Story Archive - March 2006

Work Widget (03/28/2006)

Some say Google is God. Others say Google is Satan. But if they think Google is too powerful, remember that with search engines unlike other companies, all it takes is a single click to go to another search engine. - Sergey Brin

I've been working on a Dashboard Widget. It has pained me to no avail that there is no easy way to integrate with the Keychain in a widget. There's no Widget API, no CLI and no AppleScript integration.

I was reading in Google Groups about the Google Widget that integrates. So I sent a Google Mail e-mail to one of the developers who posts in the forum about how they had done it and seven minutes later I get a Google Talk from him. Creepy.

He suggested I just "borrow" the bit of functionality. Fine for personal use, but if I'm going to do it for work, there's a little licensing issue in question. I told him Google needs to release it to public domain, and he said he's get back to me. The code is trivial for a developer, but out of reach for someone who just wants to do Javascript widgets.

Mozzarella Cheese (03/27/2006)

The merciless peppers of Quetzlzacatenango! Grown deep in the jungle primeval by the inmates of a Guatemalan insane asylum. - Chief Wiggum (The Simpsons)

My one year anniversary with Gumdrop is just around the corner (insert a shocked/happy emoticon here). At least, it's the one year anniversary of our first date. Still, any excuse to celebrate an anniversary is a good one. I got to spend much of the weekend doing fun stuff with her family.

Friday night we went to see a musical at her high school that her cousin is in. The musical was "Annie Get Your Gun." A musical is always right up my alley, and I hadn't seen this one before. The lead was a girl Gumdrop and I had seen playing Red Robin Hood in a local theater production of "Into the Woods." She's high caliber. The show was a ton of fun with a big orchestra (yeah band!) and the appropriate level of high school cheesiness and sauciness.

For some reason, my stomach was killing me that evening. My coworkers went out to Habanero Burgers in the afternoon, but I'm not stupid enough to eat one and cause CJD to take me down for a week. So I can only think the super greasy burger just didn't like my delicate constitution. The pain was right at the top of my stomach, and while I'm used to everything from bone ache to cluster headaches, it wasn't one my old friends. It was quite an exquisite experience. I couldn't even muster the power to each eight little mozzarella sticks at Denny's afterward.

I finally headed home in the middle of the night in a torrential downpour. My poor Dapple smacked through three different puddles where the wheels skidded and the traction control light blinked happily to life. Back in Schmoo, I surely would have enjoyed and exciting moment of hydroplane terror in those incidents. Hmm... maybe I can find the bizarre control combination to turn of traction control.

Hello Spring (03/22/2006)

Earth teach me to forget myself as melted snow forgets its life. - William Alexander

I did my taxes the last weekend before Spring. Doing taxes on the web is truly one of the ways the web has made life easier for people. My parents handed over the burden of doing taxes to me when I was no longer their dependant. It's fair I suppose. I tried to do my 1999 taxes myself, but got overwhelmed and had my mother send it to her "tax guy" to take care of. I tried to do my 2000 taxes, but got overwhelmed and went into to one of the tax preparation places that walks you through it. I watched the woman just enter in numbers on her little computer program and finished up thinking "that is so ridiculously easy. I couldn't enter numbers as well as she can!" I did my 2001 taxes myself online and I've kept doing it ever since.

Sunday I was expecting to be a rainy day filled with virtual fishing. Instead, the sun decided to shine. So I threw in the towel of laziness, put on my skates and hit the streets. Damn it's good to toss of the mantle of winter and seasonal affective disorder asside. Though it did pour rain on Monday because the world is taunting me.

Moral Conviction (03/21/2006)

It is my conviction that killing under the cloak of war is nothing but an act of murder. - Albert Einstein

I finally watched the first "Nightmare on Elm Street" this weekend. It's been nearly seven years since I should have seen it.

Flashback #1: It's college summer and I'm an RA over the summer residents. The job is simple and the staff director explicitly told the RAs not to bother writing up residents unless something ridiculously occurred that impelled us to. I looked the other way that summer even more than I normally did during the real school year. One friend gets an awesome surround sound home theater system set up in his room. His roommate plans to write a psychology paper analyzing the Nightmare on Elm Street series so we rent the first movie. One of the underage people in attendance decides to drink during the viewing. It's obviously against the rules for an underage student to drink, but that doesn't bother me. I would never write an underage student for responsible drinking. It's also against the rules for another underage student (me) to be in the room when it happens. So I tell him I have to leave if he's going to continue to drink, he continues to drink, and I leave and curse the fact that I don't want to bend the rules for my own gain. It's hard to lecture others if you're a hypocrit.

There are a lot of moments I remember when I was tempted just a little to bend my own ethics to make life easier. Sometimes I do and sometimes I don't. I still don't know what makes me decide one way or another.

Flashback #2: It's freshman year and we go to the movies on Friday. We arrive at 7pm, buy a single ticket to a 10pm premier, and then go sneak into one of the movies playing at 8pm. This ways on my conscious so much that I buy enough food to equal the price of a ticket. The next week before we arrive we swing by a convenience store and my friends buy sodas and candy so they won't have to pay theater prices. I wear atrench coat, and they stuff all their crap into my pockets because it won't easily fit into their tigh jeans. By week four, my ethics are gone. Buy one ticket, and sneak in food for two movies. By the end of the year, I think it's normal and am recommend this behavior to other friends.

Flashback #3: It's a few years ago when I'm out in the working world and somehow I end up on a project that eats at away at my sense of ethics. I engage in a struggle spanning months to leave a project I said I never wanted to participate in. "Reasonable accommodations" are made to allow me to work on parts that aren't directly against my morals, but it eats at me. The few of us on the project are irreplaceable by another employee of my company and leaving it early is not an option. The Friday that is scheduled as my last day arrives and I am told that I am being extended for just one more month. The extension has already occurred and there is nothing I could about it. Thankfully, California law always gives me one out. I call a friend high up in the ranks and tell him I'm going to give me resignation that day if another solution isn't found. To his credit, he found one. I'll admit, I sort of wanted to be able to say that I left a job due to moral conviction.

A Slowly Leaking Tire (03/16/2006)

All I'm thinking about today is cleaning my bathroom. - Linda Fiorentino

My car tire went flat a few months ago and I had it plugged. Now it developed a slow leak. Over the course of a week it will become flat. I keep planning on taking it back to the place that it in the plug, but keep having a hard time finding time. Because it leaks so slowly, it's hard for me to notice. It's like how you get frog into boiling water.

Two weeks ago I did a serious cleaning of my bathroom. I had yet to do a serious cleaning of it since we moved into the new place in December. Before you think I am disgusting, know that I'd done lots of minor spot cleanings so there was no mold growing anywhere (at least none that I found). I figured, how much dirt and grime can really build up in? I was amazed. The nooks at the corners of the floor had more dust bunnies than I thought possible. Last weekend, two weeks later, I attacked the bathroom again thinking it would be a thirty second job only to be surprised again at how those dust bunnies re-emerge. Where do they come from? When I had long hair, I expected the bunnies to appear, but I thought the reason for short hair was to avoid that stuff. I guess I thought wrong.

My personal cleanliness peeve these days is the kitchen sink. I have to be able to see the drain. If I can't, my head hurts. Generally when I finish with a dish, I rinse it off and drop it into the dish washer. Yet, if the kitchen sink drain is covered I either have to leave my dish out without washing it or clean the items in the sink enough to uncover the hole to wash my one dish. I tend to do the former and it makes me feel like a slob.

Jealous? (03/05/2006)

Innovation distinguishes between a leader and a follower. - Steve Jobs

A: "Hello. Apple Store."

J: "Do you have the new iPod Hi-Fi?"

A: "We just go the shipment this morning and we're setting up the front display. We don't have any you can listen to yet."

J: "Do you have any I can buy?"

A: Chuckling, "Sure."

J: "I'll be there in six minutes."

Six minutes later.

J: "I'm here to buy an iPod Hi-Fi."

A: "Do you want to listen to it?"

J: "No, I want to buy it."

A: "Okay! I'll get one out of the back. They just arrived this morning and you're the first person to buy one."

J: "Do I get a prize?"

A: "How is the prize of bragging rights?"

J: "Pretty good."

Behind Schedule (03/02/2006)

I told my dentist my teeth are going yellow. he told me to wear a brown tie. - Rodney Dangerfield

I'm just a little behind on making a few of the required appointments in my life. I did finally see the optometrist and get my new pair of glasses. They are very bendy, but the exciting thing is that they darken in the sunlight. Those Transitions are cool. It's unfortunate that they don't darken in the car, so I still act really cool and put the second pair of sun glasses on over the top. Still, when I walk across the street to get coffee and they turn dark, I just feel cooler.

Today was my checkup at the dentist and there is amazing improvement. Ever since I stumbled upon the brilliant idea of flossing during stop and go traffic on my commute to work, I have consistently been flossing twice every week day. I brush every night and after most lunches. My girlfriend, who has a compulsive disorder about brushing her teeth, is a great boon to keeping up with. Five months ago fifty-one percent of my gums where in a bad state, and this time it was just ten percent. When I go again in six more months I hope to hear that they are amazing healthy.