Worst burrito ever

I’m a big fan of Mexican food (OK, maybe Tex-Mex) and Saturday night, my wife let me choose where to go for dinner. We were out at San Diego State at some open house to see the electron microscope and some telescopes (my wife loved it and couldn’t understand why I wasn’t as fascinated as she was), so we decided to eat out that way. We went to a place that she’d been to in the past, but she said the name had changed. Well, it was quaint and looked authentic. I started eating my steak burrito and hit some fat. OK, so I pick it out and keep munching away. Hit more fat, removed it and continued. I finally unwrapped the burrito and looked at the meat. About half of it was fatty. I ate the tortilla and complained. The waiter didn’t seem all that surprised, but took it off the bill. So much for trying someplace new. I guess we’ll go back to Chevy’s; it may not be real Mexican food, but we’ve been consistently happy with the food and service.

Spark – Cool tool for keyboard shortcuts

When Mac OS X 10.4 came out, Apple broke the ability to assign a keyboard shortcut to an AppleScript in the AppleScript menu. Normally I wouldn’t blame Apple for breaking something this obscure, but it is clearly documented in the Apple Help. Now 7 months later, I finally had to find another solution as I miss my AppleScripts (they are to get around a design change Apple made that I argue is a bug, but despite by exchanges with them, they refuse to acknowledge it). I looked for apps to do this and found Spark. It looks slick and the price is right (free). So far, I got it doing what I want, but now I’m intrigued as it looks to do a whole lot more.

eBay Feedback is a joke

I bought a PlayStation 2 Network adapter off eBay a few weeks ago and still haven’t seen it nor heard from the seller. If it doesn’t arrive soon, I’ll have to start the eBay process to get my money back. Checking the feedback of the seller, she was almost all positive feedback. Reading the feedback, I see things like: “never recieved it, was told it was returned damaged. thanks usps.” and “cd cases broke, missing disc, but shipped quick & still an ok deal” both listed as positive feedback! The problem I believe is that if a buyer leaves negative feedback, the seller will do the same thing even if the buyer pays immediately after the auction closes. So because of fear of getting negative feedback, people leave positive feedback with negative comments. For the hassle and aggravation, I should have just bought this from a local store or a known dealer. On the other hand, my other recent eBay purchases were smooth and shipped quickly.

USB – Is there magic sauce to make it work?

I really like the concept of USB where devices from different manufacturers plug into hardware made by lots of different vendors without having to worry about getting the right plug. From a user’s point of view, it is great as long as their are drivers for a particular OS. Some types of devices such as hard drives have drivers built into just about every OS, so you just plug it in and you’re golden. Other devices such as PDAs, you have a big problem. I’ve been writing USB drivers and applications that talk to USB for over 3 years now and must say that as a developer, I hate USB. It seems that no one knows enough about USB to implement it correctly on the devices plugging into the computer, so as a developer, I have to code around their issues. Furthermore, each USB device should have a unique vendor and product ID. Vendor IDs seem to always be fine, but the device manufacturers, for some reason or another, give multiple devices the same product ID. This would be fine if the devices had identical USB implementations, but they don’t. Two companies in particular that seem to play games are Palm and Sony with their PDAs. They’re probably either trying to conserve product IDs or someone didn’t have a clue that it should be changed as they expect that they’d be the only ones talking to the devices. It is such a nightmare to deal with these devices. Right now my desk has 8 PDAs so that I can test my code. Things were humming along fine until an issue was reported and the log indicated a problem with some code I changed. Now, I have to find every Sony CLIE that has the same product ID and test my fix against them. Right now, there are at least 7 devices with the same product ID.

Good news on evolution

Apparently the voters of Dover, PA got fed up with their school board that is trying (the case is being fought in court and should be decided in January) to implement “Intelligent Design” in the biology curriculum. Eight of the school board members were voted out of office. Unfortunately, the ninth board member wasn’t up for re-election. Maybe there are still some “intelligent” people in this country.

(Also see this article where the Vatican seems to be against “Intelligent Design.”)

Conservative Neighborhood

While my wife and I were walking our dog yesterday, we passed by the house where we voted (we vote in a garage) and they posted the election results for those that voted (in aggregate, of course). Based on the results, I live in a conservative neighborhood. About 65% of the voters cast votes xfor all the propositions (many conservatives supported Governor Arnold). This really wasn’t surprising to me, but it is interesting to see the political views of those in my neighborhood. Luckily no one tries to impose their views on me.

iPod Nano Dock

Apple was nice enough to include an adapter so that an iPod Nano fits in a standard iPod dock. That’s fine and dandy, but I already own an iPod Mini dock where the adapter didn’t fit. Not wanting to buy another dock, I did what any engineer with a Dremel would do; I modified the adapter so that it fit in my Mini dock. Thanks, Apple, I was looking for a reason to break out the Dremel!

Governor Arnold – Maybe he should be recalled

Yesterday’s statewide California election where Governor Arnold’s propositions failed, shows that his ideas aren’t representative of his constituents. While most of his propositions didn’t win by a landslide, it does show that he wasted a lot of money ($300+ million) on this election. The only reason he had this special election was because he was unable to work with the legislature to get laws passed. I think that it may be time for Governor Arnold to go; I hope he doesn’t get re-elected. While he has said when he was elected that it wasn’t going to be politics as usual, that’s exactly what it has been.

Intelligent design – sad for America

The decision, yesterday, by the Kansas State Board of Education requiring that “Intelligent Design” be taught in biology classes marks a sad day in American history to see the religious right bringing religion into the classroom. Those that support “Intelligent Design” say that it is an alternative to evolution, but in fact, it is made up baloney. There is scientific evidence that supports evolution; the question that has always remained for me, is how did the first “things” on Earth get here? Big bang? A higher being? Magic? Who knows. I think that religion should be used to explain the unexplainable, in this case, how did the first things get on Earth. Taking the bible literally shows a lack of thinking in my mind; I see it as a guide. If you take the passage about the world being created in seven days, no where does it say how long a day is. It could be millions of years.

I’m all for religious freedom, but I don’t want to see anyone impose their religious beliefs (“Intelligent Design” is a belief and nothing more) on me or anyone else in this country. I think that the religious right need to take a step back and practice their religion without forcing it on me.

(It was pointed out to me by a friend that apparently the Vatican, of all entities, has similar beliefs to me about this.)

Video Games

I must say that I enjoy playing video games on my PlayStation 2. I’m not very good, so I don’t play all that often. I recently bought a few games off eBay. I also bought a steering wheel and Gran Turismo 4. However, I’m really bad at games and my driving consists of steering into walls most of the time. Since I wasn’t very good at Gran Turismo, I saw that the wheel also worked with Burnout, so I played that and thought it was quite cool. Realizing that this was an ancient version, I bought Burnout Revenge. It turns out either that I’m OK at this game or they made it quite easy. In either case, I am having a great time playing it. My poor driving skills don’t seem all that poor (however, I found that the Dual Shock controller works better than the steering wheel for control). My wife thinks I’m crazy as I’ve played for a few hours at a time for the last week. I’m about 30% complete and am making decent progress, all while having a pretty good time. It’s amazing that this game has kept my attention for so long already; usually I play games for a few minutes and get bored. Kudos to the folks at Electronic Arts for producing this addictive game!