Dog For Sale

Dog For Sale

A guy is driving around the back woods of  Montana and he sees a sign in front of a broken down shanty-style house: ‘Talking Dog For Sale ‘He rings the bell and the owner appears and tells him the dog is in the backyard.
The guy goes into the backyard and sees a  nice looking Labrador retriever sitting there.
‘You talk?’ he asks.
‘Yep,’ the Lab replies.
After the guy recovers from the shock of hearing a dog talk, he says ‘So, what’s your story?’
The Lab looks up and says, ‘Well, I discovered that I could talk when I was pretty young. I wanted to help the government, so I told the CIA.
In no time at all they had me jetting from country to country, sitting in rooms with spies and world leaders, because no one figured a dog would be eavesdropping.’
‘I was one of their most valuable spies for eight  years running…
But the jetting around really tired me out, and I knew I wasn’t getting any younger so I decided to settle down. I signed up for a job at the airport to do some undercover security, wandering near suspicious characters and listening in. I uncovered some incredible dealings and was awarded a batch of medals.’
‘I got married, had a mess of puppies, and now I’m just retired.’
The guy is amazed. He goes back in and asks the owner what he wants for the dog.
‘Ten dollars,’ the guy says.
‘Ten dollars? This dog is amazing! Why on earth are you selling him so cheap?’
‘Because he’s a  Bullshitter . He’s never been out of the yard’
Mac startup problems

Mac startup problems

Mywork MacBook Pro wouldn’t boot up.  It was hung on the gray screen with the apple logo and the spinner spinning.  THIS article told me what to try and fortunately, the save-boot did the trick.  However the safeboot booted into the blue screen and I had a mouse cursor I could move but Finder did not appear.  I turned it off and back on and it came up all the way. This article has more details on the problem.

Update: Next day wouldn’t boot up at all. Was stuck on blue screen.  I took the following steps to backup files:

  • Reboot and hold down <Command> S to boot into Single User Mode shell
  • /sbin/fsck -fy
  • mount -uw /  ; Make drive writeable
  • mkdir /Volumes/usb
  • ls /dev/disk*   ; Locate usb drive, should be last one listed
  • /sbin/mount_msdos /dev/disk2s1 /Volumes/usb
  • cp -r srcFolderName /Volumes/usb
  • /sbin/umount /dev/disk2s1  ; !!! Important. Unmount before removing drive
USTA 4.5 2011

USTA 4.5 2011

I had a great season of USTA 4.5 tennis this year.  Counting the three matches I played this weekend in Houston (Little State) I went 10-1 !  Not bad for the last year as a junior.  Next year I qualify for senior leagues!

Thanks to my tennis partners: Clay Johnson, Steve Gilmer (we went 3-0 in Little State), Russ Needler and James Bronson.

And thanks to Gentry Sparling for captaining our team and to Darrell Breeden for all his help this season and for scheduling most of my practice matches.

Android Development

Android Development

I’m sticking my toe into Android Development

Here are some reference links

How to install non-market apps

What version of Android should you develop for?  Many say develop to the oldest version that you can in order to support the biggest market share.  However the older versions are only in a small % of the phones.  The newest versions of Android are not supported in many phones yet.  The sweet spot in my opinion starts at 10% coverage which today is 2.1.  Visit this site for the latest stats.

Tutorials

Setting up application with multiple tabs

UI/Application Exerciser Monkey

Traceview for app profiling

Creating custom title bars

Confluence for collaboration

Confluence for collaboration

My company is standardizing on Atlassian products such as Jira (for issue tracking), and Confluence for Wikis and collaboration.   I have yet to use a system that works better than a simple blog with categories, pages and RSS feeds.  I mean what is better than subscribing to a Page, Category (or tag) and contributing to the comment thread of a post you are interested in.

So far, I’m finding Confluence’s support for blogs leaving much to be desired.  Starting with the fact you can’t subscribe to feeds with many readers since they require authentication and many (such as Google Reader) don’t support authenticated feeds.

Here is one option that uses a proxy

I tend to agree with Scott that a wiki without RSS feeds is a non starter.  Email notifications?  I find it funny that Confluence promotes itself as a solution for email chaos but then offer it as the primary mechanism for notifications.

You should completely drain your battery once a month

You should completely drain your battery once a month

“For proper maintenance of a lithium-based battery, it’s important to keep the electrons in it moving occasionally. Be sure to go through at least one charge cycle per month (charging the battery to 100% and then completely running it down).”

“Apple does not recommend leaving your portable plugged in all the time.” It adds that, if you don’t drain and recharge your Mac laptop in the course of normal usage, “Apple recommends charging and discharging its battery at least once per month.”

Of course, many iPhone users find that it’s easy to completely run the battery down…

WordPress Notes

WordPress Notes

Recommended settings:

Settings…Media… Uncheck Organize my uploads into month- and year-based folders.

Always obfuscate email addresses.  Create images of the address or use javascript email obfuscator

Roles and Capabilities

Recommended Plugins
Members highly recommended for collaboration.
AWPCP for Classified Ads
iFrame. WordPress doesn’t allow iFrames for security reasons.  This plugin supports iFrames which are necessary for embedding things such as a Google Form or PayPal buttons.
NextGen Gallary for simple photo management.  Can be used to rotate through images.  I use it to highlight VIP sponsors.

WordPress Feeds