10 Bugs Left to Fix
Only 10 bugs left on my queue of work for the year for stuff that “must be done.”
Not bad, considering the number I started with.
What I do while Netbeans loads
- Load up Pidgin and Thunderbird
- Open Firefox and peak at SLV, GLD, and the S&P 500
- Pull my personal email, delete the crap that still makes it through my spam filter
- Open Outlook and imagine Steve Ballmer and Jonathan Schwartz duking it out for the remaining resources on my system
- Cycle through the failblog posts
At this point, Netbeans has usually loaded up, but in that not quite ready for use state, so I shove it in the background one more time and do something like
- start a blog entry like this that I will post later
No more indistinguishable icons in the comments section
I really liked my previous theme, all except for the design of the comments section. Since I’m not going to alter the theme myself, I went looking for a new one.
And here it is. Thanks Brian Gardner for making this available.
Bank Fraud
Times have changed and so have problems.
In the old days I kept a chain on my wallet and simply avoided the bullies who wanted to make me buy them lunch. Now my wife and I keep extremely good records of our bank account, and like regular computer backups, the practice has paid off.
A week and a half ago there was an almost unnoticeable charge to a DEN ENTERPRISES for $9.60. Last Thursday, a week after this strange charge, there was a charge to FUNDABLE for $70. These two charges happened as point of service transactions with my wife’s debit card. Who knows what they would have been this coming week if we didn’t catch the charges earlier.
We’ve taken all the correct actions, the money is coming back to us, and it only took a little over half a day of my time to put some smackdown on the unknown internet annoyance.
I write this as a data point for others who might have dealt with fraud, and for public archival of what has happened so far. Hopefully there will be no follow up to this post.
I (sometimes) love technology
Being a code-monkey for the first time in my life, a job I like more than expected, can be:
- Joyous
- Disgruntling
- Great
- Shitty
- Totally Fulfilling
- Making me want to stab my eyes out with rusty nails
Other than those spikes in emotion I’m not usually impressed with the separation between how technology is billed and how it plays out in real life.
And then there are those moments where I say things like, “wow that’s cool man.”
I listen to Pandora Radio quite often. Pandora is part of the music genome project, and like the internet exists for IMDB (and porn), the music genome project probably exists for Pandora (and vice versa). Pandora bills itself as being able to choose music for my tastes… ja right, as if, or so I at least thought early on. Facebook can hardly correctly choose “People I Should Know,” and I figured radio wouldn’t actually work any better.
For the better part of a year I have guided Pandora, via a thumps up or thumbs down switch, to play the music I like and dump the music I don’t like.
Today I’m amazed. Twice I’ve been listening to the station and got annoyed because, “I thought I turned Pandora on so I don’t have to listen to my normal, static playlists.” I went out to turn off Songbird, but Songbird wasn’t playing. It was Pandora.
The scientist in me got to have two moments of pure, geeky, total joy and appreciation for just how difficult success like that must be with only the following data input to go on:
- Songs have a set of music-genes
- I give input via “thumbs-up” and “thumbs-down” buttons
Very cool work guys and gals. I’m impressed.
What does it mean to me?
Re: Barack
It’s like when I paid off my debt: now the real work can begin.
Time to get to work America.
God I’m a wreck
I wish I could say I was handling this election well.
I’m avoiding email and sitting here coding JavaScript.
But that also means I just missed a meeting at work. (I never miss meetings, even when I hate them.)
And I’m terrified to even to look at the paper or news channels.
Books for my kids
Here’s the reading list for my kids that don’t yet exist. I consider these the most educational books ever written that I have actually read.
- Catch 22 by Joseph Heller
- Tao Te Ching by Lao Tzu
- The Art of War by Sun Tzu
- The Prince by Niccolò Machiavelli
- Grapes of Wrath by John Steinbeck
- I Am Legend by Richard Matheson (not the let’s take all the moral and philosophical challenge of the book out of the piece of trash film)
- What’s so Amazing about Grace? by Philip Yancey
- Rita Hayworth and Shawshank Redemption by Stephen King (here the film is as good as the book)
- The Autobiography of Malcolm X as Told to Alex Haley
In defense of the fictional books above: Sometimes the truth can only be delivered in a fictional package. There’s loads of other stuff to add, but at some point I have to stop being the overbearing father, which will be something I will probably have to practice forever until I’m dead.