iPhone Again

I pulled my iPhone 3G countdown timer off my site, as I no longer give a shit. AT&T's screwing their existing customers (as mentioned in my prior post), and Steve Jobs misled the public at WWDC, when he announced $199 and $299 for the two new phones.

I spent 20 minutes on the phone with AT&T today, explaining why I feel I'm getting screwed here, and pointing out that I was forced to upgrade last time -- it wasn't an upgrade of my choice, but one of AT&T's choice (i.e. shutting down their CDMA network).

Apparently I'm not the only one who called and complained about it, as the CSR read me a memo, explaining that companies routinely shut down old services in favor of new ones, i.e. the impeding switch from analog to digital television, and that shutting down CDMA was to my benefit, as it provided better service and communication, blah, blah, blah.

Both companies get a D- for how this one was handled. :(

iPhoneverse

Again, a stretch without any updates. So here's a tome.

The iPhone

I'd planned on getting an iPhone 3G on July 11th, but it seems AT&T plans on screwing existing customers. An AT&T customer, who isn't currently using an iPhone, has to be "eligible" to upgrade to an iPhone. I am not, because... several months ago I was forced to upgrade my old phone, because AT&T shut down their CDMA network. Had I not upgraded my old phone, it wouldn't work any longer with AT&T's cellular network.

And since I wasn't working, I wasn't about to pay the small fortune for the original iPhone.

But I am working now (see below), and a new iPhone has been released, so I'd planned on getting one.

However, since I'm not eligible, due to my prior upgrade, AT&T tells me they'll be more than happy to let me upgrade for an additional $200 over Apple's price on the phone.

WTF?

I fired off an email to AT&T complaining about this idiotic decision, but I doubt it'll go anywhere. They're looking for a means of fleecing yet more money off their customers, without regard for their having forced their customers to upgrade when they shut down their CDMA network.

The Job

I'm now working at Multiverse, a game company in Mountain View. It's a 6-8 week contract position, and I need to make sure it turns into a permanent position. I've been there two weeks, and like all the people there, and find the work interesting, and hope it all works out.

Yesterday I spent the day doing battle with Microsoft (ugh). I have a process running as a Windows service, and needed to have this process perform some background operations updating some files on a server. Only services run as LocalService, which didn't have permission to write to the directories in question. So I changed the properties on the service to log in as me, but upon restarting the service, the restart failed.

Looking into this I learned that I had to specifically grant permission to my account to log in as a service. But the Local Security Policy utility, which used to be in the Administrative Tools panel, isn't there any longer. I checked XP and Vista boxes in the office, and it's just plain gone.

Searching around further, I found a command-line tool (yes, a command-line tool) on the Microsoft site, for Windows 2003 Server. This tool, when run, gives a list of options, changing the security policy of the specified user account. Only there wasn't an option to update my account to permit logging in as a service.

So I did some more searching, and found another page on the Microsoft site, listing some more options, which weren't given by the security tool (sigh). Sure enough, on the web site, was an option to grant an account permission to log on as a service.

So I ran the tool, started up the service, ran the background process I wanted to execute, and sure enough... it ran! Woot!

For the life of me, I can't understand what idiocy would direct Microsoft to make it so difficult for a user to manage their own account security settings.

Anyway, this is an example of some of the things I've been working on. In my work at Oracle, I never had to deal with Windows at this level. There I'd log in, and start writing code. There was to dealing with services, or security policies, or things like that. So it's all new, and fun.

I figured, after taking 2.5 years off, that it'd take a while to get back into the work routine. I figured about a month, and think that after two weeks I'm finally back into the routine. Yesterday was great, solving this Microsoft problem. There were other accomplishments, but I can't really discuss them.

Jobs

I haz one.

Woot! :)

Monday arvo I'll be going in to finalize the contract. It'll the first time I've worked on a consulting basis, and I'm looking forward to the experience (though I did ask if there's a chance it'll lead to a permanent position -- the answer was "yes").

The company is Multiverse. In essence, they make a toolkit for building your own MMO.

Two great tastes...

...that don't go well together. Mint chip ice cream, and Pepsi. Bleah!

Saffron

In addition to being Mal's fake wife, it's also the world's most expensive spice. I just picked up some lemons and a bottle of poppy seeds from the store, so I could make scones, and noticed a 0.06 oz bottle of saffron on the shelf. Yes, 0.06 oz. The price per ounce? $308!

I didn't buy any. :)

I heard one of the cooks on the Food Network say that the stamens of 75,000 crocuses need to be harvested for a single pound of saffron. Yikes!

Jobs

I'm a bit depressed today, as this is the first time in some 15 years I haven't been able to attend WWDC. Steve Jobs' keynote is underway, and it's strange to be following it via blog, rather than by being in the room with the rest of the Apple Faithful.

Right now I'm watching for news on the new iPhone. I want!

Oh, I haven't yet commented on last Tuesday's primary, nor have I commented yet on Hillary's speech on Saturday. I expect I'll get around do that sometime within the next couple of days.

American Gods

I started reading American Gods a few days ago, and am enjoying it. I just read a piece of dialog that made me bust up laughing.

For those who have read the book, Shadow's wandering around the forest, lost, after having been nabbed. He comes across a deer carcass, and finds a feasting raven. They chat, and the raven flies off. A bit later it returns, to coax Shadow to follow it. Here's the dialog that made me start laughing...

"Hey," said Shadow. "Huginn or Muninn, or whoever you are."
The bird turned, head tipped, suspiciously, on one side, and it stared at him with bright eyes.
"Say 'Nevermore,'" said Shadow.
"Fuck you," said the raven.

Heheh, exactly the thing I'd expect a raven to say when presented with that particular request.

Workers in yard == Stressed dog

During the winter storms, the support posts on the rear fence snapped at ground level. The fence leaned into the backyard neighbor's backyard, who propped it up with supports.

Today he has workers in the yard (my yard) replacing the supports. I'm not sure why there doing this from my side, except, possibly, for the fact that I don't have as many plants along the fence. Heh, good thing I removed all the bougainvillea shortly after I moved in. It was growing along most of the back fence, and I didn't find the inch-long spikes particularly friendly. PG&E had a crew here shortly after I moved in, topping the Italian cypress. The bougainvillea drew blood from at least one of them, which is ultimately what prompted their removal.

Of course, their being here has Toby in stress mode. I have to keep him inside while they're working in the yard, and he keeps shoving aside the blinds to look outside and whine. Twice they've rang the doorbell -- first to let me know they'd be back there, again to ask where they could plug in their Sawzall. Both times, Toby became barky dog.

Teh Decision

Saturday, the Rules & Bylaws Committee (RBC) made their decision, halving the Florida and Michigan delegations. A portion of each state was given to Obama, reflecting exit polls and assorted other metrics showing what the spread in the two states would have been, had proper elections been held.

Yet her supporters continue to fight for their candidate, saying she was robbed, that pro-Obama forces "hijacked" the election, and that Clinton should get the nomination as she leads in the popular vote.

Only, popular vote is not how we pick our candidates. Our candidates our chosen by elected delegates, and even discounting the super-delegates, Obama still leads by 116. His lead will grow Tuesday, as he's expected to win Montana and South Dakota.

Further, a lead in the popular vote is a lie the Clinton campaign continues to press. Her supposed popular vote lead discounts Obama supporters in Michigan, who didn't get the opportunity to vote, and Obama supporters in Florida, who didn't bother to vote after having been told their votes wouldn't count.

Further, it discounts Obama's numerous caucus wins, in which individual votes are not tallied.

After Tuesday, I expect Nancy Pelosi, Harry Reid, Jimmy Carter, and even Al Gore, will publicly throw their support behind Obama, who leads in the pledged delegate count. Additional super-delegates will flock to Obama, pushing him over the new 2,118 count required to clinch the nomination, following the RBC decision.

And if Clinton's words hold true, she'll begin to campaign for Obama. It'll be interesting to see if a) this really happens, and b) if her supporters will ignore her request to support Obama in November, to defeat McCain. I'm disgusted by the hard-core supporters of either candidate, who say they'll vote for McCain rather than their candidate's opponent.

And yes, "the" is intentionally misspelled. :)

DNC Rules & Bylaws

Today's the big day, in which Hillary Clinton pins her hopes on the democratic party's Rules & Bylaws Committee to change the rules in the middle of the game, to her benefit.

For the past few weeks, Senator Clinton's been championing the cause of the Florida and Michigan voters, and the DNC's decision to not seat the delegates from these states. Of course, Clinton said nothing when these rules were imposed last year, only discovering her voters' rights activism when she began losing to Senator Obama.

I watched about 40 minutes of the proceedings this morning, before finally turning it off in disgust. Florida state senator Joyner insists on seating all the delegates, as the votes were cast, in spite of the fact that Florida voters had previously been told their votes would not count. Why does this matter? Because the state has 4 million registered voters, and only 1.7 million turned out to vote in the primary. Joyner's concerned with disenfranchising these 1.7 million, but doesn't seem concerned with the other 2.3. IMHO, the only way to resolve Florida is to hold a new primary, which the state already decided not to do.

Florida state representative Wexler, on the other hand, proposed a concession from the Obama campaign, proposing the Florida delegates be seated at 50%, per the DNC rules. They don't support seating the full delegation, as the rules specifically limit seating to 50%. This will give Clinton an additional 19 delegates, which is still not sufficient to put her within reach of the party nomination. Shy the Rules Committee seating Florida and Michigan fully, Obama will still become the party nominee.

One member of the committee asked Wexler why seating half the delegates would lead to party unity, rather than seating the full set of delegates. Wexler didn't answer the question directly, instead pointing out that the rules only allow for half the delegates to be seated. My answer to the question is that party unity cannot be accomplished without holding a new election, allowing all 4 million voters to have their say. Further, the decision to strip the delegates was based upon Florida's decision to move its primary ahead of Super Tuesday, in violation of the committee's rules, and the punishment must remain in effect. If the Rules Committee can't stick to its guns, it loses all credibility in enforcing party bylaws. In 2012 we may well see other states move their primaries forward, in violation of DNC rules, knowing that the committee won't have the testicular fortitude to enforce its own policies.

Michigan's another matter. Obama, again following the rules, removed his name from the ballot and had no representation there. Clinton remained on the ballot, and by her math won the state handily. But again, she's conflicting her own ideas regarding voters' rights. Since no votes were cast for Obama, those who support him will have no voice if Michigan is seated. Michigan party officials are proposing full seating of the delegation, with a ten point spread in Clinton's favor. This still isn't enough to help her defeat Obama, and is little more than another concession. But again, the only valid way of determining Obama's support within the state is to hold another primary -- which the state rejected, as did Florida.

Interestingly, a large number of labor organizations have come out in favor of Obama. I saw a recent article, posted on DemConWatch, mentioning 36 recently appointed delegates in Michigan. Of the 36, the names of three could not be found, the nine specified no affiliation with either campaign. Twenty-two, however, support Obama. And of these, many appear to be Teamsters or United Auto Workers. If a new election had been held, I suspect Obama may well have won the state.

It'll be interesting to see what happens. I still don't think Clinton has a chance, and frankly wish she'd just go away. I predict Florida will be seated at half, Michigan will be seated according to their proposal to give Clinton a slight edge, Clinton will take Puerto Rico, Obama will take Montana and South Dakota, and Clinton will throw in the towel by the end of next week. But I could be wrong. She may well try to push this all the way to the convention in August, which would be a mistake. After Tuesday we're going to see McCain and Obama continue to campaign against one another, and the press will lose all interest in Clinton. The superdelegates have been moving heavily in Obama's direction, and if Clinton really does want to "unify the party," getting out of the race is the best way to accomplish that goal.

This looked dreadful on Firefox

I fixed the problem, so my blog should now appear correctly on Firefox (though why anyone would want to use a browser other than Safari puzzles me). :)

This looks dreadful on Firefox

A friend sent me an email, letting me know that my blog looks like crap on Firefox. I took a look, and sure enough, it's completely mis-formatted.

I didn't actually write this page, rather it's one of the blog template options from Blogger. At this point I should probably just overhaul the template so that it validates properly, and renders correctly across multiple browsers. I'd never noticed it before, as I only ever use Safari on my Mac.

West Nile

I just had someone from the county come by, and tell me of 47 mosquitos trapped on the street, one tested positive for West Nile Virus. Oh, joy. I got munched by mosquitos a couple weeks ago, watering the lawn in the back yard. It was my reminder to stay indoors at dusk.

Anyway, he'd come by to ask if there was any standing water on the property, and to confirm the pool was still empty and dry. Yeah, it is. Unfortunately. I emptied it in early 2006, with plans to have it resurfaced (as it had lots of cracks, and appeared to be leaking). But then my sister got arrested, and I had to deal with that financial mess, and could no longer afford to have the pool repaired. So it still sits empty.

When it was full, I had the filter running eight hours a day during the summer, and plenty of chlorine, so it was never a breeding ground for mosquitos, anyway. However, one of my backyard neighbors seems to have their sprinklers running around 2 AM every morning, so it's likely one of them is breeding the little blood suckers without even realizing it.

--edit--
Another county employee came by, to again tell me about the discovery of West Nile Virus on the street. Only this fellow actually lives here, and was able to tell me in which yard the infected mosquito was found. Way down on the opposite end from me, which is wonderful.

Die Roller

I wrote up a D&D Die Roller recently, for the iPhone (though it's also easily usable by laptop or desktop). Enjoy...

--edit--
Hmm, I probably don't need to total up the d20's. Will add that to the To Do list.

Recent Readings

Interface by Neal Stephenson and J. Frederick George

Fascinating read. The President gave a speech, announcing his intention to forgive the national debt. This angered the Network, the mysterious them behind the scenes, who pull all the strings for their own financial gain. Fortunately a recent development in technology provided the Network with a means of implanting a chip in the brain of Governor William A. Cozzano, allowing them to effectively control his actions. Soon began a perfectly scripted plot to make Cozzano President.

I'd only read one other Stephenson novel, Snow Crash. I found this one a captivating read, and quite enjoyed it. Especially after suffering through a couple of Anne Rice novels, below.

Prince Caspian by C. S. Lewis

I read this a couple of weeks ago, in advance of the release of the film (which I haven't yet seen). It's a quick read, and a really short story, and frankly, I don't know how they're going to turn this into a 90 minute film. Really the only thing that happens, of any relevance, is the battle, so I figure it's probably 15 minutes of the children talking, and 75 minutes of special effects. The story's really not that interesting. The Voyage of the Dawn Treader was my favorite of all the books, though if memory serves, I also enjoyed The Magician's Nephew (which relates the story of the creation of Narnia, and, I believe, the genesis of the White Witch).

Blackwood Farm and Blood Canticle by Anne Rice

I don't know what happened to Anne Rice. I loved Interview with the Vampire, The Vampire Lestat, and The Queen of the Damned. The Tale of the Body Thief was okay, but most of the others have been lackluster. BWF and BC were utterly dreadful. But I had to read them, to complete the set (which I actually haven't yet accomplished, as I haven't yet read Violin).

Blackwood Farm tells the story of Quinn Blackwood, though for the life of me I couldn't figure out why I should care. The story didn't get interesting until about 3,000 pages in, when Quinn finally got turned. And even then, it seemed Anne Rice had adopted Laurell K. Hamilton's love of vampire porn. Bleah. Sorry, but vampire porn is not my thing. I'd read the Anita Blake books through Obsidian Butterfly, which completely turned me off reading another one of her novels.

Blood Canticle continued the story where it left off, only in this one she'd returned to having Lestat narrate the story. And what'd she do here? She spent the first several pages, as Lestat, complaining about all the people who didn't like Memnoch the Devil! Sorry Anne, but Memnoch was crap. No, I'm not at all suggesting I could do better, I'm merely saying that Memnoch was crap.

But what really turned me off was Lestat speaking like some surfer from Santa Monica. I'm sorry, but the word "dude" should never pass Lestat's lips. Hopefully, she'll stop writing vampire novels altogether. I'd hate to see her destroy her mythos more than she already has.

Blood and Gold by Anne Rice

Above I commented on the handful of vampire novels I liked. I'd omitted this one from this list, as I'd planned on providing its own entry, as a recently read book. I finished this one a year ago, before I began my year-long saga to force my way through Blackwood Farm. (I'd forgotten to mention that above, but yes, it took me a full year to get through Blackwood Farm -- it was so dull!)

Blood and Gold, however, was fascinating. This one told the story of Marius, from his beginning in Rome. It tells of his efforts to protect Ankil and Akasha across the centuries, of his battles with the religious vampires, of his patronage of Botticelli, of his search for Pandora, and of his creating Armand. The tale is narrated to Thorne, an ancient who had been turned by Maharet, and who had awakened in modern times after centuries of sleep. Of the few I'd mentioned above, I'd add this to the list of enjoyable Anne Rice vampire novels.

Brother Odd by Dean Koontz

I absolutely love the Odd Thomas books (Odd Thomas and Forever Odd being this one's predecessors). In this one Odd has taken up residence in a monastery, to recover from his prior adventure. Soon we encounter the bone beast, and Odds efforts to discover its origins. As usual, the ghost of Elvis is there to keep him company.

I heard a radio ad for a new Odd Thomas book, which I'm going to have to order, in spite of not having any income at the moment. :)