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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.
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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:
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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.