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Doing my civic duty

Today, I honored my summons to goto jury duty. I’ve been called maybe 4 or 5 times in the past and have only come close to serving on a jury once (I was an alternate and the case was pleaded out after opening arguments). Now that San Diego uses the 1 day or 1 trial system, a lot less of my time is wasted. (OK, I say wasted, but others would say it is an honor and privilege to server.) For the 5.5 years prior to my current job, I just filled out the form saying it would be an extreme financial hardship as I was self employed. Fortunately for me, I have an EVDO modem, so waiting in the jury room simply meant that I didn’t have the comforts of my home office, but I was still able to work.

Luckily I wasn’t called to serve on a jury, so I’m excused for another year. It was a nice day downtown and I managed to spend a bit of it walking during our lunch break (they gave us 2 hours for lunch, that IS a waste).

Hopefully I won’t be called again anytime soon.

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More on Registration Schemes

Today I saw an update to Multiplex that I bought as part of the MacUpdate Promo bundle. I went into it, did the update (it uses Sparkle) and found that it was no longer registered. I went back to the original download link and downloaded the new version all registered. It looks like the developers embedded the license info in the Resources directory of the app bundle; so when it gets updated using Sparkle, the license gets wiped out. Wow, brilliant. Stop being clever and just have a reg file or a reg code; it is easier to maintain and it won’t do stupid things like this (yes, if you move it to another machine you have to copy the reg info, but that’s a minor price to pay).

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Flawed Registration Systems

In the latest MacUpdate Promo, there are a number of programs I’ve never heard of and some that are big name products. I purchased the bundle, downloaded the applications, and started registering them. Developers have chosen different methods for registering their products. There are a few types of schemes that are being used:

  • Registration code that is just entered.
  • Registration code that is entered and then validated against a server.
  • Registration code that is entered and then validated against a server and then tied to a certain computer.
  • Custom downloaded app that is pre-registered.
  • Picture with registration information embedded.
  • Registration code that requires you to visit a web site and then your code is sent to you.

When I started ReceiptWallet, I used eSellerate’s system and chose option number 2. After I received a very nasty comment on VersionTracker that my company could go under and he’d never be able to re-register the application, I immediately switched to option 1 as the user was absolutely correct. Registration schemes, for the most part, keep the honest people, honest. All of the systems above, except for the first one and fifth one, have one serious flaw. That is, the company must still be in business if I change computers or lose the registration number. In addition, their servers must be working and they can’t rearrange anything on the server or the validation may no longer work. I understand that people are trying to protect their software, but protecting the software at the expense of penalizing legitimate customers is, in my opinion, bad business. I’m sure people will disagree with me, but I’ve had a few successful programs that used method number 1. I sold something like 4000 copies of one of my programs to NASA and I wasn’t really worried about piracy.

Developers, please re-consider your registration systems and spend more time writing software and less time on registration schemes.

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Uneforcable water restrictions

Starting June 1, the City of San Diego will impose water restrictions that mandate when and how we can water our landscape (we just finished ripping out our lawn and putting in drought tolerant landscaping, see the picture below). While I’m not sure how much of the restrictions apply to us since we have drip irrigation, I set our sprinkler timer to water as required by the restrictions.

The water restrictions still let us fill our pool (but not overfill it). Last time I checked, it takes a lot more water to fill a pool than to water a lawn (of course, a pool should only have to be filled once a week to offset the evaporation of water). The main problem with the restrictions are basically unenforceable. Are the police (the ones the city can’t afford) going to stop fighting crime to issue citations for people watering their lawns? Who is going to remember when to water their lawns (odd numbered houses and even numbered houses water on different days).

We definitely have to do something about our water shortage, but these restrictions really aren’t going to do a whole lot. Maybe the city and county should have thought about population growth in our desert before approving more housing units like they’ve done in the last few years. We’re all going to pay for the mistakes of our politicians.

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New California City

Last week I was reading in the paper that the local water authority released another $450,000 in consumer rebates; this was after the rebates for the entire month of May were allocated in the first 1.5 hours that they were available. (I had called the first day and tried to get a rebate for the new washing machine we need.) I quickly got online, applied for the rebate and presto, my rebate (up to $135) was allocated! I got the paperwork and discovered that I needed to send the paperwork to a new California city, Sacremento. You’d like that the government that administers this rebate could proofread its web pages.

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Paperless in MacUpdate Promo!

Another bundle deal, another set of great apps! This time, however, Paperless (formerly ReceiptWallet), is part of the bundle. MacUpdate is offering a bunch of great apps. You’ve probably heard of most of them. This is the first time that one of my applications has been offered as part of a bundle.

I have a strange hobby of collecting software, so I’ll probably bite on this deal despite owning a few in the collection. It’s hard to go wrong for the price. If you decide to buy the bundle, click on the link on the right side of the page advertising the bundle to support my blog (running this blog isn’t free :-)).

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Honoring our nation’s fallen

Lately, it seems that the only words I hear associated with Memorial Day are “happy” and “sale”. The word happy definitely doesn’t belong with Memorial Day if you actually look at what Memorial Day symbolizes. It is easy to forget the true meaning of Memorial Day when you hear phrases like “the unofficial beginning of summer”. Today I spent the day with my parents and my son. When I arrived at my parents’ place, I saw that my dad had his flag out at half staff and then at 11 am (he had the time wrong, but doesn’t believe me), he raised it to full staff. (The United States Flag Code says to fly the flag at half staff until noon.)

While I don’t support and haven’t supported the wars of my generation, I do have great respect for those that serve and for those that have given their lives for our country. Memorial Day should once again be recognized for the day that it is, to honor those that have given the ultimate sacrifice for our country and should not be used as yet another excuse to have the day off and commercialize a holiday.

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The “modern” age of cameras

My mom has been making movies for us from the pictures and videos we give her of our son and she is quite good at it. As we were viewing some of the videos lately, I noticed the image quality of the older videos was pretty poor. Just over 4 years ago, we got a Pentax Optio S5i to replace our Olympus Digital Stylus. The Pentax as a great camera for its time and was quite compact. However, fast forward several years and then we started to see that the 320×240 videos were pretty bad. After seeing a review of the Flip Ultra, I decided to get one just for video. That brought us up to 640×480. Wow, a 4x increase in resolution! We were still at 5 megapixel for still images, but video was better, not great.

After reading a review from another Mac developer, I decided to start looking at cameras. I remembered that my mom just got a new one and my dad had done tons of research. Turns out my mom got the Canon SD970 which is a step up from the one in the review. I did some digging on the differences between the 960 and 970, handled both (Best Buy had the 960, so I saw its size and I played with my mom’s 970) and decided on the 960. I’ve only had it for a few days, but already I can tell it is light years ahead of my Pentax. I tend to keep electronics for a long time if I like them; I guess I really liked the Pentax as 4 years is a long time in the electronics world!

I’ll post some pictures in some other entries.

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Paperless on sale until Sunday!

Paperless, the new name for ReceiptWallet, is on sale until Sunday (5/17) for $34.95. It has the new branding on it, but it’s still my beloved ReceiptWallet! Additional features will be coming and this is a great opportunity for those that haven’t already committed to becoming organized to start.

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Running again

I’ve been running on and off for more than a decade. I’ve used it as a way to relieve stress and by running 2 marathons, proved to myself that I can accomplish physical goals that we’re unimaginable to me years ago. After my last marathon, almost 2 years ago, I haven’t run very consistently. My son is now 2 and I feel guilty about running as I should be spending time with him. However, I do need time for myself. To that end, about 6 weeks ago (maybe longer), I started running every other day. I’ve been doing a decent job keeping this up, only missing a few days which I just made up the next day. While I’d like to run 4 days a week consistently, this every other day schedule is working out quite well. My runs are 3-5 miles and take 30-50 minutes (I’m not back down to a 9 minute mile) which is enough to get my heart going, but doesn’t take that much time that I feel guilty about knocking off from work early and still get back in time to walk the dog.

Along with the other changes in my life, I would like to make this a permanent routine as it is going to be the only way I can keep my head from exploding!