Since my central air conditioning is down I’ve confined myself to working from my bedroom where I’ve installed a small window unit.  Unfortunately, since I can’t cram all of my computer systems in there (and I probably wouldn’t be able to cool the room), I had to shut down everything except a laptop.  This means that my main file and media server is offline.  This is annoying, but I can still work since I have an offline replica on the laptop.  The only problem is that the laptop seem to think that I don’t know this and sees fit to remind me every 30 minutes or so that “dominion is still offline” with one of those little notification balloons.  I wonder who was responsible for this bit of code?  Why do I need to be reminded of something I’m painfully aware of? 

I suppose I could look on it as a learning experience, as I’ve learned where to find the setting that turns that balloon off.  But it brings up a point about user interface design.  I hate annoying pop-ups, notification balloons, etc that simply repeat stuff that I already know.  A good example of this was an internal support application that our corporate masters forced on us through the automatic update feature they load on our laptops.  This helpful little application decided that it would be good to tell you every time your network connection was lost. 

I found out about this while traveling and spending time in a conference room with spotty wireless coverage and only 5 wired ports for 9 people.  We’d share the wired ports by taking turns using them as needed, which means we had to periodically disconnect the ethernet plug.  Windows already features a little balloon for this along with the little “X” on the adapter in the system tray.  So if I’ve just pulled the plug, and Windows has notified me, why does this app need to do the same again?  Worse, unlike Windows (which allows you to disable notification), the app had absolutely no way to stop being notified for dropped network connections.  The best you could do would be to delay notifications for a while.

I was suitably annoyed by this, so much so that I was moved to submit a rather angry trouble ticket against it.  I was a bit surprised to get an actual phone call from one of the developers about a week later (mainly because I expected them to just ignore the ticket).  It turns out that the development team had received quite a lot of “feedback” along the same lines as mine and that it was quite unexpected to them.  But they did add an option in the last release to turn off notifications.

I think part of the problem with both Windows and with our internal support people is that they think in terms of the lowest common denominator of user.  There’s no way for me to specify that I’ve done this stuff for a while and don’t need excessive handholding.  Since I’d not heard of this new application they were deploying until we got an email saying it would be sent to our systems in the next few weeks, I can’t help but think they didn’t involve users with some technical experience in their trials (if they even bothered with trials).

Anyhow, I suppose being too verbose can be excused provided that it can be changed.  Making something verbose, annoying, and useless to certain users without allowing it to be disabled isn’t excusable.

It seems that animal rights terrorists have succeeded in getting a researcher to abandon his work.

Colleagues suggested that Ringach, who did not return e-mails seeking comment, was spooked by an attack on a colleague. In June, the Animal Liberation Front took credit for trying to put a Molotov cocktail on the doorstep of Lynn Fairbanks, another UCLA researcher who does experimentation on animals. The explosive was accidentally placed on the doorstep of Fairbanks’s elderly neighbor’s house, and did not detonate.

I can’t help but note that this is in California.  I wonder if these idiots have tried this in Texas?  If they ever get the idea to try, I’d suggest they (as well as their potential victims) keep section 9.42 of the Texas Penal Code in mind:

§ 9.42. DEADLY FORCE TO PROTECT PROPERTY.  A person is justified in using deadly force against another to protect land or tangible, movable property:
      (1)  if he would be justified in using force against the other under Section 9.41;  and
      (2)  when and to the degree he reasonably believes the deadly force is immediately necessary:
            (A)  to prevent the other’s imminent commission of arson, burglary, robbery, aggravated robbery, theft during the nighttime, or criminal mischief during the nighttime;  …  (emphasis mine)

I wouldn’t weep for these idiots should one get his or her just deserts at the hands of a potential victim.

Via Instapundit.

I went to visit some friends in Carrollton on Saturday night to help them install their entertainment system in their new house.  After visiting with them for a while I didn’t make it back home until about 1:45am.  On my way into town I noticed a lot of runoff from the sprinklers in the killer medians on 1709 over by Keller-Smithfield.  I also noticed a lot of runoff at the KISD Natatorium.  My initial thought was that it would have been nice if I had my camera to document the waste, especially as the city wants to lecture us on how to conserve water.  Of course, later (and fortunately before I had a chance to post something snarky here), I realized that the Natatorium problem is a KISD issue instead of the city’s.  Still, it’s part of Town Center and the Town Hall “complex,” so it looks kind of like the city is involved (and it wouldn’t hurt for the city to apply its policies to *all* users, not just us peons out here who are just trying to keep our houses from cracking in two and sinking into the ground like the House of Usher).

Regardless of that, though, there is still a lot of wastage from the sprinklers in those stupid, dangerous medians.

So I’m sitting there minding my business about 9:15 last night when I notice that it’s over 80 degrees inside the house and all the vents are blowing hot air.  I went outside to check on the condenser unit and it was making an awful racket so I shut it down.  When I went back I could smell a burning odor.  I suspect that it’s the fan motor, but I’m currently waiting for a callback from Airwise to try to schedule an appointment (I was sorely tempted to call one of the 24-hour places, but my home warranty requires that I go through the process).  In the meantime, expecting that it might take them a while to get back to me, I went to WalMart and bought a small window unit so that at least my bedroom would have some cooling.  I suspect things may get a bit warm later in the day in here, as the unit is probably a bit small for the size of the room, but my choices were limited to either the little unit (5150 BTU) or a 10,000 BTU unit for twice the cost.  The 10,000 unit seemed like overkill for a temporary solution.

I supposed I’ve kind of been expecting this, given that the unit is almost 20 years old (it’s the original one from when the house was built) and that it’s been running nearly continuously this summer because of the heat.  Eventually, something has to fail on a unit that’s that old. 

On the positive side of this is that if it requires a new unit my warranty covers a 13-SEER replacement, so perhaps I could get a more efficient unit out of the deal if it’s more than just the fan motor.  That old unit is pretty inefficient compared to the newer models, and I’m reminded of this fact monthly (to the tune of $520 on the last bill).

I suppose some people would have just put up with the heat, but it’s already unbearable in the rest of the house and it’s only 89 outside.  I remember growing up that we rarely ran the air conditioner.  However, we lived in an old house with high ceilings and good airflow.  We could keep the house bearable, even in 90-degree temperatures, with a large fan that drew air through the house.  More modern houses just aren’t designed to stay liveable without central heat and air.  I’ve found that even in early spring or late fall that there were times I had to run the air conditioning because I just couldn’t get good airflow through the house, even with all the windows open.  Like most houses in this neighborhood, it only has one window facing the front.  All of the others are on the sides and back.  I didn’t really notice this when I bought the house, but it’s something that I’m going to pay more attention to should I buy another house in the future.

Update:  Looks like I’m going to be “confined to quarters” for a while.  They can’t send anyone until Wednesday (!).  I guess the heat has been a real killer for North Texas AC units…

I think I may have an idea for how the people who are up in arms about the proposed QuickTrip in front of Hidden Lakes can resolve the issue.

Hidden Lakes HOA should just go ahead and buy the land.  That way, instead of depriving the rightful owner of the land’s value, they can exercise the control over that parcel that they so desperately seem to want.

I bet they could get it for a good bargain, too, since I hear that the neighbors make a big fuss if you try to build anything there…

I’ve been a bit under the weather the past week, so I haven’t really felt like I had anything to say.  But the situation in the UK with the arrests of the potential bombers and the new security restrictions have given me a couple of thoughts.

First, I think CAIR needs to sit down and STFU with regards to the President calling the terrorists “Islamic fascists.”  People may quibble over the actual meaning of the word, but I think that’s rather silly.  I think it’s a fairly apt term, especially as I think it’s come to have a meaning beyond that of a specific political party.  As for the “Islamic” part, I happened to notice in the list of those arrested that there weren’t any people named “Bob Johnson…” 

Secondly, I don’t see this ban on liquids as being sustainable.  I would think the traveling public, especially the “road warriors,” would soon become weary of it, especially as frequent travelers often try to get by strictly with carry-on baggage.  This is in part because it’s faster and that most of them don’t trust the airlines with checked baggage.  I certainly travel defensively in that I carry a small kit of essentials as well as a change of clothes in my laptop carry-on so that I won’t be completely out of luck should the airline “misplace” my checked bag. 

Another angle I didn’t think about until I heard someone from DFW mention it this morning is the issue duty free shops.  Unless these restrictions are lifted, I would think that they will pretty much shrivel up and die, since the most commonly purchased items in these shops are liquor and perfume.

As I mentioned earlier this week, someone had smashed the mirror on the Bear Creek walking trail at Rufe Snow.  Yesterday evening as I was walking through the area I noticed that the mirror had been replaced. 

I was glad to see it replaced, but that mood was to be short-lived.  Going through there today I saw that the mirror had been smashed again, apparently with a brick (which was on the ground directly below the mirror). 

I’m going to go out on a limb and say it’s probably a group of teenagers hanging out under that bridge, so maybe the crap will stop when school starts next week.  I wonder how much those mirrors are costing us, though.  I’m guessing that two foot diameter convex mirrors aren’t exactly cheap.

The more I think about it the more pissed off I get.  I hate vandals of all stripes.  I see no art in tagging and absolutely no excuse for throwing bricks at anything.

I’d suggest snipers, but some people would accuse me of being insufficiently sensitive to the social plight of the poor youths and their lack of appropriate social outlets… 

I’ve been fiddling around with the Google Maps API for a couple of days.  I got the idea that I could use it to display my DFW gun show listings on a map. 

Displaying a basic Google Map via the API is pretty simple.  You just import their Javascript library (you have to register for an API key for it to work, though) and use the various objects that they provide.  For a simple map, all you need to do is create a <div> in the HTML body of the page and associate the map object with it by name.  The map will take its size and location from the div.  Once you declare the map, you just have to center it on a point (by Lat/Long) to get it to display (I chose a location in Irving, since that’s fairly central to the D/FW area).

The map itself (as noted above) uses Lat/Long to display points and to place markers.  They provide a Geocoder object that allows you to get back a Lat/Long from an address.  Since the Geocoder has to call back to Google to do the lookup, and that can take some time, the interface is asynchronous.  So you have to provide a callback function to get the “point” object back and do something with it.  This function will create a marker with an “InfoWindow” (the little pop-up balloon that Google Maps uses) that contains HTML. 

However, getting to the point where you can create the markers requires a bit of care.  My choice to put my map creation code into an “onload” event caused me some grief at first until it got through my thick skull that I needed to gather all the addresses (and their associated shows) while the page was being created, then do the actual marker creation in the function.  Part of this was caused by the fact that I’m working with EE, where you have to use one of their weblog entry loops to cycle through the entries.  What I ended up doing was to create an array of “address” entries such that each one contained a list of shows for that entry.  As the weblog loop runs, it generates Javascript code that adds new entries to the array.  Finally, once the page is loaded, my other function gets invoked and cycles through the array, invoking the Geocoder, which in turn (eventually) invokes the marker creation function.

Finally, once the last marker is actually created, the code recenters and resizes the map to fit the markers.

The result is something like this:

It’s kind of interesting to watch, since the markers just kind of “pop in” and then the thing recenters/resizes.  Here’s the link.

I’ve been a customer of Dreamhost since April, 2000.  Over those six years I have rarely experienced any significant downtime with them.  Their recent troubles really had me doubting their ability to continue that record, though.  They recently reached a milestone of 300,000 domains served and I couldn’t help but wonder if they were overextending themselves.

I know that Bitter was  very, very unhappy with  Dreamhost and the downtime.  They offered her a free month of hosting, which I suppose is good, but it’s hard to get over being ignored by a hosting company for such a long period.  The cardinal sin of customer service isn’t being unable to solve a problem—it’s keeping your customer in the dark about it.

What was interesting is that I didn’t experience anywhere near the same problems she did.  My sites were up most of the time hers was down.

Anyhow, Dreamhost has put up a detailed rundown of the problems, how they started, and what they’re doing for the future.

I’m starting to get a little concerned about some things I’ve been seeing on the walking trails over the past month or so.  It started with the mirror where the trail goes under Rufe Snow at Bear Creek.  The trail curves there making it impossible to see who’s coming around the bend.  When you combine a narrow trail, the blind curve, and a mix of runners, walkers, bicyclists, and rollerbladers, it’s a recipe for disaster.  The mirror was great for seeing if someone was barrelling towards you on the curve (and for alerting the barreller that people were ahead).  Unfortunately, it appears that some jerk smashed the mirror with a rock.  It started with just the center section, making the mirror difficult, but still somewhat usable.  Yesterday I noticed that the whole thing was gone.

Last week I also noticed that someone has smashed a beer bottle on the concrete retaining wall of the overpass.  This was moderately dangerous, since if you suddenly had to throw yourself out of the way of a speeding cyclist the only place to go was up on the wall (it’s one of those sloping retaining walls you typically see with overpasses).  My dog likes to jump up there and walk around the corner, so I’ve had to be careful to keep her off of it as well.

Also yesterday I had someone yell to me from the edge of the Town Hall parking lot to watch for the glass on the trail.  Someone had smashed what appeared to be a beer bottle on the trail behind Town Hall.  I’m glad of the warning, because the glass was in small pieces.  It wouldn’t have been a problem for me, but I’m sure my dog wouldn’t have fared as well. 

In the 2 1/2 years I’ve been walking the trails, I haven’t seen broken glass or this kind of blatant vandalism until now.  I hope this isn’t the start of a trend.  Maybe when the kids go back to school next week things will return to normal.