a girl, they firmly estimate.

Healthy. Great heart rate. She is 18cm long (confirm with wife) and 1′ 4oz (confirm with wife).

$75 for a little convenience (the gender). I don’t care about that convenience. I don’t want to barrage my child with sonar any more than I absolutely have to confirm her health. Glad that’s over. I had trouble sitting through the first one; I didn’t attend this one.

Insurance discount

Big day. Almost a month ago I traded my 2001 Honda Accord in for a 2001 Toyota Rav4. I had yet to put it on my insurance as the first time I called their system was down.

Today I sold my R6. Title work all done, the buyer came by to pick it up around 10pm.

While I was on the phone adding the Rav4 to my coverage, I let them know I got married. And I removed the motorcycle from my policy.

All said, using round numbers, my insurance went from $1500+ for 6 months to $590 for six months. What?!? Really. Kee-rist!

At 11:30pm the power went out. It’s fixed now.

Athlon 64

I’m seriously considering upgrading to an Athlon 64 processor. I found a well-reviewed motherboard on newegg.com for $176.

I wonder if a dual-Athlon 64 setup will give me any substantial benefits.

2525

Current iPod track count: 2525.

Put a bunch of Sam Cooke on there. Two Wilco albums to see if I like them. And heaven knows what else made up the 300+ new tracks.

Roman Holiday

We watched Roman Holiday in its entirety on television last night. Great film.

Why weight belts beat weight-integrated BCs

read the article here.

Saltwater dive

I took my first saltwater dives yesterday. Dove off of the Sea Fox, a 50-footer moored at Dunedin Marina. Two dives.

I still need to get my dive data from Shawn for my logbook.

Independence isn’t the word

I’ve come to realize that the thing from which I derive the most joy is my own self-determinism. It’s not what I do with that self-determinism but simply that I can and do exercise it. And, even that, only when I choose to, which resolves to always.

It’s not the fact that I can do X or have item Y or say phrase Z, though there is some pleasure to be derived from those things. It is that I can choose when and whether I will do X or have item Y or say phrase Z. Or not.

It is that understanding which energizes me. And I believe this is a fundamental source of energy for all high-order living things. It is an impulse to create. And I find that impulse is strongest when it comes from inside the individual rather than extrinsically. That’s what gets me up early in the morning and keeps me up late at night. Whatever my passion, it is this self-determinism which drives it, the cleanest, hottest fire of all.

Gentoo WiFi

Got Wifi running yesterday (Saturday) in Gentoo on my ThinkPad. So I can use the 802.11b wireless card I bought for my Newton 2100 now with my Thinkpad.

Saw H2G2 with A, Chris and Mar. Disappointed.

Got JPilot working with my CLIE on the ThinkPad too. And Plucker is working too, though not tuned and not coordinated with JPilot yet for automatic data updates.

I suspect the FireWire/USB 2.0 combo PC Card I bought on eBay for my ThinkPad will work in Linux. dmesg output looks good.

Splendid handwriting changes

I’ve been using my Newton now for… checking my blog… well, since 22 March. Use it heavily at work for taking notes and making lists.

Its recognition of my handwriting sure beats everything else I’ve owned (A Palm or two, a couple CLIEs, a Visor, a PocketPC, a Psion/Diamond Revo [only used the tapboard on that one, truth be told], Zaurus SL-5500). I’m a happy boy.

I’ve noticed four things that are pretty consistent:

1. Some little things I’ve done to increase my handwriting’s recognition by the Newton (like the way I write my ‘E’) are showing up in my normal writing.

2. My handwriting (in ink and especially on the Newton itself) is getting more controlled and clean. Still fits and starts here, but sometimes it really shines.

3. My Newton [2100] /hates/ my capital ‘M’s in the char-by-char editing slip. It always interprets them as a scrub unless I use that little spiral thingie on the upper-left side of the ‘M’. Then–sometimes!–it realizes it’s an ‘M’. Any tips from people who write ‘M’ a lot?

4. If I type cursive, the recognition is STELLAR. Close to 100% for since I started doing this yesterday. Really phenomenal.

The thread from the guy whose types “ni” and has it auto-replaced with ‘9′ inspired this post. Here’s to you, guy.

Google down

Google never goes down. That’s the impression, at least. That’s a credit to those guys. But what if?

I’ve noticed Google getting slower recently (months). That’s too bad. But I guess that happens when you serve the whole world in realtime.

One of these days those guys are going to get surprised by something that infects their cluster and blows by (around) all their safeguards. I’m not looking forward to it, just predicting.

Newton arrived

My Newton arrived. I picked up at 11:45am Sunday.

I’ve been banging on it ever since. I almost the entire User’s Guide last night so now I’m a proficient Newton novice.

I’m not disappointed by this device. So far, it trumps my Palms, CLIE, PocketPC, Psion and Zaurus in terms os suitability for my purposes (mostly note taking and appointments). It is impressive even by today’s standards.

I think of it as a VERY reasonably priced tablet PC at a total delivered price of $112.00. ($100 plus $10 S&H plus $2 insurance)

I can’t wait to get a TCP/IP stack on it. Yesterday I ordered a Newton serial-to-PC serial cable. Last night I ordered a Lucent 802.11b card. Both are on their way to me.

Newton delivered?!?

I just got delivery notice from USPS.com. The Newton was delivered today at 1:59pm. What?!? I couldn’ve been working on it all day. I ran to the mailbox and found a note saying it’s being held at the office. My source tells me the office opens tomorrow at 12pm. I’ll be waiting when the doors open.

This is irritating. I told the seller to deliver it to the office, not the house. But it worked out in my favor.

Ramones

Time to discover The Ramones. There must be something good there.

MC Chris

According to ChrisB, MC Chris is coming to the State Theatre on 18 April. Woot!

Newton

I bought an Apple Newton 2100 on eBay last Sunday. I paid right away. The guy disappointed me by promising to ship Wednesday (already pretty late) and not shipping until Thursday. Today is Saturday. It’s coming Priority Mail from Washington state. I hope to get it as early as Tuesday.

iPod track count

Ripped several CDs today on the XP box in iTunes. FTPd them to the Linux box and put them on the iPod.

Current iPod track count: 2122

Newton

I want an Apple Newton 2000 or 2100. I’m watching eBay. This could replace paper notes for me. I just need to:

- Get a web browser working (I’ve read it works if I use NIE… Newtone Internet Enabler?).
- Get it syncing with Windows (better — Linux!)
- Get it so I can install packages on it.

Then I’m set. I suppose. Hope it works out. I want to find one for < $50. An eMate is a sorry substitute (because it is larger).

Fett’s Vette

Last night I came across Fett’s Vette, a song by MC Chris who is known broadly as the voice of “Hesh” on Sealab 2021. Give him a visit.

Tonight I downloaded approximately 105 remixes of Fett’s Vette. I haven’t listened to any yet.

Fuckin Up My Christmas is an extremely funny MC Chris track. With the Talking Moose voice and Steve Martin bits.

Current iPod track count: 2017

Does anyone else remember the Talking Moose?

Netflix

Signed up for Netflix last night. 3 discs at a time for $17.99/mo.

The first film will by Andrei Rublev, recommended by DennisK.

There’s a note on the Queue page that says, “Most customers add 6-10 movies to their Rental Queue during their first visit.” Our initial queue: 65 films (plus one they didn’t have — Startup.com).

The Best Years of Our Lives

This is Thursday morning. Tuesday night we watched The Best Years of Our Lives on TCM. What a fabulous movie! Harold Russell, who played Homer:

- Was not an actor prior to this film
- Was discovered by the director who saw him in a documentary (due to his hands)
- Did a great job
- Won two Oscars for his performance: Best supporting actor and an honorary Oscar for being an inspiration for disabled war veterans throughout the U.S., making him the first (and only) actor to receive two Oscars for the same role.

Highly recommended. Five stars.

Thinkpad T23

I wound up getting a ThinkPad T23 (refurbished) from TigerDirect. It was delivered about a week ago. Details:

Pentium III M 1.2GHz
256MB 144-pin 133MHz SODIMM
40GB hard drive (IBM says the unit only came with a 30GB so the drive might not be warranted)
16MB Savage video
14.1″ 1024×760 TFT LCD
IBM Warranty expires 21 July 2005

Price…

$650 plus tax plus 2nd Day shipping. Good thing I got the fast shipping, those two days were tough!

The ‘D’ key was sticky. IBM sent me a replacement keyboard. Took a few keyboards to get it just right. But it seems to be all set as of today. I haven’t installed it yet. Maybe this weekend.

This was funded wholly by the sale of my Sony VAIO Picturebook model PCG-C1VPK on ebay to a fellow in Verona, Italy. I shipped it today. Thanks for buying it. I hope you enjoy it.

Ice

Wow.

Odd schedule

Night before last (Friday), went to O & A’s for her birthday. Stayed until 3am Saturda (yesterday). Those convincing fellows got me to have three shots on my way out the door.

Went right home and to sleep. I didn’t get drunk until I was asleep. Strange feeling.

Woke up okay Saturday morning at 10-something. Actually, not the worst sleep I’ve had this week.

Lost an eBay auction for a ThinkPad T20 PIII 700MHz. Glad I lost it — turned out the very fine print said it failed to boot.

Put my Sony VAIO Picturebook laptop up for auction on eBay. I have my eyes on a ThinkPad T42. The G series are too big and there seem to be very few people running Linux on them. Plus, running Linux on them doesn’t seem as “easy” as on the T series.

Took a nap at 5:17pm. Woke up at 12:14am today (Sunday). I guess I’ll be up for the night.

The purpose of government

What is the purpose of government? To define and enforce limits? To ensure freedoms? To provide safety for the citizenry?

Foo

Current iPod track count: 1870

Houses

We’re house hunting. Saw five places tonight. Two sucked. One was horrible more because of the creepy people living there, though the house also sucked. One was very cute but not amazing.

The last was cute and amazing. It was like a nice, big house in miniature. Very different.

I hope it’ll pass inspection though. It is a little old and rough. But charm? Oy vey!

Looks like CDKB has a house under contract. Good luck. He should blog his home ownership insecurities.

Maskin: removable paint

Slashdot has an article about Maskin, a removable paint-like finish which can be peeled off after use.

Who wants to be the first to posit that the manufacturer/developer of any product with any conceivable criminal application is evil? Like those bastards that make broomsticks.

Rumored $499 headless Mac

See this Think Secret article.

Word of the day: surfeit

The word of the day is definitely surfeit.

Feather Linux

One week away from the keyboard and I’m typing extraneous letters.

Right before we went on vacation–really, the night before–I set up a 128MB Memorex USB TravelDrive with Feather Linux. I look forward to playing with it on some systems. Too bad my laptop doesn’t boot from USB devices.

Back

We returned today from a trip to paradise. Well, someplace nice, at least. I read the Tristan Betrayal by “Robert Ludlum(TM)” and Angels and Devils by Dan Brown. But don’t get the wrong idea: I only read at appropriate times. For example, I almost never read at a table with other people.

How were the books, you ask? Both were quite enjoyable, thanks.

Dillo on Libretto

Set up Dillo 0.8.3 on the Libretto today. From an RPM. Nice. Went in without a hitch!

There’s a browser with real self-esteem. It knows what it’s for. It doesn’t have designs on the throne; it’s made its OWN throne. It does what it does. And that sure helped me today on my underpowered (shame on me!) little Libby.

Riddick!

I saw Riddick last Saturday with Marr. Thanks for letting me stay all night and all day, Marr!

Well, my lady saw Riddick today. All I can say is, “Vin Diesel has a spell on her,” because she liked it.

The Open CD

I was introduced to The Open CD today by a Slashdot article.

The Open CD is a downloadable ISO image containing several Windows versions of Open Source projects, including FireFox, FileZilla, AbiWord and much more.

I’m going to make them stocking stuffers for my Windows-savvy friends and family this season.

Mambo coming along

I moved my website from flat HTML to Mambo this weekend.

Today I set up a Mambo site at the office. I hope it will replace our flat intranet. I also hope to extend it to become an extranet eventually.

Mambo

Screw it. Tonight I decided to give Mambo a try.

I’m building (emerge-ing) apache with PHP, Zlib and XML support and PHP with XML and Zlib support.

$5M

I was talking to my insurance agent. The health insurance plan she quoted me some time ago has been replaced by a new, reportedly better plan.

The old plan had a $2M lifetime limit. This new plan has a $5M lifetime limit.

So, of course, I told her, “Gee, if it reaches $5M I’m dead [so that must be enough].”

She replied that her son-in-law (or nephew) just had a heart-lung transplant and he is most definitely not dead, so, “No, at $5M you are definitely not dead yet.”

Oops.

Built w3m on Libretto and Cygwin

Yesterday I built w3m on my Libretto 50.

Today I built w3m on my Windows 2000 box in Cygwin.

I don’t remember the last time I built an app from source for one of these environments.

Libretto 50 back up

About a dillion years ago (ca. 2000 based on file dates) I succesfully installed RedHat [Gnu/]Linux on my Libretto 50 ultraportable notebook computer.

RedHat is no longer my distribution of choice… but it was a pain to get on there so it’s going to stay awhile.

Well, I took the L50 out of mothballs this weekend with the intention of getting it back into use. My plan was to put Damn Small Linux (DSL) on it but then I realized two things:

- RedHat 7.1 is okay. Why downgrade?

- DSL might not have mutt pre-installed and I might be on my own getting it built. Unacceptable.

So I decided to get RH7.1 another chance on this wonderful little notebook. The only problem remaining was that I never got a network card working in it.

So I tried my 3Com PCMCIA NIC. It worked on the first boot. Hmmm… maybe I only tried my Linksys WiFi card back in 2000.

Next thing: install FVWM. I was ready to install from source when I found an RPM. Worked great, with just a little taste of dependency hell. (I don’t miss RedHat but Gentoo is out of the question for this underpowered little darling–I refuse to put a source distro on it.)

FVWM… working!

Firefox… dependency hell… forget it for now.

mutt… already installed!

So today I brought the L50 to work. I didn’t get it to see the office network yet. Maybe later in the week.

Her digicam

Hell froze over! My lady got a digital camera! And I didn’t have to twist her arm; it was her idea.

She got a Nikon Coolpix 3200. I’m impressed. Its pictures are way better than the consistently fuzzy shots I got with the Coolpix 2100 which I returned as fast as I could. The 2100 was probably defective.

The 3200 takes crisp shots; holds 2 AA batteries; has 14MB of built-in memory; supports SD media; has a cute TV-output cable; and best of all it is cute small. She loves it. Nice package for $200.

Now I need to sell her Nikon N65 35mm SLR. No problem.

St Augustine

Spent the Thanksgiving holiday (Thursday and Friday) in St Augustine. Loaded up the Garmin III Plus GPS with maps of the appropriate counties, plotted a route for the first time and we got there on the first try.

Had an excellent two days. Saw my uncle’s boat for the first time. Took a few photos.

Self indulgence

I was just reading the titles of my most recent half-dozen blog entries and I must say: those titles really interest me! How self-indulgent.

School of Hard Rocks

We went to the Hard Rock Cafe casino on the indian reservation last night. Left around 11pm, got home around 3:30am today (Sunday). Just woke up.

Here’s the breakdown:

Went with $26

Got $100 cash on the way

Spent $60 (me); and

$30 (her).

At my peak, I was up $165 and change.

Then I lent Oscar $13 on my $165 ticket, which he lost.

Then I kept playing $15 bets until I was broke. Nice.

She left with $65 from her $30, so her net was $35.

I left with $13 so my net was -$50.

While we were there someone hit $4000 on a “Double Diamond” machine on a $15 bet. Fun.

No roulette. =(

No blackjack. =|

Nickel slots were really minimum 9 nickels ($0.45). Rip off. She played those all night and did great!

I’d like to check the odds on the various machines and decide which ones I want to play based on that.

Mutt, you’re changing my patterns!

I’m getting so used to navigating around with single-key shortcuts in mutt, it’s affecting my use of other applications I use! The other day, I caught myself trying unsuccessfully trying to close my ICQ client chat window by pressing ‘q’.

Oh, mutt, you’re changing my patterns!

CVS mboxes

I put my main mboxes into CVS today. Had what seem to be some line-ending problems, which I’ll document here for myself.

1. Cygwin set to “CR/LF” (DOS) line-endings.

2. Committed mboxes.

3. Checked mboxes back out. Differences only that the CR’s were gone (compared with the pre-commit backup mboxes I made).

4. I noticed a line between each header field in mutt. =(

5. So I set Cygwin to using “LF” (UNIX/Linux) line-endings.

6. I then deleted the mboxes in my CVS sandbox and checked them out from CVS again.

7. Now the empty lines were gone (yay!) but each header line had a visible ‘^M’ appended. =(

8. New messages don’t get those ^M’s. But did I double-check that by committing them, deleting the sandbox mbox[es] and then checking them out of CVS again? I’m not sure.

Maybe I’ll look for a sed one-liner to rip those ^M’s out.

So Win2000->Cygwin->CVS->mutt == good, but be sure Cygwin is set to use Linux-style line-endings (LF) from the get-go.

dotfiles.com

Discovered these guys today. Referred to them by a link on this page.

Specifically, check out the .muttrc examples they host.

~/.msmtprc

Thanks to the ample Gentoo documentation, I have replaced ssmtp (with no Authenticated SMTP support) with msmtp (at least as far as mutt is concerned), which worked on the first try. Good thing because Earthlink is phasing out the in-the-clear (non-authenticated) SMTP servers, according to the Support guy I spoke with on the weekend.

Here is the exact article that introduced me to msmtp and which provided all the information I needed to set it up.

iPod homedir

I moved my [Windows 2000] $HOME directory to my 4th generation 40GB iPod today. Ah, the freedom! But now I have to be good about backing it up, lest this bite me in the rear.

Mutt, oh Mutt

Boy, I’m lovin’ this thing called mutt! I continue to customize my mutt email client (MUA). I’m just tickled by the level of customization possible with it.

Here are just a few of tonight’s additions to my ~/.muttrc:

set quit=yes # quit without asking

###############################################################################

# COLOR

###############################################################################

#headers:

color header brightgreen black “^to: “

color header brightgreen black “^cc: “

color header brightcyan black “^date: “

color header brightred black “User-Agent:”

color header brightgreen black “^from: “

color header brightmagenta default “^subject: “

color body brightyellow default ” [;:\=]-*[)>(<|]” # etc…

# email addresses

color body brightblue default “[-a-z_0-9.%$]+@[-a-z_0-9.]+\\.[-a-z][-a-z]+”

# URLs

color body brightblue default “(http|ftp|news|telnet|finger)://[^ \"\t\r\n]*”

color body brightblue default “mailto:[-a-z_0-9.]+@[-a-z_0-9.]+”

color body brightblue default “(news|www|ftp)\.[^ \"\t\r\n]*”

#Two other approaches to hyperlink matching.

color body brightgreen default “((ftp|http|https)://|(file|mailto|news):|www\\.)[-a-z0-9_.:]*[a-z0-9](/[^][{} \t\n\r\"()]*[^][{} \t\n\r\"().,:!])?/?”

color body brightgreen default “[-a-z_0-9.+]+@[-a-z_0-9.]+”

###############################################################################

# FORMAT

###############################################################################

set folder_format=” %-8s %d %f”

set index_format = “%Z %2C %{%b %d} %-15.15F (%4l) %s”

Encryption primer

TechWorld has a small article with some nice definitions.

Soulfound tonight

We’re going to see Soulfound tonight at Boomerz. I’m going to take pictures. It promises to be a good show!

w3m

I just discovered the w3m text-based web browser. I intend to use it with mutt, though I don’t have all the quirks worked out yet.

It’s similar to lynx and links. However, so far I like the feel of it better.

I really should wash my car today and get my hair cut.

Mutt

I’ve been using the excellent mutt email client at work (via Cygwin from Windows 2000) and at home (in Gentoo) for a few weeks now. I’m surprised I didn’t write about it earlier.

I’ll publish my .muttrc one of these days.

I like it for its:

- automatic regular-expression-based colorization (in list view and message body view).

- single-key operations.

- customizability

- clean interface. Much less scary than pine!

- ability to read mbox files nicely and thus share message stores with Evolution (home) and Thunderbird (work). So I can jump back and forth between my GUI-based MUA and mutt.

What software?

What software would it really make me happy to write?

I get excited about writing an OSX outlining app, but it’s not likely to pay the bills.

I want it to be something that is really appreciated by the end-user. Could be business software or personal-use software. But I want the end user to WANT to use it.

What would *I* want to use myself?

Hub, Router, Switch — Which?

Got an hour of detailed training last night on IP networking. I’m not an expert and it’s not my field. However, I now have simple definitions for hub, switch and router. These are terms that I did not understand as a home networking product user, not to mention being exposed to them at the office.

I had tried to clear up the meanings (and differences) of these words in the past to no avail. Here’s my understanding as of last night (thanks, Brad):

Hub

A hub sends each packet to every node on the network. Traffic on hubs can easily get clogged if two machines are sharing large amounts of information with each other since every single packet goes to every single machine. As a rule of thumb (just a loose estimate that I requested of my trainer) once you’ve got five computers on a hub, you’ll notice a speedup when you move to a switch.

Switch

A switch is an upgrade (a big one) from a hub. According to my trainer, switches have come down so far in price it almost doesn’t make sense to waste your money and time on a hub. A switch routes from MAC address to MAC address on the network. It does not send each packet to every node. Switches are fast. But they’re not routers (and neither are hubs).

Router

A router connects two networks. For example, if you have a cable modem in your home and you share that internet connection with more than one computer via some Linksys|Netgear|DLink “box” that box should be a router. It connects your private [home] network to the external network — the internet.

Network-connection-sharing Routers

To understand how your router allows all your computers to use your single internet connection and its one IP address you should understand that:

- It is a router. It connects networks.

- When a computer sends a request packet to a website, it includes a request regarding which port (> 1024) to return the response on. The router then sends this request into the “real world” and gets a response on the same requested port that the client machine requested. With this >1024 (somewhat random) port number and the client’s private IP address, the router knows how to get each response packet back to the correct computer on the private network.

I hope I got that last part right.

The Incredibles

I saw The Incredibles with Kyle, Bart, Judah, Josie and their girls Saturday.

Judah said, “It was flawless.”

I said, “The only flaw was the kid on the tricycle saying, ‘… wicked.’” It didn’t give me the same chill that his previous two parts did.

What can I say–it exceeded my high expectations. In a word… really good.

Wednesday

The job didn’t work out for my brother.

So Jim came down to pick him up tonight. Had a great time. They even went to Home Depot and got me some custom-fitted fiberboard to make my bed more firm. It’s much improved now!

After using mine, Jim now wants a Virgin Mobile phone. He just had to use mine. I’ll try to pick him up one as I saw a special in the Sunday paper for $50 after rebates, plus the standard $10 in phonetime it comes with.

Kirk

I ran into Kirk Mossing unexpectedly last night. Good to see you, Kirk!

Camera + Mexico

I’m seriously considering taking my nice Olympus E-10 DSLR to Mexico this holiday. I’m concerned it will get nicked, but I’m torn: I want to take great pictures.

We’re going to pick up a point-and-shoot Nikon Coolpix 3200 (3.2MP) but it won’t provide the smoothness nor manual control of my Oly.

I’ll talk to some people who know. I want to check with the family at Saturday morning breakfast on:

- The camera (whether it’s likely to get me mugged, etc.)

- Clothes to wear

- What else?

Ringing in my ear

My “new” Virgin Mobile Kyocera cellular phone has a nice feature which I’ve disappointedly found missing in all the cellphones I’ve owned to date: Ringing through the headset/earbud.

Nice feature.

Parker pens, service

I picked up a Parker fountain pen in Saudi Arabia a couple years ago. Nice stainless steel model with an unusually thin barrel.

I clogged it with what I must assume was the wrong type of ink.

A nice girl at Crane’s stationery shop in International Plaza mall gave me a pre-addressed envelope and a service request card for Parker pens.

I mailed the pen off and soon received a replacement via FedEx! Plus, since I indicated on the service request card that my pen had sentimental value, they sent it back to me!

Included in the package from Parker was a good-faith (as in service-before-payment) invoice for $10. $10?!? No problem. I’ve never paid a bill so fast. I believe we wrote the check that night.

That, my friends, is service. Parker has impressed me.

Quink

I started carrying my Parker fountain pen a few weeks ago. I’m surprised it hasn’t needed an ink refill yet.

Zeagle Warranty cards

I can’t find the warranty cards for my Zeagle scuba gear. =(

Been a while

I haven’t blogged in a while. I’ll bring things up to date.

My brother came down last Friday, 30 October 2004 from Crystal River. He applied for and got a data entry job where I work.

He’s met a bunch of my friends and associates in the last 8 days.

We went to the excellent IAS 20th Anniversary event last night.

New Virgin Mobile phone a pleasant surprise

I recently broke the LCD on my Virgin Mobile Audiovox-brand flip-phone. So I was unable to navigate any phone menus. Most importantly:

- I was unable to see the prompts necessary to Top-Up my phone with a Virgin mobile retail Top-Up card; and

- I was unable to check my phone balance from the phone as the balance displays on the screen.

Darn.

Well, I still have my supposedly low-end Kyocera non-flip phone (see end of my June entry) that I can use.

I took it out of the closet, plugged it in, turned it on and started navigating the menus. Boy, was I impressed with the elegence of the user interface (menus)! But really impressed! My Audiovox phone was almost impossible to use. So bad in fact that I only had one phone number saved in it–and misfiled at that.

The interface on this Kyocera KE4233 is awesome! The phone even has a white LED flashlight accessible via the button.

I cannot believe how easy to navigate and understand the menus are. And how feature-rich this phone is. The only two things I miss from my Audiovox phone are:

- The Audiovox was smaller; it fit in my Audi’s ashtray (as I discovered after I cracked the LCD).

- The Audiovox had a speakerphone feature, a feature I think is very important on a cellphone, though I admit I never used it.

This Kyocera phone was really designed. Its interface was not an accident. Interfaces like this are the result of long consideration and testing with real people.

I heartily recommend the Kyocera KE433 phone from Virgin Mobile. I also still recommend the Virgin Mobile pre-paid cellular service. I have not been disappointed.

I’m going for a motorcycle ride now.

I’m going to see The Incredibles with Judah et al around 5pm today.

The Cooler

Watched The Cooler with William H. Macy, Alec Baldwin and others. Good movie. If you’re watching it and feel like ditching it halfway through, hang in there.

Dojo run with fries

We went to the dojo last Wednesday, Chris and I. They were training so we decided to come back another day (and call first).

Ran home, rented and watched Super Size Me. Excellent independent film! Excellent as a film, independence notwithstanding. Auri watched the first half. I recommend this film to anyone who cares about their health… and everyone else too.

Judah and Josie offered to lend me the same movie a day or two before, but I left it at their house. Oops.

In the DVD special features they put an order of McDonald’s french fries in an unsealed jar with a lid. They looked like brand new (no visible rot) for 10 weeks, until the film’s intern threw them out with other food that was also being rot-tested. Ten weeks!

Local aikido dojos

Looking for a local aikido dojo. Preferably one in a location central to Palm Harbor and Rocky Point so both Chris and I can attend conveniently.

Via aikiweb’s search page, the best I’ve found location-wise is:

Saint Petersburg Aikikai

13256 66th Street N

Largo, FL

33733-1813

John Messores, 6th dan

727-536-0801

MW 0930-1030; MWF 1900-2030; TuTh 1930-2030

sensei@theaikidodojo.com

www.theaikidodojo.com

Style: Akikiai

Affiliation: ASU

The Spirit of Aikido

Today I finished reading The Spirit of Aikido by Kisshomaru Ueshiba, the son of the founder of Aikido.

Terrific book and wonderful translation from the original Japanese.

Less than well

I faxed in sick today. The answering machine wasn’t picking up.

I’m at home bored and feeling crappy. I’m sure I’ll feel better by Monday. I don’t even feel like ripping some CDs onto my iPod. =(

Chris has a blog. Check it out.

RJ’s weblog

Found Ron Jeremy’s blog today. I haven’t seen any of his films, but I’ve definitely heard of him the last two years.

Interesting blog. I entertained myself for about ten minutes.

Current iPod track count: 1636

Another iPod note: I used it to record a technical specification pow-wow today. It’ll be great if we have any questions down the road about exactly what was discussed.

Future Sonics EM3 earbuds mini-review

Someon from Austin, TX emailed me asking:

> So, what do you think of the EM3s?

Here is my reply:

Very happy. Recommend them to all my friends. Have some friends who are musicians who are now excited about in-ear monitors as well.

Where did you find me?

Details:

Bass response: great.

Detail: Very good.

Separation: Terrific

They really shine when you listen to something with serious detail in it, like Bob Dylan’s Time Out of Mind album.

Very immersive. I would buy them again.

Let me put it this way: I expected to notice a HUGE difference when I upgraded to these from my normal earbuds. Well, I did. But even more remarkable is the difference when I DOWNGRADE back to my old earbuds. The sound is so bad, I can’t stand it.

So there’s a great, noticeable difference on upgrade. But you’ll REALLY notice the difference when you try to return to your old life of mediocre $10 earbuds.

I listen to an eclectic mix of music. But I listen to mid-90’s rock the most, which I think is where these headphones excel. If I was listening to mostly classical music, I’d buy something from Shure or Etymotic.

I’d buy these again in a minute.

Oh, and people at work don’t even think I’m listening to headphones, if they notice them at all. They think they’re earplugs. Good!

And the cable is the perfect length for me. I can run it down the front of my shirt and have it connect at the iPod hanging from my belt. It’s just the right length for me. I can even run it down my shirt and back up to the iPod if it’s on the desk.

And they don’t get tangled up at all, unlike ALL my other earbuds.

Also, if I was a jogger (I’m not) I wouldn’t use them because they do reproduce the sound from the cables rubbing on my clothes. But since I just sit and walk with them, it’s fine.

I’m never going back.

How’s that?

//sig

P.S. Oh, I forgot:

I didn’t like the case they came in. It was soft, I wanted hard. So I put them in a little mint case (about half the size of an Altoids can) that I picked up at a tradeshow. Fits perfect!

//sig

bitrate analysis

I ripped a CD at 192kbits that I had already ripped at 128kbits. I have compared the filesizes, but not the all-important fidelity delta.

I’ll post my detailed results and opinions if I remember.

Current iPod track count: 1539.

192kbits

A few days ago, perhaps a week now, I decided to start ripping my MP3s at a bitrate of 192 instead of 128. I was going to do some filesize and fidelity comparisons, but I haven’t gotten around to it.

I used to note my ripped CDs by putting a blue dot (with a Sharpie-brand magic marker) on the spine of the CD case. But now that I threw away my CD cases and moved the CDs to soft carrying cases, that won’t work. So I started putting a blue dot on the top of each disc, at the edge, at about four o’clock when I ripped them at 128kbits.

For the first few CDs I did at 192kbits, I put a BLACK dot at the same clock position. But I didn’t like that so I switched to a blue dot at about eight o’clock.

Current iPod track count: 1441

BMG

Received my BMG order today: 7 CDs.

Ripped three: Coldplay, The Cure and Bob Dylan.

Current iPod track count: 1248

My Future Sonics EM3 headphones arrive tomorrow. I can’t wait!

Spending Friday night with Pop for his birthday.

Finished Red Rabbit

Finished Tom Clancy’s Red Rabbit on CD->MP3->iPod a few days ago. Nice book. I’m a big fan now of books on CD. Knocked out one (abridged) novel in just a few evenings.

One perhaps oft-overlooked benefit of books on CD: You can “read” them in the dark, so your significant other doesn’t have to stay up with you and you don’t have to read in the living room.

Saturday, Books on "Tape"

Went to the Library today. Picked up numerous books on CD:

The Seven Habits of Highly Effective People, Stphen R. Covey

Red Rabbit, Tom Clancy

How Ronald Reagan Changed my Life, Peter Robinson

The Darwin Awards 3, Wendy Northcutt

Real Estate Riches, Dolf DeRoos

Shark Trouble, Peter Benchley

Ripped two of them to MP3 and transferred to my iPod.

Also ripped some CDs including Dido’s No Angel.

Current iPod track count: 1178.

Had a lonely dinner at Pizza Hut with a $2.99 salad bar (score!), accompanied by Tim Dorsey’s Florida Roadkill with cameos by Carl Hiassen and Dave Barry.

I wish I had gone to dinner and movies with A. and her mom. =(

Gmail

A nice guy on the quattro@audifans.com mailing list (whom I have never met) sent me a Gmail invitation. Thanks, Emre!

Gone fishin’

My other Camaro is a Jesus.

Went fishing tonight. Stocked at a scary bait shop with a backed-up toilet. Staccato bites all over my legs, cried out like a little girl when the biggest mosquito I’ve ever seen landed on my hand. I could only stand the flying vermin for about an hour.

Didn’t catch anything, but watched the people around us pull in some saltwater catfish. Threw away the majority of three dozen (huge) dead medium shrimp. Fouled my line but good twice in a row.

All in all, had a great time! I definitely recommend fishing on Tuesdays. Try it sometime.

Didn’t add any songs to the iPod.

More rippins

Ripped two more albums:

- 8 Mile movie soundtrack (for Eminem’s Lose Yourself)

- Soulfound’s Tomorrow Can Wait.

Current iPod song count: 1086

List: quattro@audifans.com

Signed up for the audifans.com Quattro electronic mailing list. Busy list. Messages started coming in immediately. Ah, community.

They have lists for other Audi models as well. Check out the list of available mailing lists.

Monday, Monday

Boring Monday. I’m ready to move. Maybe Asia.

Current iPod song count: 1059

NOAA’s my home page

I made NOAA’s site the home page in my web browser yesterday. If you’r in the Southeast United States, read what they have to say.

Here is their Hurricane Ivan projection map from 11am EDT Saturday 11 September 2004 (today).

The Quick or the Dead

Bear with me here, it’s 11:07am and I haven’t had my coffee yet.

The question is do I stay or do I go now. Here’s my view:

Some important factors are:

- I’m in a second-floor apartment in a three-floor building.

- I’m in Florida.

- I’m made of meat.

- I can’t fly.

Some more subjective factors are:

- I work for a living and would like to get back to work as soon as possible after the predicted Ivan strike.

Okay, maybe just that one factor for now.

Our choices are simple:

1. Stay; or

2. Go.

Let’s explore those more deeply. I’ll talk about departure first. Possible methods are: Walk, drive, fly (via plane). We have feet, cars and an airport nearby.

If we drive out, we have to drive a long way to get out of the likely paths of this beast. North out of Florida, then either further north or far west. Going East or South is just not that appealing, though East may make more sense if the hurricane seems it will be skipping Orlando.

On the way, we’ll be fighting with the same thousands of motorists for the same gasoline and lodging for a long way. The farther away we get, the less we’ll be fighting for gas, but the first 200 miles seem risky to me. And during that time, we’re in the car. We’d damned well better not run out of gas out in the open like that–I’m not weathering a hurricane in my car by choice. Risky.

If we drive far away, we have to drive just as far to get back. And the drive back will likely be messier than the drive out. If the hurricane strikes us good, it’ll be an outright mess. And it may even be harder to get gas than on the way out if gas trucks have trouble delivering.

On this drive back, our home is exposed, abandoned. As is our garage. I don’t like this either.

And through all this time, if (big “if” here) my business has power (fat chance, but possible) I’m missing work. This is not a major factor.

If we fly, we are likely to be even farther away than if we drove. And we will have to get back. We’ll have to hope that the airport here at home will be functioning (likely). But we’ll be fighting with hundreds or thousands of other people to get back again. Similar to the car scenario. Everyone leaves at the same time; everyone comes back at the same time. I don’t mind sleeping in airports, but that’s time I could be working on the recovery of my home immediately after the storm.

Okay, walking away is not a real option.

Where to stay. I consider myself safer in my second-story apartment than at ground level or on the top (third) floor. With the people below me getting flooded and the roof coming off of the people above us, if it gets really bad, I intend to spend the storm in the bathtub.

I consider myself better off at home (with my food, water, blankets, guns, doors, etc.) than somewhere else.

Even in a hotel, I’m in less control than I would be at home. I’m not going to rely on someone else to ensure I have water to drink and food to eat on an immediate basis.

So do I stay or do I go now? I stay. Is it because A man never abandons his home? No. A man (or a woman, for that matter) does what is best for his family. My reasons are listed above.

Power!

Power came back on at the office around 3pm today.

They called everyone in from their houses for a 2pm announcement. I didn’t go. The announcement: We hired someone. I’m glad I couldn’t make it.

Started making preparations for Hurricane Ivan today. Couldn’t find a large gas can to save my life. But I did find a siphon with a bulb. So I can use one of the cars as a gas can. Not exactly the same thing, but it’ll do.

Some thoughts on two cars vs. one car with a spare can of gas:

Two identical cars with identical gas on an identical course can get the passengers of one car 1.5 times the distance one car can. Travel with both cars for half a tank. Then transfer the remaining gas from one car to the other. Then drive that car (now full of gas) for a full tank of gas, having already traveled for one-half tank.

But this solution isn’t identical to a gas can. For example, if you only have one driver (no one to drive the second car); or you have more than one destination….

School’s out for… Tuesday.

Went to the office today. It was warm and dark. But not empty. The power went out yesterday around noon. I went home to work.

Rip!

I can’t stop ripping CDs to MP3!

Current iPod song count: 1047

gtkpod update

I upgraded from gtkpod 0.72 to the latest, 0.80.2.

iPod ID3 cleanup

I also used gtkpod to clean up the ID3 tags on many of my MP3s today. It looks like it edits them on my Gentoo Linux desktop machine and on the iPod immediately and quietly. Nice! I was very happy with how this went. And it’s great to have my ID3 tags more consistent.

It makes the iPod much more pleasant to use.

I also ripped about ten more CDs and synchronized them on the iPod.

Previous iPod song count (as of yesterday): 809

Current iPod song count: 957

Today, Email Monday

No work today. Too windy. The Labor Day holiday didn’t factor into it.

Today I tackled the email portion of my Win2000->Gentoo Linux data transition.

I’ve been working happily with Gentoo on this computer since November 2003. But I had yet to move all my data (including old email) from my old machine.

I moved the raw data over yesterday (Sunday). Today I imported one mbox file at a time into Ximian Evolution while I watched Sean Connery battle an asteroid aimed at Earth in Meteor.

To get the data into mbox format for import into Evolution, I first installed Thunderbird on the laptop and used it to convert the email from Outlook Express’ proprietary format into a useful, standard format: mbox.

It’s all in Evolution now (probably 20K+ new but old messages).

Yesterday (Sunday)

Sitting inside all day avoid deadly wind, rain and flying car parts, I set about moving all my user data (including a voluminous email message store) from my old primary computer (a Win2000 Sony laptop) to my main computer, a four-year-old desktop from Polywell Computers running Gentoo Linux and FVWM.

It went very well. I found that I had better luckunzipping my zip files with the opener supplied by Nautilus than with Konqueror’s Zip file abstraction. Konqueror complained that many files were expected to be folders (they were folders!) and the result was that it made (worthless!) empty files out of them, their contents lost. =( So I redid my unzipping work with Nautilus. Worked like a champ.

My user data included tons of digital photos taken with my old digitcal cameras. It had been a while since I’d seen those pictures. It was nice to move them over.

It was a productive day.

Frances

Tropical Storm a.k.a. Hurricane Frances has nearly left the building. Like Charley before her(?), she just gave us some wind and rain here. Not even great kite-flying weather.

I’m glad we were spared the brunt of her fury.

Wal-Mart

Last night at 10:30 I went to my local (Oldsmar) Wal-Mart Supercenter. I was bored and wanted get my first commercially-produced prints of digital pictures I’ve taken over the years.

I was disappointed to find the photo processing area unattended and mostly dark. One machine was left on: the Kodak digital photo processing machine.

There was an employee in the area, a nice black gentleman who let me know that the photo processing center was closed for the night.

Too bad. However, since the Kodak machine was on I decided to give it a try. I was excited.

Well, the machine was $0.36/4×6″ print. Compare with the advertised price of $0.24 for a 3×5″ prints, but that machine was turned off.

So I made one print apiece of the eight JPG images on my 64MB CompactFlash card. In less than a minute, all eight prints popped out the front. I waited for a receipt or a prompt to slide a credit card somewhere in the machine.

No luck, aparently these pictures were free.

I sought out the gentleman who had helped me before. He was not an isle over sorting through some inventory. I told him the situation and asked him how to pay for my pictures.

to be continued…

East Coast Represent

New Slant

This blog may take a new slant. Since my work is a big part of my life, I may start posting technical notes here.

Love, Life and Work

I read the beginning and end of Elbert Hubbard’s Love, Life and Work as a Project Gutenberg etext tonight. I skipped the middle. Looks like a very nice work. Here is a beautiful quote:

The Best Religion

A religion of just being kind would be a pretty good religion, don’t you

think so?

But a religion of kindness and useful effort is nearly a perfect

religion.

We used to think it was a man’s belief concerning a dogma that would fix

his place in eternity. This was because we believed that God was a

grumpy, grouchy old gentleman, stupid, touchy and dictatorial. A really

good man would not damn you even if you didn’t like him, but a bad

man would.

As our ideas of God changed, we ourselves changed for the better. Or, as

we thought better of ourselves we thought better of God. It will be

character that locates our place in another world, if there is one, just

as it is our character that fixes our place here.

We are weaving character every day, and the way to weave the best

character is to be kind and to be useful.

THINK RIGHT, ACT RIGHT; IT IS WHAT WE THINK AND DO THAT MAKE US WHAT WE

ARE.

I agree with the author on the subject of character.

Charley

Storm coming. We’re staying home. Chris and Marr staying with us because green zone is better than purple.

Repair x 3

So I took delivery of the Audi yesterday (mechanic put my crappy, $50 used, pulled power steering pump in it for $112.00.

It laste < 1mile before it burst. Christ.

So I took the Audi to Wayne Purdy’s European auto service today. Marty’s going to put a new pump in for $404 + ~ $75 labor. They’ll work in it Thursday or later (today is Tuesday).

I picked up the bike today — the tire had a piece of glass in it.

iPod

Broke down and bought a generation 4 (G4) 40GB iPod today from the Apple store in International Plaza mall, Tampa, FL.

Wow. I’ve copied ~ 1.9GB of MP3s to it so far. Sounds awesome.

Running it in Gentoo Linux using gtkpod to get my music onto it. Working okay.

I had to put it on my Windows XP Pro box to format my new G4 iPod to a FAT32 filesystem (using the included software from Apple).

Wow.

I don’t even know what time it is now. But it’s definitely Sunday night.

Yesterday

Yesterday went pretty much as planned. But it rained, so no go-carts.

Picked up the Audi. Dropped it off at the mechanic. I only drove about 3 miles, but that car really drives!

The bike blew a tire. Dropped it off near the bike mechanics’ place.

Gotta price a Metzeler M1 rear tire.

Should have eaten better. Chips/salsa for breakfast with a banana chaser. Then steak at 7pm.

ZOË

I’ve been testing and experimenting with ZOË, billed as ~ “Google for your email” at home and at work.

I’m excited. It seems to be intended as more of a proxy for your email. That is, it doesn’t necessarily replace your email client. You would like check the same mailbox(es) with both it and your mail client and use it for an SMTP relay for your sent mail so they get indexed too.

That’s already great. And I’m not complaining. But I was rather hoping it would replace my mail client. Maybe it will surprise me.

Long Saturday

I have a lot to do tomorrow.

In the morning I’m sleeping in.

Then I’m not going to the bike dealership to have them look at the faulty low-gas gauge on my motorcycle.

In the afternoon, I’m picking up the Audi(!).

In the evening we’re going to dinner somewhere to celebrate the Swiss Pimp’s birthday.

Then we’re going to race go-carts to continue celebrating the pimp’s day.

Whew!

Port

Had a small glass of port; slept like hell.

Still haven’t set up squirrelmail or imap. Gotta get to that.

I’m going to look for some E-10 accessories today.

Attracting flies

Do I have to say shit or damn to get some feedback to my posts?

Good service + good intentions = trust

I refinanced my car and my motorcycle today. On a referral from my friend Joel Camery, who is an excellent, trustworthy car dealer, I brought my business to Florida Central Credit Union. I cannot tell you how glad I am that I did.

Have you ever fully trusted the intentions of someone who was offering you a loan? Really? We’ll I trust both Jo and Michelle at FCCU.

Have you ever felt hunted and lied to when financing a car? Well, I did NOT feel that way today at FCCU.

Have you ever applied for a loan, gotten a great rate in the first place (no negotiations) and still felt great about it by the time you got home? We’ll, today FCCU did better: They made me feel great about two rates (car and bike). I’m already home and I still feel this way.

I’ve got a new family. And I’m moving all my bank accounts from AmSouth Bank to FCCU. I know who to trust and now have, corny as it may seem, a little more community in my life. My money is in good hands.

Here is some contact information for Florida Central Credit Union. I wish I could do more:

Michelle or Jo

Florida Central Credit Union

1499 S Belcher Rd (NE corner of 142nd Ave N and Belcher Rd)

Largo, FL

33771

www.flcentralcu.com

(727) 535-0400

Hours:

M-Thur.

9:00-5:00

Fri.

9:00-6:00

ATM available

Drive-thru

Safe Deposit Boxes

And Joel Camery, who connected me with my new financial friends and who is equally worthy of trust, can be reached at:

Joel Camery

The Carfather

Ulmerton Road Automotive

9445 Ulmerton Rd

Largo, FL

33771

mailto:carfather91@cs.com

Phone: (727) 687-0586

Fax: (727) 559-7863

Mobile: (727) 423-5669

Hours:

M-F 10a-6p

Sat 10a-4p

Sun [Closed]

Joel has never let me down and I take every opportunity to recommend him to friends.

FVWM screenshots (big)

20040616 (just getting started)

Today (getting good)

FVWM

Having a good time and much success running FVWM. I used to run XFCE. It was nice, but FVWM is more hardcore.

- What is FVWM?

- Why use FVWM?

- What is a window manager?

- What is XFree86?

- What is X.org?

- What is X Windows?

- What are some other window managers?

Thanks to taviso for the thread that got me started with FVWM.

Thanks to ikaro for the .fvwm2rc that got me started, plus his detailed response to my large list of emailed questions.

At least in the Gentoo community, taviso and ikaro seem to be the undisputed champioins of FVWM proselytization.

This tea tastes like the elephant pen

I bet heroin tastes like baby shit. But nobody cares.

All your motorcycle service needs

Picked up a nail in my R6’s new Metzeler Sportec M1 rear tire about two weeks ago. About to leave for work one Monday, pulled it out of the garage and it felt low and mushy. It was LOW.

Two weeks of bumming rides to work.

Got it patchplugged today by Alex of:

MOTOTECH

2167 Drew St

Clearwater, FL 33765

727-447-3686

While I was there, I bought a slightly-used Metzeler Sportec M1 front tire to replace my aging Dunlop 208. Gene hooked me up with a good deal. I also bought a pair of blue stand spools, which Gene sandblasted and installed at no extra charge while I waited.

So for your motorcycle service needs, give Gene and Alex a call. They also sell used bikes. Nice couple of guys who know their business.

No charge for the extra disservice

Looks like in the last 24 hours my ISP (Earthlink via Time Warner/Brighthouse) in Tampa Bay has disabled port 80 (HTTP) on my home cable modem.

I host a low-volume website for a friend of mine.

I tried port 8080, but it didn’t work. So I moved him to port 8079.

One of the things that gets forgotten in this electronic age is that a single button press in a central office in Missoula can affect thousands or hundreds of thousands of customers across the country.

This service was disconnected without any notice to me, the account holder. I was not consulted nor notified beforehand. And I was not notified afterwards. The only notice I did receive, loosely speaking, is the cessation of the service on this port. That is, in my opinion as an Earthlink/Brighthouse customer in good standing, inadequate.

The Insider

Go see The Insider.

Whew! Saw it on tape 20040609 (two days ago). Amazing movie! I enjoyed it on the whole better than The Contender, which is also a great movie.

Good taste

French design magazine VocMag (Voice Magazine, I presume) is featuring the art of my friend Frank Juval Quinones.

Mr. Quinones has, by the way, besides gobs of talent, a very attractive website. I urge you to check it out.

Some picture links for a friend

Warning. These are BIG.

snake in hand

lizard biting hand

corn

snake suspended

fuzzy Daniel

crisp Chris

stage

stage populated red

Rx for Poison

My county (Pinellas, FL) is about to start poisoning our water supply with fluoride. Specifically:

hydrofluorosilicic acid

Go to aquasafe.us to find out how you can help prevent this HORRIBLE event from coming to pass.

If you want to hear more about this socially-engineered poisoning campaign:

Wednesday, June 9, 2004 at 1 pm eastern time, tune to WXYB 1520 am in the Tampa Bay area, or on the internet at http://www.hawkradio.com/ to hear an interview with investigative reporter Chris Bryson, author of the newly published book, The Fluoride Deception. [credit: aquasafe.us]

Going for my nitrox

Going for my Enriched Air (Nitrox) diver certification this weekend. Gotta study.

Human Interest

Here’s my first human interest article.

Hey, did you know fresh deli-fried chicken tenders are cheaper at Super Wal-Mart than at Publix? Proof:

Publix: $6.9x/lb

Uber-Wal-Mart: Less!

Predators

I don’t mind offshoring. I’d like to see more parity in world incomes. It’s also someone’s right to buy only locally-made goods (whatever local means to them).

What I don’t like is the strategic, aggressive organizational practice of making service so hard to receive that it is more cost-effective, for example, for a consumer to buy a new phone than to spend the three hours on the phone it will take to get a replacement for a faulty (but warrantied!) phone. Only to then get hit up with a $14.99 fee for warranty exchange shipping and handling to boot!

You can reach AT&T Wireless’ Warranty Exchange department at 1-877-746-9244.

The AT&T Wireless Warranty Exchange representative I spoke with at length, who told me his name was “Roger” but refused to give me his location, citing “security reasons,” was very polite, if a little robotic. He chuckled when I told I him I thought AT&T’s policy here was not in the spirit of the warranty and bad karma. “Roger” sounded more Pakistani than Indian to me, but I really don’t care. My gripe is with AT&T customer service policies, not their personnel or the location of their call centers.

Senior AT&T Wireless company policy should be:

1. Help your customers. A satisfied customer today is a repeat customer tomorrow. And so is everyone to whom he brags about AT&T’s service.

2. Be honest [with your customers]. Don’t just call me a valued customer. Treat me like one. Opening each phone call be reminding me that I am a valued customer — which Roger did, and I believe he meant it — is not the same as ACTUALLY TREATING me as a valued customer through corporate policy that actually backs up this purpose.

And if honesty fails or conflicts fundamentally with some other hidden, senior purpose, at least

3. Be consistent. When I pushed Roger for his location, he said, “Don’t worry, I am part of the national network.” That’s Avoido-speak(r) if I’ve every heard it. And the girl (“Barb[e|a]ra”) I spoke with about a billing issue before Roger — on the same phone call! — told me she was in Washington state. She did not mention any security concerns when disclosing to me her general location.

Failing honesty, at least strive for consistent. If your policy is to cite “security concerns,” then at least have the respect for me to have your domestic personnel deliver the same line of crap as your overseas personnel.

I contend that if AT&T Wireless applied the above three points broadly, they could keep customers based on actual customer satisfaction, not with two-year contracts signed in blood.

I am not going to renew my AT&T Wireless contract (on which I still have another year to serve). But I’m up for parole in six months.

5 June 2004

I’ve been reading A Different Drummer for a while now, written by Michael K. Deaver. Had a recent interest in the former President of the United States, Mr. Ronald Wilson Reagan.

I’m glad, for pointless, romantic reasons, I guess, I found out something about him before he died. Better that than because he died, though at least something good comes from death that way.

On a personal level, I imagine he’s better off. On a broader level, I think a good man died yesterday and the world is worse for it, at least for a while.

A REAL cell phone plan

Written 3 January 2003

Updated 6 June 2004

My cell phone needs are atypical. I want a phone to have in the car in case of emergency (car trouble, etc.) and to have with me on motorcycle rides for the same reason — especially when I’m out riding alone. I do NOT want to pay a monthly fee for time I don’t use. Period. I’ve been waiting for a good pre-paid cell phone deal to come around.

Months ago I changed cell phone providers. I used to use Aerial->Voicestream->T-Mobile. I dumped that because I didn’t like paying a monthly fee for something I didn’t always need or used very little. I got a Virgin Mobile (www.virgin.com/mobile) pre-paid cellular phone.

They license their airtime from Sprint, so the phone supposedly works anywhere on the Sprint network in the U.S. That’s good.

It costs as follows:

$0.25/minute for the first ten minutes you use it in a day.

$0.10/minute for each additional minute that day.

Domestic (U.S.) long-distance is no extra charge.

This includes voice mail, though I’ve never used mine.

The prices are the same anywhere in the U.S. (I don’t know what happens when you leave the Sprint network.)

You buy cards (smallest is $20) to “top-up” the phone. If you don’t use the minutes, the cards expire 90 days from activation. That is NOT BAD. Then, 60 days after that the card expires–if you don’t top-up again — you lose your phone number (no big deal) and you have to call them to re-activate your phone. I keep a spare card in my wallet.

Via e-mail AND telephone they have told me there is NO FEE to re-activate a phone in such a case. Just a phone call.

Your phone probably comes with $10 in free initial top-up.

This was a good deal and will probably save me $35/mo over my old cell

phone. I haven’t made a single call on the new phone (no need to!) so I

can’t comment on service, but the person that activated the phone for me was a friendly beach bum up in Washington state. (“Gnarly, dude.”)

You just pick up a top-up card at a store like Best Buy when you need them. Or keep a spare $20 card in your wallet.

Also, at any time (I HAVE done this) you can ask your phone to tell you how much money you have left.

This is great for me. When I go out of town, I will still have a cell phone

for emergencies or whatever and it won’t cost me an arm and a leg the rest of the year. I haven’t given the number to anyone. And even if I did, I can see who is calling and decide if I’m going to answer (if I EVER give the

number out, that is.)

I thought this might be useful to others.

As an aside, I would like to remark that whenever I have called for customer service, the folks on the other end of the line have been eager to help, competent and courteous. That’s more than I can say for the people I’ve spoken with at AT&T Wireless — both in town at the actual AT&T Wireless office (not a third-party mall kiosk) and on the phone.

My final remark is that, though my cell phone needs are atypical, they shouldn’t be. Take a look at your cellular service usage patterns. How much of that do you really need? I think many people, taking an honest and brutal look at this, will realize that they really only need a phone for three reasons:

Emergency (incoming or outgoing)

Family and CLOSE friends (incoming)

Occasional miscellaneous use (outgoing)

Beyond that, how much really can’t wait until you get home?

I even have a spare Virgin Mobile phone waiting on my bookshelf for my girlfriend’s AT&T Wireless plan (two years!) to expire. When it does, I know Virgin Mobile will be there for her.

Backups with rsnapshot

Looking for a good way to backup your Linux system?

Today I started using rsnapshot, which utilizes rsync to make very nice, incremental backups of selected directories. My first backup was 15.7GB. My next incremental backup (later the same day, today) took a lean 3 1/2 minutes.

My thanks to rsnapshot’s author Nathan Rosenquist and its contributors for selflessly providing this excellent tool which I find so perfectly suited to my own backup needs.

I’m backing up my 15.7GB of user data and config files to a 30GB IBM ATA hard drive in a CompUSA-branded IDE Ultra DMA 66/100/133 Hard Disk Enclosure SKU 309704, which I picked up locally yesterday for $19.99. The unit fits and works well. It would be better if it came with an 80-pin ATA cable.

No Me No Cry

Frank could not come here

Jacksonville I could not go

No transportation

The impermanence of the pile

Too bad filepile posts don’t last so long.

Comments on the same.

No %s No Cry

Bob Marley said it best. No %s no cry. Any other songs about Frank?

No rush on visiting; I’ll see you when you can make it out.

Baby on the way

1987 Audi 5000CS Turbo Quattro. Sick! I can’t wait.

Jeet Kune Do

Looking unsuccessfuly for a local place to learn Jeet Kune Do.

Does anyone know of a place which teaches Jeet Kune Do in the Palm Harbor, Tampa or Clearwater, Florida areas?

Cancelation

Frank canceled. Shame. Maybe next week. I’ll stock up on bananas.

Bought yummy chicken at Publix.

Don’t drink a lot with meals. Liquid dilutes stomach acid, hindering digestion. Give your body a chance to do its job.

Thanks for the invite, O. 15 minutes became 2 hours. Watched the American version of Ringu with friends. One beer; one movie; 200 jokes. 4.5hrs of sleep for A.

New baby arrived

Olympus E-10 4MP DSLR

I can’t tell you how excellent this camera is. Try it and see for yourself.

Elements of Style

Today’s book recommendation: Elements of Style by Strunk & White. It is my favorite English composition reference.

Four days, $1

Four days in Orlando, $1 spent. Minor failure or spectacular, unbelievable success?

“The best is enemy of the good.” (Russian proverb)

Inspiration

It occurs to me that among the books I’ve read, two stand out as examples of how to lead men and treat people:

Julian “Bean” Delphiki in Orson Scott Card’s Shadow of the Hegemon; and

The Lieutenant in L. Ron Hubbard’s Final Blackout

Two wonderful and prolific writers in several genres, by the way.

9 x 3

Nine incomes, $300 apiece. Nine incomes, $300 apiece.

Apolitical question

Does Al Gore make anyone else’s skin crawl? On a good day, I feel like he wants to kill me.

Drain

Today was a drain. It was a relief to go to the dentist. Her gung fu is the best.

Seminal entry

Reading dvorak today. He pointed out how deliberate and incredibly creepy the Honda ASIMO is. Then he wrote, “You have to draw the conclusion that all phone companies are basically dishonest.”

I was inspired to share my own opinions publicly.