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March 22, 2007
The Looking Glass Wars
We were at Brad & Kat's place when I saw a poster that Kat had gotten @ a comic con signed by someone somehow involved with The Looking Glass Wars. She loaned me the book, and I finished it this evening.
Continue reading "The Looking Glass Wars"
Posted by dberger at 9:56 PM
March 16, 2007
On Keyboards and Cognitive Dissonance
I use Linux on my machine at home - have for years. Windows just doesn't solve any problems that I have, and seems to create more than it's worth. I think it comes down to the fact that I'm a Unix hack at heart, and Windows is just frustratingly opaque and poorly layered to me.
Attached to said machine is an example of the pinnacle of keyboard design and construction - an IBM Model M keyboard I've had since the early 90's. I love it's finger feel, and my typing is far more accurate on it than any other keyboard I've tried. When I used to work remotely for OpenMarket and spent a lot of time on conference calls, I had to be sure to mute the phone if I was going to keep typing. If I forgot, the folks on the other end had no question who was making the call sound like a combat zone.
Continue reading "On Keyboards and Cognitive Dissonance"
Posted by dberger at 8:27 AM | Comments (2)
March 12, 2007
Daylight Savings Time
I'm home, and it's still light out.
This is good.
I have a handful of devices around the house that have no idea Congress decided to muck about with DST.
This is less good. Don't even get me started on work, where we have a handful of critical systems running Windows2k, which is out of mainstream support. Blech.
I wonder how much the software industry spent accommodating this capricious change?
The mind boggles.
Posted by dberger at 6:21 PM | Comments (1)
March 10, 2007
Paranoia
The issue's not whether you're paranoid, ... the issue is whether you're paranoid enough.
Somtime in 1992 or 1993, I discovered PGP - and I tried - really tried - to use it to encrypt email communication for years. When the first mailers supporting S/MIME came out, I tried that - but despite better support in email applications, it had the same problem as PGP - no one else (*) was participating (* well, amost no one.)
Even though I knew it was a lost cause, I even wrote an app while in grad school that tried to make PGP (or GnuPG) easy enough for anyone.
Recent news has reinforced my conviction (cemented by some older news) that I wasn't unjustifyably paranoid.
"No right of private conversation was enumerated in the Constitution. I don't suppose it occurred to anyone at the time that it could be prevented."
- Whitfield Diffie
Posted by dberger at 8:04 PM | Comments (1)
United: Enough is Enough
I've flown United air as my "preferred" carrier for what must be 10 years now, but over the past year I've decided that I enough is enough, and I'm giving up on United, including on our United Mileage Visa.
When they wouldn't let us use our frequent flier miles to book Dawnise's trip to S. Africa (due to blacking out all but three days the month she was traveling), I was annoyed, and told them so.
This month, they did it again - I'm trying to book tickets to bring my folks out to our place for my Dad's birthday in July - and we've got plenty of miles on United to cover the tickets, but lo-and-behold, there are only five available days in July.
Alaska Air (where we also have a good chunk of miles) is being much more cooperative so far - so if I can get their credit card people to waive the annual fee, we may have a winner.
Anyone got any horror stories to share, either about their credit card or their frequent flier program, before I make the switch?
Posted by dberger at 5:22 PM | Comments (1)