Some stuff

Major IE8 Annoyance

2009-06-13T05:48:16Z

I recently installed Internet Explorer 8. Windows Update has been nagging me to upgrade and I do web development work, so I figured it's worth checking out and having around if for no other reason than to occasionally check out how various web sites (including my own work) look in various browsers that typical visitors will be using, even if Internet Explorer isn't my personal favorite browser.

[Currently I'm gravitating between Firefox - cross-platform, quick searches, and lots of add-ons, not the least of which is Firebug, a web development helper extension; and Google Chrome, whose most compelling feature for me is its high-performance Javascript engine.]

I've currently got Google Chrome set as the preferred browser in XP Pro (set in "Set Program Access and Defaults" found in the Start Menu if enabled in the Advanced Options of Start Menu Customizations or in the "Add or Remove Programs" Control Panel applet) so that if I click a web link in an email, or in Tweetdeck, or any other Windows application that renders web links as clickable, it pops open a new Google Chrome window (or a new browser tab, if Chrome is already running). Sometimes in the course of my web development work, I may have any or all of IE, Chrome, or Firefox open.

Shortly after installing IE8, I noticed that when an instance of IE8 is open, it appears to intercept the windows URL handling event at a low level without permanently changing the current selection of preferred browser. The annoyance factor is mitigated somewhat by the fact that when IE 8 is closed, URL handling goes back to being handled by the preferred browser.

I'm sure there's probably a hidden option somewhere or a registry hack to get rid of this annoying behavior short of falling back to IE7.

Update: It's not consistent, but when IE8 is open, sometimes it completely consumes the URL handling event and sometimes it handles the event (opens the clicked URL) and passes the event on to the desired default browser which then also opens the clicked URL.

Posted without further comment

2008-08-07T05:55:36Z

Dismissal from Prairie Brass Band for "failure to maintain a satisfactory level of musical performance"
Illinois Brass Band Post-audition Roster as of August 2008

Callie Lim (born: c. 4/1999; died: 2/14/2008)

2008-02-17T12:30:53Z

Callie, our calico domestic short hair died last Thursday evening at our vet's office shortly after 9PM CT, apparently from a pancreatitis attack.

On Wednesday, Callie was very listless and depressed. Most of the day she either laid in the tub or in the kitchen with her head hanging over the edge and into her water dish. We took her into the vet's office that afternoon where the vet did some blood work and said that she had ketosis (ketoacidosis?), was suffering from hypothermia, and had barely detectably low blood pressure. The vet recommended that we take her to a nearby 24 hour veterinary hospital for overnight care and observation. The vet at the 24 hour facility was very blunt about Callie's critical state and after taking our home and cell phone number, braced us for the possibility that Callie might not make it through the night. Lori did not sleep well that night, expecting the worst news to come in a call from the vet in a late night call.

We were relieved to find out the next morning (Thursday) that Callie had survived the night and was somewhat stabilized. I drove out to the 24 hour hospital and took Callie back to our regular vet's office to spend the day (and probably several more) under observation and recovery. Around Noon, our regular vet called to say that an ultrasound and results from the blood work indicated that Callie had probably suffered a pancreatitis attack. The vet said that they had stabilized her body chemistry and her body temperature and blood pressure had returned to near normal and that she was in "guarded" condition and that her recovery could potentially be long and hard, but if she recovered (big if), there would be no long term implications or additional impairments from the pancreatitis (I later found out that in a separate call to Lori, the vet gave a 20% chance that Callie would pull through).

Around 6:00 PM, Lori decided on a whim to visit Callie at the vet's office. Lori said Callie was groggy from being sedated but appeared alert and in a better state than when we first took her in and that Callie recognized Lori when she came into the room and visibly perked up. The vet recalled Lori's visit and recalls that Callie looked back and forth between Lori and the vet a couple times as if to say she wanted to come home and that she felt that the vet was "bad news". Lori then left the vet's office, reassured that Callie's condition was improving and that she was in good hands.

I went to my regular Thursday evening rehearsal with the Prairie Brass Band. Around 9:00PM, towards the end of rehearsal, my cell phone went off. It's not typical for my phone to ring during rehearsals, so I figured the call must be important. It turned out that Lori had just received a call from the vet saying that Callie had taken a turn for the worse and that he'd try and keep Callie alive until someone was able to come to the office. I told Lori that I was leaving rehearsal immediately and that I'd meet her at the vet's office. Lori said not to bother since, according to the vet, I probably wasn't going to make it (rehearsal is about 30 minutes from home). I decided to leave rehearsal early anyway.

As it turned out, Callie didn't even last long enough for the 5 or so minute drive for Lori to get to the vet's office.

I arrived at the vet's office where Lori was already waiting in the reception area. The vet then took us back into the treatment area to see Callie. She was still on one of the treatment tables covered with a couple of small blankets with her head and paws sticking out from under the blankets. Callie was still warm and her eyes were still open, but she was completely still and unresponsive. After grieving over Callie's body for a few minutes, we thanked the vet for all he had done for her and we left, taking Callie's travel carrier with us.

When we got home, Lori got out of the car and placed Callie's carrier on a shelf in the garage. On the shelf, Lori picked up a Halloween skeleton costume sweater that we had bought for Callie back in October, mainly to discourage Callie from continuing to scratch behind her neck (which, at the time, she had scratched raw into an open wound and which after some surgery to stitch closed, was only just now nearly completely healed). Lori clutched the outfit and ended up sleeping with the outfit that night.

These past couple of days, there has been bright sunshine outside and there were bright patches of sunshine cast onto the kitchen floor. That would've been Callie's favorite place to nap when she was alive and it was sad to think about that and realize that she's gone.

We're planning on getting Callie's ashes from the vet after she's cremated. Lori thought it'd be creepy if -- as some pet owners do -- we were to keep Callie's ashes on display in the house for any length of time. I suggested that maybe we didn't need to keep Callie's ashes in the house, but rather I thought it might be nice if, when the weather warms up, we were to scatter Callie's ashes outside in the garden or around any of the other patches of bare soil that she loved to roll around in when she went outside when the weather was nice. Lori agreed that that would be nice.

Callie will be especially missed because from the day we first brought her home, she was extremely affectionate, sometimes rubbing her cold nose against our faces, often curling up on our laps for a nap. Often, she would come down to the basement and sleep on my lap (usually as a ploy where she would then get up and eat Fluffy's food -- that we kept in a dish on the floor in the basement -- as soon as i dozed off).

Meme-o-rama

2006-09-16T19:05:01Z

Third Way Liberal

You scored 64% Personal Liberty and 33% Economic Liberty!

A third way liberal believes in little to moderate government intervention on personal matters and moderate to high government intervention on economic matters. They tend to be opposed to war, police powers, victimless crimes, and what they may consider to be a corporate state or rogue capitalism. They generally support personal liberty and believes in a social safety net or welfare state. They support self-ownership and privacy. Third way liberals are essentially the "mainstream" left and left of center.

My test tracked 2 variables How you compared to other people your age and gender:

You scored higher than 99% on Personal

You scored higher than 99% on Economic

Link: The Politics Test
written by brainpolice

Oh, BTW, clear-gifs with ad-word alt-text have been removed.

Fun day with my nieces

2006-06-18T05:06:42Z

Lori and I spent the day with my two nieces, Breana and Brittney, who are staying with Brittney's godmother and her kids.

That's Brittney (left), who just turned 5 a couple of weeks ago, and Breana, who turns 7 in a bit over two months. TEH CUTE!!111

We arrived at Brittney's godmother's house at around 10:00AM to pick the girls up. The girls knew they'd be spending the day with us, but our destinations and exact plans were left as a surprise.

Lori works as at a day care center taking care of toddlers to two-year-olds, so she has a good collection of kids' music. The girls were entertained on the trip into the city with such greats as:

The Locomotion,

Rockin' Robin,

YMCA, and others.

After most of an hour in the car, we finally arrived in downtown Chicago. Traffic was a mess on the lakefront due to the Puerto Rican Day Parade in Grant Park. We finally arrived the Shedd Aquarium, which the girls really enjoy visiting. Even though the girls have visited the Shedd Aquarium on several of their last trips to Chicago (the last time being about a year ago when my sister's family visited to get out of town to get out of the way of last year's hurricane in Florida), today's trip would be special as the aquarium recently opened a special exhibit of lizards and a Komodo Dragon.

We had lunch, saw the lizard and Komodo Dragon exhibit, saw the marine mammal behavior (dolphins) show, saw the aquarium's beluga whales, and sea otters. The girls alsa wanted to see some snakes, but apparently, the aquarium doesn't have many snakes other than one tree snake that we saw.

We then left the aquarium and headed back to Woodfield Mall to take the girls to the Build-A-Bear Workshop (which was also a surprise for the girls). As it turned out, this weekend, Build-A-Bear introduced a new Hello Kitty stuffed character. We got to the store just in time for Hello Kitty to emerge from the back room, who the girls had fun escorting to the front of the store. After that, Brittney chose a Hello Kitty (who Brittney named, aptly, "Hello Kitty"), a fairy costume, some shoes, and a purse for Hello Kitty. Breana chose a stuffed husky dog (who Breana named "Bud"), a shirt, some shorts, a leash, and shoes (four, naturally, because dogs have four feet -- DUH!). Fair warning: If you're ever in the position to need a gift for a child that the child will have some fun actually building and customising for herself and you've got upwards of $50 burning a hole in your pocket (accessorize, accessorize, accessorize!), Build-A-Bear Workshop is a great idea. Besides, I was a delinquent uncle for missing Brittney's birthday... We got the stuffed dog for Breana as an early gift for her birthday.

After Build-A-Bear, we went to A&W for dinner for burgers, a hot dog, some cheese curds, fries, and drinks. For dessert, we went to Cold Slab Creamery for some ice cream and candy mixin's.

After dessert, we returned the girls to their Brittney's godmother's house, almost in time for bed (well, after some time to settle down).

At the end of the day, it was great to hear the girls say that they enjoyed the day and that they're looking forward to coming back to Chicago next year and spending time with their Aunt Lori and Uncle Doug. The day was a bit on the expensive side (compared to a typical weekend for just Lori and I), but it was well worth it to get a chance to bond with our nieces whom we don't get to see often.

Other selected photos from the day

nart88 @ 2006-06-15T11:41:00

2006-06-15T16:55:49Z

Yesterday afternoon, I caught a problem that would've had rather large production processing implications. Saved the department I'm working for the hassle of having to deal with a huge surprise crisis early this morning. The $client FTE that I brought this up to says he owes me lunch. YAY!

The client I'm currently working for (Company X) changed out an old Solaris FTP server for a new MS Windows FTP server. Apparently they've been planning this for quite some time and yesterday was the production cutover date. I discovered this because one of the processes on which I've been doing some maintenance work quit working yesterday.

The server is a publicly exposed server set up for vendors and customers of Company X to drop off and pick up files.

The process I'm working on goes out to a directory on that server on a nightly basis and picks up files that a vendor dropped off the previous night. The process verifies that files matching a certain naming convention exist, and if so, downloads and processes them. In the processing, the timestamp for the files on the FTP server is used to rename the files for archiving so subsequently received versions of the file can coexist in the archive folder.

For example, below, the file AAAAAAAA.gz would get renamed to AAAAAAAA.Mar.31.16.53.5392013.gz in the archive.

The problem is the download scripting was done entirely in Windows batch files with built-on-the-fly ftp commmand lists fed to the MS FTP client and with the FTP client's stdout piped to a temp file; the output temp file is then parsed for filenames retrieved by directory listings and parsed for possible errors during the FTP session.

The following script snippet processes %SCRIPT_FTP_GET_UNIX_DDS% (a temp file captured from an immediately preceding FTP session that simply gets a full directory listing of the FTP pickup directory) and creates another FTP command stream that will get/rename the desired files.

.
.
.
echo.%UNIX_FTP_LOGIN%>"%SCRIPT_FTP_GET_UNIX_DDS%"
echo.%UNIX_FTP_PASSWORD%>>"%SCRIPT_FTP_GET_UNIX_DDS%"
echo.cd %UNIX_FTP_DIRECTORY%>>"%SCRIPT_FTP_GET_UNIX_DDS%"
echo.lcd "%DIR_DATA_ARCHIVE%">>"%SCRIPT_FTP_GET_UNIX_DDS%"
echo.prompt>>"%SCRIPT_FTP_GET_UNIX_DDS%"
echo.bin>>"%SCRIPT_FTP_GET_UNIX_DDS%"
for /f "usebackq tokens=5-11 delims=.: " %%a in (`type "%FTP_LOG_FIND_FILE%"`) do (
    if not [%%f]==[] (
        echo.get %%f.%%g %%f.%%b.%%c.%%d.%%e.%%a.%%g>>"%SCRIPT_FTP_GET_UNIX_DDS%"
    )
)
echo.quit>>"%SCRIPT_FTP_GET_UNIX_DDS%"
.
.
.

UGH! Ugly!

The following is a full FTP directory listing from a 'nix FTP server.

ftp> ls -l
200 PORT command successful
150 Opening ASCII mode data connection for file list
-rwxrwxrwx   1 dlim     None      5392013 Mar 31 16:53 AAAAAAAA.gz
-rwxrwxrwx   1 dlim     None      4745908 Mar 31 16:54 AAAAAAAB.gz
-rwxrwxrwx   1 dlim     None      6613770 Mar 31 16:52 AAAAAAAC.gz
-rwxrwxrwx   1 dlim     None      1163002 Mar 31 16:54 AAAAAAAD.gz
226 Transfer complete.
ftp: 272 bytes received in 0.00Seconds 272000.00Kbytes/sec.

The following is a full FTP directory listing from an MS IIS FTP server.

ftp> ls -l
200 PORT command successful.
150 Opening ASCII mode data connection for /bin/ls.
03-31-06  11:53AM              5392013 AAAAAAAA.gz
03-31-06  11:54AM              4745908 AAAAAAAB.gz
03-31-06  11:52AM              6613770 AAAAAAAC.gz
03-31-06  11:54AM              1163002 AAAAAAAD.gz
226 Transfer complete.
ftp: 208 bytes received in 0.00Seconds 208000.00Kbytes/sec.

In switching to MS IIS FTP, the directory listing format changes, which breaks the processing scripts which are dependent on the column format returned by the server.

Apparently the client did minimal to no testing of the impact of changing to a different FTP server, and the first indication of anything wrong would've been a rather rude surprise this morning as data feeds impacting 3 business units wouldn't have processed as expected.

This could have been done in perl using the Net::FTP module:

The entire FTP fetch/archiving/processing could have been done in a single FTP session instead of capturing and parsing stdout of successive FTP sessions.

The Net::FTP module provides mdtm(FILE) and size(FILE) methods for server-independently determining the modtime and size of files on the FTP server rather than depending on implementation-dependent server-formatting of long directory listings.

Bacon...

2006-06-13T16:46:37Z

What is the deal with bacon?

I had assumed that it was just something that radparker fixated on for a bit, but maybe it's not.

There's a BaconBOF (BoF) at YAPC::Chicago.

Happy New Year!

2006-01-02T06:22:55Z

Had a pretty uneventful New Year's Eve. My mom says that as you get older, going to big parties for NYE becomes less of a priority. I guess so. Went out to dinner with Lori for steak dinner at Outback. Yummy.

After that, we went and saw Chronicles of Narnia. I remember when I was in grade school, a lot of my friends were reading it for fun (at least I think so, anyway). I always wanted to read it myself, but never got around to it. I recently became aware of the fact that the story is considered by many to be an allegory for the life of Jesus. (Hmm. Thinking back again... nope, the friends I knew who read the book didn't seem terribly religious -- at least not in a proselytizing sort of way). The movie was entertaining enough for light fantasy. A few current friends of mine have remarked that the movie didn't do the book justice. What movie treatment of a novel does, really? I never read the book before, so I guess I didn't really miss anything.

When we got back home, Lori went to bed (before midnight), and I turned on the TV to see what was on. Naruto marathon. Kewl, but I've already seen all the episodes they were showing, other than the single new episode for the night, which I recorded. After that Stroker and Hoop (which I think is mostly lame and mainly just coasting by on its reputation from the first episode where they showed some skanky topless chick with tasseled pasties firing a machine gun), 12 oz mouse (LAME), and Aqua Teen Hunger Force (which is sorta funny in a surreal sort of way SOMETIMES). WTF is with Cartoon Network? Two more shows I can't stand or don't get: Perfect Hair Forever (which seems like a major train wreck to nowhere getting by on its anime aesthetic) and BoBoBo BoBo BoBo (which just seems mostly stupid). Maybe CN should just be done with it and bring back GI Joe. (Yes, I'm being really sarcastic.)

Also, today, I spent some time watching some stuff I'd recorded on my MythTV box but that I hadn't gotten around to viewing. I also checked coming recording schedules and saw that Full Metal Alchemist isn't being recorded on weeknights anymore. I went to the TV guide to see what's going on with that and found that the weeknight Adult Swim has been reworked.

Bad news: no more weeknight FMA and no more weeknight Ghost in the Shell. The remainder of the shows are OK, but I'm not really interested in seeing them rerun more.

Good news: I'll be getting to sleep a lot earlier (maybe at a sane hour for a change). At least that's the plan.

Pandora Music Service

2005-12-29T14:31:23Z

Yesterday, I discovered a new streaming music service - Pandora. Basically, a user sets up one or more "stations" representing a particular style of music the user likes starting out with a representative artist or song.

The service selects and plays music that is similar to the user's original choice based on the Music Genome Project, which categorizes music according to over 400 attributes. The service's selections are further fine-tuned by the user indicating whether or not they like a song that gets played on that station. The theory is that there's a lot of money to be made by directing people to music that matches their tastes that's more obscure than can be efficiently promoted by traditional methods.

In addition to allowing user feedback to tune the music recommendations for a station, there are also links from each song to purchase the song from iTunes or purchase the whole album from Amazon.

At the user's option, the service is either free and ad-supported, or for-pay to forgo the advertising for $36 for a year or $12 for 3 months. Currently, there doesn't seem to be any advertising currently (beyond the iTunes and Amazon buy links in the application and an Amazon banner ad on the main Pandora site), but they say that'll be changing soon.

Some Articles on Pandora:

NPR - May 21, 2005

Slate - July 5, 2005

Slashdot - November 29, 2005

FastCompany - December 2005

Marketers...

2005-12-09T01:34:04Z

If you ever find yourself in the position to have a pizza place and you're gonna have related deals on different size pizzas, it might not be a good idea to forgo the traditional use of pizza sizes (M, L, XL, etc.) in favor of clever-sounding names that sound the same over the phone, unless you think people ending up getting a different size pizza than they thought they ordered would be a good thing.

Case in point: Pizza Hut's 4ForAll[tm] (M) vs. MoreForAll[tm] (XL)

I suppose one could explicitly state the size when ordering, but then it just sounds dorky:

Me: "I'd like an Extra Large MoreForAll ..."
Order Taker: "MoreForAll *IS* extra large." .oO(You dork. Ghod. Customers suck!)

OR

Me: "I'd like an Extra Large MoreForAll ..."
Order Taker: (Mis-hearing "4ForAll") "I'm sorry. 4ForAll is only Medium." .oO(You dork. Ghod. Customers suck!)

OR

[the remaining permutations are left as an exercise for the reader]

At the point I go to pick up the pizza and realize that they've taken down the order wrong. I have two choices:

A) Explain that the order was incorrectly taken and that I want the proper size pizza.
Result: Pizza order takes an additional 20-25 minutes. Wife whines about how she's hungry NOW and mumbles something about my parents not being married when I was conceived.

B) Recheck the receipt for the pizza, take some comfort in the fact that the proper price was paid for the size of pizza received. Go home. Wife whines: "That's extra-large?!" Me: "Well, we were charged the right amount for the size pizza we got." Wife mumbles something about my parents not being married when I was conceived.

I can't win...

Podcast fun

2005-10-05T18:31:02Z

Today in IRC, somebody was talking about watching a Time/Life commercial for The Superstars of Country Collection. Someone else in the channel thought it somewhat frightening that the first person was also a metal fan. At which point, I mentioned Johnny Cash's recent cover of Nine Inch Nails' "Hurt" and that I thought I recalled a metal band doing a cover of Johnny Cash's "Ring of Fire" (Social Distortion). In the process of googling for metal covers of "Ring of Fire", I stumbled onto a pod cast of song covers - Coverville. Fun!

I've recently found a usable pod catcher (jPodder - a java-based pod catcher) and I've been exploring various pod casts. I was originally motivated to find a pod catcher by the weekly Battlestar Galactica commentary podcast by the show's executive producer. Other than that, I've subscribed to a couple of NPR shows that are broadcast on the weekend, when I'm not normally listening to the radio.

I also stumbled onto another pod cast today - Karin's Themed Songs Podcast. I haven't listened to it yet, but it sounds interesting.

Creepy follower during a work break

2005-09-30T19:53:44Z

Just now, on the way back from the post office (about a block away) on a work break, in the middle of a block I noticed someone walking a few feet behind me off to my left. I didn't think much about it at first since I work in the Loop in Chicago; it's not unusual for people to walk down the sidewalk fairly close to each other. One's sense of personal space gets pretty compressed (if it would've been in the suburbs, I probably would have gotten creeped out by someone I don't know getting within a few yards).

I kept walking back towards the office and after walking another 15 or so feet, the person had closed to within half an arm's length away. I abruptly stopped. My follower didn't expect that, so he walked another step and turned back to face me. He appeared to be on the thin side, approximately my height. He had a black hooded sweatjacket. His hood was pulled up over his head and his hands were stuffed in the jacket pockets, arms straight, stretching the jacket fabric. For an instant he just stood there looking at me (I assume he was looking at me - I don't really recall paying attention to his face or even remember to what extent his face was exposed from under the hood). No plea for spare change. No request for directions. Just standing there looking at me.

Just as quickly as I had stopped, I started walking again, veering a bit to the right to walk around him.

The whole incident probably lasted no more than five seconds.

I kept walking, not looking back, but for the next block or so I kept peeking over my shoulder or glancing into the reflections in the passing storefront plate glass windows to see if anyone was still following particularly closely. No one was following.

For all the years I've worked in the Chicago Loop, encountering on the street countless panhandlers, clipboard-armed opinion pollers, coupon distributors and pamphleteers, I've never been so creeped out. I wasn't creeped out so much just over the invasion of personal space as much as that when I stopped, he also stopped and stared at me casually, as if it were the most natural thing in the world, all while not even uttering a word.

Better than a sharp stick in the eye

2005-09-28T17:55:47Z

Well, how about a needle? Or a hot poker?

I just got back from the cornea specialist. I'm going to have to have my lower tear ducts cauterized shut. Fun. FCVO "Fun".

I have chronic dry eye, which developed from contact lens intolerance (I've been wearing contact lenses for the past 20 or so years) and for the past nine months or so, I've had four little plastic plugs (punctal plugs) inserted into the tear ducts (puncta) -- first, one each in the ducts under each lower eyelid; then, one each in the ducts under each upper eyelid about a month later. The plugs serve to slow the drainage of tears from the eyes and allow the tears to stay on the eye longer, thus relieving the dryness. The plugs (along with other medication I've been taking to promote tear production) have really helped prevent my eyes from getting too dry, but they're not really intended as a long term solution as they tend to be spontaneously ejected from the ducts in many cases.

Last week, the cornea specialist I've been seeing decided to take the plugs out from underneath the upper eyelids to see how I'd react. When I saw the doctor today, he said my eyes were "bone dry". So, now it's obvious that I'll need the lower puncta closed more or less indefinitely (maybe upper ones as well, but we'll see how things go) and the doctor has scheduled me to have the lower puncta cauterized shut in three weeks.

The procedure involves first, a novocaine shot into each lower eyelid, followed by a hot cauterizing tip to seal the tear ducts shut. It's a fairly simple procedure that's done in the doctor's office and takes about 20 minutes (thank God for small miracles) and I can drive myself away from the doctor's office and go about my business for the rest of the day. Not an appealing prospect, to say the least. There is an option to get a prescription for a single valium pill in order to sedate me at the time of the procedure -- which some people opt for because they're terrified by the prospect of both a sharp stick AND a hot poker to the eye (ya think?!) -- but that would require having someone else along to drive me home after the procedure (I'd have to ask Lori to take time off work). I'll probably forgo sedation.

Oh, by the way, there's a possibility that after being cauterized shut, the puncta could spontaneously reopen within the next year (the area around the eyes are one of those places in the body that really aggressively heals itself), in which case I'll have to go through the procedure all over again. The doctor says that if the puncta remain closed after a year, it's almost always permanent beyond that.

I'm not crazy about the thought of this procedure, but I'm not sure if I'm dreading this more or less than the concept of corneal replacement, which is very likely at some point in my distant future. More on that in another entry maybe.

Killer Cosmic Dust Cloud

2005-09-27T04:56:31Z

Haha! Planet-Dissolving Dust Cloud Is Heading Toward Earth!

Good news. Bad news.

Good news.
Yahoo is carrying stories from the Weekly World News - indulge in the guilty pleasure of reading WWN without the embarrassment of actually going to a store and buying one.

Bad news.
Apparently a lot of people get their news through Yahoo and Yahoo carrying WWN articles gives them a certain amount of credibility with some people ("You might be a redneck if..."). Enough to warrant a shiny new entry on the Snopes Urban Legend site: http://www.snopes.com/science/dustcloud.asp

Train semi-evacuation

2005-09-26T14:33:13Z

Every morning on the train ride to work for the past year and a half, I've heard the now familiar overhead announcement asking passengers to add their eyes and ears to those of the rail line's conductors and security personnel and to watch out for unattended packages and other suspicious activity. I've heard the announcement so many times -- at least once on the way to work and once on the way home -- that I've mostly tuned it out as part of the background noise.

This morning, just after boarding the train and barely even having had a chance to find a seat and sit down, before the train had even left the Schaumburg station where I get on, people towards the rear of the car I was in started slowly getting up and heading towards the head of the train and towards the car's exit. I heard a few scattered mumbles: "somebody told us to evacuate the train". At about the point where there was a break in the stream of people in the aisle and as I was about to get up and leave the train with everyone else, a voice came over the PA: "Joe, load everyone back on."

Everybody turned around, headed back to their seats and sat down. After things settled down and the train started moving, the conductor started making his rounds checking and collecting tickets, he announced to everyone in the car what the fuss was all about. Apparently someone in the car behind mine either had sat down on one side of the aisle and place their packages on the seat across the aisle and had dozed off or was somehow not present (maybe visiting the bathroom) when other passengers noticed the unattended packages and notified the conductor. The conductor, after receiving no response when he asked other passengers in the area to claim the packages, called for passengers in that car to start evacuating. The owner of the packages finally owned up to the packages after the car was nearly half evacuated.

The conductor, while explaining the situation after the all-clear and restating that people should feel free to notify a conductor of suspicious people or packages. Additional helpful conductor hint: "If you see unattended packages, please notify train staff and don't kick the packages." Duh! I don't know if that was supposed to be some attempt at levity, but it was pretty weak.

SMS Text Notification for Home Voicemails

2005-09-25T19:01:22Z

I've had Vonage VOIP since around March of this year and have been quite pleased with the service. The sound quality on the line is indistinguishable from old POTS quality probably 99% of the time. (The other 1% or so of the time there are some slightly noticeable digitization artefacts and sub-second delays, but that's probably due to the fact that I'm on DSL and about 13kft or so from the CO and the DSL connection has occasional line quality issues.) I'm on the $14.99/mo 500 minute plan. I rarely go over 500 minutes of usage in a month, but even if I did, I'd have to chew up a buttload of minutes at abour $.04/min before I'd even come close to the $40/mo I was paying SBC just for local phone service (and that's not even including long distance service yet).

One of the things that annoyed Lori (my wife), was the fact that unlike using an answering machine, Vonage's included voicemail system doesn't have any kind of obvious indication that there are received messages waiting. However, Vonage does have an option to send email notifications (with or without a WAV attachment of the voicemail) of newly received messages. So, about three months ago, I set up a procmail recipe to watch for voicemail notification emails from Vonage that triggers an X10 command to turn on a nite lite in our kitchen so Lori knows when there's messages waiting. It's not a perfect system (i.e. there's nothing to turn the light back on in the event of messages received that remain unread after a power outage), but it eliminated Lori's desire to go back to using a regular answering machine.

Earlier this week, I thought it would be cool if I could also be notified on our cell phones by SMS text message when new voicemails arrive for when we're not in the house to see the nitelite -- like when I'm at work (I've been dealing with handling my parents' divorce from my mother's side for the past two years, and even though you give people your cell number and tell them to use that number for urgent issues, I still get voicemails for urgent issues left on my home voicemail during business hours when I'm not home).

So, this week, I went out searching for the web to SMS interfaces for Lori's and my cellphone providers. Having found those, and armed with Perl and a core module called LWP::UserAgent, I modified my procmail script and added a quick and dirty perl script that parses the email notification and sends a text message to Lori's and my cellphone indicating that a new home voicemail has arrived, the caller's phone number, and the date and time that the message was received by Vonage.

---- BEGIN ~/.procmailrc -- procmail recipe file
LOGFILE=$HOME/procmail.log
VERBOSE=ON

# Turn on kitchen nitelite on receipt of notification of new voicemail
:0 c
* ^From:.*13125551212@vm\.vonage\.com #not my real phone number
| br a8 on

:0 Ac
| ~/code/vm_parse.pl
---- END ~/.procmailrc

---- BEGIN vm_parse.pl -- Voicemail notification parser and SMS text send
#!/usr/bin/perl

use LWP::UserAgent;

my $date;
my $time;
my $from;
my $urgent;
my $private;

# Parse the Vonage voicemail notification email
while (<>) {
    if (/^Date: (\S+) (\S+) (\S+) (\S+) (\S+)$/) {
        $date = "$2-$1-$3";
        $time = "$4 $5";
    }
    if (/^From: Outside Caller $(\d+)$$/) {
        $from = substr($1,1,3).'-'.substr($1,4,3).'-'.substr($1,7,4);
    }
    if (/^X-Priority: 1/) {
        $urgent = 1;
    }
    if (/^Sensitivity: Private/) {
        $private = 1;
    }
}

# Build the basic SMS message that will be sent
my $msg =
    "Home Voicemail\r\n".
    "From $from\r\n".
    "On $date\r\n".
    "At $time\r\n";

my $flags;
my $urgent_string;

# People leaving voicemails on Vonage's system have the option of marking the message URGENT or PRIVATE
# I don't think this has any delivery functionality beyond being purely informational for the persion the message is being left for
if ($urgent) {
    $flags = "URGENT";
    $urgent_string = "on";
}

if ($private) {
    $flags .= " " if $flags;
    $flags .= "PRIVATE";
}

if ($flags) {
    $msg =
        "$flags\r\n".
        $msg;
}

my $ua = LWP::UserAgent->new;

# sprintpcs' SMS web interface insists on a cookies' capable browser
# it only sets a session cookie, so, no permanent cookies end up getting sent
# what the purpose of that is, I'm not sure. Maybe it's supposed to be some
# sort of measure to restrict bots, but this kinda makes that moot
$ua->cookie_jar({ file => '~/.cookie.txt'});

# Visit the SMS text message web form -- this is just so messaging.sprintpcs.com has an opportunity
# to push a cookie at us
my $response = $ua->get('http://messaging.sprintpcs.com/textmessaging/compose');

# A cool thing about LWP::UserAgent is that if you assign a cookie jar as above, the cookie handline is all
# handled transparently behind the scenes
$response = $ua->post('http://messaging.sprintpcs.com/textmessaging/composeconfirm',
                      [ "phoneNumber" => '8475551213', # Sprint PCS cellphone number to deliver to
                        "message" => $msg,
                        "composeCharCount" => '160',
                        "callBackNumber" => '',
                        "deliveryMethod" => 's',
                        "x" => '5',
                        "y" => '5'
                        ]
                      );

# US Cellular doesn't require cookie setting, but in a regular browser, javascript is used to compose the actual
# transmitted message (hidden MSG field) from the visible form fields on a browser. Not sure if the form processing
# CGI on the US Cellular server pays attention to MSG_TMP, count, or tc_agree -- they're likely ignored, but I
# haven't investigated this
$response = $ua->post('http://usc.ztango.com/uscwmss',
                      [ "MSG" => $msg,
                        # Lori's US Cellular phone number
                        "ADDRESSES" => '8475551214',
                        # From address is required by USC, so set it to the home phone number
                        "FROMADDRESS" => '3125551212',
                        # Not sure if this is actually used by the form processing CGI on the USC server
                        "MSG_TMP" => $msg,
                        # Not sure if this is actually used by the form processing CGI on the USC server
                        "count" => '132',
                        "URGENT" => $urgent_string,
                        # Not sure if this is actually used by the form processing CGI on the USC server
                        "tc_agree" => 'on'
                        ]
                      );
---- END vm_parse.pl

LJ Interests meme

2005-09-21T05:07:56Z

LJ Interests meme results

adult swim:
I mostly like the anime/action portion of adult swim. I'm a bit more lukewarm towards the comedy portion of adult swim. Exceptions: Family Guy - love it; Futurama - love it, but the same old reruns are getting old; Venture Brothers - appealing because it sorta tips the hat at and pokes fun at the old Jonny Quest cartoon and supervillains in general.
brass band:
Prairie Brass Band!
cartoon network:
See adult swim.
cats:
I'm a cat person. Grew up with an orange and white domestic shorthair tabby. Currently have three cats: one grey and white shorthair tabby with grey patch over one eye, 10 y.o.; one domestic medium-hair all white, also 10 y.o.; one calico (mostly black/orange) 6 y.o. Cats don't have owners, they have staff.
computers:
My interest in computers grew out of my early interest in science-fiction including wanting my own "Lost in Space" robot and being fascinated with artificially-intelligent HAL from 2001. Lusted after the early Altair and IMSAI toggle-panel and paper-tape programmed minis. I got involved with TRS-80s when my junior high bought the first Model I's. I got my first taste of programming when the math teacher who bought the school's first TRS-80s insisted that I actually program a game of my own before I would be allowed to play any more of the prepackaged games; I ended up creating a realistic (probability-wise, not appearance-wise) slot machine simulation using the TRS-80's primitive graphics capabilities. Bought my own Apple IIe as soon as I could afford one in high school. Continued from there.
iowa state:
Go 'Clones! Pity about the University of Iowa Hawkeye football team's former top 10 poll rating. :p~~~ NYAH!
linux:
Open source, customizable. No need to pay a premium price for "premium features" like running a full production-ready web server, or a local DNS cache (ie. like the $100 or so differences between XP Home and XP Professional or more for Win Server 2003). Originally tinkered with Slackware in '95 for a bit. Got heavily into linux with Red Hat and when having DSL made it practical to download and install off the net. Abandoned RH for Debian when RH went commercial and before the existence of Fedora Core. Currently, Gentoo is my distro of choice.
mythtv:
Open source TiVO-alike. Digitally record TV shows, freedom to move the recordings to other computers without needing to burn a DVD-R or DVD-RW (timeshift missed shows to the commuter train ride). It's open source, so at some point I may try to add in home automation functionality into the user interface. Currently running on Gentoo, which I find pretty accomodating to customized building of system components from source without having to get into the arcana of learning to build the precompiled binary packages of other distros.
perl:
TMTOWTDI (There's more than one way to do it.) Extensive community-contributed add-on module library (CPAN). All the best parts of the various 'nix shell flavors in a very cross-platform package.
tenor horn:
I played french horn in high school. Never had more fun playing music than in marching band playing mellophone (NOT one of those bastard marching french horn things) - they slot easier and I could play much more challenging music on mellophone than I could on french horn. There's not much call for adult musicians to play mellophone (senior drum and bugle corps aside), so tenor horn is the next best thing.

Enter your LJ user name, and 10 interests will be selected from your interest list.

Nice Hack

2005-09-09T05:56:12Z

hack ('hak): n. creative practical joke

nart88 @ 2005-09-08T04:34:00

2005-09-08T09:36:48Z

OK. Well, Balloon-Juice technically isn't a community blog. It's definitely John Cole's blog i.e. he's the only one that can make posts to start new threads, but anyone can add comments to his posts.

Evolution vs. Creationism - Proper framing

2005-09-08T09:26:08Z

OK. I'm a geek. I just stayed up 'til past 4AM 'cause I found an interesting community blog on politics (Balloon-Juice - the owner is slightly right of center; FWIW, I'm pretty close to dead-center... maybe a tiny, tiny, bit to the left) and I found a post on teaching Intelligent Design (*cough*creationism*cough*) vs. evolution in schools. I figured I'd respond to it and I figured I'd spent enough time on it, I might as well crosspost it here.

Crossposted here

5. How, exactly, does teaching Intelligent Design alongside the pure scientific theory of the origin of man weaken the scientific base? I thought debate was good?

The "debate" of evolution vs. "intelligent design" being taught in public schools is so clumsy because it's mostly really not properly framed.

"Debate" as it applies to evolution vs. "intelligent design" is the wrong word; it implies that the two things are comparable. They're not, at least not in terms of science. "Intelligent design" is not science no matter how much some of its proponents want to dress it up to look like science. [Bear with me. Don't tune out yet.] Trying to do so makes it look like at best that one doesn't understand what "science" is and, at worst that one is intentionally trying to confuse the issue of the difference between science and religion. "Science" isn't just simply a guess at how or why things work or how or why things are the way they are. Science is that plus it has to be testable (not, as some people incorrectly believe, that the essential quality of something being science is that it's provable - there are lots of things in science which are not provable, but definitely ARE testable). Intelligent design is not science, no matter how you dress it up, because it's not testable. If something is not testable, it's not science. That is not at all to say that it's an invalid idea -- just that it's not science.

That said, I don't have a problem with people believing in intelligent design (whether or not one wants that strictly to mean that the Earth is only around 6000 years old). I don't have a problem with the concept that God exists. I happen to believe in God myself.

I strongly disagree with the rhetorical tactic that tries to claim that teaching evolution teaches people to be atheist heathen. Belief in the validity of the idea of evolution does not automatically necessarily preclude belief in God or some other Higher Power. Part of the problem is that at best, a lot of people don't understand that evolution doesn't address or even try to address the issue of the origin of life. In the worst case there are definitely those who are aware of this but intentionally confuse the issue and try to conflate science with religion. Evolution is simply the testable theory of how one type of organism changes over time to become a slightly different organism. The theory of evolution in itself (as originally presented by Darwin in The Origin of Species) doesn't deal with the origin of man (he did deal with that in The Descent of Man, which is based on the theory of evolution, but that's entirely different from saying that evolution says that man descended from apes). It doesn't suggest or say anything as ridiculous as cats changing into dogs or vice versa. It doesn't say anything about the existence or non-existence of God (well, unless your personal "flavor" of belief in God is absolutely incompatible with the idea of the Earth as being any older than 6000 or so years old).

I don't have a problem with teaching intelligent design in public schools [bear with me] so long as it's not presented as science, because it's not. That said, lets be honest and just go back to calling it creationism - nobody's really fooled by the window dressing; I still don't have a problem with it being taught in school as long it's not presented as science. Present it in a comparative religion class or philosophy class. Some (many?) public schools actually have those classes. I don't have a problem with the idea of presenting the concept of science as a form of religion, if that's what people want to do; proponents of creationism have argued that in order to cram creationism into science curricula, and if you want to have that kind of comparative discussion/debate -- and I think that is conceivably an interesting discussion -- it belongs in a comparative religion or philosophy class.

Can we agree under these conditions (i.e. in a comparative religion or philosophy class, not science) that it's OK to expose students to the idea of creationism in public schools?

By the way, if it's allowable to have creationism in public school as part of a comparative religion or philosophy class, we can talk about Buddhism or Islam or Taoism in comparative religion or philosophy class, too, because, after all, debate and exposure to different ideas is a good thing, right?

To sum up, I don't have a problem with teaching creationism in public schools so long as it's not presented as science. Present both science and creationism/religion side by side in a comparative religion or philosophy class. Fine. I don't even have a problem with after having both ideas presented side by side in a comparative religion or philosophy class someone decides that they choose to believe creationism and disbelieve evolution.

Unfortunately, even though I believe in God, there are some (many?) on the creationism side (especially those in the ~6000 year old Earth camp) that do have a problem that I don't believe in God in the exactly same way that they do and that is their problem to deal with and not mine.

Un-f***ing-believable...

2005-09-07T16:30:29Z

http://www.sltrib.com/utah/ci_3004197

That's all I have to say...

Welcome to my blog...

2005-08-27T18:55:05Z

So, I've finally gone and gotten myself a blog. Welcome to it.

I've resisted setting up a blog for myself for this long because I've felt that one had to be a bit of a narcissist to write a blog and post it on the web for everyone and their dog to see. I've recently (within the past year) started to come to the conclusion that there's a lot more to blogging. Over the past several years, I've come across quite a lot of people blogging on some really interesting topics.

This being my first entry, I suppose I should write a bit to introduce myself.

I live in the Chicago area. I work as a software developer and I've been in the business for about 17 years - closer to 18 if I count the couple of summers in college that I was a summer intern (paid, thank you :)) in my first real computer-related job as telephone technical support for a company that made word processing software for the then new PC and DEC VAX (written in, of all things, FORTRAN - if you can imagine that). After that I worked for a company that did EDI translation software that ran on PCs (at the time, people who did EDI most often had big-iron mainframe systems); I worked for a couple of years after that for a big-name commercial printing/publishing company doing (cutting edge at the time) multimedia CD-ROM application development in C, which is also where I had my first exposure to (the also then new) world wide web, web development, and Perl (back then, web development was very much mostly UNIX-based). Between then and now, I've worked in various other software development positions for several companies. Maybe I'll write more about them later.

At this point, the overwhelming bulk of my computer experience has been in the Microsoft environment, but I've always had an interest in 'nix-like systems, including Linux. Though most of my day-job is in the Microsoft environment, aside from a couple of systems used for current PC gaming, I make heavy use of Linux for personal use. I have an old PII-200 system that I've set up as a firewall (used to be a 486DX4-100 w/32M RAM). I've also got a box that serves as my mail and web server, I've got a couple of systems that I'm tinkering with, and I just recently puchased parts for and completed an open-source TiVo alternative called MythTV

When I'm not being a complete computer geek, I play Tenor Horn in a british-style brass band in Arlington Heights - the Prairie Brass Band. I've been with the band since Spring 1999. We typically have: three "regular season" performances, usually held at John Hersey High School in Arlington Heights, a parade on Memorial Day, a couple of parades on July 4 or thereabouts, several outdoor park concerts during the summer, a couple of brass band contests, including the U.S. Open Brass Championship (which also happens to be organized and currently run by various people in PBB), plus whatever other gigs we end up getting hired for (sometimes weddings, and quite often municipal events for local towns).

I should probably condense this down a bit and post into the bio section...