Sounds Like Weird
27 July 2004
I noticed that Clarion Science Fiction & Fantasy Writers’ Workshop has announced its workshop leaders for 2005 and Cory Doctorow will be there. Not only that, so will Leslie What, who was a lot of fun at Clarion 2002.
Go, Cory!
25 July 2004
25 July 2004
Just took a four-hour nap and feel icky and groggy. I definitely needed the extra sleep — I’d been getting too little sleep during the week and hadn’t had a chance to catch up. But four hours? I think I overslept.
24 July 2004
There’s a lot of Klingons out there. This cafepress shop may help them with their prayers.
24 July 2004
I’ve started transcribing them. It’s amazing how much of it I already remembered, but there are some gems that didn’t make it onto the t-shirt. Ah, I love this stuff.
23 July 2004
23 July 2004
I went through a fairly long dry spell for a couple of years where I did very little development. I seem to be on a roll now, with eight projects up my sleeve.
For me, Cocoa has been a technology in search of a problem: quite literally, every problem I seemed to have needed another kind of solution, in part because I’m a database person and there wasn’t really a good, free, database wrapper solution. Well, I think I finally found the correct hammer and nail. So, I’ll be reworking my WO app (mssTracker) to Cocoa. Yay. I’ll also be releasing the WO application into the wild.
One my pending projects was to update the code for BALE, which previously had a doctype of HTML 2.0 (!). A couple of years ago, I changed it over from a hand-maintained HTML to a LAMP application. I’m not sure if anyone had ever run it through a validator, but when I first changed its doctype to 4.01 transitional, I got 261 validation errors. And then the fun began. It now has minimal CSS (yes, I know it needs more, stop already). And it validates. So I’ve ticked a couple items off the ToDo list, but have several more for bale. But it’s certainly not the only project in the works.
22 July 2004
After using ActionItems for a few days, here are my thoughts:
The blurb says “ActionItems™ continuously saves your information as you enter it. Go to “Preferences/Data File” to specify the frequency. ActionItems™ also performs an “AutoSave” on your data file upon closing the program.”
You know what? It doesn’t. Too many times, I’ve lost information that I entered half an hour ago, even though my save interval is set to 10 minutes.
The other thing is that there’s no way to see ALL your own tasks, nor are the days that tasks were assigned highlighted. So it’s not easy to get an overview that’s not project-by-project.
This is really a 1.0 release, even though it says 2.0, so I’m willing to give it a bit of leeway. Then again, I’m using a demo. Would I buy it with these limitations? Umm, no.
But the single thing I’d like most, even more than better reports? Subprojects!
22 July 2004
I couldn’t read this article on BoingBoing without seeing the incredibly funny job interview scene in The Full Monty.
I think I’m going to watch that one again in the next couple of days.
21 July 2004
So it turns out that if you die at home and aren’t on a priority for an autopsy, it can take 2-6 months (!) to get the lab results for your cause of death.
Why does this matter? Because insurance won’t pay out until a cause of death is determined. At least, in the case of one of the people I know who died recently, this is the issue. It doesn’t even matter if it’s “heart attack or stroke,” insurance companies need to know specifics.
I can’t really blame them, but then the point becomes: should you drop dead suddenly, have some way of supporting your family in the meantime that doesn’t rely on insurance or probate, both of which can be quite slow.
Now, for my late husband, who died in a hospital (and had organ donations pending on being declared properly dead), I was able to pick up his death certificate within two weeks. Had he had insurance, it would have paid out very quickly thereafter. But, I find out, that’s not necessarily the norm.
This has been a Public Service Announcement.