Shouting Into Space

Just a little pet peeve I need to get off my chest.

I know all you PC folks are coming over to the Mac in droves and that's a great thing. It's great for you and for me. You'll have a much better computing experience (and life in general) on Mac and I'll still have a job making software for you. So win-win all around!

One little behavior we need to correct though, is how you write about your new computer. In the Windows world it's normal to write PC, or DELL, or IBM in all capital letters. Heck, in DOS (all caps there too) it's even proper to write FOLDER NAMES in capital letters as well, isn't it?

In the Mac world however, it's wrong to write Mac in all caps (and generally wrong to write folder names in all caps - it just looks like you're yelling). Yeah, I know it's a hard habit to break; writing Mac vs. MAC. I mean, you're gonna have to hold down the shift key a little less, and that's tough, but you should be getting used to doing things with less effort now that you have a Mac, right? Besides, you don't need to yell about your Mac. We all know how much better they are (we've been using them for years) and Mac users generally appreciate a little more subtly (you'll understand that as you get used to using your new Mac).

Anyway, Mac is the first three letters in the word Macintosh, which is a kind of an apple. Apple makes computers (and other hardware) and a Mac is a kind of Apple computer. See the correlation here, kind of witty huh? Anyway, you never see the word Macintosh with all caps for the first three letters: MACintosh. That just looks weird right? Well, using MAC to talk about Mac computers looks weird too. So, if you could just please not do that, it would be great.

Oh, before you go there is one instance where you'll want to use the all capitals version of the word MAC. That's when you need to talk about the "quasi-unique" identifier that's assigned to your network adapter. It's known as a Media Access Control address. All computers that can connect to a network have these and they're certainly not limited to Mac. Hey, I guess you also might want to use the all capitals version MAC when you're talking about MAC cosmetics as well, but that has nothing to do with computers.

Ok, so just to make sure we're on the same page... Use Mac and not MAC and we'll all get along great. Thanks!

So yeah, it's been a loooong time since I posted in this blog but I found something that gets my goat enough to write about it... It's this damned bailout business. I'll post more on my feelings about this when it's not so close to my bedtime but for now, I'll just leave with a link to a high-level analysis of the cost thanks to CNBC.

Yes, you as a tax payer are indentured to your share of this. Yes, you are now solidly a slave of the state. Yes, your unborn children already owe. Get working friends, it's gonna take alot of your sweat to pay this off. If you consider there's 300 million people in the US (from age 1 day to very old) and the cost of the bailout is roughly $4.3 trillion (that will go up), then you owe (right this minute - not counting inflation) just over $14,000! Remember, this amount is on top of your share of the national debt (and I won't even get into that).

Get cracking people, freedom is not free!

I was a little concerned with the web service on my new Intel Xserve running Mac OS X Server 10.5 (Leopard) when I started seeing the following log entry in my Apache error log:



I wasn't so much concerned that there was a critical error. I could see my Apache 2 based Subversion server (DAV svn) was performing just fine. My larger concern was that there was an error about mod_rewrite when I wasn't the one that turned it on in the first place. You see, I could believe it was my human error that might have caused the problem but I'd have a harder time believing it was a problem with the default install.

So, I looked at my config file: /etc/apache2/sites/0000_any_80_.conf and compared it to the default config file: /etc/apache2/sites/0000_any_80_.conf.default and found the <IfModule mod_rewrite.c> containers to be exactly the same. Annoying.

Iquickly gave up trying to point the finger and lay blame and decided to take the initiative to fix the problem. I fixed it by giving mod_rewrite an actual log to write to (make it happy - if for only a moment) and then told it to not to log anything to the file (mwahahaha). The change was simple.

From this:

To this:


Problem solved it seems. Now why did I have to do this!?

The Guardian had a great article about why eBooks and other reading "gizmos" (devices) won't beat printed books anytime soon.

The article was well written and pointed out some interesting facts about the longevity of books. This is exactly something I've been framing in my mind as to why I'd rather be writing books than writing software. If I could support myself as well doing the formers as I do doing the latter, I'd change my line of work in an instant!

Every once in a while you hear something that is so dumb it will give you an aneurysm. Fans of Lewis Black will know this as an "If it weren't for my horse..." situation. Well, I had a similar experience this morning. I was waking up to the radio as I am wont to do (the buzzer just isn't as appealing as I get older), and the news was on.

The anchor woman was talking about TurboTax. She spoke about how last year, Intuit had a bandwidth problem that brought down the TurboTax servers near tax day and caused a few thousand people a real headache. The newscaster asked an Intuit spokesperson about what had done this year to help keep that from happening. After talking with the Intuit PR woman, the newscaster talked to an IRS representative. The IRS agent explained how last year they were able to offer an extension of 48 hours to the people who were affected and how the IRS really appreciates e-filers.

Now, none of this talk could make blood shoot out of my nose. This is all very simple, straight forward, and reasonable. It's what the IRS guy went on to say next that got me. Actually, it wasn't just what he said... but how he said it that twisted a vein in my noodle.

As my memory surely can't recall a direct quote from this morning, I will do my best to paraphrase accurately. He (the IRS guy) said something to the effect of: E-filing is such a great thing. It used to be that we literally had trucks pull up to the office (IRS office that is), unload tons of forms, and we had to go through each one (whine, whine). It was sooo hard and there was sooo much to deal with!

That's the one that blew my gasket! I thought to myself: WTF!? Did he really expect me to think: "Poor IRS, they used to have so many forms to deal with. I mean it was literally tons of paper they were swimming in. Can you imagine the potential for papercuts!? I feel sorry for those guys. It must be so much easier for them if we e-file. We really do need to make their lives easier."

Ok... Look asshole, I'm sorry you had to work with all those forms, but seriously, you're the assholes who're telling us we have to do this crap. There isn't even a god damned law stipulating that we have to. It'll be a cold day in hell when I feel sorry for all the work you have to do when I file my taxes. I shouldn't have to do this crap work in the first place. As a matter of fact I shouldn't have to pay any taxes in the first place considering I don't a agree with a single thing my tax money is spent on (inflating the dollar - for instance).

So my brain nearly burst when I thought about how this IRS agent had hoped his comment would spark pity in me for what he has to go through. The only thing that got me calmed down what when I thought about the slim chance that the TurboTax servers might go down again this year. Oh goodness, I really hope it doesn't happen again. I couldn't bear the thought of the IRS having more heartache and headache on tax. Those poor guys!