fiddle2

When the gateway IP at work got listed in DroneBL, I couldn't access FreeNode. After unblocking the IP, I decided to drop in to #dronebl and lurk for a while, and immediately had a chuckle:

from(ChanServ) [#dronebl] If you came here looking to be unbanned, We cannot unban you from any service you are trying to access. Please follow the instructions on our site and wait a few hours, we suggest running anti-virus software while you are waiting.

Smart asses.

I love Netflix. I have the Roku Netflix player, and there was a movie that wasn't playing properly. I figured it would get fixed after a while, but after several weeks, the audio was still all messed up. I wasn't really dying to see the movie, but I was kind of curious about the issue, so I decided to contact tech support.

I figured I'd just send an e-mail, since I wasn't really interested in waiting on hold, but I found that they don't even bother with anything other than phone support, and the hold time was less than a minute.
After my short wait, the call was answered by a delightful, articulate, American girl.
I explain that "I have the Roku set-top player, and there's this one movie, Welcome to the Dollhouse, that won't play properly...." She interrupted me to say (!) "Oh, yeah. I tried to watch that the other night—I have the Roku player, too. That's actually a known issue... the file was loaded incorrectly. Oh, I show that the issue has been removed. I'll re-submit the error. If you really want to watch the movie, what I can do is send out the disc as a courtesy. Have you ever seen it? It's a really funny movie. I love the scene where...."

I don't recall the last time I enjoyed a support call as much. I almost didn't want to hang up--I wanted to talk about movies with her. A customer support rep.! Who knew?

Is me, or is Dreamweaver totally broken once you have more than one person in your company?

Case in point:
It shouldn't matter how or by whom the template changes—if Dreamweaver ever notices that the template is different, it should realize that any resource based on that template could potentially be stale, and offer an opportunity to update them. ]]>

I'm not actually using Dreamweaver to build any sites, I'm just writing the code for the base "company" template that my departments use to build the template for their sites. Ideally, there will be a bunch of department sites that all have their own template they can use to make pages, but those department templates all inherit from my "master" template code.

When I initially set up a department to have a web site, I manually create their Templates/ directory on the server, and put this master template in that directory (actually, each department just has a symbolic link to the master template, but I digress). The permissions are such that they cannot modify this file on the server. (They can modify it locally, but it never can be overwritten on the server--if I could lock it down so they couldn't modify it locally, I would; but I wouldn't know how such a thing would be accomplished without Dreamweaver having a "read-only" flag on the template or something. Again, I digress.)

Anyway, what I would like to do is to be able to edit this master template on the server (which would result in that template file in each department's Templates/ directory immediately appearing to have been changed), and then have the users synchronize their site (which would initiate Dreamweaver's realization that the template has changed), pull down the template, and update their department template (because it is based on the "master" template), which would cascade to update pages based on their department template.
In the real world, the "...and update their department template..." part is where the process stops.

After multiple conversations with multiple Adobe employees, I fear the conclusion is thus: "It doesn't do that."

This is a bug.

I repeat: It should not matter how or by whom the template changes--if Dreamweaver ever notices that the template is different, it should realize that any resource based on that template could potentially be stale, and offer an opportunity to update them. Or, at very least, there should be a way to "refresh" the site—have Dreamweaver compare the state of each resource to their ancestor template(s) to check for consistency, and offer an opportunity to update them at that time to resolve any inconsistencies.
Anything other than "synchronize your site, open the master template, add a space, remove it, save, initiate updates" would be a better work-around.

What a fucking toy.

Best. New Year. Ever. =)

America Will Soon Owe More Than It’s Citizens Are Worth

Given more recent developments, it’s clear that America now owes more than its citizens are worth. Passing this shocking milestone highlights the need for President-elect Obama and the next Congress not only to turn the economy around and boost consumer confidence, but to put a process in place that will lead to tough choices getting made to strengthen the government’s financial condition once the economy begins growing again.

Toldja so.

"...the answer is because had we not done anything, people like the folks behind me would be a lot worse off."

Step 1: Let the banks fail.
Step 2: ???
Step 3: Armageddon!

Nobody has satisfactorily connected the dots for me yet. For that matter, I'm still pretty unconvinced that a corollary exists of:
Step 1: Buy a bunch of worthless debt.
Step 2: ???
Step 3: Crisis averted!

We were almost certainly screwed before. With the passage of this legislation, we've arrived sliding into full-on screwed.

Oh. My. God. Yes.

Ambient awareness
This should be required reading prior to signing up for a micro-blogging service. Easily the best article I've ever read about social software/media.

I'm not a huge Toyota fan, but the FT-HS looks awesome. I would totally drive one of these.

I just watched Harvey on Netflix Instant View, and this is easily one of the best movies I've seen in a long time.

"...better to be pleasant than smart."

Often useful advice.

The Consequences of Rejecting Hillary

Because of all the problems associated with the Clintons--husband Bill, her relatively high unfavorability in polls, Clinton fatigue--Hillary Clinton appeared to be the wrong running mate for Obama. I thought so. I was mistaken. As Clinton won primaries in big states and developed a populist appeal to downscale white voters, her political value soared. As it turns out, Obama needed her. McCain is lucky Obama missed his chance.

What he said.

w00t!

Netcraft's uptime graphs, due to the limitation of 32-bit integers, cannot record an uptime greater than 497 days. As of right now, my uptime string is "up 515 days, 12:00" and my Netcraft reading has wrapped, which means my graph starts over, and my moving average starts to suck. (The previous choppy uptime readings were from when I was with phpwebhosting.com, the unreliability being a significant reason why I left and got a linode.)

i aM teh l337 r0XoR!!!!!!111oneone

Dear "CyberBob" at WOAI.com,

I subscribe to the WOAI "San Antonio news" RSS feed to get some of my local news, which inexplicably includes the "No Bull Zone"--an anonymously authored conservative opinion blog.

This is a serious journalistic oversight that I'm surprised I need to point out. Anyone who wants to read ignorant ranting of any political nature can subscribe to individual blog feeds separately. It really shouldn't be included with the rest of the reporting from an objective news organization.]]>

There's a reason op/ed pieces have their own section in a newspaper, segregated from the objective reporting. The same rules apply on the web.

There's a reason anonymous op/ed pieces are not published by respected newspapers. The same rules apply on the web.

Especially egregious is the advertisement of this willful ignorance on the profile page for "Rob": "Rob is the blogger behind "Rob's No Bull Zone" on woai.com. All we know for sure about him is that he's United States Air Force Retired. Everything else is a mystery."

Unless, of course, WOAI isn't interested in maintaining a reputation of journalistic integrity. In that case, I'm sure there's always plenty of room at Fox News' parties.

Regards,

Travis Kroh

Update: I heard back from him already.

Thanks for the email Travis. Good point on the RSS feed. I'll get a pure news feed set up -- with no opinion included.

Bob Gambert aka CyberBob

The first sentence of an email I sent at work today regarding the purchase of a NN/g report:

Tracy,
Marcy told me that Nancy asked her to tell me that her supervisor said to ask you about the purchase of a document we're trying to get....

Bureaucracy FTW!!!!11

It's a class war, stupid

This is why you need to pay careful attention when you hear about John McCain claiming that he's going to "look at entitlement program" waste as a means of solving the budget crisis, or when you tune into the debate about the "death tax." We are in the midst of a political movement to concentrate private wealth into fewer and fewer hands while at the same time placing more and more of the burden for public expenditures on working people. If that sounds like half-baked Marxian analysis... well, shit, what can I say? That's what's happening. Repealing the estate tax (the proposal to phase it out by the year 2010 would save the Walton family alone $30 billion) and targeting "entitlement" programs for cuts while continually funneling an ever-expanding treasure trove of military appropriations down the befouled anus of pointless war profiteering, government waste and North Virginia McMansions — this is all part of a conversation we should be having about who gets what share of the national pie. But we're not going to have that conversation, because we're going to spend this fall mesmerized by the typical media-generated distractions, yammering about whether or not Michelle Obama's voice is too annoying, about flag lapel pins, about Jeremiah Wright and other such idiotic bullshit.

Just a touch on the sensationalistic side, and certainly a biased, albeit accurate, essay, this kind of critique will most certainly be ignored by anyone who has influence necessary to correct the outlined problems. The bit about our country's insolvency is particularly urgent, in my opinion, but is currently either ignored or completely unknown to the public in general. It's entirely possible that within my lifetime we'll have a significant number of American economic refugees to other countries as the government moves well into the realm of a working capital deficit (based on the GDP). Seriously! Our GDP is about $13.86 trillion and our current national debt is about $9.53 trillion. Our current debt is damn near 70% of our GDP. That's some scary shit. Meanwhile, people cast votes for national office based on trivialities like stem cell research.