Posts

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Cash vs Credit

It seems that these days very few businesses besides gas stations charge a different price for cash vs. credit. I know that there is a cost to accepting credit cards (transaction fee and percentage of sale), but companies consider it a cost of doing business and absorb the cost. Years ago when I started accepting credit cards for NotfiyMail, I too realized this and if I wanted to get more customers, I’d have to accept credit cards and charging different prices would not sit well with customers. It would seem that either gas stations are on a super slim margin or just want to milk customers. There are 2 gas stations near my house; for a long time neither accepted credit cards, so I always got cash before going (they charged a $0.35 convenience fee for ATM transactions). Then one of them starting accepting credit cards for the same price as cash. Well, the second station started accepting credit cards at a different price (6 cents higher), so the station I was going to just started doing the same thing. This really annoys me, but it won’t stop me from going there as the bank is in the same shopping center so I can get cash and it is convenient.

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My tax dollars hard at work

I tend to use the phrase “my tax dollars hard at work” when describing wasteful spending of tax dollars. Today’s paper gave me another opportunity to say this. San Diego is looking to build a bigger airport and has selected some military sites (currently in use) as options where they would be dual use (military and civilian). They have done this despite the fact that the military has said absolutely no. The airport authority has paid a consultant to come up with ways that the airport could be dual use. If the military said no, is there any chance it will happen?

Personally I don’t want a larger airport; I like our airport as it is convenient and easy to use. In addition, one of the top sites is Miramar Marine Corps Air Station which is much closer to my house; this could increase flight noise near my house, but will definitely increase traffic. During the annual Miramar air show, traffic was backed up to my exit on the freeway which is about 10 miles from the entrance to Miramar. This was on a weekend without the normal commuting traffic. I can’t imagine what it would be like to get to the proposed airport during the week.

I wish someone would pay me a lot of money to come up with completely unrealistic ideas for a new airport.

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Viruses on Navy computers, i.e. I’m paying to get spammed

It looks like the Navy needs to update their virus software as they have a machine trying to send me spam:

Feb 20 21:37:39 linux sendmail[6685]: NOQUEUE: connect from
pacfc.fleet.navy.mil [205.56.145.37]
Feb 20 21:37:48 linux sendmail[6685]: k1L5bda1006685: ruleset=check_rcpt,
arg1=, relay=pacfc.fleet.navy.mil [205.56.145.37],
reject=550 5.7.1 ... Relaying denied

Can I send the Navy a bill for having to deal with their virus infected computer? I’m glad my tax dollars are hard at work sending me spam.

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Nice work, RapidWeaver

Over the past 24 hours, I’ve been bombarded by bounced email that appears to have originated from my server. Turns out, there is a security flaw in the php script that RapidWeaver uses for its contact page so people have been exploiting it to send spam. Reading the message boards for the software shows that the authors knew about this about 1.5 weeks ago. It would have been nice for them to inform their users to turn this feature off until they can patch it. Even after they patch it, I’ll find another way to handle the contact page so I don’t have to deal with this again.

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Fun with Pointers (not the dogs)

One of the aspects of programming that took me a long time to understand was (memory) pointers. I grew up with BASIC, learned Pascal and C where I always used fixed length structures or types and never cared about memory allocation as it was way too confusing to me. In college, I majored in engineering and only took 1 computer science class, so most of my programming knowledge is self-taught, on the job training. It wasn’t until a few years out of college that how pointers worked really clicked. These days, with high level frameworks and languages such as Objective-C and Cocoa, I don’t use pointers all that often (I still have to deal with allocation and de-allocation of memory), but when I need to use them, they’re a piece of cake to use. I find that I only use them when shipping data across a wire, i.e. to/from a handheld device. Knowing how to use pointers, walk pointers, etc. makes complicated code very easy. I think that understanding how pointers work is essential to being able to write applications that aren’t self-contained, i.e. only run on a desktop machine. I wish I had learned about them earlier as I’m sure it would have made my life easier.

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Samsung A900 Update – Almost golden!

Samsung/Sprint released an update to the A900 phone today or yesterday (version ZB12) which directly addressed the “phantom ringing” issue that I, as well as others, reported. This is excellent as I can now use a Bluetooth headset with the phone. However, my Parrot EasyDrive carkit doesn’t work with it, yet. I’m not sure if this is a Parrot problem or a Samsung problem, but I suspect Samsung as I can use the carkit with a GSM phone I have on my desk.

I’m keeping my fingers crossed that Samsung/Sprint will iron out this remaining issue in the near future. It’s disappointing to see the fixes take so long and not to have them in there before the phone was released, but I’m glad they’re finally getting addressed.

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Boy Scouts (again) sued over land access

Today’s paper had an article about the Boy Scouts in court again over lease agreements with the city of San Diego claiming that the Boy Scouts are a religious organization. This is the biggest bunch of bull I’ve ever heard. Just because the 12th point of the Scout Law is “Reverent” and the Scout Oath has “do my duty to God and my country”, it doesn’t mean that it is a religious organization. US currency has the word God on it; the Oath of Office for various top positions in the government end with “So help me God.”. Does this make the government a religious organization? While I completely respect people’s views in whatever religion they may have, I see nothing wrong with the Scout Law and Scout Oath as they are today. I agree with the Boy Scouts of America on this point, I completely disagree with them on their stance on gays as leaders. Being gay doesn’t mean that someone is morally wrong, does it? It isn’t my choice, but why should I care what others choose? It also doesn’t mean that a leader will act inappropriately around the scouts.

I am a huge fan of the Boy Scouts and believe that being a Scout and earning the rank of Eagle Scout has made a big impact on my life. However, I think that it needs to re-think some of its views (particularly its stance on gays) so that it doesn’t become associated with highly conservative religious views which could have a very negative affect on the organization.

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Aging Hardware

Every now and again, I tend to look at the equipment I have on my desk and think about how long I’ve had it. The oldest piece of “equipment” is a pair of Apple Design speakers that I got in 1996 or 1997. They still are in use and work quite well. The second most ancient piece of equipment is my PowerMac G4/500 dual processor which I bought in late summer 2000. This machine, despite being 5.5 years old, still serves as my test and build machine. My builds now take 20-25 minutes as there are a ton of components and I keep considering if I should upgrade to a newer machine. I’ll still need a PowerPC based machine for testing, so maybe I’ll be able to pick up a G5 dual processor machine cheap as soon as the Intel based towers come out.

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One of the least accessible places in San Diego

I’ve always thought to myself that there are several places in the city of San Diego that are extremely inaccessible in case of emergency. One of those would be Cowles (pronounced Coles) Mountain. Why is it so inaccessible? There are 2 ways to get to it on the ground; the first is up the winding narrow trail that won’t support a vehicle and the second is a fire road up the back. My theory was proven correct yesterday as Copter 1 had to rescue a hiker off the mountain. The only other option was to have rescuers hike up the mountain and carry the injured person down on a backboard which would definitely not be a fun task. (Parts of Mission Trails Regional Park and some beach areas are also very inaccessible in emergencies.)

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Fire truck on fire

Yesterday’s news showed a fire truck that caught on fire. That really was a bummer to see a $350,000 emergency vehicle up in flames. To top it off, I saw a big 39 on the side…that’s the fire engine that serves my neighborhood. I hope that it gets replaced soon. (This is the second fire truck that has caught fire in the last few days.)