That’s really a stupid question, but it has an answer and that is at the airport. With the new TSA regulations, all gels and liquids (3 oz or less mind you, but they didn’t say there was a limit, so go hog wild and split your stuff up into a bunch of little containers) must be in a clear plastic Ziploc type bag. I put my stuff in a gallon sized bag (that’s all we had at home) and when I got to the airport, I had to transfer my stuff to a quart sized bag they provided. Why? I have no idea. I put the bag in the bin with my shoes to go through X-Ray; if it was a gallon sized bag, would it have made a difference? Absolutely not, but it is pointless to argue with the TSA. Mind you the X-Ray screeners didn’t care about the 10 patch cables I had in my bag, the digital camera, computer, portable scanner, PSP, iPod, etc., but they do care that my 2 oz container of hand sanitizer was in a quart sized bag.
So much for privacy
This past weekend I took and passed the Technician class Amateur Radio License exam (yes, I realize I’m a geek, but my desire to get the license has to do with being part of CERT and being prepared for a disaster). This morning I checked the FCC’s website to find out my call sign; it was there as well as my address. While the government has strict regulations for medical information, it doesn’t seem to care who can get my home address. I need to switch the address to my mailbox as it is way too easy for someone to figure out where I live. I think it is completely unacceptable for the FCC to have this information publicly available. Why is it that some parts of my privacy are more important than others? The FCC simply requires that I can receive mail via USPS at my address, so there shouldn’t be a problem with the change. I actually did think about using my box when I entered the information for my license, but decided against it.
Blogging, a year later
I’ve now been blogging for just over a year. In that time, I’ve written about many random topics from politics to technology. The most popular article, by far, has been my review of the Garmin Forerunner 305. This article has been quite valuable, it appears to many looking at the device. All my other posts seem to be for my own entertainment, which is fine by me.
Have I learned anything over the last year about blogging? Well, I’ve learned how to make the site prettier and that by writing in a hournal type environment, I can put my feelings down and stop bugging my wife.
All in all, I’m glad that I started this blog.
Franchise Tax Board is incompetent
Several months ago, I blogged about the Franchise Tax Board somehow losing my tax payment. For the last 2+ months, I’ve been calling them to find out the story and was promised a call back a number of times. No one ever called me back and I called them again today. This time, I got a different story…I had to make the payment AND the interest and penalty. So the $68.81 penalty and interest has now gone up to $92.31 because they’d been jerking me around for 2 months. This is not to mention the $20 stop payment fee I have to pay the bank so that the original payment doesn’t get cashed. I’m going to send the damn payment today by certified mail (or registered letter) to ensure that they get it and I can put this behind me. I can’t believe I have to pay an additional $23.50 due to their incompetence. My future tax payments are going to be sent certified or registered. I don’t have the time or patience to deal with their stupidity.
TiVo came back to life!
The tip I received indicating that my TiVo’s hard drive might be dying could just have been my problem. We’ve gone 2 days on the new drive and it seems a bit faster and programs recorded after I replaced the drive haven’t skipped! We watched Saved without interruptions today whereas the last few episodes, it got blocky and almost unwatchable a few times. I offer my apology to TiVo for saying that they needed to fix their update. Too bad there isn’t a way to tell an end user without knowledge that the device is failing.
Beef, it’s what’s for dinner
I’m a meat eater and proud of it. While I don’t eat meat (beef) all that often, when I do, I really enjoy it. My mom used to make London Broil when I was a kid and despite our best efforts at reproducing it, my wife and I haven’t managed to succeed, until yesterday! For a family barbecue (my in-laws were in town and my family came over), I went to Costco and bought flank steak. I know very little about steak, but it looked like there was little fat and it wasn’t too thick (a bit hard to tell as each piece was rolled up). My wife marinated the steak in teriyaki sauce all day and then I put the steak on the grill; at first, I thought I had bought way too much steak, but I cooked it up anyway. It was such a big hit that I thought people were going to fight for the last pieces. Mmmmm….beef!
Completed another race
Today I completed the America’s Finest City Half Marathon. I’m still not sure what my motivation is for continuing to run, but I figured I was already in shape from June’s marathon, so I might as well do a half marathon. This race was a completely different experience from the Rock ‘N’ Roll Marathon. This was significantly smaller than the Rock ‘N’ Roll Marathon with a limit of 6000 half marathon runners (it sold out) compared to over 20,000. The budget was much smaller as noticed with the race expo being held in the basement (basically) of a local hotel instead of the convention center. One of the biggest issues I saw with the race, due to its start location, is that we had to board buses to be driven about 25 minutes to the start line instead of basically driving right up to it. So I had to get up at 4:30 am for the 7 am start. Also, the race numbers were given out alphabetically instead of by estimated finish time and then everyone regardless of estimated finish time, started all bunched up. It took me over 2 miles of zig zagging before I was able to maintain my pace.
I did quite well and beat my goal of 2 hours (just over a 9 minute mile) by coming in at 1:49:29 for a pace of an 8 minute, 22 second mile. Not bad, in my opinion.
So, next year, I’ve decided to just run the Rock ‘N’ Roll Marathon (I’ve already signed up) and spend other times with activities like mountain biking and I know my wife wants to go kayaking, so maybe we can do that.
Is programming really engineering?
In a recent blog post that I read, the author said that he had just finished reading To Engineer is Human and said that programming is not engineering. While that may be true in the pure sense of programming, but to say that all programmers don’t do engineering is absolutely incorrect in my opinion. I read the book mentioned during my 4 years of engineering school to earn a BS in Engineering at Harvey Mudd College and find it hard to believe that I don’t use some of that education in my career as a software engineer (a term that the blog post author doesn’t believe in). I do a significant amount of design work in my day to day work and have to problem solve which I consider engineering. Pure programming, in my opinion, is the stuff that is being outsourced to countries like Russia and India (not to say that those countries don’t have engineers). Anyone can write code according to specification, but it takes thinking to design software, analyze risks (in most cases not physical risks), and do cost/benefit analysis; skills that I learned in my training as an engineer.
This will probably be an ongoing debate that will never have an agreement, but it saddens me to see people lump together people that have an engineering background with people that just decided to write code as a hobby (some of those people are good enough, in my opinion, to be engineers).
Airport Security
Last SUnday, we returned from our week long trip to San Francisco/San Jose and as usual came back on a plane. This was our first flight after the new rules about no liquids and the increased paranoia about terrorism. The San Jose airport didn’t appear to have tighetened security and we passed through security without problems as usual. Most people seemed to be adjusting to the new rules. When we arrived in San Diego, I saw national guard troops at the gates apparently inspecting all carry on luggage. The difference in security at the airports makes you go “hmmm”. It isn’t unusual to have different rules and practices at different airports, but if the government is serious about security, it needs to be consistent. What kind of scared me about the troops is that they had a bucket full of confiscated liquids and gels; this was at the gate where all the passengers had already passed through the security checkpoint. Were the security screeners asleep at the wheel? Shouldn’t everything have been searched before hand?
I’m not convinced that the screening at the airport will really prevent terrorism. In my opinion, the only effective way to counter terrorism is through intelligence like the plot foiled in the UK. If I thought hard enough, I’m sure I could find holes in airport security, but since I’m not a terrorist, I won’t spend time thinking about it.
Apple Newton – 10 year old technology lives on
I received my Newton MP2100 last week and it is everything that I had remembered (for the most part). The handwriting recognition works well and everything seems so elegant about this 10 year old technology. In fact, I’m writing this while sitting at the beach watching my wife surf (I’ll post it when I get home). People have developed WiFi and Bluetooth drivers for it (the Newton I purchased had both a WiFi and a Bluetooth card) and there are tons of programs for it. In addition, I know many in the old Newton developer community, so I have a wider access to free programs (free is always good). In addition, I loaded the HP IRDA printers drivers for it and was able to print from any application to my LaserJet 2100MP; a feat that still cannot be accomplished on Palm OS. I found a few email programs out there including MailV so that I can send my notes and such to myself via email. People are working on or have written apps to communicate with OS X. There are a few down sides to the Newton. It has always had a heap problem so you have to be careful with how many programs you install. I’m using NewtCase to “freeze” stuff I’m not using. The device doesn’t have USB so transferring stuff over the serial port (while doable) is slow. It doesn’t have color, but I’m not sure I mind that. I’m still wading through the hundreds of programs available to see what I want to install. SO far, I have a ToDo list program and I’m using Notes and Calls.
I don’t really remember how to program NewtonScript so it’s hard to hack away at programs (I want to bypass the registration code for the WiFi driver as the author is no longer accepting registrations for it and it delays for 10 seconds each time I insert the card). The Newton was so flexible in terms of modifying virtually any application (good from a hacker point of view, bad from the point of view of selling software) and it was very extensible. The soup method of storing information allowed other programs to add fields to say the Names application while still remaining compatible with the rest of the OS (everything is integrated so if you use the Calls application, you can look up a phone number). Palm OS isn’t this flexible and it hasn’t been until Palm, Inc. wrote their own Contacts application that the concept of extensible fields came to be; however the format is not compatible with older devices.
Did I mention flash memory? If the batteries die on this device, nothing is lost. Something that the Palm OS only got recently.
Overall, I’m quite pleased with my new acquisition. I still have more to remember and more to play with; this is the most excited I’ve been about technology in a long time.