fxl.blog()

Millennium Falcon Lighting Project

2012-01-01T22:59:23Z

For Christmas, Oona got me a the Millennium Falcon™ LEGO Set (7965), an excellent gift. Before I even finished building it, I noticed that it came with a blue plastic tube, and something told me it needed to be lit.

I had some Adafruit El Wire laying around, and tried running it through. It looked excellent, and immediately the little one, who also got one for Christmas, wanted me to wire hers up as well. While it looked nice, it had some serious drawbacks:

The power inverter makes a high pitched whine.
The battery pack + inverter are quite large and hard to conceal.
The inverter takes 2 AA batteries and puts out 110VAC at about 2000hz, which is not exactly safe for kids.
Over all it is a bit pricy with the inverter/battery pack starting at $7.50, and the El Wire is about $1.45/ft.

I also had some Light Pipe laying around that I purchased from Spark Fun a while back on whim, figuring it might be useful some day. I tried popping a white LED into the LEGO that holds the blue tube in place, and putting some Lite Pipe inside of the blue tubing. It looked good, but not as brilliant as the El Wire. Putting LEDs on both sides helped a lot, but was not as blue as the EL Wire.

In order to get a better color I ordered some 3MM Blue LEDs from Jameco Electronics. I also ordered a few 3xAAA battery holders with built in cover and switch to use in powering the LEDs. I had located a small area at the bottom of the Millennium Falcon where I could hide the battery box so I attached an unused LEGO plate to the box with some double sided tape so that it could easily be attached.

After some soldering and heat shrink tubing I was able to test the LEDs with the Light Pipe and attach it to the bottom of the Millennium Falcon:

The finished project looks like:

In the end, the combination of 2 blue LEDs and the Light Pipe looked just as good, if not a little bit brighter than the El Wire version. The project cost about $5.00:

$0.58 - 2x 3MM blue LEDs @ .29ea (In pack of 10)
$0.95 - Battery box with cover and switch
$1.98 - 6" of Light Pipe (From a $3.95 1' length)
$1.16 - 2 pieces of heat-shrink tubing from Radio Shack
$0.11 - About 6" of 2-Conductor Intercom Wire

I am giving this one to the little one so she can light the Millennium Falcon she has at her dads place and will be making another one for me. For this next version I am going to attempt to run the wires through the LEGO pieces under the body, in order to hide the wires better, and I may also run some wire to the front of the ship in order to light the headlights.

I will try to take more photos of the construction, if I remember... :)

My experiences migrating from Pine to iPhone and OS X Mail.app

2010-01-07T03:12:30Z

I recently got a 27" iMac to replace my 3 year old PC laptop. So far the experience has been good, although I am still finding a few annoyances with the UI compared to Windows or even Gnome, but I am mostly happy with the experience. So far the biggest win is that iTunes now starts in less than 10 seconds compared to the laptop where it could take MINUTES for it to start, and it hardly ever crashes anymore.

I figure that should start posting solutions to problems I have had during this migration, and ones I have yet to resolve in the hopes of helping others and finding needed or alternative solutions.

As part of this upgrade, and based on my experiences with reading mail on the iPhone, I also gave up Pine in favor of Mail.app. This took some doing, and also required me to make some changes to how I save mail.

One of my favorite features of Pine, and one that kept me using it for years, was the ability to set an FCC address for entries in the address book. Once an FCC address was sent, not only would mail to that person/company be filed to a specific folder, anytime I hit "s" (Save) while viewing a message from that person/company, it would also be filed to the designated folder. If the person/company was not in my address book, the mail would get filed to the default read mail folder.

This allowed the flexibility of using something like procmail, while still having an in your face Inbox. I often prefer to have mail land in my Inbox, than to other folders I may check less frequently. Within a year, I would end up with an 'Accounts' folder that had at least 100 sub-folders, of different companies I deal with or who send me email. After archiving a years mail, Pine would always recreate the folders as needed. Finding email

Once I started using the iPhone as my primary email client, continuing to file may this way became very tedious. I would often read the mail on the iPhone, then file it later in Pine. As time went on, I started to wonder if bothering to file the bulk of my mail in specific folders was even worth it anymore. It made finding all correspondence from a person/company easy, even when they used multiple addresses, but modern (read: Not Outlook) mail readers make it very easy to search mail, or set up smart folders based on search criteria.

Much like my switch to iTunes, the search box at the top right of the application is what has sold me on using it, and no longer needing to file my mail so carefully. I keep the last few years of my email online, yet Mail.app has no problem searching it fast, using what I assume is a local index to speed up the searching.

One annoyance on the iPhone and in Mail.app is the lack of an easy way to file an email that has been read to something like a "READ MAIL" folder. Sure you can click the file icon, and select the folder, but I was looking for something more convenient, that could take place in one keystroke/action.

On the iPhone this was very easy. Since I never delete mail, just pointed the Deleted Mailbox to my "READ" folder, and turned off the removal of deleted messages and the ask before deleting prompt. Now I can blow through my Inbox every morning, tapping delete for each email. These settings can be found in the settings application under "Mail, Contacts, Calendars" -> Accounts -> a particular account -> Advanced.

In Mail.app on OS X this was a bit more difficult. I can either drag mail to READ, or repeat that action with ALT-OPTION-T. I am not fond of either option, and the desktop version does not have the same flexible options to change where deleted mail is stored as the iPhone does.

My solution was a cron job that moves mail from 'Deleted Messages' to 'READ' every hour. I already have a cron job that reads any mail filed as Learn-SPAM or Learn-HAM and uses it to train Spam Assassin, so adding this was no big deal. I figured that if I was going to be moving mail that I knew was read, and was not SPAM, I might as well train Spam Assassin with this mail while moving it as well. Any mail I read, and 'delete' are now used as samples of HAM (Not SPAM). Anytime junkmail ends up finding its way to my Inbox (rare) I just file it as Learn-SPAM instead of deleting it.

EDIT TO ADD: mkb_cbr points out that Mail.app on OS X DOES have the flexibility to change where deleted mail is stored. My mistake was looking in the Preferences -> Accounts tab, and selecting the advanced options for the mail server. The solution is to select the mail folder you want to use for Trash, then select Mailbox -> Use This Mailbox For -> Trash.

Like with most issues I have experienced on the Mac, things are not always where I might expect them to be, or where I would consider to be the most logical place. Often times it is too user friendly for my own good. I guess I just don't Think Different.

My gut instinct says to NOT use this option, and continue using my cron job solution in the off chance that a future update to Mail.app changes my default settings and decides to be helpful and empty my Trash. In fact, now that I have this cron job set up, I am also changing the settings on my iPhone as well.

20 Years Ago Today

2009-10-18T00:22:17Z

20 years ago today I was living in Oakland, across from Highland Hospital.

One day my friends Stephanie and Linda wanted to do some shopping and we headed over to Hillsdale Mall in San Mateo. I forget the reasons why we went all the Way to San Mateo to do shopping, or what particular store we were headed to. Our plans were to do some shopping, then head back to Oakland. I took the San Mateo bridge to get there, and had planned to head back on the Bay Bridge. If we had been on time, we would have been heading back at around 5PM.

We were having a fun day when suddenly, the mall started to shake. We were experiencing an earth quake, and it felt like a pretty large one. I remember people started frantically running out of the mall. My friends and I were pretty close to an exit, but I had no desire to leave the mall. We were pretty close to an escalator, and I recall moving us towards it, and stood under it, thinking it was the safest place to be. I glanced outside and could see stucco falling onto the side walk, so I knew that was NOT where I wanted to be. The escalator we were standing under was near the poster/print shop. I recall it having a two story glass window, and it was starting to flex pretty badly. I had never seen glass move so much, and it was quite fun to watch, but the window never broke.

After the mall stopped shaking we made our way to the parking lot. I had parked on the upper level. Not to many other cars were up there. The first thing I noticed was that my car was no longer in between the lines of the parking space, but had moved over a bit.

Having grown up in the Bay Area, earth quakes did not phase me. I had lived through quite a few, and I did not understand people who let a little ground shaking scare them. From the moment the ground started shaking, to seeing the stucco falling, to seeing that my car was moved a bit, I was very calm. This is one of the things I remember most.. I remember thinking that most of the people in the mall were acting quite silly, running outside the way they were. Even one of the people I was with wanted to go outside during the shaking, and I recall having to stop them, for their own safety.

At this point I figured that the roads would be very chaotic, and that the best thing we could do was to wait it about a bit, listen to the radio, and then head to my moms place to make sure everything was OK there. She lived in San Mateo, not too far from the mall.

We got into the car and turned on the radio. The radio was tuned to my favorite radio station of the time, and I was slightly surprised to hear news, and not music when I turned the power on. We first heard the magnitude of the quake, and I recall acknowledging with a laugh that it was quite close to what I had predicted earlier. The news continued with a report that 'the bay bridge had fallen', or at least that is what we heard. It was most likely an early report, and it was a bit vague, but we heard that something major happened to the Bay Bridge.

This is where I stopped being calm. If something could happen to such a large structure that I had driven on countless times, how was the rest of the Bay Area? how was my moms place, how was my mom? I started the car and headed over to my moms place. On the way there we continued to hear reports of a collapsed freeway in Oakland. I didn't recognize the name at the time, but I would later learn it was roadway I drove on almost every day.

My mom was fine, and seemed a bit surprised that I had felt the need to check on her over 'just a little ground shaking'. I again figured it would be best to sit tight for a while, and maybe watch the news. My friends called home to let their families know they were OK. While watching the news we learned that Caltrans had shutdown the San Mateo bridge for inspection. It would reopen in the morning. Not wanting to drive around the bay, back to Oakland we ended up spending the night at my moms place.

That is what I remember from 20 years ago today.

Replacing my PC laptop with a Mac desktop.

2009-10-13T21:44:18Z

I have found my self trying to remember all the reasons I am not interested in another laptop a few times, so I figured I should just document it somewhere, and add to it as needed:

Reasons to replace my laptop with desktop

I want real cooling fans. Tired of my laptop over heading and spontaneously shutting down due to over heating. This is after adjusting fan settings and placing on a laptop cooler. Of course, this is what you get when you cram an Intel P4 Desktop CPU running at 3.2Ghz into a laptop case. Oddly, the overheating tends to only happen when running iTunes.
Too many wires. 3 USB plugs, some which can't be merged onto one hub for power/bandwidth reasons. Power cable, network (wireless is not fast enough for me when connecting to my file server), speakers, external monitor, etc.
I never use it as a laptop anymore, partially due to #2. I now have a netbook for mobile / coffee table use, and honestly, the iPhone has replaced my need to even carry the netbook around with me anymore. Safari is that good.
Sound. I am sure this would not be the case with a newer laptop, but the fans in this laptop are very loud, and this is after cleaning. Add to this the sound of the laptop cooler it is sitting on, and it sounds like I am in a server room.
Being used as a desktop replacement has not been good to the battery, which is now stuck at 0%.

For some of this, I am sure it is just due to owning a desktop replacement laptop that is 3 years old, and a newer laptop, with newer laptop CPUs would not be as much of an issue. There is still not much point if I do not need to take it with me, and the Netbook gives me access to all non Apple specific things stored on my file server.

I am also considering make the switch back to a Mac again, although my last attempt with a crappy iBook did not go so well. These days they are all Intel based, and that means that if I still can't get OS X to work the way I want, I can at least run Windows on it, and/or guest it with out the additional CPU translation. I even hear you can integrate Windows apps into OS X, but that sounds like a negative feature to me.

At this point I have drank the koolaid a few times. I ripped all my CDs into Apple Lossless in iTunes, purchased an iPod, and now an iPhone. I might as well take the next step, buy a Mac, and put an Apple sticker on my car.

I am considering a MacMini or a 24" iMac. This is what I know so far:

MacMini Pros

Small
Quiet
I can get any monitor I like for it. Supports 2 monitors.
Cheap, starting at $599, what I paid for my current 3 year old laptop.
If being a Mac owner does not work out, can also use it as a media server.

MacMini Cons

May use laptop parts, including HD.
Still no 4" fans
Limited to 2.0Ghz
Limited to 4Gb RAM (although this should be enough for anyone)
Drives are only 5400 rpm

24" iMac Pros

Built in screen makes perfect laptop replacement.
Faster speeds than the MacMini
Memory up to 8Gb.
I have been told that it does not use laptop style parts such as the hard drive.
Supports an external monitor.
Drives are 7200 RPM

24" iMac Cons

Much more expensive than MacMini
Might be cheaper to get my own screen + MacMini
Still no 4" fans

Interested in any info anyone has to offer. I will be updating my lists as I learn more. I do plan to hold off buying until the end of the month, or when Apple announces its new line up.

Bath Towels

2009-07-31T23:40:57Z

Prompted by a recent conversation...

View Poll: Bath Towels

Breaded Chicken

2009-02-24T05:14:14Z

I am getting much happier with my own cooking lately. I am starting to cook the way I used to, back when I still lived at home.

I made a breaded chicken breast tonight, with much success. No recipe, just instinct.

I made the breading out of about a half cup of some leftover bread crumbs, added some freshly chopped parsley, freshly chopped thyme, finely chopped/minced 3 cloves of garlic, about a table spoon of minced onion, a few squirts of lemon juice for moisture and flavor, and some lemon pepper.

I beat some Dijon mustard, about a table spoon, and a little flour into an egg for the egg wash. Stole that from a breaded pork chop recipe that I tried recently. It creates a thicker breading that sticks better, and adds extra flavor.

The rest was just a typical 3 step breading. Cut the breast into two in order to make two servings, rolled it in flour, the egg mixture, then the breading. 375 for 30 min.

It was excellent. Christine said it had lots of flavors, which I took to be a good thing.

My new Twitter account

2009-02-19T11:07:41Z

inoah had an interesting idea last Saturday night. Create a Twitter account that spews nonsense, based on the input of users it follows.

A day later, I created the Twitter account named BlaBlaBloblo. Originally, the code was a shell script that called dadadodo but I soon after implemented the whole thing in Python in order to be better suited for 140 character output, and renamed the twitter account to DinDaaDaa, giving it a name that had more meaning to me.

So now I have dindada.py, a program that accesses a Twitter account, uses the tweets of those it follows to form a Markov chain, builds one or more sentences from the chain, and posts a tweet back to Twitter. Tweets that are read are accessed through the Twitter JSON API, and saved to a local pickle, as to help build the Markov chain over time. Words are weighted by frequency in order to produce better output over time.

The funny part is that this account already has 21 followers.

I now wonder if I should create a new LiveJournal account and do the same thing.

Harrison Ford

2009-01-15T03:19:36Z

Just in case you are ever curious and need to check: Is Harrison Ford Alive?

Yacht Rock

2009-01-03T18:55:05Z

My friend Rachel pointed me to Yacht Rock recently. There are only 11 episodes, and it does not look like they are making anymore, but it is seriously funny stuff, if you have ever listened to any "Yacht Rock".

I am up to episode #3.

Edit to Add: Also found "The Bed and Breakfast Club" on the same site.

For more debate watching fun...

2008-10-15T22:25:29Z

Don't forget to print out your Presidential Debate Bingo cards before the debate tonight. You can usually fit two cards on one sheet, and if you have people coming over, you can print a whole bunch at one time.

Enjoy!

McCain on Health Care...

2008-10-06T21:34:07Z

“Opening up the health insurance market to more vigorous nationwide competition, as we have done over the last decade in banking, would provide more choices of innovative products less burdened by the worst excesses of state-based regulation.” - John McCain

If only our health care was as solid as our banking infrastructure.

See: Health Care Destruction and the referenced article: http://www.contingencies.org/septoct08/mccain.pdf

Looking for beta testers for a silly web application

2008-10-05T20:15:42Z

If anyone is interested in testing two new features of Buzzword Bingo Game, reply here or send me an email and I will send you the link.

This is a feature I wrote about 3 years ago, but due to mostly accounting issues, I never felt comfortable releasing it until today.

Thanks in part to a nasty cold I have had this weekend, I have had a chance to clean up the code a bit, and fix those pesky accounting issues.

For more debate watching fun: Presidential Debate Bingo!

2008-10-05T00:56:25Z

In preparation for the next debate I have set up a few more Buzzword Bingo Cards:

If anyone sees any errors, or has suggestions for new phrases, please let me know.

Also, I finally activated buzzwordbingogame.com so that there is a version of the site that is work/kid friendly.

For your debate watching fun...

2008-10-02T22:30:53Z

Sarah Palin Debate Bingo

Enjoy!

Vacation

2008-08-27T10:04:06Z

Almost ready to head out on our vacation. We are heading to Hartford, CT to visit with Christines family, and for her sisters wedding, then off to NY for 2.5 days for sight seeing.

The bags are packed.
An excellent friend has agreed to stop by and check on our cats while we are gone. (I can not even describe how much this puts my mind at ease.)
iPod is loaded up with enough podcasts and music to keep me entertained and maybe even sane on two 8 hour flights, including a few episodes of FLOSS Weekly, An episode of No Agenda, and 2 episodes (13 and 14) of Mixed Blessings in case I start feeling too sane. Also bringing about 12 hours of audio and video lectures from the Stanford section of iTunes U.
Flickr Account upgraded to a pro account so that I can upload photos during the trip (I was already at my limit for the month).
Boarding Pass has been printed.
Alarms set for Way:Too:Early AM (And why am I still up?)

For this trip, I am trying something new. I am going with out a single laptop. Just a phone, iPod, and camera. Lets see how long I stay sane with out an actual computer, for 6 days.. I will be using a microSD card in the camera via an SD adapter so that I can put the card in my phone, and upload to Flickr along the way.

I am cheating a little by bringing a bluetooth keyboard, so in a pinch, I can write a longer email, or blog post if I feel like it, but most of my posts for the next week will be of the 140 character Twitter variety.

Methods of payment at Mi Tierra in Oakland

2008-08-05T01:57:42Z

One way to tell that the economy is going down hill:

Lost Boys 2: The Tribe

2008-08-03T21:32:10Z

I made the mistake of renting Lost Boys 2: The Tribe last night. Here is the review I posted to Netflix:

I went into this movie expecting it to be bad, based on the fact that it went straight to video. I got what I expected, in abundance.

For starters, the description of the movie is very misleading when it says "Corey Feldman and Corey Haim co-star in this sequel to 1987's Lost Boys". Corey Haim has less than 30 seconds of screen time in the movie, and those 30 seconds do nothing to further the story. The only explanation for that cameo is so that they could advertise the movie as having 'both Coreys'. I also suspect that based on the last name of the main characters, that this script may have been re-written from an earlier version that had more involvement by the Corey Haim character, as his last name was also "Emerson" in the original movie.

The story, if you want to call it that, is not a continuation of the first movie and there are little to no references to it. In some ways, it might as well be a rehash of the original, in a new time, with new people. The whole thing is very predictable, to the point where I guessed specific details about ending very early in the movie.

There was one surprise in this movie: The "head vampire" is played by Angus Sutherland and he does bear some resemblance to his older half brother Kiefer Sutherland of the original Lost Boys movie. There are no attempts to capitalize on nor explain this in the movie.

One thing that could make this movie better would be if Corey Feldman used a normal talking voice, and not some made up voice that is a cross between a 50 year old biker/smoker, and a stoner. The voice is phony, laughable, and very distracting.

Again, I knew this movie would be bad going into it, but I was lured in by the expectation of two Coreys, and the possible continuation of the original story. I was disappointed on both counts. Save your time and skip this movie. I gave it two stars.

Irony

2008-07-15T17:54:18Z

Went to a 1.5 hour meeting this morning. Turned out to be a rehash of a 1.5 hour meeting I went to exactly one week ago.

The general themes were:

Employee utilization
Productivity
Cost Cutting

I wish I were joking. Sometimes I feel like I live in a Dilbert strip.

A typical home project...

2008-07-07T00:17:57Z

This is a day in the life of a typical home owner wishing to install a ceiling fan...

Decide to install ceiling fan in office. The goal being more airflow, and much better lighting.
Decide that a fan with multiple directional light units would be best, for focusing light at desk, and laundry machines.
Go to OSH and pick out fan that will look good in the office. Ensure that selected fan uses standard bulbs so that using CFL bulbs is an option.
Return home.
Remove ugly old ceiling light.
Note that old ceiling fixture is loose and wobbly and thus not appropriate for a ceiling fan. Also note that it is attached, badly, to the side of a beam.
Go to hardware store and buy a new 1/2" pancake light fixture (right), a 16" medallion (left) in order to cover old 4" hole in ceiling, and a sheet rock knife for use in cutting new 4" hole in ceiling, below beam.
Return home, cut new hole in ceiling, solidly attach pancake box to beam using 3 - 2" screws.
Start installing new fan.
Attach fan harness to pancake box.
Start attaching electrical wires to fan motor housing.
Detach electrical wires.
Remove fan harness from pancake box.
Install 16" medallion.
Re-attach fan harness to pancake box.
Start attaching electrical wires to fan motor housing.
Mount fan motor housing to harness.
Lose screws in fan motor housing 3 or 4 times. Each time, remove motor housing and shake vigorously until lost screw falls out.
Wrap motor housing in plastic in order to cover holes so screws will stop falling in.
Attach motor housing to fan harness.
Suddenly decide to double check light unit, notice that it uses candelabra bulbs, not standard bulbs.
Detach motor housing.
Detach electrical wires.
Detach fan harness.
Box up all parts as well as possible and rush back to OSH, before they close in 20 minutes.
Learn that the display model is an older version. The current version is what we purchased.
Return fan as there are no other models meet our needs.
As it is now 9PM and all hardware stores are closed, go to K-Mart and Target in hopes of finding a replacement.
Give up, go home and watch movie.
Wake up Sunday morning and go to a different OSH, in hopes that and older version of the fan we had chosen is still on a store shelf somewhere.
Get extremely lucky in finding said older version. Open box at store and confirm unit is correct.
Return home with fan, and celebratory candy bar.
Start installing new fan.
Attach fan harness to pancake box.
Start attaching electrical wires to fan motor housing.
Detach electrical wires.
Remove fan harness from pancake box.
Install 16" medallion.
Re-attach fan harness to pancake box.
Keep plastic bag on motor housing in order to prevent screws from falling into it.
Start attaching electrical wires to fan motor housing.
Mount fan motor housing to harness.
Attach fan blades.
Attach light unit.
Install CFL bulbs.
Turn on light switch and confirm that light and fan operates correctly.
Note that ceiling now needs to be painted to hide evidence of old light fixture location.
Log in to IRC, and LJ to document follies.

CrimeView Incident Map

2008-06-28T08:00:13Z

I just learned about a service that Oakland offers called CrimeView Incident Map.

The service allows you to see a map of an area up to one mile from a given location that highlights all crimes that have taken place with in a specified period of time. Each crime is displayed as an icon, and clicking them gives you more information as to what the crime was.

They also have a service called CrimeView CyberWatch that provides automated email alerts of recent crime activity for a desired area of interest,

This is useful/interesting information for anyone who lives in Oakland. If you live in the area, it is worth checking out.

EDIT: Also interesting is: SpotCrime, as it is based on Google Maps, but the data does not appear to be as complete.

Firefox 3

2008-06-18T15:45:48Z

Installed Firefox 3 yesterday. It seems fast so far, but the loss of various extensions, and features is making me want to go back to Firefox 2.

Extensions I miss:

AdBlock: Adblock Plus is ok, but I prefer the UI for AdBlock
Add N Edit Cookies: I have found no good replacement for this
Linky

Tabbed Browsing Changes

Previously, if you middle clicked on a folder of bookmarks, or right clicked and selected "Open All in Tabs", Firefox would either load them in new tabs appending these new tabs to your currently open set, or close your current tabs, and create a new set. The preference "browser.tabs.loadFolderAndReplace" controlled this behavior.

In Firefox 3, the default behavior is to always appened new tabs when selecting "Open All in Tabs". To options that contolled this feature have removed, and the about:config option "browser.tabs.loadFolderAndReplace" is now ignored.

Mozilla Team: Why did you remove functionality?

Voting today

2008-06-03T15:45:20Z

I voted yes on 98, no on 99.

I personally do not like rent control, nor do I think it is fair to landlords. I also believe in a free market.

I also think it creates incentive to increase rents yearly, at the maximum allowed rate, vs following market trends. My last experience living in a non-rent controlled apartment was a $50 rent increase in 8 years. I saw more than that living in SF in 3 years, where rent controls existed. Also during the 8 years I lived in Alameda, I saw neighboring buildings jack their rent prices up during the boom, only to find half empty buildings a year later, while my building maintained a much lower rate of turnover, most likely due to the limited rent increases. This leads me to believe that a free market works the way it should.

That said, 98 does not remove the current rent controls that many people enjoy today, as long as they continue living in the same place.

My main reason for voting yes on 98: 99 only protects single family homes, not businesses. Single family homes are not usually the target of such actions, except when it involves Freeways, etc, and that is still allowed under both 98 and 99.

98 also protects business owners. I have seen Alameda use eminent domain to destroy a business and give the land over to a private business at least once, and there is a small bar that may lose its property so that a Toyota dealership can expand onto it. Those are not good uses of eminent domain, and something that 98 works to rectify.

For the record: I read the full text of both 98 and 99 before voting. My head hurt afterwards, but I felt that it was the only way to make an informed decision. I will not read advertising for any measures as I find it to be the worst source of accurate information, and the radio advertising for these measures was very misleading on both sides, almost causing me to just vote no on everything.

PayPal

2008-06-01T21:10:18Z

Today I closed my PayPal account for reasons that are very similar to why I closed my eBay account: Too much SPAM/phishing email that is spoofing their domain.

Although I use SpamAssassin to filter out most of my SPAM, PayPal has made it very difficult for their users to determine which email is legitimate, and which email is SPAM. PayPal has implemented an SPF record (view it), but it does not specify that all email must come from their designated servers (-all vs ~all) . What PayPal is saying through their SPF record is:

We might send email from other servers, we just do not know and we are unable to plan ahead. We might add a mail server in the future and forget to add it to our SPF record, so we are afraid to lock our SPF record down. Please do not block emails that say they are from us but do not come from our mail servers, and just ignore the fact that we set up an SPF record at all.

Since PayPal users can not use the SPF record to filter out the spoofed mail, they must also use a white list entry, to ensure that legitimate email from PayPal does not get filtered. The SPAMers/phishers know this, and as such send all their SPAM from this whitelisted address (service@paypal.com). For these reasons, most of the SPAM that slips through to my in-box is spoofed PayPal email.

Now that I have closed my account, I can remove the white list entry, and assume that any email from PayPal is phony.

The big question is: Does anyone actually use eBay or PayPal any more?

Asking for a lower interest rate

2008-05-24T21:35:41Z

When ever I read financial advice blogs, such as The Simple Dollar (thesimpledollar), one suggestion comes up over and over again: Call your credit card companies and ask for a lower rate.

It sounds like a great idea, but I suspect that most people do not really believe that it is as easy as these blogs make it out to be.

Currently, my American Express Card is the only non-store credit card I use or carry a balance on. I signed up through Costco, and use it mostly for larger purchases that I may want to spread across a couple pay checks, or purchases that I want purchase protection on. I generally try to keep the card paid off, and at most have had a balance equivalent to 14% of my available credit line.

Many might find it silly to make a purchase on a credit card, or to carry any balance at all, while having funds are available in savings to make such a purchase, or to pay the balance off. I find it to be a way of protecting my savings account. If I were to pull money from my savings, there is a risk that I would never put it back. Sure I might pay a small interest fee here and there, but since I hate paying interest fees I use them as motivation to keep the cards paid off, while maintaining/growing my savings account.

I also have store cards for Home Depot and Mervyns. In the past I have tried to get the interest lowered on the 2 store cards with no success, and as such I do not carry balances on those cards, and only use them when doing so saves money on a purchase. For instance, Mervyns will often give you a 15% discount coupon that is only good when you use your store credit card, and as long as you pay off the balance with in 30 days, there is no interest charge, and as such the savings is real. I find my Home Depot card as mostly useless, as their only special offer is 0% interest for 6 months for balances over a specific amount, but I keep it around in case of a home emergency.

Today while reviewing my American Express Card bill, I noticed that my interest rate was higher than I am comfortable with, and decided to see if calling would make a difference. I spoke to a representative who immediately told me that my account was eligible for a rate reduction of about 1%.

I find it to be fascinating that a card company might flag an account for a lower interest rate, but has no incentive to automatically give the rate to the consumer, or notify the consumer that the rate is available to them just for the asking.

When asked if I wanted this new rate, I expressed my concern that it was not as low as I thought it should be. I told the representative that I was looking for a rate of 8 or 9%. At that point I was put on hold for about a minute so that the representative could "discuss my request with his colleagues". My guess is that in reality the representative spent this time re-organized the items on his desk. He returned with an offer of a rate that was 2% lower than what I am currently paying. Not as good as what I asked for, but it is much closer to those numbers than I was previously.

I found his next question to be quite amusing: "Do I have your permission to apply this rate to your account?" I have just been told that I can pay 2% less interest, and for some reason, there is a concern that I might want to continue paying the higher rate? For the life of me, I can not imagine a reason that this question was necessary, but I answered yes to his question while wondering what comedy might ensue if I answered with no.

In the end it took me 6 minutes and 39 seconds on the phone with American Express in order to lower my rate by 2%. It was time well spent. Now I wonder of my mortgage company would be as open to lowering my interest rate? :)

So if you have a few minutes to an hour to spare today, I challenge you to call your credit card companies and ask for a lower rate. Some of them may have already decided to give you that new lower rate and are just waiting by the phone for your call.

It really is that easy.

LoudTwitter

2008-04-14T01:32:07Z

I have noticed that a good number of my friends are using LoudTwitter in order to post a daily batch of Twitter postings to their LiveJournal account.

I was curious about how this works, since I recently signed up for a Twitter account. It seems that you have to give your LiveJournal account user name and password to the folks who run LoudTwitter, and that gives their system access to your LiveJournal account in order to make the daily post.

What this means is that the maintainers of LoudTwitter, could, if they wanted to, access the LiveJournal accounts of the people who have signed up for their service. They could then access private/friends only entries, if any, and/or make random posts. I can see a good number of people signing up for something like this without thinking of the possible ways that this could be abused, but I tend to know a good number of people who are more security conscious, so I assumed that LoudTwitter must have a pretty good privacy policy.

This is the privacy policy / TOS:

All your base are belong to us
We're not affilited with twitter
[ ] <- you allow me to use this blank with anything

I wonder how many people read that before signing up.

There does appear to be an option to post via email, and that only requires a post-only pin to be provided. I am testing that now with my own account, but I wonder how many people that are using this service supplied their LiveJournal account name and password.

Edit 2008-05-02: nattotastic contacted LoudTwitter about this issue, and as a result, the TOS was updated. While it is nice to see that they have updated the TOS, I still do not plan on giving them my password.