Gmail Annoyances

For the most part, I'm a happy Gmail user. However, there are some annoyances I wish they would fix.

• When I use a different from: address, recipients see the dreaded "On behalf of" message.
• Signatures - how about an option to not append one in a reply or forward? I hate having to scroll to the bottom of the message and manually removing it.
• Why are contacts automatically added when I email them?
• Can I please have a first AND last name field for a contact? This would make importing into my Blackberry so much easier.

The last time I wrote about Gmail, I asked for a calendar application and Google obliged. Come on, Googlers.

Wireless Power?

I can't tell if this is a joke or real.

Open Letter to Women With Large Sunglasses

You look ridiculous. How can a fashion accessory popularized by retirees in Florida leap across two generations? As with leg warmers and perms, you're going to regret the photographic evidence of your inability to think for yourself. Stop now. Save yourself from having to apologize for your poor judgment.

Soccer Ball

I got part of a soccer ball named after me in Peru. This is all part of Nick's humanitarian work in the remote villages of South America.

iTunes Add-On

For those Mac users not blessed with infinite screen real estate, You Control is a lifesaver. It puts the basic iTunes controls on the menu bar. Although Foxy Tunes offers the same controls on the FireFox status bar, You Control plays nicely with OS X overlays as tracks start.

Who Is This?

"[T]he most unpleasant character in all fiction: jealous and proud of it; a petty, unjust, unforgiving control-freak; a vindictive, bloodthirsty ethnic cleanser; a misogynistic, homophobic, racist, infanticidal, genocidal, filicidal, pestilential, megalomaniacal, sadomasochistic, capriciously malevolent bully."

The God of the Old Testament, according to Richard Dawkins in The God Delusion

My Life in 15 Minutes

Thanks to Neeraj for this video that summarizes my dating life. My people will have their revenge.

Ed Op

I wish I wrote this.

NYC is expensive

Confirming what we all know, this article provides an unscientific basis on why living in NYC is expensive.

White & Nerdy

Weird Al Yankovic is a genius:

Well Stated

"Democrats should go into another line of work if they can't retake the House in this climate of Republican misery." -- George Will

Outfoxed

It's common knowledge that the Fox News Channel is a conservative right wing propaganda machine. Their trademarked taglines "Fair & Balanced" and "We Report, You Decide" are as apropos as calling creationism a science.

The documentary, Outfoxed, reveals the truth behind Rupert Murdoch's mouthpiece.

Train Wreck

The Republicans have outdone themselves this time. Representative Mark Foley sent explicit emails to an underage page. Apparently, the Republican leadership knew about it a year ago and did nothing. Uh oh.

With this scandal, Iraq, the economy, failed foreign policies, illegal wire taps, and endless mischief, the Republicans should lose control of Congress. If not, the U.S. is in big trouble.

You Are A Fortunate Soul

Appreciate what you have.

RIP, Crocodile Hunter

Since 1992, his infectious enthusiasm provided hope that work and fun were one in the same. RIP, Steve Irwin.

Lust

I want one of these.

Recent Sports Quotes

"[Most Americans] don't know a peloton from an electron." [Link]

Yankees pitching coach Ron Guidry to Scott Proctor on the pitcher's concern about being traded, "You can always go back to [stinking], and then nobody'll want you." [Link]

The World Cup is Over

Although I am an avid sports fan, I can't seem to make myself enjoy the World Cup. I played soccer as a child, but never enjoyed watching it. To this day, the difference between a thrilling 0-0 tie and a boring one still eludes me. So I'm not upset that the World Cup concluded today, with Italy winning the title.

My biggest complaint about soccer is that the better team does not win an overwhelming percentage of the time. Too often, the match comes down to penalty kicks. And in this type of tie-breaking scenario, the goalie who guesses right more often than the other goalie can secure a victory for his team. Just ridiculous. At least in ice hockey, the goalie has a legitimate chance of stopping the puck.

While soccer sports tremendous athletes and a world-wide following, it's never going to replace football, baseball, or basketball in the US.

Buffet

Warren Buffet continues to be my hero. He is giving away his entire fortune, most of it to the Gates Foundation.

Capacitors + Nanotubes = Super Battery

These batteries will charge in seconds, last longer than current batteries, and won't degrade. Boy those MIT guys are sure smart.

Craigslist

I love craigslist. I listed a used road bike at midnight. I had cash in my hands before noon the next day.

Ironic?

On Bike to Work Day, I received a parking ticket.

Web-based IM

Meebo allows you to log into all your IMs via a browser.  It's a bit sluggish and doesn't yet have all the features of a desktop client.  However, the concept is great.  Check it out.

Not A Good Combination

Jack Daniels with Arizona's Mucho Mango does not go well together, especially after hot Thai Curry at 1 am.  I need to keep this in mind.

Brilliance

My hatred of W and love of sports in one memorable quote:

Season tickets have been selling rapidly in New Orleans ever since the Saints drafted Reggie Bush. Optimistic Saints fans point out that this is the first time since Hurricane Katrina that somebody named Bush has promised to help New Orleans -- and actually meant it.

Home Office

Any chance I can win the home office of the year award?

Not That Naive

Not even I'm dumb enough to fall for this scam artist on craigslist.com:

Thanks for your reply...

I will be paying using USPS online money order... you will be notified by USPS when the payment is made, approved.,... the money order would have been approved by USPS.. then your CASH would be mailed to you.

Fedex will come pick the item when you receive the email notification saying the money order has been verified / approved and your CASH is about to be mailed out. You dont need to pay anything... it's all at my own expense.

Please reply with your full name and address to send the payment to.

The Real Excitement

While Apple's Boot Camp has generated a lot of buzz, Parallels Workstation 2.1 for OS X is what really interests me. Dual booting is necessary if you play games or need Photosohop to run at maximum speed. For me, however, I only need to run Internet Explorer, Dev Studio, Access, and Yahoo! Music. Virtualization (not emulation like Virtual PC) provides more than adequate performance for these applications without the inconvenience of rebooting. Moreover, the ability to have a complete deployment environment (Windows 2003, Red Hat Enterprise Server, etc.) readily available makes my life easier. Dreams do come true.

It's Hard to Find Good Help

Perhaps my expectations are unrealistic, but every service person/company I've hired to prepare my house for its new life as a rental has performed unsatisfactorily. First, there's the handyman I hired to install a new garbage disposal. He forgot to punch the hole that connected the dishwasher to the garbage disposal. Consequently, the dishwasher wouldn't drain. It took a puddle of water and 45 minutes of investigation before I discovered the problem.

Then, I contacted someone from craigslist to install 2 deadbolts. The handyman calls to cancel at the exact time he was supposed to show up. He then asks to reschedule and promises to make that appointment, short of ending up in the hospital. Well, he missed that next appointment. I hope he's doing OK, because he's fired.

I then contacted another handyman to install these deadbolts. On the front door, I wasn't able to turn the deadbolt when the door was closed. That's a bad installation in my book. He finally fixed it, but there's wood filler and other hacks involved. Then on the back door, his drill bit started to exit on the other side. This normally wouldn't be a problem, but these are one-sided, keyless deadbolts.

The following day, I contracted with a service company to powerwash, paint, and clean my house. The powerwashing went well. That's pretty hard to screw up. The paint job was haphazard and represented something I could have done. As for the cleaning, they neglected to clean the inside of the oven, the workshop, the garage, and didn't bother with any of the blinds. We had a verbal agreement for all those things.

Where are all the good service people in Austin hiding?

How to Make a Sale

True Story:

While searching for a bike shop, I encountered a Mattress Firm retail store. As I needed a bed for my new place, I walked in and spoke with the saleswoman. She was the only one in the store, cute, and not more than a few years removed from college.

I summarized my bedding needs succintly, "I'm a light sleeper and want a queen-size bed that minimizes motion transfer." To demonstrate the effectiveness of various beds, she bounced on the bed as I lay on the other side. I tried not to be a lecherous shopper and look over, but I couldn't help myself. With one hand, she was holding her top up to prevent from coming out of it.

So I had an idea: I would test about half the beds in the showroom for their motion transfer dampening effects. An hour later, she made the sale. America is such a great country.

Landlord

I have renters!  A lovely couple has signed on for a 13-month lease of my house.  This marks my entrance into the landlord realm.  Watch out, Donald.  I'm gunnin' for ya.

Now What?

With the help of craigslist, I was able to sell my 27" TV and DVD player. I have no immediate plans to replace them. This will be the first time since 1993 that I haven't had television to keep me company.

How will I replace my TV watching time? Well, there is that pile of books I've paid for but never actually opened ...

I'm Doing Something Right

I received a handwritten letter from my 6 year-old niece today:

Dear Uncle R---
I miss you! I hope I will see you at Auntie's wedding. I love you a lot.
Love, Shannon

She's still my favorite (and only) niece.

Switch to Gmail

The ability to access all of your emails and contacts with a web browser is a powerful concept, especially if you use multiple computers throughout the day. Moreover, having someone else responsible for backing up your most important data removes a huge headache. I've been a paying Yahoo! Mail Plus customer for the past few years. Last week, I switched to a better alternative, Gmail.

Gmail is now the gold standard in web-based email solutions. Here's what distinguishes it from its competitors:

• Fast and snappy interface. Google has invested a lot in AJAX, and it shows in Gmail. At times, Gmail feels like a desktop application. Yahoo's new interface is still clunky, slow, and flaky.


• Keyboard shortcuts. Vim is my primary development environment, so it's no surprise that I'm a heavy user of keyboard shortcuts.


• Threaded conversations. How did I previously live without this?


• Tags. I can categorize conversations into multiple buckets. For example, a converstaion may be related to ClientX as well as AJAX. Now I don't have to choose just a single place.


• 2.7 GB of storage and growing. Wow.

The big feature I'm waiting for is Google Calendar. Hopefully, it will adhere to the iCalendar standard, have the rich client interface of Gmail, and of course, be integrated with Gmail.

We Don't Need This

While I believe in euthanasia, I'm not thrilled about my homeland as a suicide destination. Cambodia has had enough problems from which it's trying to recover. While I didn't find Cambodia to be as lawless as this account, I did find that sex, drugs, and even rocket launchers were within the reach of a $20 bill.

Weird Al Rules

This is pure genius (All About the Pentiums):

Yeah, payin' the bills with my mad programming skills
Defraggin' my hard drive for thrills
I got me a hundred gigabytes of RAM
I never feed trolls and I don't read spam
Installed a T1 line in my house
Always at my PC, double-clickin' on my mizouse
Upgrade my system at least twice a day
I'm strictly plug-and-play, I ain't afraid of Y2K
I'm down with Bill Gates, I call him "Money" for short
I phone him up at home and I make him do my tech support
It's all about the Pentiums, what?
You've gotta be the dumbest newbie I've ever seen
You've got white-out all over your screen
You think your Commodore 64 is really neato
What kinda chip you got in there, a Dorito?
You're usin' a 286? Don't make me laugh
Your Windows boots up in what, a day and a half?
You could back up your whole hard drive on a floppy diskette
You're the biggest joke on the Internet
Your database is a disaster
You're waxin' your modem, tryin' to make it go faster
Hey fella, I bet you're still livin' in your parents' cellar
Downloadin' pictures of Sarah Michelle Gellar
And postin' "Me too!" like some brain-dead AOL-er
I should do the world a favor and cap you like Old Yeller
You're just about as useless as jpegs to Hellen Keller

Sleep, Where Are You?

So many things to do, so little time.  Life was easier as a slacker.  I need sleep.

Checks Written

My condo offer was accepted. The checks have been written. The financing has been arranged. The only thing that can derail my move now is a bad inspection.

Winter Olympics?

I'm convinced that the Winter Olympics are just a collection of contrived sports contested among privileged Scandinavians and Americans.

You Can't Make This Up

Dick Cheney shot a friend. Imagine what he'd do to you.

Confused

Chinese Professor: (In Mandarin) Are you a Texan?
Me: (In Spanish) No, but I got here as fast as I could.

Oops.

Another Potential Income Source Eliminated

According to a local news broadcast, only 3% of men who apply to be sperm donors are accepted. There goes another backup job.

Chinese is Hard

After the first week, I've concluded that learning Mandarin is difficult. New sounds, 4 tones, and completely alien writing. Did I mention that the professor assigns 10-15 hours of homework per week? But when I'm able to eavesdrop on native conversations in Chinatown, it will all be worth the effort.

Clear Vision

This morning, I bid adieu to my glasses and contact lens paraphernalia. Dr. Shannon Wong at Austin Eye Clinic performed Custom-Cornea Wavefront-guided IntraLASIK surgery on me. The technology derives from the Star Wars program. Following a 3 hour nap, I woke up with some dryness, but otherwise felt spectacular. I'm sure the Valium helped.

I'm not going to miss my contact lenses refusing to take their place in the morning. Nor am I am going to miss them getting lodged or tearing at the most inopportune moments during a softball game. Finally, I'm not going to miss lugging around this gear.

Listen to Your Elders

On MLK Day, Shaq, prompted by the great Bill Russell, made amends with Kobe Bryant. Although the rivalry was good for the NBA, it was overblown. However, the idea of peace in the NBA arriving on MLK Day makes for a great story.

11 seconds

In my prime, it would take me 90 seconds. But the world record is now 11 seconds. Just incredible. I'm talking about solving the 3x3x3 Rubik's Cube, of course. What the hell were you thinking?

Student Again

On January 17, I will return to the classroom by taking a UT Extension Course. In my attempt to learn Mandarin, I've registered for Chinese I. After all, 800 million people can't be wrong.