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512MB of RAM is ridiculous

Years ago (when Bill Gates said that 640 K is all that is needed or something like that), 512 MB of RAM would have seemed like overkill. Unfortunately (I guess depending on how you look at it), this is no longer the case. I had to send my MacBook Pro in for repairs as it had an annoying whine when running on battery which forced me to use on of my Mac Minis with only 512 MB of RAM for a few days. It clearly wasn’t the speed causing things to slow down (1.66 MHz Core Duo on the Mini and 2.16 GHz Core Duo on the MacBook Pro). The OS kept having to swap things in and out of RAM, everything I did took ages. I was tempted to go buy 2GB of RAM, but couldn’t justify the cost for a test machine. I can’t believe that Apple (and other computer manufacturers) ship machines with this little RAM knowing that it won’t be enough. That’s how they keep the cost down; pay $600 for the machine, spend another $300 in RAM.

Thankfully Apple’s service is fast and I got my MacBook Pro back in 2 days (sent it in on Monday, got it back on Wednesday) otherwise I would have pulled my hair out.

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Scared waterless

Yesterday I replaced our reverse osmosis system as the one we had was costing me something like $200 per year to replace the filters. The previous owners of our house installed probably one of the most expensive systems they could find and to top it off, the replacements filters had to be ordered. So I picked up a GE Profile Smart Water system from Home Depot where the replacement filters are about $40 every six months so not only is it half the price per year, I can get the filters right from the local store.

Plumbing is definitely something I hate doing and this job only reaffirmed that. A simple task (since it was already setup for it) turned into an all day affair and I still didn’t get it exactly how I wanted it as I wanted a shutdown value for the refrigerator water line (2 Home Depots were out of the part).

Anyway, after I got it installed, I noticed a warning label on the tank “This product contains chemicals known to the State of California to cause cancer.”

Warning label

Hmmm. Now that is a great thing to have in a system that is supposed to clean my water. I figured it was the paint on the outside of the holding tank, but called GE this morning. The lady I spoke with knew exactly what I was talking about and said that their tests have shown that this is not the case and the label is being removed from new production runs. I asked if my tank was the same and she said yes, so I should have nothing to worry about. My question is, how does a company put out a product that is advertised to reduce harmful contaminants when it has a sticker on the side indicating that it could cause cancer? This label is not on the outside of the box, but is inside. I would have thought that they would have cleared up this issue before shipping. That kind of explains why most of the units were opened at Home Depot; I managed to get a sealed one as I have no idea what people may have done to the units before returning them.

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What happens when technology fails?

The other day when I was in Los Gatos for work, I stayed in a nice hotel that had electronic locks on all the rooms with what looked like no manual bypass. I went back to my room one of the days I was there and my key didn’t work. I went to the front desk and asked to get a new key; the system wasn’t working to generate a new key, so I had to be let in the room by the front desk clerk. He used an electronic master key. What would have happened if the master key didn’t work? Would all the rooms unlock (I’d hope not)? How would people get in? Later when I went to get a new key, the system was working again, but I wonder how my card key got deactivated. Hmmm.

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What’s that growing out of your ear?

More and more I see people with Bluetooth headsets hanging on their ears when they’re walking around and even when they’re eating. I think that this is extremely rude and completely unnecessary. However, people feel the need to talk on the phone wherever they happen to be. Bluetooth headsets are fine for the car and when you need to be handsfree, but it doesn’t have to be a permanent fixture on your ear.

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OS X server – deceptively simple

The more I play with OS X server, the more I realize how much Apple tried to slap a GUI on open source stuff and was only moderately successful. Take for instance the WebDAV support. I can give access to a realm to various users and various groups. In my case, users have multiple short names, such as scottgruby and sgruby (I didn’t set this server up). If I give my user access to a DAV realm by dragging it over, OS X server only gives access to the first short name assigned to the user and then even lets me edit the name which makes no sense because if I change the name, I no longer have access to it. I had a user have trouble with this, because she was using the second short name and not the first. Furthermore, OS X server does weird things with the DAV permissions such that even if you have read only access to various parts of a DAV volume, you can’t browse it with a DAV client, i.e. the Finder or Transmit. Apple says this isn’t a bug, but I disagree. Clearly they setup the Apache access permissions incorrectly making it a pain for users to access parts of a DAV volume. So unlike an AFP volume where a user can mount the top level and navigate to directories that he/she has permissions to view, the DAV implementation requires users to mount the particular folder they want access.

I’m not a huge fan of AFP as it doesn’t appear to be the most efficient protocol, allows clients to hang around (using process load) and by default, isn’t secure. You can do AFP over SSH, but you still have to turn on AFP and explicitly tell it to use SSH.

There are some aspects of OS X server that are nice such as turning on the firewall and controlling access, but in my short time using it, I’ve run into a number of bugs (that I need to report) that I’m sure won’t get fixed.

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Isn’t this helpful?

I went to look for the gate for my trip to San Jose and saw the picture below. You’d think the airport would have a monitoring system to restart the machine running the monitors. The monitor next to this worked fine.

Flight Monitor
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When isn’t a gallon sized bag better than a quart sized bag?

That’s really a stupid question, but it has an answer and that is at the airport. With the new TSA regulations, all gels and liquids (3 oz or less mind you, but they didn’t say there was a limit, so go hog wild and split your stuff up into a bunch of little containers) must be in a clear plastic Ziploc type bag. I put my stuff in a gallon sized bag (that’s all we had at home) and when I got to the airport, I had to transfer my stuff to a quart sized bag they provided. Why? I have no idea. I put the bag in the bin with my shoes to go through X-Ray; if it was a gallon sized bag, would it have made a difference? Absolutely not, but it is pointless to argue with the TSA. Mind you the X-Ray screeners didn’t care about the 10 patch cables I had in my bag, the digital camera, computer, portable scanner, PSP, iPod, etc., but they do care that my 2 oz container of hand sanitizer was in a quart sized bag.

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So much for privacy

This past weekend I took and passed the Technician class Amateur Radio License exam (yes, I realize I’m a geek, but my desire to get the license has to do with being part of CERT and being prepared for a disaster). This morning I checked the FCC’s website to find out my call sign; it was there as well as my address. While the government has strict regulations for medical information, it doesn’t seem to care who can get my home address. I need to switch the address to my mailbox as it is way too easy for someone to figure out where I live. I think it is completely unacceptable for the FCC to have this information publicly available. Why is it that some parts of my privacy are more important than others? The FCC simply requires that I can receive mail via USPS at my address, so there shouldn’t be a problem with the change. I actually did think about using my box when I entered the information for my license, but decided against it.

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My email address has been sold!

While this really isn’t a new occurrence, it is interesting to note who sold it and who bought it. Several years ago, I read about someone that creates a new email aliases for each website he visits. Since I run my own domain and can easily do this, I adopted website.com@gruby.com which lets me easily track (and disable) email addresses. Today I received email from the San Jose Mercury News; I signed up on their website at one time to view some article and used a new email address. I also uncheck the “share my name” options and all the email options. Well, it looks like the Mercury News feels they need to support their website by sending out spam. The email I received today was a paid advertisement from the Phil Angelides campaign.

I can see less reputable companies doing this, but the newspaper for Silicon Valley? They really should know better than to spam their subscriber list. Their FAQ states:

Will I receive email?
Our content is available to you as a free service. Occasionally, we will send emails to update you on new features and products from MercuryNews.com and on behalf of our selected partners and advertisers.

So while they are in their rights to send me crap, sending me a political advertisement when they haven’t sent me anything in years is just in bad taste.

Not a huge deal for me, I just disabled the email alias and now they can’t send me any more spam.

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Software Installers should have uninstallers

I’ve not been a huge fan of either software installers or uninstallers, but understand the need for installers. Recently I tried out a program on my Linux box and used the installer to install it; I was unimpressed with the software and the mess it scattered over my drive. I looked around, but couldn’t find an uninstaller. Maybe I deleted it trying to quickly recover from what it had done or maybe it didn’t come with one. If it didn’t come with one, it should have. It took me awhile to remove what it installed and then it wasn’t until a day later that I discovered it changed some of my system files. Luckily I had backups of those and was able to restore them. Hopefully I’ll no longer complain about shipping a product with an uninstaller as I now know firsthand how hard it is to remove some programs.