March 10, 2006
Image Etiquette
I had to slap the guy hosting the "Alternate Energy Blog" on the wrist this morning. He was freeloading my bandwidth by linking to an image on my server. The solution? Simple... rename a different file with the same name!! The result is pretty sweet! Now he has a picture of my daughter on his site with a caption: "This guy is stealing my bandwidth. Please visit http://harrisreynolds.net/blog/" SWEET!!! I am not sure how long it will be until he notices it and changes the link, but in the meantime you can enjoy the result via the image below.
James... you have been a naughty boy! Don't just randomly link to other people's images; copy the image, assuming it is in the public domain, to your own server. Oh... and James... thanks for the free advertising!! :-)
Click here to see the picture!
Posted by harris at 10:43 AM | Comments (1)
March 01, 2006
ETrade Bug
Note the nice bug in eTrade's tranfer money "feature". Apparently the system skipped straight from February 28th to March 29th... the calendar popup shown below does not allow a user to select a date before 03/29/06. The image below also shows the current date as March 1st in the upper right-hand corner, but clicking the Transfer button with that date in the Date text box doesn't work. You can't get past the errant "Please enter a valid date" dialog box to actually make a transfer. Talk about user hostile... all I wanted to do was fund an IRA account. This nasty bug needs to be fixed pronto! The lesson here? When dealing with dates MAKE SURE TO DEAL WITH FEBRUARY properly! :-)
BTW... if you are viewing this entry from the main page in a browser you'll need to click this link to see the full image.
Posted by harris at 01:40 AM | Comments (1)
January 06, 2006
Procrastination is Bad. Period.
Paul Graham seems to be an intelligent person and I generally enjoy and benefit from his thinking. Nonetheless his latest treaty should be entitled "Effective Time Management", not "Good and Bad Procrasination". Why? Because procrastination inherently implies carelessness, laziness, and needless delay. The piece has merit for its discussion of prioritization, but the concept of positive procrastination is a classic oxymoron.
Why do I care? Well... ultimately I don't. However sometimes it feels like otherwise smart people try a little too hard to be novel and new so that they actually blur reality. There is no such thing as "Type C procrastination" ... that is simply being a good prioritizer. No sane person would call rushing your dying grandmother to the hospital instead of studying for an exam "procrastination"; likewise, the loaf who is chomping on potato chips while playing X-box instead of studying is guilty as charged. There is no need to refactor to English language in this case.
Thank for the article on Time Management Paul! Let me know if you'd like me to review your next essay before it is published! :-)
Posted by harris at 06:50 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
December 15, 2005
Honda Hacking
I was put in between a rock and a hard place recently by the state of Virginia and Honda. You see, in VA, you have to periodically pass a safety inspection. Passing this requires that your car meet certain requirements including, if you own a Honda, that the SRS light is not on. This light is known to be flaky in some years of the cars and unfortunately this light came on recently in my Accord. So it failed inspection because a light that the dealership couldn't reliably diagnose was on; and the dealership conveniently, after multiple trips with varying answers, decided I needed to spend $480 to "fix" it.
Unhappy at the prospect of giving more money (yet another story) to a dubious cast of characters at Fairfax Honda, I turned to a good friend, Mr. Inter Net. He introduced me to Mr. Josher who wrote a piece entitled, "How To Reset The SRS Indicator Light", and I did what I felt I must: hack the SRS light. Two paper clips and about five minutes later the light was turned off in my 2000 Honda Accord and later in the afternoon the state was appeased.
Chalk up another one for Mr. Inter Net empowering the little people of the world. Now I just have to make sure I'm wearing that seat belt!
Posted by harris at 08:27 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
October 13, 2005
Pride Goes Before a Fall
I watched the first season of The Apprentice religiously; since then however I have been only a sporadic viewer. Nonetheless I caught the last couple episodes of The Apprentice 4 and have been mildly entertained. One thing that The Apprentice always has is an antagonist; in Season 1 it was easily Oma Rosa (Sam was a little annoying, but nothing like OR). In the current apprentice a girl named Toral is a champ in this role. This is actually great casting on the part of Don and Mark Burnett. Having a person that people "Love to Hate" is good for ratings and leaves us all with a satisfied happy feeling when said person is fired.
So let's take a closer look at Toral. Despite excellent professional creds, Toral will never be a great leader. Why? She has incredibly narrow vision and seems wholly incapable of seeing the value of individuals in a diverse group. Sure, the other contestants are very different, and many would make poor investment bankers; but that just means they have different skill sets; it does not make them imbeciles as Toral seemed to insinuate. In addition her arrogance on the show was unparalleled, making her wildly ineffective in dealing with people outside her educational-professional demographic. Of course it was also evident that she could never laugh at herself or worst of all, get her hands dirty.
I am confident that Toral will have a successful career in financial terms and I wish her well (despite exorbitant glee when she was fired directly, without the typical "Choose Two People" protocol). For now though our faith in The Don has been restored, and we can get on with determining who the next Apprentice will be without worrying about those who never had a chance.
Posted by harris at 10:25 PM | Comments (1) | TrackBack
August 29, 2005
Google Talk & the IM Pecking Order
I was talking with a buddy over Google Talk last night and was amazed at how crystal clear the call was... better than Skype and really better than my cell phone! So I was surprised to see this blog entry entitled "Google Talk Blows". LOL! Google Talk is very simple yes, but the voice feature has effectively reached perfection.
To be fair to the MSN Messenger team I decided to talk to the same buddy using their shiny new IM client. Here is exactly what MSN Messenger printed to the screen:
Corey B. is inviting you to start a Voice Conversation. Do you want to accept (Alt+C) or decline (Alt+D) the invitation? You have accepted the invitation to start a Voice Conversation. Harris says: We are currently unable to set up this conversation. Please try again. The Voice Conversation with Corey B. has ended. Harris says: You have invited Corey B. to start a Voice Conversation. Please Corey B. has accepted your invitation to start a Voice Conversation. Corey B. says: The Voice Conversation with Corey B. has ended. |
We never talked over MSN; maybe the service was just having a bad night, but it didn't even work. Apparently this "feature" is even listed as "...Awesome Audio Quality Improvements"??? Riiiight. One thing that struck me though is that with this level of brokeness, MSN Messenger could actually function as a rejection service... when someone who you don't want to actually call asks for your IM, give them your MSN handle and rest assured that their call won't get through! Brilliant!
MSN Messenger exhorted me to "Please try again." I did... this time with GoogleTalk, and what do you know... a nice clear voice connection... ahhhh... free calls that work and work well. GoogleTalk Blows MSN Messenger Away!
The true king of IM though is Yahoo... they even allow you to leave voice messages... plus the audibles are hilarious and for some reason it is the only package that supports offline messages.
Of course by the numbers AOL is first (mainly from the teeny bopper crowd) followed by Yahoo and MSN, with GTalk just out of the gate. If GTalk becomes the one service to bind them all then it may get some traction as well. From a technical perspective however, the IM pecking order is more like this: 1) Yahoo 2) GTalk (simple but fantastic voice) Tied for Last) AIM and MSN Msgr.
Rants, Flames and other sundry commentary welcome.
Posted by harris at 11:13 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack