Yet Another Brain Dump

Expectations

2008-11-06T10:25:00.002-05:00

So today at work I received an email from a colleague: "Please let me know when you will finish reviewing the manual for the XXXXXX project". Now, this is the first I'd heard that I was supposed to review said manual, so it was a bit of a surprise to me. Kind of like if I'd gotten home from work one day and my wife had asked "when are you going to finish building that tool shed in the back yard?" What tools shed? Did we talk about this? When do you want to have this tool shed done? If you want the tool shed done tomorrow, I'll have it done tomorrow. If you want it done before spring, I'll have it done before spring. Give me a little guidance here.

It's Still a Dog

2008-09-12T07:44:00.002-04:00

Airborne!

2008-09-09T12:17:00.002-04:00

The Giant Pool of Money

2008-07-14T13:26:00.004-04:00

If you're at all curious about the mortgage/credit crisis (and if not, why aren't you?) you should definitely listen to this episode of This American Life about the Giant Pool of Money. If you don't have time to listen to the episode, download and read the transcript.

From the transcript:

Think how attractive a mortgage loan is to that
70 trillion dollar pool of money. Remember,
they're desperate to get any kind of interest
return. They want to beat that miserable
1 percent interest Greenspan is offering them.

And here are these homeowners, they're paying 5,
7, 9 percent to borrow money from some bank.
So what if the global pool could get in on
that action?

Truck explosion on 128

2008-07-12T20:22:00.001-04:00

Flyball!

2008-04-14T14:45:00.000-04:00

Addie's long day in the crate

2008-04-08T14:36:00.003-04:00

Finally got the bike out of the basement

2008-04-08T11:58:00.001-04:00

A little late this year

Online bicycle commuting comic

2008-04-01T14:37:00.002-04:00

Yehuda Moon and the Kickstand Cyclery. I highly recommend it.

A little jargon

2008-03-18T07:52:00.003-04:00

True conversation at work:

Cow-orker: Dave, do you know how to sink to a particular change set from the command line?

Me: Sit at the top of the tree you want to sink, then pea four sink dot dot dot at your change set number, no spaces between the dot dot dot at number. I would do a sink minus en to make sure you're getting the right thing.

Cow-orker: No, it seems to be working.

It's what I do.

Addie and the snowballs

2008-01-21T19:27:00.000-05:00

Can't run until ...

2008-01-17T11:25:00.000-05:00

You can't walk 'til you can crawl; you can't run 'til you can walk; you can't fly 'til you can run. Wait, you can't fly at all! OK, back to the drawing board.

I'm a character in a novel

2008-01-03T10:16:00.000-05:00

Turns out I'm a character in a detective/thriller novel. Who'd a thunk it?

Hawaii sunset

2007-11-25T10:30:00.000-05:00

Attacked by Turkeys!

2007-09-22T13:03:00.000-04:00

This morning,, Liz and I were driving home from walking the dog at Ridge Hill. Along Charles River Street she spotted a flock of turkeys grazing by the side of the rode; she quickly stopped and I jumped out to take some pictures. I approached the birds slowly, expecting them to keep away from me, but I hadn't bargained on this bunch. As I started taking pictures, the three toms turned and headed towards me, gobbling in a threatening manner. When they got within three feet of me I turned and hopped back into the car, expecting the toms to lose interest, but instead they parked themselves below my window and continued gobbling threateningly. I told Liz to drive away, but as we did the lead tom made a drive for the front wheels. Eventually I distracted him by throwing some dog treats out the window, and we were able to drive away.

Pictures of the event can be seen here.

Quite a Collection

2007-09-20T07:04:00.000-04:00

Anyone who has raised a puppy will appreciate this (click on the picture for a closer look):

Turkey in the Parking Lot

2007-09-07T21:29:00.000-04:00

The Last Peach ...

2007-08-25T07:35:00.000-04:00

... is eaten by squirrels.

Hibiscus

2007-08-25T07:31:00.001-04:00

Left-handers Day

2007-08-13T11:18:00.000-04:00

Today is, apparently, Left Handers Day. I'm not sure who decided this or why it's today (why not every day?) but there it is.

Monarch butterfly on oregano

2007-07-30T11:51:00.001-04:00

On the deck

2007-07-30T11:48:00.000-04:00

Sleeping Puppy

2007-07-23T15:05:00.000-04:00

Addie does some gardening

2007-06-28T13:48:00.000-04:00

Wildlife

2007-06-15T09:48:00.000-04:00

Wildlife spotted during my Waltham-to-Woburn commute this week:

- A coyote crossing Pleasant Street in Lexington

- A turkey crossing Lexington Street in Woburn (why did the turkey cross the road? I don't know, but I got a picture )

- A flock of at least 6 turkeys grazing in a field near Lexington Street in Woburn ( probably the same bunch I got pictures of last fall )

- A red-tailed hawk being harassed by sparrows on Presidential Way in Woburn

Also numerous sparrows, robins, chickadees, blackbirds, crows, mockingbirds, and cat birds. Too many to count; I just enjoy their company.

Turkey!

2007-06-12T20:16:00.000-04:00

Happy 30th

2007-06-05T07:43:00.000-04:00

No Smoking

2007-05-21T20:05:00.000-04:00

Teh Parteh Cooler

2007-05-20T13:11:00.000-04:00

What's wrong with this picture?

2007-05-16T17:02:00.000-04:00

Although I've worked in this location for two years, I never paid much attention to the "bicycling facility" out front, mostly because I don't use it. But today for some reason it caught my attention, and I took a good look at it. I saw at least six problems with it. Can you spot them? Can you spot more than I did? No wonder I don't use it!

D'oh!

2007-05-16T07:23:00.000-04:00

What's wrong with this code?

ASSERT(sys_call(37, &result) == SYSCALL_OK);

LOLdog

2007-05-08T18:25:00.000-04:00

Azalea

2007-05-03T17:11:00.000-04:00

Deconstructionism

2007-05-02T13:32:00.000-04:00

I'm going to avoid the whole HD-DVD key thing which swept the interwebs yesterday and instead offer you "How to Deconstruct Almost Anything".

Spring at last

2007-04-23T20:33:00.000-04:00

Spring seems to have arrived. What were only the barest hint of swellings on the trees and bushes have exploded, literally over the weekend, into a profusion of blooms. A week ago we had gale force winds, sleet, and even a little snow. Today we have record heat -- 86 degrees at Logan Airport, breaking the record of 85 degrees set in 1902.

Go to Summer. Go directly to Summer. Do not pass Spring. Do not collect $200.

Moving day

2007-04-14T19:47:00.000-04:00

Today when Liz got home from shopping she said "There seems to be a house coming down the road!". I said "Hey, I wonder if they're going to put it in that lot on the corner where they knocked down the house and completely leveled the lot." Sure enough ...

Another knockdown

2007-04-07T13:50:00.000-04:00

Spring snow

2007-04-05T07:46:00.000-04:00

Spring is a little late this year. Yesterday we had an inch or so of snow (which melted almost immediately), and this morning we woke up to an additional dusting.

But that's nothing. 10 years ago we had the April Fool's Day storm which dumped 27 inches of snow on Boston and even more in outlying areas. All sorts of records were broken. I remember that one not only because of the records but also because it was one of the first storms I tracked on Internet radar. It was so cool to see that spinning mass of blue superimposed on the map of the U.S. right on my computer screen at work and to know, without a doubt, that this was a Big One.

But that was nothing. 30 years ago this year we had snow in April and snow again in May. I remember that one because I was about to get married, and we had driven down to Connecticut to get the marriage license, and we woke up that morning to see the most beautiful covering of blossoms under the apple trees. Only it wasn't blossoms, it was snow. We drove back to Boston that day, and the next day we had even more snow -- three or four inches of heavy wet stuff. I was busy typing my Master's thesis on an electric typewriter, and suddenly there was a huge flash and a boom -- a tree had fallen across the street and brought down power lines and a pole. Luckily some combination of the Electricity Gods and the Thesis Gods were looking after me, because we didn't lose power in our apartment, and I was able to complete the thesis on time.

The following year, of course, we had the Blizzard of '78. But that's another story.

Tulips in sunlight

2007-04-01T16:01:00.001-04:00

Two rabbits and a helicopter

2007-03-27T13:28:00.000-04:00

That's all. Two rabbits and a helicopter.

At Hemlock Gorge

2007-03-24T15:35:00.001-04:00

Anatomy of a Bug

2007-03-22T07:33:00.000-04:00

A quiz in two parts (but don't worry, I give you the answers).

The Scenario:

Sally works for a small but well-known company developing a product that will be incorporated into other products. She designs the product to contain a data structure which controls the product's behavior; this data structure contains an array of elements, and each element contains several data items. In order to make the product more flexible she designs it so that the data structure can be extended; to do this she adds a macro which other designers who are incorporating her product can use to add new items to each element. In addition, she documents this macro so that those other designers can understand how to use it.

George works for a large well-known company developing a product which will assist in debugging products that contain Sally's product. He needs to be able to examine and report on the contents of the data structure Sally has designed. He notes that the elements of the structure contain exactly 14 items and that these items are arranged in a particular order; he uses this information to design his debugging aid.

Mike works for a small not-so-well-known company developing a product that incorporates Sally's product. He notes that Sally's product doesn't do everything he needs it to do, but he can use the macro provision and add custom items to the data structure to tailor it to his needs. He does this, but in the process prevents George's debugging aid from working on his product.

Question 1:

Whose bug is it? Is it (a) Sally's bug, (b) George's bug, (c) Mike's bug, or (d) none of the above?

Answer:

(a) is not correct. Sally is following well-established principles by designing a product which is flexible enough to be useful in a wide range of potential applications. She knows that she can not possibly imagine all of the requirements of those potential applications, and so she allows for the extension of her product to fit those applications. It's as is she designed a car with a trailer hitch -- she can't predict what sort of uses the trailer hitch will have but she knows it will be useful.

(c) is not correct. Mike is just using Sally's product the way it was intended to be used. In fact, Mike should be commended for actually reading and understanding the documentation.

(d) is not correct. I just put that one in to confuse you.

(b) is correct. George made two mistakes: (1) he didn't read the documentation, and so he didn't realize that the size of the data structure elements might change, and (2) he assumed that the order of the data items in the structure elements would never change. It was mistake number 1 that is the immediate bug, but there's another bug lurking the the background because of mistake number 2 -- George's debugging aid will only work as long as Sally never changes her data structures.

Question 2:

Who must fix the bug?

Answer:

"Sally" is not correct. Actually, there's nothing Sally can do in this case. George's debugging aid works perfectly well as long as no one uses the macro capability, and Sally has no control over whether or not someone uses the capability. Sally could remove the macro capability, but then what happens to someone who needs the capability and doesn't care about the debugging aid?

"George" is not correct. George's debugging aid has been out in the market for a long time and has been working quite well thank you very much until Mike came along and tried to actually use the capabilities of Sally's product. Plus George's company is large and well-known, and Mike's company is small and not a large part of George's company's revenue stream.

"Mike" is correct. That's right, even though it's not Mike's bug, he's the one who's going to have to fix it if he wants to be able to use George's debugging aid. Actually, what he's going to have to do is find a way to add the functionality he needs without using the macro facility Sally designed into the system.

Welcome to the world of Software Engineering.

Lightbulbs

2007-03-20T11:27:00.001-04:00

How many levels of abstraction does it take to screw in a lightbulb?

North Peak Express

2007-03-18T20:03:00.000-04:00

St. Paddy's Day Storm sequence

2007-03-17T17:51:00.000-04:00

(Click on the picture. I dare you)

Broken Bottle

2007-03-16T06:59:00.000-04:00

Oversize Load "Under Pressure"

2007-03-12T16:30:00.000-04:00

Late-winter pick-me-up bouquet

2007-03-10T12:46:00.000-05:00

Bluejay in the feeder

2007-03-08T09:02:00.000-05:00

Lunar landscape in the backyard

2007-03-07T17:58:00.000-05:00

Crisp again

2007-03-06T16:26:00.001-05:00

Stupid blog tricks

2007-03-05T10:45:00.000-05:00

The sole purpose of this post is to make Scott Adams' pocket buzz. Yes, that would be Scott Adams, the guy who does the Dilbert comic strip.

In case you wondered, yes I did once upon a time work with Scott Adams. But not the Scott Adams who does the Dilbert comic strip.

The Globe

2007-03-02T07:41:00.000-05:00

As the featureless globe hovered in front of me, I felt an irresistible urge to touch it. Reaching out slowly, I poked it, and as my finger sank gently into the surface I could feel a slight hum. The ball rebounded from my touch and the indentation from my finger slowly disappeared. “Great,” I thought. “We finally make contact with extraterrestrials and they turn out to be made of MemryFome®.”

Earplugs

2007-03-01T15:48:00.000-05:00

Sometimes, to preserve your sanity, earplugs are just the thing.

Shadows on the snow

2007-02-24T15:06:00.000-05:00

Your account number, please

2007-02-24T08:54:00.000-05:00

I'm always amazed, when I get lost in a call-center phone maze, that each person I talk to asks for my account number (or my social security number; it comes to the same thing). And this after the system had me key in my account number before it would let me talk to a person in the first place! Why do they bother having me key in the number when they're not going to use it for anything? Why, when I get passed from one person to the next, don't they have a way of telling each other who I am? They always know my name, but they don't seem to know anything else about me. It doesn't make sense, and it's very very annoying.

Alberta Clipper

2007-02-23T14:36:00.000-05:00

Pointer size

2007-02-23T07:46:00.000-05:00

It's too bad that cpp doesn't understand sizeof, because the following would be really really useful:


#if (sizeof(unsigned int) < sizeof(void *))
#error This code depends on being able to store pointers in ints
#endif

Squirrel Scratches

2007-02-22T19:17:00.000-05:00

And the beastie wot done 'em:

Adventures in home ownership: replacement windows

2007-02-18T09:00:00.000-05:00

For several years we've known that we should replace most of the windows in the house; the ones downstairs in the livingroom and the den are the originals (which makes them over 60 years old) while the ones upstairs were put in when the house was redone (which makes them about 35 years old). So a couple of weeks ago we went to one of those home show expositions that was in the area and went to all of the replacement-window booths and signed up for estimates for replacing the windows. Well actually we didn't go to *all* of the booths; it turns out there are an awful lot of outfits that do replacement windows, much more that we had thought.

Yesterday we had a visit from the first window saleman, a guy from NewPro, and it was quite an eye-opener. He arrived a little ahead of schedule and quickly settled into his spiel -- described the product, explained how NewPro both manufactures and installs the windows so their warranty is more comprehensive, showed cutaways of a NewPro window and some of the competition (emphasizing of course how the NewPro window is better), set up a sample window to show how all the features work, and finally walked around the house and took quick measurements of the windows we wanted to replace. We're talking 16 windows in all -- 11 double hung upstairs and 5 casement windows for the basement. This is all as you would expect from a window salesman.

Then came the price. We had expected that he would give us an estimate and then he would leave. We would get pitches and estimates from the other windows outfits, and in a few weeks we would make a decition. Instead what we got was a price that was way way more than we had expected, then a "letter from the VP of sales" that he read out to us verbatim which said that they were instituting a program whereby if the customer committed to a price right then and there they could give them an immediate discount. The discount, which amounted to roughly 25%, still left the price pretty high (we're talking an original price of about $21K, and a "discounted" price of about $16K -- why this is significant you'll see later), but even so only applied if we committed "right now".

Their rationalization was that it would "reduce their costs of sales" because the saleman wouldn't have to come back for a second visit.

We were pretty upset at this. We've bought cars, and this is exactly the tactic that car salemen use -- they won't tell you the real price unless and until you commit to buying the car. The NewPro guy even did the old "let me talk to my manager" thing -- he asked to use our phone, called his manager, told him the rough outlines of the deal, listened for a couple of seconds, then hung up, after which he said he could take the another $2K off if we would let them put up a sign in our front yard (I can't really tell if he called his manager, because from our end the conversation sounded pretty strange; for all I know he was talked to a recording machine or to his wife or both).

When it became clear after a couple of minutes that we weren't going to make a decision right then and there, he packed up his samples and left. Didn't give us a business card, didn't shake hands, didn't even leave behind the quote worksheet.

All of this is a shame, because I think we were pretty sold on the product. He had made a good case that the NewPro windows are in many ways better then the competition, and that their warranty and service are superior, and I think we might have been able to convince ourselves that it was worth the high price. Now I'm just upset. Now I don't want to trust my house to a company that acts this way, no matter how good their product is.

After he left (and after I calmed down a bit) I did a google search on "NewPro sales tactics" and discovered that people have been complaining about the same thing at least as far back as 1998. So this "discount" thing, which the salesman had implied was implemented recently, is actually the standard way they do things. I also discovered that everyone who complained online about this was magically given an initial quote that just somehow managed to be in the neighborhood of $20K. Hmmm.

On the other hand, everyone who actually went with NewPro seems to be very happy with them. As I say, it's really a shame they don't just tell you their real price up front.

Cat on the fencepost

2007-02-17T17:00:00.000-05:00

Frozen in Time

2007-02-16T12:25:00.000-05:00

Happy Valentine's Day!

2007-02-14T18:13:00.001-05:00

Fly the flag proudly

2007-02-14T18:11:00.000-05:00

Online tax programs

2007-02-12T09:46:00.000-05:00

For the past couple of years I've been toying with the idea of doing my taxes online. I've been using tax software for many years, and for the most part have been satisfied with it except for one thing: I have to fire up my Windows partition in order to use it. This is not a huge thing but it's one of the things that causes me to keep my machine dual-boot instead of switching over completely to Linux (one of the others is iTunes and my iPod, to which I'm becoming addicted -- curse you Steve Jobs!).

I use H&R Block's TaxCut, purely by historical accident (I think it was the cheapest of the two major brands the year I started using it) but since I was considering a switch I thought I would try the online versions of both TaxCut and TurboTax. Since both services offer "try before you buy" this seemed like a perfect way to compare the two.

The short story: if you want to do your taxes online from a Linux machine, only TaxCut will do an adequate job.

This is a shame, because TurboTax actually did a better job (for the most part) handling the vagaries of our taxes, but for some reason TurboTax runs dog-slow on a Linux box. I thought at first this was because I was using an older notebook machine, but I tried it running from Windows on the same machine and it was perfectly fine. I also tried running it from a MacBook (perfectly fine) and a fast Linux server box (dog slow). In all cases I was running Firefox (either 1.5 or 2.0, depending on the platform).

The long story: when you first sign in to either TaxCut or TurboTax, they'll tell you that your system doesn't meet their requirements (they list only Windows and Mac OS X as being compatible, and NOTE for you Vista and XP-64 users, TurboTax lists only the 32-bit versions of both). You can ignore the warnings and proceed, but as I said the TurboTax version will run very very slowly; in particular it's very slow to pick up button clicks and very very slow in scrolling windows. You can live with it if you must, but it's easy to make mistakes because you'll click someplace on the screen only to discover that it's still in the process of repainting, so you'll end up clicking on the wrong item, or entering data in the wrong box (I finally gave up trying to do TurboTax from Linux and switched to Windows so I could as least get a comparison of how the two products handled my taxes. It was that bad).

Beyond the Linux/Windows thing, I was interested to see how TurboTax and TaxCut handled a couple of tricky items from my taxes. I had sold some Employee Stock Purchase Plan (ESPP) shares which I had held for several years, and the tax treatment for these is bizarre, to put it mildly. Then I had sold some mutual fund shares at a slight loss, and because this particular fund was set up to reinvest dividends it resulted in a wash sale of some of the shares.

TaxCut didn't even seem to know that these situations could exist; instead I had to finagle the information I was sent so that the numbers would come out right. TurboTax, on the other hand, knew enough to ask about ESPPs (but didn't know enough to ask whether some of the proceeds came from reinvested dividends). TurboTax also has a neat feature whereby you can download 1099-B information directly from the financial company into your tax form; for normal stock/mutual fund sales this isn't that big an advantage but for figuring out the complicated wash-sale mutual fund situation it was great.

In both cases I was able to make the numbers come out right but it still took a bit of work on my part.

On the downside for TurboTax, when I was entering the ESPP data (which, but the way, it was *not* able to download) it insisted on rounding all data to the nearest whole number. This led to a situation where it came out with numbers which were wrong -- not trigger-an-audit wrong, but wrong enough to make me notice. It also had me declaring that I sold more shares that I actually sold.

One thing I don't like about either of the online versions is the inability to check that the data I enter ends up going to the right places on the form. Somehow I don't trust that the program and I are always speaking the same language, so it's reassuring to me to be able to look on the actual IRS forms to make sure the numbers go where they should go. For example, with the ESPP situation some of the proceeds end up as ordinary income while some of them end up as capital gains, and without seeing the forms I'm not sure that the tax programs got the mix right.

I guess, being a programmer myself, I don't trust programmers to get things right. I need to be able to check their work.

I'm still up in the air about whether to do the taxes online or not. I like the idea of not being tied to a particular computer or OS for doing taxes, but I don't like the lack of visibility of how that data is ending up on my tax forms, and of course there's that whole "are my data secure on someone else's computer?" thing. It's clear that the tax-program companies want people to do their taxes online because the online prices are getting to be significantly lower than the on-local-computer prices. But they don't have me convinced yet that it's an advantage for me.

At the birdfeeder

2007-02-11T16:27:00.001-05:00

Sparrow on approach

2007-02-09T14:07:00.000-05:00

Moon setting over Needham

2007-02-06T07:50:00.000-05:00

Banded goose

2007-02-02T15:43:00.000-05:00

Fire Stations

2007-02-02T14:04:00.000-05:00

Making snow

2007-02-01T13:34:00.000-05:00

Summary:  conditions were excellent

Pictures can be seen at http://www.waltzking.org/photos/20070131/

Mike and I parked next to each other in row 12 (purely by accident, I swear) and shortly later were out on the slopes where we met Steve, who had already made a couple of runs.  We made most of our runs off the Polar Express quad, with a couple of runs off the Minuteman quad.  At around 8:30 we went inside for a quick break, and then met up with Brian at the Polar Express Quad at around 9pm.  Brian claimed he had been there since 7, but we have only his word on that.

Conditions were very good, not surprising given that the weather has stayed cold, but it *is* surprising when I look out the window here at home.  Wachusett really does an excellent job keeping the mountain in shape as long as the weather cooperates.  I'm just amazed at the amount of snow they're able to crank out in such a short time.

For those of you interested in such things, their terrain park is in full swing, with rails, jumps, and halfpipe.  They have divided their terrain options into two sections on two different trails -- Hitchcock has some smaller jumps and rails, while Look Mom has more serious features and the halfpipe (you have to buy a terrain park pass to get into this one).  You can, of course, just ski around all this stuff if you want to -- that's what I did.

As usual it was fairly crowded when we got there but thinned out dramatically after 7:45.

Password hell

2007-01-29T13:47:00.000-05:00

The past couple of weeks I've been going through password hell.

First, as some of you may have noticed, I've been bringing up a new waltzking.org server, and took the opportunity to generate a new set of passwords. That created a bit of angst when I couldn't get the new machine and the old machine to agree to talk to each other for a little while, but I finally got that straightened out (it turned out I had the old machine set up to demand encryption but the new machine didn't know how to do it -- yet. All fixed now. I think).

Then at my place of employ it was time for the periodic I'm-not-allowed-to-tell-you-how-often exercise of changing passwords. Unfortunately this usually means getting locked out of your account at least once because of the "we're-not-allowed-to-tell-you-how-many strikes and you're out" rule -- if you attempt to log into your account with the wrong password more than (how many?) times in (how many?) minutes your account is locked and you can't log in until you track down someone in MIS to reset it for you. So how does this happen, you ask? Don't you just change your password and then log in with the new password? Well, it's not that simple, because the system uses the same password for logins, mail, and intraweb access, and there's a lag in getting the various parts in synch. So you change your login password, log in, and your machine starts up your email client. The email server is still using the old password so you can't change the email client yet. After a while the email server gets the password update notice, but in the meantime you've started doing Real Work and have forgotten that you left the email client running in the background. At some point the email client can't log into the server, so it tries repeatedly and then gives up. Of course by this time you've violated the n-strikes rule so your account it locked out, but you don't know it because you're still logged into your machine. The only indication that there might be trouble is that any intraweb accesses will fail, but there's a good chance you won't notice because the intraweb is so contorted and it's so hard to find things there that you hardly ever use it.

This could go on for days before you notice that you don't seem to be getting any email or if, perhaps, you log off your machine and then try to log on again. Even then, it's more likely that you'll think that you've forgotten your new password than that your account it locked out.

I've found, by the way, that this sort of thing is most likely to happen when you start off on a business trip. You reach your destination, try to log in remotely, and the system won't let you because your account is locked out. You have to call up MIS and get them to unlock your account -- but of course the emergency MIS number is posted online on the intraweb that you can't get to because your account is locked.

Don't try this at home, boys and girls.

Passwords are such a P.I.T.A, it's no wonder the cracking method of choice is dictionary login attempts. We all need so many different passwords it's ridiculous, and there's absolutely no way to remember which password goes with which site. Of course you don't use the same password everywhere, do you? Because that would be very very risky. I've heard all sorts of ways of dealing with password fu, which basically boil down to two variations: (1) Have a standard way of generating a unique password for each site (one that you can remember based on the site) and (2) writing them down. I know someone who doesn't do (1) and claims not to do (2) but when pressed it turned out he was keeping his passwords on a PDA which was never never connected to the network. To my way of thinking, though, this is the same as writing them down.

Of course Microsoft and Google want you to dispense with all the various passwords and have a single Passport or Google Checkout password that handles everything, but do you really trust either company to safeguard the key to your financial security? Not only that but Google wants you to use the same password for mundane tasks like posting to forums or editing blogs and for should-be-secure tasks like buying things online.

You can try to use your browser to save all your online passwords, but that only works if you use only one machine and is itself a weak point of attack. It's also a problem if your machine crashes or you move to a new machine. And it doesn't address the issue of all the non-browser passwords you need in your life, like your bank PIN(s), your voicemail password (work and personal), your car PIN, your email account password(s), and so on and so on (do you know how many of these get transferred in clear? I thought not).

And don't get me started on all the rules that various sites have for generating passwords: some places you can use only letters and numbers, some places you must use puntuation characters, some places you can't use puntuation characters, some places you can't have anything over 8 characters, some places you must have more that 8 characters, and so on and so on.

There must be a better way.

Just a dusting

2007-01-28T10:32:00.000-05:00

WARNING Autos/Trucks Only

2007-01-27T11:33:00.000-05:00

Morning chopper

2007-01-25T17:27:00.000-05:00

Time

2007-01-25T12:26:00.000-05:00

The days are too short, except when they're too long.

Discuss.

Hint

2007-01-25T07:39:00.000-05:00

Here's a hint: all those pictures that are so small you can't tell what they are? They're links. Click on them.

Inside a 3-way cable splitter

2007-01-24T18:36:00.000-05:00

Butterflies

2007-01-20T12:59:00.000-05:00

We woke to the rustling of the leaves around us as the sun, peeking through the branches of the trees, played across our faces. Above us, literally inches away, were two pale-yellow butterflies, locked together in a kind of embrace as they floated almost motionless on the gentle air currents. "Look at that!", I whispered. They bobbled in the air, then slipped sideways and down, out of sight. "How cool was that?",

Any moment/do not spray to clean

2007-01-20T12:58:00.000-05:00

Bananas

2007-01-16T19:46:00.000-05:00

The trouble with bananas is that they're not chocolate.

Thinking cap with mouse

2007-01-16T17:49:00.001-05:00

Jade plant

2007-01-15T16:21:00.001-05:00

No snow for you!

2007-01-06T15:57:00.000-05:00

Nibbling

2007-01-03T10:55:00.000-05:00

When you sleep, do you let your arm dangle down towards the floor? Of course you don't, because otherwise the monster-under-the-bed might nibble on your fingers. And don't even think about the dust bunnies!

The last day of the year ...

2006-12-31T09:55:00.000-05:00

... dawns bright and clear.

Out with the old, in with the new

2006-12-28T14:18:00.000-05:00

Borg scale

2006-12-27T15:25:00.000-05:00

Ho ho ho!/invitation

2006-12-24T16:19:00.000-05:00

On the internet ...

2006-12-19T16:48:00.000-05:00

Once upon a time there was a New Yorker cartoon that proclaimed that "On the Internet, nobody knows you're a dog". It was a comforting thought for most of us. But it's not true any more. Nowadays, on the internet, it's much too easy to find out much too much information about people. Sometimes you find out things you'd rather not know.

Assisted dip/chin

2006-12-16T13:43:00.000-05:00

Some days I need all the assistance I can get.

One Misty Moisty Morning

2006-12-14T14:13:00.000-05:00

The bluejay drops by

2006-12-13T16:59:00.001-05:00

Stars or squid? You decide.

2006-12-12T11:14:00.000-05:00

Me? I voted for Phil.

The tufted titmouse returns

2006-12-11T16:23:00.000-05:00

Management 101 - the Cube Shuffle

2006-12-10T16:47:00.000-05:00

For those of you who don't work in a cube farm, a Cube Shuffle is when the Powers That Be decide to move people around in the cube farm for one reason or another. Common reasons to instigate cube shuffles are (a) to get people working on the same project close to each other (and thus to enhance communication within the project) or (2) to get people who work on different projects or in different disciplines close to each other (and thus to enhance cross-pollination between projects or between disciplines, for example between hardware engineers and software engineers).

The hope of the cube shuffle is to make the overall organization more efficient; the mechanism of the cube shuffle effect is all of those informal conversations that people have when they're put in close proximity with one another.

It's not clear if cube shuffles actually make people more efficient, but it is pretty clear that they change who you talk to during your day in the cube farm. It's amazing what a few extra feet can do to encourage or discourage conversation.

(Yes, I did just go through a cube shuffle; no, I didn't lose a window cube).

"Lost" game

2006-12-08T18:47:00.000-05:00

Join the Lost game. If you follow that link you get an invitation to join the game; if you join I get points, and the person who got me to join also gets points. It seems to be a graduate project of some sort, probably to see how quickly they can crash their computers.

Here's what they say about the game:

LOST is a student project that aims to show how 7 million people can connect to each other. It's also a game, and is trying to reach the highest number of players for any game, ever.

These are the rules.

To score a point in the game, you must invite someone else. For every person they invite, you gain another ½ point.

There is a timer on your account page. It resets itself every time you score a point, and you will lose if it ever reaches zero.

Sparrels

2006-12-08T15:00:00.001-05:00

Tufted titmouse

2006-12-05T08:50:00.000-05:00

First snow of the season

2006-12-04T17:10:00.000-05:00