I finally figured out what causes traffic; drum roll, please…stupid people! Did you really expect some profound reason? Last week when we were driving back from Santa Barbara, there were a few patches of slowing. As we passed the slow areas, I kept looking for a reason why. There was no reason the traffic slowed. It’s a good thing I don’t commute as I’d probably rip all my hair out.
Life with the iPhone
I’ve been using an iPhone for a few weeks now (I have a very nice client that sent me an iPhone) and must say that I kind of like it. I’m not a huge voice person, so I’ve only made a few calls and can’t really comment on it.
I’m getting used to the email client and web browsing is pretty nice. In addition, the iTunes interface is pretty slick. I even watched some Simpsons episodes on it on one trip. My biggest complaints about the iPhone are 1) it is on AT&T, 2) it is on the EDGE network and 3) it suffers from the GSM buzz. As I don’t do much text messaging, the lack of a physical keyboard isn’t an issue for me.
At first, I was jealous of the iPhone as I’ve spent many years dealing with Palm based devices and have had a lot invested in working with Palm OS, but with the lack of life in the Palm OS and my shift of focus in my work, I realized that I had no reason to be jealous and am embracing the device.
I’m sure that future versions of the iPhone will be better, but for a first version of a device by a company that has never produced a cell phone, this is quite amazing. Nokia, Palm, LG, Motorola, etc. have had years to come up with something like the iPhone, but have not managed to come close.
iPhone Update and Self Signed Certificates
I updated my iPhone today to the latest firmware and found that I couldn’t check email. I remember reading something in the release notes about man in the middle attacks. So, I tracked down the issue to a self-signed SSL certificate I use on my mail server. Luckily, I have a real wildcard certificate for receiptwallet.com. So, I reconfigured my mail server and changed my settings to mail.receiptwallet.com and presto, things started working again. So, unless I missed a setting, self-signed certificates can’t be used with the new iPhone update; I see this as a big problem for people that don’t want to fork over the money for a real certificate. Oh well, I learn something new everyday.
Government actually does work!
The other day, I blogged about getting my local city councilman to get a sidewalk we use cleared of brush/weeds. Well, today I walked the dog and saw that the sidewalk was completely cleared. That sure was fast! I guess the squeaky well does get the grease.
Scott, the fireman
Today my wife was grilling some chicken for dinner when she yelled to me that the chicken was on fire. I walked over from my chore of planting a tree and sprayed some water on it from a squirt bottle. When that failed, I turned off the burners and sprayed more water on it. I fired up the grill after the fire was out and went back to my task. My wife then called again a few minutes later and said the grill was on fire. This time, I ran over and tried to put it out with a squirt bottle, but that was fruitless. My wife told me to get a hose to put it out (she was more put together than I was to think of what to do). I ran and got the hose which happened to have a fire hose type nozzle on it and I put out the fire by dousing the grill with water. My major concern was that if the propane tank got too hot, it could explode.
Luckily since I used water to put out the fire, my wife salvaged dinner and finished the cooking in the oven; it was quite tasty despite the fire. After we looked back on the fire, my wife pointed out that it was a grease fire and she expected me to use a dry chemical fire extinguisher. I didn’t even think about using a fire extinguisher, so we’re lucky that my wife managed to remain calm under pressure and tell me what to do.
I think I’ll stick to my day job and let the professionals put out the real fires.
Counting my lucky stars
Last Saturday, we left for the airport at around 5:15 am to catch a flight to Oakland (to surprise my mother-in-law for her birthday) and as we’re driving down I-15, I noticed some “road hazards” (cars that were going slower than 60 mph in a 65 mph zone), so I moved over a lane to the left. Up ahead, I saw flashing yellow light and just thought it was CalTrans doing some work. As we got closer, I started seeing debris on the road and what appeared to be a burned out car in the far right lane. There were no CHP cars around or anything, except a private ambulance that had its lights on (the yellow I saw before). (I now know it was a private ambulance because it was a Type II ambulance and San Diego Fire/Resuce uses Type III ambulances. I managed to only run over a small piece of debris and we kept moving. Looking back on this, I’m surprised it didn’t turn into a huge disaster. The “road hazards” I mentioned above were right on target to slam into this mess. However, I couldn’t find any reference to this accident in the online versions of the San Diego Union Tribune or mentioned on any of the Web sites for the television stations.
I keep thinking back to have bad an accident this could have been and feel quite lucky.
Just call me Jack
Yesterday, I went to pick up some takeout and after waiting a bit and hearing them call “Jack” a few times, the cashier called me up and gave me my food. Hmmm, last time I checked, my name wasn’t Jack. I paid by credit card and showed the cashier my driver’s license to verify the name on the credit card and she entered my name as Jack. Scott, Jack, what’s the difference?
No wonder governments are so inefficient
I went to send a complaint to my local councilman and visited his Web site. He had a contact form, so I filled it out to complain that vegetation has become overgrown on a stretch of sidewalk that we use making it more difficult to walk our dog and push our son in his stroller. I hit the submit button multiple times using Safari and nothing happened. I went to Firefox, filled out the form and something happened. “Page Not Found”. Wow, that’s great. So I looked at the source and whoever worked on the page had uncommented the line for the testing server and commented out the line for the production server, thereby causing the form to goto a server that would appear to be only accessible internally.
So I sent email and got an auto-response. It was a pleasant auto-response that had a paragraph in it that disturbed me:
You have been automatically added to receive via email our eNewsletter
that keeps you up to date on issues in our community and the City. The
eNewsletter is sent once a month and contains information on things
going on.
That’s great. There was no unsubscribe link and I didn’t ask to be subscribed to a newsletter. Isn’t that in violation of the CAN-SPAM act? Or are government officials exempt? Or since I sent email, that automatically meant I agreed to receiving crap? I made the mistake of using my regular email address; damn. I would just block email from the city, but I receive email from CERT.
What’s better if you look at past newsletters, there is a link to update your preferences; it doesn’t work.
Thanks Mr. Councilman!
Tired of crappy HP Scanner software
Just about everyday, I get crash reports from customers using HP scanners. The latest one I got, the customer was quite angry at me because DocumentWallet kept crashing. He finally sent the crash log and look at what it contains:
Thread 0 Crashed: 0 HP All-in-One Scan DS 0x058f1240 0x57a4000 + 1364544 1 HP All-in-One Scan DS 0x057b84fc BroadcastMessage__12LBroadcasterFlPv + 108 2 HP All-in-One Scan DS 0x057bc604 BroadcastValueMessage__8LControlFv + 52 3 HP All-in-One Scan DS 0x057e8388 HotSpotResult__11LPushButtonFs + 24 4 HP All-in-One Scan DS 0x057bcbc8 ClickSelf__8LControlFRC15SMouseDownEvent + 184 5 HP All-in-One Scan DS 0x057c2d6c Click__5LPaneFR15SMouseDownEvent + 140 6 HP All-in-One Scan DS 0x057c96ec Click__5LViewFR15SMouseDownEvent + 76 7 HP All-in-One Scan DS 0x057c96ec Click__5LViewFR15SMouseDownEvent + 76 8 HP All-in-One Scan DS 0x057bdc38 ClickInContent__13LGrafPortViewFRC11EventRecord + 232 9 HP All-in-One Scan DS 0x05874bec DoMouseDown__15CHPGrafPortViewFR11EventRecord + 236 10 HP All-in-One Scan DS 0x0584b4e0 ScanWindowEventHandler__FP25OpaqueEventHandlerCallRefP14OpaqueEventRefPv + 304
Yes, folks, that means that HP’s software crashed DocumentWallet. It’s hard to convince user’s that my app isn’t causing the problem, but that’s reality. Vendors make crappy Mac scanner software and should be ashamed. They never expect people to use the TWAIN drivers because they suck so much and apparently never get tested.
HP, are you listening? Please fix your TWAIN drivers so that they don’t crash app’s that make scanner calls using proper TWAIN interfaces.
Zip ties to the rescue!
Several weeks ago our dishwasher stopped functioning properly; the door to release the soap stopped opening during the cycle. After this happened a number of times, I decided to take a look. I don’t have a problem calling a repairman, but the last time we called an appliance repairman, I felt like an idiot. Our stove had an auto-igniter and it kept clicking in order to re-light when it was already lit. The repairman took a look, asked if I had a file and filed the tips of the igniters. Uhh, I could have done that myself.
So back to the story. I took apart the front of the dishwasher, fiddled with some plastic and thought I was good. Nope. Still didn’t work during the cycle. I tried again, but this time took off the front panel to work on it and made some more adjustments. No luck, again (it worked when I tested it by hand). So I got out a zip tie (one of those plastic thingies) and used it to make a connection tighter. The guts of the front of the dishwasher are all plastic, so after time, it starts to wear. Low and behold, this time it work. Knock on wood, it has been functional for a couple of weeks now. Who knew that a little piece of plastic could fix such a complicated appliance!