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The joys of writing code
Yesterday and today I decided to tackle an issue in some of my code that I wrote for a client. This wasn't a huge chunk of code, but how it worked bugged me and was actually going to affect my current project. This chunk of code, unfortunately was in a kernel extension (KEXT) and is extremely hard to debug. Each time I made a slight mistake, my machine would crash and I'd have to restart. After 4 or 5 times doing things, I decided to get smart and use one of my test machines. Luckily one of the machines already had Xcode on it. Crashes on this machine aren't that bad as I can work on my main machine when it is restarting and it restarts much faster as I don't have so much junk on it.
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Disappointing car
Last year we bought my wife a new Honda CR-V as her Honda Accord wasn't going to cut it when our son was born. I stared driving her car a bit and really enjoyed driving it. I started looking the Acura RDX as it was a step up in terms of options from the CR-V and drooled. While I wasn't looking for a new car, I could dream. After driving my wife's car for awhile, we soon realized that it was a bit small once you pile in the baby stuff and that our next car might have to be bigger. My Toyota Highlander is a little bigger, so it will work fine when we need to pack in more stuff like Aiden's wagon.
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Taking things for granted
I've been working from home for almost 9 years (9 years this month) and have been self-employed for more than 5.5 years. Things have been pretty good for me, and I've been reasonably happy. Recently I had the opportunity to change the status quo in terms of my work. After a lot of thinking, I realized that I have things pretty good; I control my own hours, I get to work on my own projects when I want (within reason as my own projects don't pay the bills), and to some extent I control what I work on when (prioritizing projects based on what interests me). I've taken things for granted and didn't completely know how good I've had it! Are there things I'd like to change? Of course. Working out of my house sometimes would be nice, but I can't justify the expense of an office as I wouldn't use it all the time. Would it be nice to work on one project all the time without having to do a context switch? Sometimes yes, sometimes no.
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Reviews on the AppStore
When I look for software, I like to try it out before I buy it. However, with the AppStore for the iPhone/iPod Touch, you can't so you have to rely on reviews and the product description. Even for free apps, some people find reviews important. The review mechanism on the AppStore has a lot to be desired. For instance, anyone can post a review even if he/she hasn't downloaded/purchased the app. This should change as it skews the reviews and can be misused, especially for paid applications. Second, there is no way for developers to respond to comments without posting a review with a star rating (and of course, who is going to give his own program anything less than a 5 star review?). Third, even posting a 5 star review, it looks like I only get one, so I can't respond to reviews and point out why I shouldn't get poor reviews. Apple should take some lessons from VersionTracker; while VT isn't perfect, it is a lot better than the AppStore. Fourth, there is no way to post a review without giving it a star rating; so people that ask questions like "How do I get a GrandCentral account?" give it a 2 or 3 star review.