Pet Peeve

30-something mom: Darnell, how many times do I gotta tell you not to walk down the stairs on the left side when there's people coming up?

People in Gainesville - especially people on campus - ignore this simple courtesy by strolling on the left side of the sidewalk, "owning" the sidewalk by walking right down the middle, or weaving back and forth and cutting people off.

Hate.

Disregard your inner monologue

DON'T YOU TURN

It's warming up, which means cyclists are heading out on the road more often. These people brave major thoroughfares to push their bodies, dodging heavy machinery in the process.

There's no doubt that cycling on the roads is dangerous. I know all too well that cycling near cars requires caution and constant attention.

However, I don't appreciate being screamed at by cyclists who assume everyone is going to turn in front of them. Some drivers do pay attention and some of us even check our blind spot before making turns.

Being defensive is one thing. Being an asshole is quite another and riding a $2000 bike on the road without a helmet doesn't give you the right.

GNOME Lock-in

One of the main reasons I chose Linux over Mac OS (7.6.1 at the time) and Windows (98 at the time) was because it gave me more control. Initially I didn't necessarily know what to do with that control, but I was at least aware of it. I've stuck with that choice for years now; even modern alternatives like Mac OS X manage to piss me off precisely because I feel the balance of control and simplicity is not shifted in my favor.

I've come to terms with the fact that using Linux takes effort. It's worth it, though, because Linux shifts the balance in my favor: If I don't like one component, there's probably another that works better. Linux as a whole is not tightly coupled.

GNOME, though, is trending in that direction. With each major released of the GNOME desktop, components are becoming more integrated. Sensible defaults are one thing; coupling unpolished components and calling it a cohesive desktop is another. The balance is no longer in my favor.

I've ranted before about such components of the GNOME desktop that support common workflows like chatting online or playing a video. Granted, Gossip is an optional component of the GNOME desktop AFAIK, but gnome_url_show is not. Totem is part of GNOME proper and from an end-user standpoint failed. If I want my mom to run Linux on the desktop, This Is Not Acceptable.

Take screensavers as another example. All I want my screensaver to do is blank my screen, require a password to return to the desktop, and turn off my monitor after an hour or so. No flashy RSS readers or particle trails for me.

XScreenSaver achieves all of these things quite well and even manages to disable itself when I'm playing a video. (Well, to be completely accurate, mplayer et al disable XScreenSaver.)

So what's the reason for ranting? gnome-screensaver was recently forced onto my desktop as part of GNOME 2.16. It "replaces" XScreenSaver but only superficially. None of my preferred video players know how to disable gnome-screensaver yet (perhaps because gnome-screensaver uses DBus, and not everyone wants to use DBus?). This Is Not Acceptable.

Perhaps most amazing is the fact that this problem has existed for at least a year (as evidenced by an Ubuntu feature request for an "unbroken screensaver"). The issue was reported nearly nine months ago as GNOME bug 335149. Various patches exist for mplayer; none seem to have been applied to the mainline yet.

If you're going to make it hard for me change one component for another on my desktop, the new component damn well better behave very similarly to the previous one. Like, say, maintaining the XScreenSaver API until DBus becomes more commonplace.

BEEP BEEP BEEP BEEP BEEP

At what point did car manufacturers decide to add a backup warning beep to minivans?

Are soccer moms really that worried about running over kids?

And are kids really stupid enough not to know when to get out of the way?

Making your minivan sound like a fucking bulldozer will not solve these problems. In fact, it will only serve to piss off your neighbors.

NOTICE OF CHANGE TO INBOX

By del.icio.us team

We've launched a new feature called "your network", and your user subscriptions have moved there. This is only to annoy you: you now have to subscribe to two feeds instead of one.

Paging CNET Programmers

So I'm reading a news.com.com (cough) article and I reach the








end of the first page.

Yeah, please cut pages at the paragraph or, at the very least, the sentence. We're on the Web here, we don't have the same layout restrictions found in newspapers.

Fucking GConf

Apparently I haven't hated on GNOME recently. It's long overdue.

So Gossip is currently my preferred Jabber client. It's simple, gets the small chat window thing down, and generally stays out of my way (no, I don't want to be interrupted while I'm working).

Most of my hate for Gossip comes in how it handles logs.

First, it logs in a standalone XML format. Personally I'd prefer plain text, but I may be in the minority here. Whatever, maybe this will piss me off enough to learn XSLT.

Second, when you request to view a chat log Gossip loads the entire log in a Web browser. Some of my logs are at least a few megabytes in size, so loading them takes 10-20 seconds.

Third, Gossip uses XSLT to convert from XML to HTML. This process leaves a temporary file around. Closing Gossip doesn't seem to remove any of these files. Last time I checked I had around 100 gossip-log-XXXXXX.html files polluting /tmp.

Finally, Gossip uses gnome_url_show to open the log files. Ostensibly this is because GNOME has some knowledge of your "preferred" applications, but it doesn't work.

Neither of my GNOME installations have a handler for file:// URLs. So on my home computer Gossip opens the logs in Epiphany, while at work Gossip opens the logs in Firefox. Hey, shithead, I use Galeon.

So my "solution" to this is to add GConf keys for file:// URLs:

gconftool-2 --set /desktop/gnome/url-handlers/file/command --type string "galeon --noraise --new-tab %s"
gconftool-2 --set /desktop/gnome/url-handlers/file/enabled --type boolean true

I dunno, this may invalidate my GConf schema. There may be a way to do this using Nautilus or some other hateful software, but this works for now.

Now I'm ANGRY

Spent some time on the phone with T-Mobile. The first representative disconnected me after a 10 minute conversation about what she might be able to do and how she'd have to put me on hold to be sure…

The second representative was surprisingly nice - he blacklisted Blinko from my account and talked to his supervisor in order to refund one of the charges.

Since I never subscribed to this service (or opted in to their SMS messages, for that matter), I went directly to the FTC to file a complaint.

Now for the waiting game. Yay!

$10.04 for Receiving a Text Message?

So recently on my T-Mobile phone, I've been getting these text messages from a service called Blinko. Thinking they were spam, I simply deleted them.

Apparently they were more than just spam.

On my bill, I have two items under "other service provider charges" from Blinko. Each for $9.99. This, in addition to the $0.05 I pay for receiving a text message… WTF?!

Credit Where Credit Is Due

So recently someone asked about installing Catalyst on gentoo-perl. I pointed him to my overlay, which contains quite a few Catalyst-related ebuilds.

He added a few more ebuilds, then published the result to the Gentoo Forums, crediting me as simply "Daniel". He also posted to the Catalyst mailing list.

Am I wrong to feel annoyed about this? I'm no open source superstar, but I generally try to give people credit for their contributions.

I guess this is what I get for not making more noise about my overlay…

Reason #23948 Why I Hate Debian

[21:52:01] <rafl> audreyt: I'm about to bring PAR and friends to Debian. Maybe you want to have the debian/ dir in svn as well?

I'm Trying Not To Hate People, Really

Somehow I've managed to set my internal clock about three hours later than EST, meaning I get to work around noon and leave around 20:00. This actually works out much better for me because I feel more rested (not a morning person) and because I have at least a couple of hours with the office to myself (no one understands that office door closed == don't bother me).

Unfortunately, this also means I leave work right around the time events start on campus.

I park near the O'Connell Center. You know. Where the basketball games, concerts, and graduation ceremonies happen.

Yeah.

So apparently tonight there was a graduation ceremony. Now, if I had been paying closer attention, I would have realized this would cause problems in my parking lot and tried to plan my schedule a little better. Oops.

Surprisingly the lot itself wasn't all that bad. People were being courteous, traffic was flowing, etc.

When I turned out of the lot and onto the main campus road, traffic was a little backed up. Nothing too bad, but I knew I wouldn't get home as quickly as usual.

I pulled up behind the car in front of me. Traffic wasn't really moving at this point, and I was a few car lengths away from the big crosswalk. There were about 10 people standing near the edge of the sidewalk, just sort of hanging about and talking.

Right when traffic started moving again, a rather large pickup truck approached from the opposite direction. A few members of the group noticed this truck, and motioned to it as if asking it to stop.

Apparently about half of this group DIDN'T FUCKING NOTICE that their transportation had arrived. No big deal, I think, the cars in front of me haven't really moved all that much.

Oh, but the stragglers. These people were so out of it. After the second wave of people crossed in front of traffic (outside the crosswalk, mind you) and got in the truck, these people FINALLY realized what was going on.

The last woman stopped IN THE MIDDLE OF THE LANE for a good 10 seconds, blocking traffic. Why? I DON'T KNOW. I hope for her sake that she was drunk off her ass.

I still can't figure out how around ten people fit in the truck, but hey, it was a big truck.

Dear DVD producers,

DON'T PUT SPOILERS IN YOUR DVD INTRODUCTION. (Warning: Spoilers below if you haven't watched Season 3 of 24.)

I've been watching the previous seasons of 24 recently. For the most part, the DVDs are well produced - nothing special, but not at all bad.

But then I got the first disc of the third season in the mail. One of the first images is of Nina Myers, who wasn't out of the running simply because she wasn't dead, but still. Her involvement in the plot wasn't revealed until the ninth episode of the season.

We also get to see Jack Bauer shooting up during the DVD introdution, and while his addiction is revealed early in the season, it's still a spoiler.

DVD producers need to realize their audience includes people who haven't watched the show previously, for one reason or another. Maybe it's only a small part of the audience, but still - choose images which don't spoil the plot for us.

Sincerely,
dwc

P.S. No one really cares about your DVD introductions in the first place. If you must make a lame introduction, don't make it longer than 5 seconds. Seriously.

Splat.

Runners: When did you all decide to run in the bike lane, opposite to the flow of traffic? No, REALLY. Which one of you morons thought that was a good idea?

First, you have cars to contend with (who, from experience as a cyclist, aren't always paying attention).

Next, WHAT IF A CYCLIST IS USING THE BIKE LANE? You leave him or her little choice in the matter: swerve to avoid you, hoping there's no cars, or run you the fuck over.

Don't feed me any crap about "well a car or cyclist is responsible for going at a reasonable speed". If you don't like running on the sidewalks, go to a fucking gym.

OVERRIDE=0

Linux uses a file, /etc/resolv.conf to configure DNS. In this file, you put the IP address of each of your name servers. You can also add entries which set the local domain name (e.g. yamum.org), and the list of search domains. Search domains are like shortcuts, allowing you to type, for example, news instead of news.ufl.edu. ("Type" is the operative word here; you shouldn't rely on search domains in your programs.)

Take this example file:

nameserver 192.168.1.2
nameserver 10.0.0.1
search ufl.edu yamum.org
domain yamum.org

Setting the domain as the last entry in the file is completely braindead, because it resets the search domains and thus breaks our "shortcut". A sensible person would never create a resolv.conf like this, and I like to think I'm generally sensible.

As it turns out, this is Gentoo's fault.

No, seriously, what on hell was the baselayout team thinking when they did that?

Don't forget to read the developer cop out:

that's the point of the OVERRIDE variable

really the only point of setting your domainname is to auto-modify resolv.conf so if you dont want resolv.conf to be touched at all, you shouldnt set the DOMAINNAME variable

Not that this is obvious from the comment in the default /etc/conf.d/domainname:

# When setting up resolv.conf, what should take precedence?
# If you wish to always override DHCP/whatever, set this to 1.
OVERRIDE=1

Well, I'm not using DHCP, but I guess I fall under the "whatever" category. ARGH.

Really though, the point is that no sane person would go around creating broken files like this. If I were writing a boot script which modified a user's resolv.conf, I wouldn't knowingly break it.

How to Annoy Me

1. Send five emails about my order shipping. I would have understood two, seeing as you sent my order in two shipments, but five is excessive. Also, why you can't decide whether or not to charge me for shipping? Make up your goddamn mind.
2. Run a red light, especially when the light in the other direction is very short. 16th and 16th would be a great place for GPD to enforce traffic laws.

How to Annoy Me

1. When I'm sitting at a red light, waiting to turn right, pull up past the line so I can't see. In fact, go ahead and pull up so far that I can't see around your car without pulling into traffic. Who knows, maybe you think you're doing me a favor.
2. When pulling over someone for speeding, park your motorcycle on a turn into a parking lot, not further down where there is plenty of space, but right in the middle of the entrance.

I don't want to listen but it's all too clear

Seriously, WTF?

Gentoo quickly became my Linux distribution of choice because the package manager made it clear what the hell was going on and because of the balance between stability and freshness (at least in the x86 tree, I haven't used other keywords except for individual packages).

I never quite solved these issues under Debian. Initially, I was running testing. Packages were a little out of date, so I upgraded to unstable (after much hesitation). I found that a lot of packages were uninstallable due to broken dependencies (this got really bad when a new version of GNOME came out, and I wasn't even running GNOME at the time, just select GNOME applications).

There wasn't a middle road where I could get more recent packages but maintain a little stability. To give you an idea of the problems, testing was something like six months behind on Galeon. (I think version 1.2.5 was available from Debian, but Galeon was up to 1.2.11, which would make the delay even longer.) Upgrading to unstable meant using early versions of Galeon's development branch, which had serious functionality regressions.

To be fair, it sounds like things have gotten better with the balance between testing, unstable, and experimental. For instance, testing is currently up-to-date with respect to Galeon.

Anyway, somewhere along the way I installed Gentoo at home and quickly got comfortable. Package management events were logged (does Debian do this yet?). Packages that were keyworded stable were almost always stable without being stale. If I needed a newer version, I could easily install it.

Nice, huh?

Of course, now that I've gotten really comfortable, I'm starting to notice problems. Stuff like the looming Apache package refresh (is this ever going to happen?). And botched commits that cause broken dependencies and QA violations (isn't repoman supposed to catch this crap?).

None of this would really bother me if I were just running Apache at home, but I need some stability in this area at work. So naturally I'm a little wary of installing Apache from ~x86, but I have to if I want to use Apache 2.x and mod_jk or mod_macro. Couldn't we provide a better transition via apache-module.eclass?

I forgot who I used to be

Local News via RSS

I recently started using Bloglines to read all my blogs, Planets, and news sites. Bloglines has its issues, but it lets me access my feeds from anywhere, so I'm happy.

But neither of my local newspapers offer feeds. The Alligator seems to have plans to offer one, as evidenced by the following line in their source:

<!-- define rss URI <link rel="alternate" type="application/rss+xml" title="RSS" href="rss.xml" /> -->

Unfortunately, the file doesn't exist.

The Gainesville Sun has a feed on NewsIsFree, which I'm currently subscribed to. But why can't they offer it themselves? Third-party feeds make me feel dirty.

One more point: I don't read these publications in print form, or through their Web sites. I would, however, read them in Bloglines.

How to Annoy Me

1. Drive a red Ford Explorer, cut me off, slam on your breaks, and act surprised when I lay on the horn and flip you off.
2. Send an "urgent update", send it again ten minutes later, and send it a third time ten minutes after that. Then, half an hour later, realize you sent the wrong version of the file and ask me to do the update all over again.
3. Edit files that will be pushed to production, possibly by anyone in the office, without testing them. If you need to make changes that might break things, do it on a separate file until you're sure it works.
4. Type "could of" when you mean "could've".

She'd melt away if only she could've

How hard is it?

In preparing to vote in the upcoming primary election (by absentee ballot, whee), I'm trying to find information on the candidates. Making an informed decision shouldn't be so frustrating.

I don't get the Gainesville Sun delivered and I don't find the political advertisements sent by mail to be a very good resource. So, I tried the Gainesville Sun's Web site, gainesville.com. Their homepage is way too cluttered, and doesn't contain any links (that I could find) to election information. After searching a few times, getting errors saying my search returned too many results (...), I clicked on "News" and found "Elections" hidden near the top.

I guess I shouldn't get my hopes up. When I click on one of the available articles, the page renders okay except for a nice white block on top of the text. About 90% of each article is covered by this block, which presumably acts as a container for the advertisements. Thanks for testing your Web site in Mozilla, people. I guess that leaves me with viewing the source of each article I want to read.

Making an informed decision doesn't have to be easy (if you want it easy, you're of course free to abstain or to submit a blank ballot (that's freedom, I guess...)), but finding information shouldn't be so frustrating. At the very least, someone should offer a better collection of articles and interviews than the Gainesville Sun (preferably one that is compliant and accessible in all browsers). More importantly, this is one place where online voting could really shine.

I have a reasonable approximation of the convenience of online voting by doing absentee ballots - all I have to do is remember to call the elections office before the election. But online voting could bring us so much more: you're given a ballot, and each candidate's name is (*gasp*) a link to more information. Some of the information could be provided by the candidates themselves, but it would be much better if it were all provided by an impartial officer. You could even design a page that compares each candidate on n specific points. None of these ideas are novel, and I'm sure they've been implemented over and over, but why aren't we using them yet?

I guess I just haven't seen a decent, logical explanation of why online voting doesn't exist currently. Most, if not all, of the issues (e.g. anonymity and paper trail) have already been solved. Authentication (on a county, state, and national scale) is really the toughest issue. But everyone seems stuck on the other "problems", so no energy is spent investigating it.

Finally, I'd just like to say that I find the issue of online voting for UF Student Government very annoying. We have the authentication problem solved at UF with GatorLink. Where's the hangup?

(As a sidenote: I read the UF Student Goverment On-Line Voting Committee report recently. It was well written and very much in favor of online voting. Unfortunately, I can't find a link - but I think it falls under open records.)

myUFL Security

I've been told that if I use myUFL off campus, that I should be on the VPN. Not a bad recommendation, but I hope it's not the final solution.

Feedback

I decided to send feedback to the myUFL team about the most serious problems:

myUFL doesn't seem to use Secure Sockets Layer (SSL) for HTTP transactions except for the initial login. It would seem that my personal information - such as my UFID, my bank's routing number, my checking account number, and my Social Security number - is being transferred in the clear when I use the portal. This makes me very nervous.

I tried to change the URL from "http://my.ufl.edu/..." to "https://my.ufl.edu/...", but myUFL claimed that my session had expired.

Further, why is my UFID stored in a cookie (named SignOnDefault) on my hard drive with an expiration date of 7 days from login? If I login to the portal from a public computer, someone else could theoretically get it without too much trouble. Would it be possible to encrypt the contents of this cookie?

Thank you.

myUFL: Cookies, SSL, Redirects, Interface

So myUFL has been unleashed on the University of Florida community, and it's gone well...I guess. Ross has voiced (what I expect to be only) some of his complaints about the browser requirements, which I of course agree with. But this isn't about browser requirements, because I can still access myUFL in Galeon (though it's painful at times). This is about cookies, SSL, redirects, and user interface.

First, let's talk about cookies. Like any sensible person, I have my browser set to only accept cookies from the current server. This lets me login to myUFL. When I try to use any of the employee functions, however, it tells me that my session has expired. Setting it to accept all cookies, of course, lets me use those functions.

Logging into the portal sets, by my count, nine cookies. One of those is the UF_GatorLinkState cookie, which is used by other services on campus, so let's call it eight. Another cookie, SignOnDefault contains my unencrypted UFID. I can't find any specific policy on who is allowed to have access to your UFID, but I can forsee major headaches with leaving such data around on people's hard drives (this cookie doesn't expire when you close your browser, unlike some of the others), especially in lab settings.

Further, myUFL doesn't seem to use SSL for anything except the login transaction. That's right: I login using an HTTPS transaction, which redirects me to an HTTP URL. This means that ALL of my personal information is being transferred in the clear. It's possible that my UFID has been intercepted. Not to mention my payroll information - such as my bank's routing number, my checking account number, and my Social Security number.

Modifying the URL to use HTTPS (by changing http:// to https://) causes myUFL to claim my session has expired. Hitting the back button returns me to my last page, and from there I can go anywhere - so my session is obviously still active.

Now, let's talk about redirects. When you type http://my.ufl.edu/ into myUFL's "recommended" browsers (Internet Explorer 5, 5.5, or 6), you are redirected what looks like twice. Once is to http://my.ufl.edu/ps/signon.html, and finally to a secure version of that page. This breaks the back button. I kindly point the myUFL administrators to the W3C's writeup, Use standard redirects: don't break the back button!.

On user interface: it's obvious the interface was constructed by programmers, with no help from UI experts. Let's face it: as programmers, we are often horrible at creating user interfaces - we see the interface from a very technical perspective, and so it often mirrors the structure of the database tables, even when it doesn't make sense to. A complaint of one instance of poor interface design came up on the Campus Computer Coordinators list today, specifically:

-Could the time reporting link appropriate to each employee (for me, for example, weekly time) be moved up several levels in the hierarchy to, for example, my home page on my.ufl.edu? It's an awfully deep lot of clicking to do every time
-Could the date field on each punch default to today's date?
-Could the add punch button be done away with and instead just always provide a new (or, better, a few extra) blank punches at the bottom? A few blank punches would make for many fewer HTTP transactions

To give you an idea of the issues here, take a look at a screenshot of the "timecard" feature, which is used to report when an OPS employee works:

On the left, you see the navigation menu. I had to click on "Employee Self-Service", then "Time Reporting", and finally "Time Reporting Home" to get to the screen prior to this one (so a total of 4 links to get to this screen). If "Time Reporting Home" is the only thing I have in that section, why can't it come up when I click "Time Reporting"?

To actually report time, you have to first add a "punch". Then you have to select or enter a date (there's a calendar widget, or you can type into the date field). Next you type the time of the punch. Finally, you select the "type" of the punch, either "In" or "Out".

When you have one or more punches, I think the date defaults to that of the last punch. That's okay. Now, it would be really nice if the punch type would default to the opposite of the previous one, so if you last punched in, "Out" would automatically be selected.

If you leave a punch blank, you get an error message. The server should be able to simply ignore blank punches. This would also allow for the third suggestion above - always giving a few blank punches. I understand the technical reasons why this isn't done, but I would think that they could be overcome without much difficulty.

Also in that CCC thread, Sandy McArthur gave a number of good suggestions. Usability and other improvements will be made over time, hopefully.

Overall, the transition to myUFL is going better than I expected, but there is a lot of room for improvement. I want fewer cookies and the ability to constrain them to the current server only. I want secure transactions everywhere. I want a better interface. Urg.

And I don't want to feel this overwhelming hostility

T-Mobile

My experience with T-Mobile has not been pleasant. First the number portability frustration (granted, not entirely their fault), and now billing problems. I tried paying my bill online from my checking account because it's simpler than writing a check, but it turns out the payment was returned due to an invalid routing number. I checked my printout of the payment approval - sure enough, the routing number and account number was the same as on my checks. I even verified the numbers with my bank. T-Mobile's customer service representatives can't tell me anything more than "invalid routing number", and there's apparently no one I can talk to who knows more. I actually pay most of my bills online these days, and this is the first time I remember having problems, so the problem seems fairly unique to T-Mobile.

I'm overall pretty disappointed with them. Reception isn't close to what I had with US Cellular a couple of years ago. They sort of dicked me over on porting my old number. Their Web site sucks. Their billing system has obvious problems. If things don't improve, it looks like I'll be looking for cell phone service again.

No More

As I mentioned before, my brother likes to take advantage of people. Family members are no exception. I put myself in the unfortunate position of paying my family's cell phone bills for a little over a year, costing almost $2000 over my regular usage. This month, I received the final bill. With any luck, it will be the last time I have to spend money on Ben that I would rather be spending elsewhere.

I'm angry about this bill for two reasons:

1. AT&T Wireless were total cocks about allowing me to cancel my service before the change from US Cellular. I would call US Cellular, asking to cancel, and they told me to call AT&T Wireless. AT&T Wireless told me that I would have to wait until the change was officially finished (March 16, if memory serves). When I called on Monday, they told me that I would receive one final bill because they already started service. There's some black magic there with contract law, which I will likely never understand.
2. Ben didn't have a phone of his own after the second or third outrageous bill. I called US Cellular to have his phone turned off. But my mother let him borrow her phone, and by "borrow" I mean "she gave it to him".

So this final bill has over 1000 minutes of usage which are ALL thanks to Ben. The bill is $100, which is coming out of my graduation presents.

So Ben, if you ever wonder why I don't like you, it's because of issues like this. One day, I hope you realize that taking advantage of people is wrong. Until you repay me for the cell phone bills, don't even THINK of asking me for money.

Number Portability

With AT&T's purchase of US Cellular customers, I finally had a way to move to T-Mobile (yay GSM!). Knowing that at least one other customer had taken her US Cellular number with her to T-Mobile, I was hopeful that I could keep my current number. Unfortunately, I've had little luck porting my number.

I called T-Mobile before setting up service to check if my number was eligible. They told me it was, and so I was happy. I bought a T610 from Amazon (great rebates), and followed their instructions for beginning the process of porting my number to my new service.

The next day, T-Mobile called me back to tell me that they were having trouble porting my number over. They asked me to call US Cellular to verify that my number was eligible. US Cellular told me it's not, since I'm not in one of the top 100 markets. Okay, so how did my friend port her US Cellular number to T-Mobile?

If I want to keep my current number, I have the option of continuing my service with US Cellular/AT&T until May 24. I don't particularly want to do that, since US Cellular and AT&T haven't handled the buyout very well (sure, let's sign up three of my phones on a plan with only 45 minutes per month). Another reason I don't particularly like AT&T right now: According to one person I spoke to, I could cancel my service at any time without any early termination fee (which is largely why I went ahead and started service with T-Mobile). According to another person I spoke to, I will have to wait until March 28 to cancel my service. Grr.

So I'm glad the FCC is requiring cellular carriers to do number portability, and I understand the reason for the 6 month testing phase (November 24-May 24), but I'm VERY frustrated that a carrier can tell customers that their number is eligible only to later find that it's not. If I had known, I would have either (1) not gotten my hopes up or (2) waited out until May 24 with AT&T.

Cell Phones

Oh, this uncertainty is taking me over

Much like Mark, I'm anxious to try Bluetooth. I'm tired of US Cellular and their poor selection of phones. Luckily, their customers in this area were recently purchased (?) by AT&T Wireless, so I have the option of canceling my service at no cost. I want to sign up for T-Mobile, but it's not that simple.

First, some history.

When my initial contract with US Cellular ended (in 2001), I agreed to renegotiate for another 12 months and add a phone for my mother. I wasn't using very many of my anytime minutes, so an extra $20 a month didn't seem all that bad. When that contract ended, I (foolishly) agreed to a plan with more minutes so that we could add two more phones for my brother (18 years old) and younger sister (16 years old). When US Cellular switched from regular letter-sized envelopes to 8.5"x11" ones, that should have been a sign of things to come.

Just to give you an idea: In 11 months, I've paid $1564.13 in cell phone bills. My mother paid a few of the bills, so the total is probably close to $2000. One month, the bill included 4761 minutes, for a total of $416.44. My brother's phone accounted for 3297 of those minutes. Last month, when my brother's cell phone was disabled by US Cellular, our usage was 3288 minutes, for a total of $344.07. Whose phones did he use? Our mom's and sister's.

How one person can talk that much on a cell phone (or any phone, for that matter) is completely beyond my comprehension. I've probably never used more than 500 minutes in one month on a cell phone.

So with the AT&T buyout of US Cellular in my area, I'm finally in a position where I can get out of paying for at least his cell phone. Since I have absolutely no control over what the others do with their phones (I don't live at home), I'd like to go back to paying only for mine. (Having at least an extra grand a year sounds perfectly fine to me.)

So why can't I just cancel my US Cellular/AT&T contract and sign up for T-Mobile? My mom wants my younger sister to have a phone for "safety", which I mostly agree with. Am I supposed to feel guilty about leaving them to find their own service?

Why Trillian Sucks

I've once again found myself forced to use Windows thanks to school, not because of hardware classes that require MAX+plus II, but because of a software class that requires Visual Studio. Specifically, we have been "strongly urged" to use Visual C++ 6. That rant is left for another day, but let me say that I am looking into purchasing VMware.

Since using Windows is a necessity, I've had to find an IM client that doesn't piss me off. I happily used Trillian before (even buying the Pro version when it came out), but this time around I find myself wondering how I put up with it. A few of the issues so far:

1. No feedback on which window currently has the focus. This has caused all sorts of problems from typing into the buddy list what I meant to type into a conversation window to typing into a conversation what I meant to type into another.
2. Since Trillian can't correctly read buddies from the server, I've had to go on a crusade to reorganize my list. Who thought that having a one-pixel difference between adding someone to the top of a group and moving them out of a group entirely was a good idea?
3. When creating MetaContacts, there's no feedback if you forget to fill in the MetaContact name. The dialog just sits there. Nice.
4. Containers. "Hey, guys...some applications are using these things called tabs now. Let's take the idea and make it suck."
5. Wasted space in conversation windows. I don't need a title bar inside the window telling me who is involved in the conversation - that can either be left out or put in the main title bar. I also don't need a formatting bar. Or a status bar that tells me when the last message was received. At the default window height, these "extras" leave about 40% of the height for the conversation. Since the, well, conversation is the most important part of an IM session, that number should be much higher.

These issues appear in Trillian Pro 2.01 with the default theme (Trillian Whistler 3.5) on Windows XP with Service Pack 1 and all current hotfixes.

Believe me, I would like to use Gaim for the time being, but there have been problems recently with the Windows version. The GTK+ runtime is still kind of ghetto on Windows, and Gaim completely bombed out when I tried to load it up. :-(

Don't even get me started on why Firebird sucks. At least the Tabbrowser Extensions now properly save my session.

IQ

Fox has an ... interesting breakdown of IQs (from the TV ads; I could have gotten these wrong):

111-119	Above average
120-129	Gifted
> 130	GENIUS!

Now, from what I've read, an IQ of around 140 is "genius". But there's not one number that represents genius, not to mention that many educators and psychologists feel that IQ tests aren't all that great:

Correlations between different kinds of test range from about 0.35 to about 0.85. It must equally follow, therefore, that a single, short test will not tell us all that we might want to know about a person's IQ.

This test is apparently multiple-choice, about which I have a number of reservations. I distinctly remember one part of my IQ test - back when I was in first or second grade - that involved a set of triangular blocks with a different color on each side. I was given a pattern to form out of the blocks, and I guess the amount of time and accuracy helped determine my IQ.

Enough! Star Trek is on.

Ugh....

Hey, everyone! Don't forget to watch the IQ show on Fox tonight at 8:00 pm!

Two Things

1. This new Verizon commercial with the chimpanzees talking to bananas should really say something to the thousands of people who spend all their time on the phone. I have a cell phone. It's useful. But do we really need to spend all our time (in between classes, driving home, etc.) on our phones?
2. ... (I had something else in mind, but I've forgotten what it was.)

Michael Moore, Oscars, Google News, and Editorials

I love it when people make statements like this:

First, we defend Moore's right to his opinion. That is, after all, what American soldiers have fought and died for the past 227 years. Moore may not appreciate that fact, but his freedom of speech so shrilly exhibited Sunday night came at a cost in lives and sacrifice by his fellow Americans.

It's like saying, "You can't be against war because people fought for our idependence." What now?

I'd rather just ignore the whole thing (it depresses me), but it's absolutely everywhere, inlcuding Google News. I generally just skip over the US news sections, and glance over the world, technology, and health news. Usually I don't see editorials, but this one slipped through apparently.

Spam

It all started last year with an email sent from a computer in Turlington Hall. Things were pretty quiet after I reported them for that. Then, they registered an AOL account and used to spam me. They used that account to send me the following five emails:

1. 2003.01.31
2. 2003.02.10
3. 2003.02.13
4. 2003.02.23
5. 2003.03.23

I then received email from Yahoo! Groups inviting me to join the gainesvilleclubs7 group. This email was immediately forwarded to the Yahoo! Groups abuse team.

One would figure Yahoo! would be against spam, but apparently not. Since I never registered my email address at Yahoo!, I can't sign in to remove myself from these Yahoo! Groups. This is fun.

Arghahrarhgh

My damn eyelid is twitching. It's really annoying.

Gender Equality

The issue of women in computing has come up again. I guess I don't see "gender equality" as a goal we all must set for ourselves. That's not to say that women shouldn't feel welcome, as often seems to be the case. Just remember: If you know your shit, you aren't going to take crap from any of the "pale, photophobic potbellied stick men". Likewise, males who don't know their shit will miss the cut.

Bike Traffic

Please excuse the following rant. I'm grumpy today.

A cyclist came very close to hitting me and another person in the crosswalk today. Normally, I don't mind so much that cyclists ride on the sidewalks and fail to stop for people in crosswalks - I can get over that.

I'm bothered because he was riding against traffic.

YES, RIDING AGAINST TRAFFIC.

Imagine that someone walks out into the crosswalk, a common event when class has just gotten out. I always glance over my shoulder to look the other way, but I don't expect a biker to be riding the wrong way. He has to swerve to avoid me, but - holy crap - there's a CAR APPROACHING.

*SPLAT*

Bike lanes are available on campus for a reason.

Adler

I can't believe this (from Jennifer Valdes' Alligator article): "After [Marc] Adler's arrest [attorney Robert] Rush argued that the only reason the [reckless driving] incident was an issue was because of Adler's position on campus." The attorney went on to say that it "is unfortunate that he has to go through this because of who he is." Honestly, Adler should be given the highest possible punishment for what he did, not because I have something against him, but because it would show other people that driving with an blood alcohol level of 0.06 is simply unacceptable.

Blarg

Reasons (well, it all comes down to one reason) to be pissed off:

• "Couldn't he [a TA in my THE 2000 class] try to be a little less gay?" -- a student behind me at the exam this morning
• People who get off by laughing at others
• Those I'm-trying-to-hide-it-but-don't-really-want-to smirks from them

Look, I'm finding it really hard to understand how people justify this total lack of respect for others. I don't want to simply dismiss someone because they give me a look I don't like, but it's getting harder not to. (The THE 2000 TA thing was a very poignant example of this insulting nature that people seem to have.) [Update, blah, blah, blah. I don't feel like blaming this entirely on others. I have my own issues, but I feel like there are a lot of people who "get past" their issues by being ass holes to others.]

Rebates

So I bought a Yamaha CD burner last December. It came with a $30 rebate offer, which I sent off after making sure the burner worked. The rebate asked for a copy of the receipt, the proof of purchase from the top of the box, and the UPC barcode. After waiting four months, I received a note from Yamaha saying that they could not send me a check because my submission was missing the barcode. The box has a large hole where the UPC used to be, and while it's possible that I forgot to put it in the envelope, I'm doubtful. I remember sealing the envelope and wondering whether the postal service would accept such a thick letter. So, whatever. There's not much I can realistically do by 2002.04.15 (the deadline, according to the note I received). Hmm, Yamaha may have just made my list of companies to boycott.

Sky Niteclub Fun

I received a response from the UF Incident Response team. Also, I emailed Yahoo! Domains, their hosting company. I received this initial response from Yahoo! Domains.