1001010

1st Fathers Day

What? It's not my birthday! But Bren decided to spoil me with some phat loot. Namely a new printer, a replacement Mrs Tea, a thinkgeek DAD in binary t-shirt and a boba fet t-shirt.
We, (Baby-Bren-Me) hung out at noon with my dad, this was the first time in Seamus' 5 months that he actually got to hang out with his grandpa. Up until earlier this month he had been constantly in and out of the CCCU/ICU.
It was great!

---

Look at the image from the print driver installer - do you notice anything odd? I don't know - maybe it's the fact that the printer driver is ***50 MEGABYTES!?!?***
WTF?
That is WAY TO HUGE FOR A PRINTER DRIVER!? What the hell are they also including with this driver? I mean the driver code itself MUST be under 5megs, what the hell is in the rest of the 45 megs? Clip Art?
What realy pushes me of the edge of trying to comprehend this deception is that the seperate network support is ONLY 2 MEGABYTES.

I mean, it is possible that it's not really that big and it's a huge typo that slipped past QA. but still.
w. t. f. ?

The USGS needs a tip jar

That last earthquake was fun, but it doesn't look like the USGS web site can take the load of eveyone with a desk job in so-cal hitting it.

Me durring the quake: "Oh Yea! Ride it BABY! Woooo Hooooo!"
Others in the office: muffled female quick panic screams in the distance. I think that might of been Coach - naa he would never scream like that.

Note to self: fix CSS so that pic stays in box and does not leach over into other fields

Dell rocks

I've had my dell inspiron 8600 laptop for a year and a half now - and I love it (not as much as Bren or baby Seamus of course) but it is my favorite piece of tech. So when I noticed that the bezel was suffering from a minor stress crack, I sent them an email asking how to order a replacement part.

I was surprised when they refused to answer my question, and instead sent a repair guy to come out and fix it under the extended warranty. (Imagine the picture without the crack) Not only did they replace the bezel, but they replaced the entire plastic housing around the LCD. I've got that original clear plastic sticker covering the dell logo on the back side of the LCD. Just like new again!

And to think that I only got the extended because I was freaked about breaking the LCD. That was one warranty I don't regret. Dell is seriously focused on service.

Hmm, I wonder what model of Dell laptop I'll replace this dell laptop with next year?

Diving into linux editors

Yesterday two books that I had ordered from the Amazon marketplace arrived:

* Learning the vi Editor, 6th Edition
* GNU Emacs and XEmacs

Why learn two radically different text editors at the same time? Are you crazy?
No, but my work environment is. The dev policy is that we run xemacs, but oftentimes I need to know all the archaic vi commands because every linux tool that needs to dump you into a text editor will generally dump you into vi.

But why not change environment variable xyz so that you can set your editor?
Well, at CodeIt, oftentimes I need to connect to various remote linux boxes that only have vi installed. Waisting >=15 minutes to install xemacs is not an option.

Note to self: there is a downside to buying "like new" used books via Amazon, sometimes the books smell like they were owned by chain smokers. blech!

F. U. Spellchecker, Goto is ONE word - not two

just had to vent

Worlds largest signature

OK, so I've been kicking around the idea of going back to school and getting a degree. I would love to be able to take the time and get a real BSCS. That's right - I actually WANT to take a compiler design course.
But my bigest problem is that I can't take the time off and do the full time student thing.

As a result I've been contacting all sorts of accredited colleges that offer night and/or online programs. So far Phoenix.edu looks like the quickest. Sure they do the morally questionalble "applying life experince to credits" thing, but I could get a simple BS in IT in 12 months.
I'm realy trying here, but I just can't shake the slimy-diploma-mill feeling. Maybe it's because of emails like this (contact and names removed per the uninforcible confidentiality note at the bottom)....

From: [HIDDEN_PHOENIX_PERSON_NAME] [mailto:[HIDDEN_PHOENIX_EMAIL]]
Sent: Monday, May 23, 2005 9:07 AM
To: 'HIDDEN_MY_EMAIL'
Subject: Your Degree....

 

Hi Jason,

HIDDEN_PHOENIX_SMALLTALK_3_SENTENCES

 

HIDDEN_PHOENIX_PERSON_NAME

 

HIDDEN_PHOENIX_PERSON_NAME

Enrollment Advisor

University of Phoenix

Diamond Bar Learning Center

HIDDEN_PHOENIX_PHONE (toll free)

Fax HIDDEN_PHOENIX_FAX

Mailto: [HIDDEN_PHOENIX_EMAIL]

 

Click Here to Apply Online and Verify Admissibility!

 

 View Degree Information Here!

 

 

Apply for Financial Aid PIN?

"People begin to be successful the minute they decide to be."

 

College graduates earn 60% more income than a high school graduate, and those with advanced degrees earn 8.5% more income than a person with a high school diploma. Source: National Center For Education Statistics (2003)

 

 

CONFIDENTIALITY NOTE: This communication contains information belonging to [HIDDEN_PHOENIX_PERSON_NAME], which is confidential. The information is intended only for the use of the individual or entity named above. If you are not the intended recipient, you are hereby notified that any disclosure, copying, distribution, or the taking of any action in reliance on the contents of said information is strictly prohibited. If you have received this communication by error, please delete it from your computer and notify us immediately.

 

BTW: there were A LOT of links to alter :/

Research Shows...

Dr. Madigan writes about how Bubbly teenagers dabble in psychology

In the interests of bad, poorly documented, and unverified research - I make the following bold and unsupported claim:

Research shows that sloppy research based on hot chicks, controversial topics, or challenges social norms have a 75% chance of getting picked up by media outlets with lazy editors.

Further research indicates a great majority of our population do not understand The Scientific Process or they mistakenly believe that double-blind is the description for a blind seeing eye dog guiding his/her equally blind master. As a result, most will mistakenly define 'researched' as 'proven beyond all doubt'

-Jason De Arte

Quote me on it - but ONLY if you keep the typos, mispelings, and horible grammer. Famoos I am be!

Missing RFC - CSV

As strange as it might seem - there is no "standard" for CSV other than common convention and the name.
CSV's or Comma Seperated Value files are just that - a text file containing tabluar data where each line is a "row" seperated into "columns" by commas.
It is usually used as a common file format for sharing data between spreadsheets (i.e. Excel, Lotus, Quatro, whatever).
I thinks the rules are something like this
* file is plaintext, human readable and viewable in any text editor
* each line is terminated with a newline
* each line has the same number of elements
* the element seperator is a comma (it puts the C in CSV)
* commas may have zero or more spaces around them, but they are ignored upon parsing
* if an element contains a comma, that element needs to be placed in "double quotes"
* optional, the first row contains column names
* fields with newlines need to be wrapped in "double quotes"
* fields with leading or trailing spaces need to be wrapped in " double quotes "
* for excel, if you want to force your entry to be a string - put a single ' quote at the beginning.

Why bring this up? Well, a customer's lead supplier got the bright idea to suffix the 8bit ascii char 0xA0 to every single field!
Apparently they were haveing problems with excel importing east coast zip codes with leading zeros as zip codes, so rather than prefix those fields with a (') they decided to add (what is on the US code page) is a non printable space.
From what I've seen, this same character is an (a') on some euro code pages.

plumber

One of the (many) problems exposed from adding a slight slope to the flat roof over the garage is that there is this gas pipe that now stands proud of roof ~1" over a 2' stretch.
I called a plumber yesterday - in the early afternoon and set up an 8am appointment so that I would be here. And despite assurances that s/he would be here - it's now 8:30 and there is no plumber.

Oh well, I've go to go to work and call a different plumber for tomorrow morning. damn smacktards.

I know that I'll get a call at 1pm explaining that the plumber is at my door and wondering why I'm not there. Yea, like I can drop everything because you never learned the difference between the big and little hands in elementary school and race down there and your convenience?!
... sigh ...

Quote of the Day

This borders on technically accurate, but it's definitely an abuse of the commonly understood definitions for such lingo

Our DNS server hands out a dynamically allocated static IP ... in the 192.168.0.n range

It hurts in a good way

Progress bar UI design

Or manipulating user perceptions for fun and proffit

All programmers know that if you have a blocking task that takes N seconds, the user will complain that it takes forever. So if you add a progress indicator that ends up making the task take N*1.25 seconds - they will compliment you on how faster it went.
Remember the phrase "Time flies when you're having fun?" The inverse is also true. Time slows when your not having fun. Ever been stuck in traffic?

Here's my variation on the theme: Unless >50% of your product's users are uber geeks that need you to be counting bytes with hyper accuracy - i.e. downloading, reformatting drives, defragging, ect. AND it's a task that generally takes less than a minute, why not max out your progress at 90%?

It seems to me that most users generally don't care about the mundane.
Do they care if it gets to 100%? No.
Do they raise an eyebrow if some marketing bozo / football coach doesn't understand that you can only give 100%? Anything more would be subtracted from nothing? (This is a personal pet peeve of mine BTW) No.
Do they get annoyed when it "hangs" at 100% or goes beyond 100%? (i've seen it in the wild) yes

All they really care about is that the task is that there has a pretty indicator telling them that it's working and that it's now done. So why not give them what they want and they'll return the favor by raving about the "responsiveness" of your product ;-)

Yes, I know it's deceptive - but I can deal with that if users are happy.

Oh, 90% is over the edge? then how about we all promise to never go over 99% unless we are truely 100% done with the task and we are not blocking user interaction? I known that I hate it when an installer gets to 100% and "hangs" for reasons unknown - don't you ;-)

Thank you sbc yahoo dsl for blocking port 25

because at 3-5 outgoing emails per week I was obviously sending out to much traffic for your network to handle.

Oh wait, port 25 (SMTP) only works if I connect to YOUR email server for mail?

I just love the way you FAIL TO MENTION THAT PORT 25 TRAFFIC IS BLOCKED TO SERVERS OUTSIDE YOUR NETWORK. Sometimes people use their own mailservers at other locations and only use your services for an IP. But I guess that concept if foreign to you.

... friggin smacktards.

[UPDATE 13:13]
Aparently they have a cryptic opt-out page
http://help.sbcglobal.net/servabuse.php

and I got this form letter response

Dear SBC Internet Member

Thank you for contacting the SBC Internet Services Security department. Port 25 blocking is based by the SBC Internet Member ID that is used to log on the Internet. We have opted you out of port 25 blocking specifically for the Member ID that you used when you made this request.

Note If you would like any additional sub accounts opted out, please make a request for each Member ID.

This is an automated process and the body of your message will not be read, our system opts out only what is in the Member ID field.

In order for the changes to take effect, you will need to log out of your Internet connection and log back in. If you have a modem, you will have to power off the modem, wait 15 seconds and power it back on again.

Please be advised that the port 25 blocking we have in place, does not stop you from using our mail server. Please refer to our help site at http://help.sbcglobal.net/article.php?item=287 for the email settings to connect to our POP and SMTP servers.

Stress

What a hecktic world I live in
1) the roofer is STILL NOT DONE
2) I need to get a plumber(?) out to move a gas pipe 2". The roofer put in a pitch to the flat roof, so now the pipe that once ran parralel to the roof - now intersects it and stands proud ~1"
3) Dad is still dying in the VA - I think that he is finaly coming to grips with his own mortality
4) Seamus has learned to cry for food - it only took him 4 1/2 months ;-) It's facinating how his soft happy facial features can quickly toggle back and forth to bright red with hard angular ridges.
5) I'm now doing tech support - in addition to all my normal coding responsibilities
6) I'm considering going back to school at night to get my degree.
7) The french door installers may have placed the door 2 inches "to low" which will mess up the tile job & pitch of the remade flat roof over the garage
8) My pepcid perscription is about to run out
9) I need to find time to get my eyes checked
10) I need to find time to get a haircut
11) the PC I'm rdesktop'ing into for tech support reasons has latency in the 20-30 second range
12) apparently there are problems with the "Z-Bar" flashing around the french door
13) I need to get out a new version of Juncture to a client so that they can actually use it - but everyone is arguing along the lines of "let's take this opertunity to fix some other bugs" - ugh.

And yet, if I wern't bitching about it - I wouldn't be having any fun ;-)

Seeing it from the flip side

Barring my sister's opinion of the roofer being a burn out ex-stoner, he seems like an OK guy.

But after talking to him, I can't help but think "so this is how managers feel when dealing with programmers". He's telling me all these things that I just don't care about nor understand - but I know what I want and I want it done.
I just spent 15min on the roof with him as he tried to explain some issue with what the door installer did & how he needed something. What it was - I had no idea for the longest time. In the end I got the message
1 The door installer put the door to low and this will effect the pitch
2 The "Zbar" bottom flashing was improperly applied, cracked, has holes, and WILL leak
3 He needs me to call them out to explain to him where "things are"

Is this how the rest of the world feels when you talk to a programmer?
...sans the burn out ex stoner mindset?