::::: : the wood : davidrobins.net

My name is David Robins: Christian, lead developer (resume), writer, photographer, runner, libertarian (voluntaryist), and student.

This is also my son David Geoffrey Robins' site.

Broadstripe, the worst ISP in the world

News, Technical, Guns ·Tuesday August 12, 2008 @ 22:45 EDT (link)

"We must needs attack them, then," Mandorallen asserted. "Our cause is just, and we must inevitably prevail."

"That's an interesting superstition, Mandorallen," Barak told him, "but I'd prefer to have the numbers on my side."
—The Belgariad, David and Leigh Eddings

The quote reminds me a lot of the upcoming election. The conservative libertarian cause is just (stop robbing the people and "redistributing" their income), but we need the numbers on our side to prevail, which also requires some people to vote for justice against their own financial self-interest, which, as Tytler tells us, probably isn't going to happen: the special interest groups all want our money, and the politicians are happy to buy votes from them.

20080805: Mowed lawn.

20080806: Called Broadstripe about bad Internet performance (lots of outages, drops; I have a ping task, and we lose a lot of packets); they said they'd send someone (same day even), but, as usual, promises, promises: Honey never saw anyone and the connectivity's still wretched. Went shooting; cleaned gun afterwards (overdue since I skipped it last time).

20080807: Sprayed weeds; filled sprayer tank all the way (4 gallons); couldn't use it all. Costco.

20080809: Today and yesterday Broadstripe (the worst ISP in the world) called back and said they were going to "re-provision" the modem, but it hasn't done any good; as I type this, I'm in the middle of a 40+ minute outage (I have no idea how long it will go) and there have beep periodic half-hour outages over the past month at random times (they're at 3.58% downtime, or 7h33, for the month of August thus far, and that doesn't properly reflect the disruptive effects of their frequent 1-minute outages to e.g. VoIP calls). Boycotting the Olympics, since the Chinese suck; we need to nuke them before they get too rich and powerful and start doing the evil that they'd really like to, but can't because of fear of military retribution.

Honey's friend Rochelle (from school) was here from noon to around 2200; played some games: Quiddler, Scotland Yard, Boggle, and a new one she brought, Carcassonne (I won, so I rather like it… lots of monasteries; I didn't clue in to the farmer bit until late). She made custard, which was good (last time I made it it was very lumpy, so I watched closely… heating the milk is apparently a good idea, and watching/stirring it constantly).

20080810: Went to the Monroe gun show, last attempt to find a few good holsters locally; didn't find anything. I'll probably order a few Galco holsters I've been looking at on OpticsPlanet. Honey and I had discussed automating one or more players in Scotland Yard (in particular, "Mr. X" first), so we started entered the connections of the big graph that makes up the game map (199 numbered locations, connected in various ways by (bidirectional) taxi/bus/rail and a few boat connections that only Mr. X, the suspect pursued by the detectives, can use).

20080811: Went shooting, 18' and 27'; getting better, still not sure I could pass the Tennessee range test since they require 70% in the 8-ring at 25 yards (75' for those keeping score at home). Although, I can only find one place that states those requirements, so it might depend on the instructor. ZX checked in a few fixes (mainly ones that we'd worked on together; I'm not sure if he's been too long in academia—a master's really isn't that long—but he isn't learning as quickly as I'd like).

20080812: Cleaned Glock.

I was watching Judge Judy and it gave me some ideas about sensible ways to handle alimony and child support; I already discussed alimony in a previous rant (internal link, sorry), but I didn't say much about child support. The deal today is that the man (it's couched as e.g. "non-custodial parent", but even when that isn't the man, the man is doing most of the paying) has to pay to support the child in "the manner to which they are accustomed." Total rot. The state should only require the man to pay to give the child (their equal half of) basic food and shelter—necessities. If the child wants to do better, perhaps they should elect to live with the father.

The state should not generally be interfering, but I support them ensuring that the child gets necessities covered by those responsible for it (and not the rest of the taxpayers), but anything above necessities is the choice of the parent, as it was pre-separation: just because a parent chose to spend more on a child at one point doesn't mean they should be forced to keep that up forever. Also, I support adjusting the amount for location, but, and this will seem odd at first, based on each parent's location. So, the father isn't punished for moving to Arkansas where, presumably, incomes are lower (and cost of living also commensurately lower), but nor is the mother rewarded for moving to California or New York. I am adamantly against the amount paid out depending in any way upon the income of either parent: that is prejudicial and socialistic and morally and ethically bankrupt: amount should depend on cost, which depends primarily on location, full stop.

Books finished: Belgarath the Sorcerer.

DVDs finished: Thinner, Stargate: The Ark of Truth, Charmed: The Final Season, The Invisible, Ocean's Eleven.

Brigade Days at Fort Langley

News, Photography, Guns ·Monday August 4, 2008 @ 00:16 EDT (link)

The old sheriff was attending an awards dinner when a lady commented on his wearing his sidearm. "Sheriff, I see you have your pistol. Are you expecting trouble?"

"No Ma'am. If I were expecting trouble, I would have brought my rifle."
—From Texas Fred's Thoughts on fighting, winning, and the 2nd Amendment.

20080801: Code complete for co-authoring separate locks part; as I said to MS, now I can go from getting compiler errors to runtime errors, and so I did, starting with needing to handle the case of pushing locks with no existing server lock data. Went shooting at SVRC after work; made excellent progress. Still concentrating on the Glock. Last time I switched to shooting full (17 round) magazines rather than just 10 rounds; it seems to be easier to develop a rhythm. Shot some good groups; still fairly close range; I'll work up to distance later.

Little birdies got stuck in our heat pipe today (above the microwave; doesn't seem to do very much, but goes up to the roof); I put on gloves and lifted them out (first the baby, then the mother); the baby was too terrified to fly so we put it out on the deck; the mother flew into a wall, fell down with its feet up, then fluttered itself upright and headed out the door; it later came back for the baby.

Google maps has recently gone downhill: several features are gone (ability to drag waypoints around on the directions pane) and information is missing (they only have total time and distance; time and distance between waypoints is gone, which is a real pain). Other people have noticed too. It seems they later fixed the time/distance issue, but you still can't collapse sets of directions nor drag waypoints.

20080802: We planned out our day, and this is how it went: left at 0930, arrived at the WAC gun show in Puyallup at 1030; didn't buy anything, but handled a few SIGs that I liked. Left there 1200 and got to Port Orchard at 1320 (were aiming for 1300, but called ahead and said we'd be late) to buy a Nikon SB-800 flash and SC-29 sync cord from a guy (via Craigslist). Update: no box (fair enough; he thought he was keeping the items; not everyone keeps boxes like I do), and no soft case or stand, which the manual says were included. He seemed like a good guy, so although the possibility of it being stolen had run through our heads, given various factors that doesn't seem likely.

Honey has decided she wants to become a veterinarian, so she's going to do biology; she was going for a business degree, but fortunately most of what she's done so far (first/second year) will transfer. We stopped by the local vet. on the way home today and asked a few questions; she was very helpful.

A note on composition: these entries are frequently composed in OneNote™, even though of course markup doesn't work there. Sometimes if I get behind (hint: I'm adding this entry to the site in September), they pile up, but eventually I work the queue, pick a group of items, and put them online, fine-tuning formatting when I do.

20080803: Open house, 1300-1600. We left for the day at 0800, to attend Brigade Days at Fort Langley, BC; arrived around 1130, no trouble at customs either way (I was slightly worried because my Canadian passport had expired, and although I'd applied for a U.S. passport, the application required them to take my original certificate of naturalization (which is illegal to copy, as stated plainly on the face of the document, although the lady at the passport office at King County District Court made me two copies when I asked), so my expired Canadian passport was all I had; fortunately the Canadian guy took it with no comment on leaving, and the U.S. guy asked if I had an extension and waved me through when I told him my U.S. passport was pending, without even asking to see any sort of receipt, which I had).

The fort was great; we saw the Simon Fraser arrival by canoe, greeted by a black powder salute; got lots of pictures, stopped for ice-cream around 1500 on the way out in the town of Fort Langley (picture a smaller Niagara-on-the-Lake); went to Wal-Mart and bought 3 DVDs with the two Canada-WalMart-only gift cards we had from Rebecca and Theo from Christmas ($15 x 2 cards, plus $5 in change I had and a few bucks on the credit card). Visited Grandma Martin in Abbotsford on the way back; got there about exactly at 1700 as we'd said (we expected to be &plusminus; 1 hour), and took her to Swiss Chalet; left around 2015, got home 2300.

Stupid signs: I've already ranted about the egotistical Don't Drink and Drive: In Memory of … signs; another one for the list is "Safe traffic area" signs and their ilk, like the ones posted along I believe it was the Trans-Canada highway in BC. Just because you post it don't make it so, and it's yet another distraction for drivers. Every sign that a driver has to read (or just mentally categorize) takes away their attention from the road, so useless self-congratulatory signs are dangerous as well as annoying.

Masters candidate, new mentee, Nikon D300

News, Work, School ·Thursday July 31, 2008 @ 20:24 EDT (link)

Good things happening all around!.

20080729: My mentee arrived (cool initials: ZX). He's a new full-time developer unlike Luiz (LM), who was an intern; I'll be mentoring him to help him get up to speed working in the Word development group: helping him understand the Word code base, coding conventions, bug tracking, etc.

I was gone when he arrived; I was meeting a guy to purchase a slightly used Nikon D300 camera. I met him at a Bank of America, and, as the camera was in good condition as promised, and we both had accounts there, the purchase was handled via direct funds transfer. The guy seemed to have taken good care of the camera; he was moving up to the new FX (full frame) D700. New photos from here on are taken with the D300. I've also enlarged all photos sizes (thumbnails, mid-size, and I increased the size the camera is storing).

20080730: Mentee has a working Word build, some familiarity with the core Word data structures, and 5 bugs (of mine, in the area that he'll be working on, which is the object model); we took a look at the first one then I left him to keep going and let me know when he hit a roadblock. Co-authoring: separate partition for locks work is progressing well.

20080731: I learned that I have been accepted into the Professional Master's Program in Computer Science and Engineering at the University of Washington; the PMP advisor said my GRE scores were among the highest he'd seen in 10 years of administering the program. It starts at the end of September; one (evening) course per quarter plus a colloquium.

Modified the books read page to allow Honey to keep track of her read books separately. I also added a page yesterday to show a list of our DVDs in 4:3 "full screen" ratio (excepting TV and others that are only available in that format); we may try to sell some of those and buy the widescreen versions, especially for favorites like the Indiana Jones trilogy (maybe they'll have all four in a box then) and Star Wars.

Called my parents, told them about getting into the PMP and our open house; they're taking a trip to Maine, to stay at the Sea View Motel and hang out at the beach. Talked to Dad, Mom, and Julia, who was playing Scrabble™ with her boyfriend Josh(ua Sabourin).

OCDO at Chang's Mongolian Grill

News, Technical, Guns ·Monday July 28, 2008 @ 19:55 EDT (link)

20080720: Somehow, our (miserable) ISP, Broadstripe, has partially broken our network access: just Yahoo! and connected sites (e.g. yimg.com, which means Honey can't see pictures on the Drudge Report, and sites that use their store, such as OpticsPlanet, which appears to also be hosted by Yahoo!, are partially broken: the main site still comes up, but my cart is inaccessible). Called Broadstripe about it, they filed a ticket, but it came back around midnight; since the only outage was Yahoo!, it does look like it was their problem, except for the fact that I could still reach it from work (via VPN) and DownForEveryoneOrJustMe said it was up.

20080725: E.R. season 9, Bourne Supremacy, and my Olympus ME-15 tie-pin condenser microphone arrived from Amazon today. We also had The Maids here, which will be reimbursed by our realtor at closing; I left early to meet with him so Honey and I could do paperwork. We tidied up some of the friendly clutter in the rec. room, and I cut short the tree that was trying to overhang the front patio: we use the garage door, so it's not a problem for us, but it makes the patio look smaller and obscures the front of the house a little (I was seeing how far it would grow sideways, but alas, apparently the answer is "no further"). Logged into work later to make up for leaving early.

20080726: (Early morning.) Zune is still a piece of (crap). It likes to maintain a "collection" where it requires you to have files on your hard drive if they're on the Zune, and, here's the kicker: if you delete anything off of your disk, it deletes it from the device too. Now we're in a state where we can see (viewing the POS as a drive in Explorer) that files are there, but the Music section is empty. W T bloody F?

Stayed up most of the night tidying up. Went to Wal-Mart to get passport photos done since my Canadian passport had expired in April; that'd end our Alaska trip very quickly (or strand us in Alaska, I suppose) if we were turned back at the Canadian border.

Went to Chang's Mongolian Grill in Everett to meet with various Open Carry folk (OCDO = Open Carry Dot Org); had a good time. Before I left, I posted my Zune on Craigslist for $110 (seems to be about $175 new at Wal-Mart, plus tax, and I just want to get rid of it and use the money towards getting Honey an iPod… I'd like an Archos, but they seem to only have overpriced video machines now, no plain music players).

For the longest time the Zune wasn't letting me put any files on it—if I'm going to sell it (Yes, we have a buyer!) it needs at least one sample file to play; that's only reasonable. I finally formatted it with the secret handshake (it's tricky; time between the two key combinations is important), and managed to get some Handel onto it. Now I shall never burden my computer with connecting to it ever again.

20080727: Nothing further from the potential Zune buyer… maybe her ISP dropped my reply. Jill, can you hear me now? (Turns out her ISP was silently dropping my mail; Comcast, bastards. So that fell through.)

20080728: Went to the range after work; shot some better groups, due to a tighter grip on the gun and lining up the front sight better; good article by Massad Ayoob. Looked over my old French Bible and some other Christian books with Honey.

Books finished: Asterix in Switzerland, Asterix the Gladiator, The Pawn.

DVDs finished: Lonesome Dove, The Bourne Ultimatum.

Death of a DVD player

News, Guns ·Saturday July 19, 2008 @ 23:02 EDT (link)

20080713: We went to SVRC early afternoon; shot a few targets, then the EMP jammed while Honey was shooting it. Could have been a bad reload, possibly a bad grip causing the recoil to jam it, but I don't think so. It was jammed shut but I eventually managed to tap and rack it open; a casing was stuck in the feed end of the barrel (definitely only a casing—it had fired—or I wouldn't have been messing with it). I couldn't pry it out even with my Leatherman. We shot a few targets with the Glock, then left. When I got home I field stripped the EMP (had to clean it anyway) and a combination of needle-nosed pliers to pull it and pushing from the other end with my bore rod got it out. There did not appear to be any damage to the barrel. I also cleaned the Glock.

20080715: JMJ Northwest (painters) came by this morning to power wash, and did something to short out the exterior power outlets; I plugged in my lawnmower when I got home, nothing; worked fine in an outlet in the garage. I called them, they told me to try the breakers (already had, none were tripped) or to try to find a GFCI switch (didn't see one outside, and the inside ones hadn't tripped). Still waiting: hopefully it'll fix itself tomorrow, or I can find a reset, or I may have to take advantage of my company's legal plan.

20080716: Called JMJ again (0850); I walked around outside, there are only the two front/back outlets, none have any GFCI buttons. They may come by.

20080717: One of the JMJ people came in the morning and found the GFCI reset in the garage. Mowed the lawn and killed some bamboo in the evening.

20080718: Bought an Olympus DS-30 voice recorder (from Radio Shack, since OCDO mentioned a sale and they were cheaper than Amazon and a few other places I checked). The only one they had had no package, since it had been misplaced after opening it for a customer, so I got a 12% discount, extra batteries, and they doubled the return time. Went shooting, just the Glock.

(Midnight towards Saturday morning) Onkyo DVD player acting odd, died, opened it up, still dead, but at least I got my DVDs back. I'd like to shoot it, but SVRC frowns on shooting at metal because bullets might ricochet. It's just the DVD player; the amp. and speakers are fine, fortunately; I've never had any trouble with them; the DVD player has had problems in the past: new 1 2.

20080719: Gun show in the morning, picked up a soft case for the EMP (same as the one I got for my Glock; unfortunately the told me the company that makes them went out of business, they're made in USA according to their label; probably got driven out of business by traitors buying from third-world sweatshops).

Came home, cleaned the Glock and headed to Best Buy and picked up a new DVD player (Sony 5-disk with upconvert, DVPNC800H/B); their web site said it was on sale for $116.99, store tried to charge the non-sale price of $129.99, but they fixed it when I told them I knew their game. Ordered items from Amazon, including ME-15. People's Court introduces me to the phrase "tooling up"… when I buy my Nikon D300, that's just tooling up.

Books finished: Sorceress of Darshiva, The Seeress of Kell.

DVDs finished: The Village.

First open carry: SeaTac airport

News, Guns ·Friday July 11, 2008 @ 22:45 EDT (link)

20080706: Cooked chicken breasts in the crock-pot (slow cooker) again; I left them in about 8 hours (on low) this time, they were super-tender when they came out (fell apart when I was taking them out with the tongs). Still had some sausage left over from Friday, too. Just added some water and salsa to cook them (no tomatoes this time).

20080707: If someone can tell me why Adobe Reader requires so much bloody time to install, I'd be very happy. Ye Gods, they're either morons or very, very evil.

20080708: Went into work fairly early (up 0730 arrived 0830; usually works out to 30 minutes to shower/shave, 30 minutes to drive, give or take, so about an hour from when I get up to when I sit down at my desk), and left commensurately early to go to SVRC and shoot. My new handgun, the Springfield Armory 1911 EMP, arrived today; Cash Company (you can't get handguns sent directly to you, they need to be received by a dealer with a Federal Firearms License, or FFL) called me, and I picked it up, after filling out the necessary paperwork. New gun is great; holster that it comes with was a bit hard to get onto my belt since the belt is so thick (it's the carry belt I bought at the last Puyallup gun show), but it loosened up a bit and went on fine. I can see how a paddle holster would be better for easy removal, though.

JMJ painters called me back in the morning, said they'd email me a contract today after we discussed what I wanted them to do; no email from them yet (it's now midnight), however. Chapter for the day was Jude 1—final verse was missing; checked my scripts, it's actually missing in the source file; when I parsed the text out of the (freeware) HTML, it looks like the parser missed it; other (final) chapters don't seem to have been affected.

Just disassembled/reassembled (field stripped) my EMP (I'll clean it tomorrow; I cleaned the Glock today). Wow, is it ever stiff! Nowhere near as easy as field stripping the Glock for cleaning; but at least there's a video to help out the somewhat terse instructions in the manual. No doubt the stiffness will disappear with use.

20080709: Honey called, had a long talk (just over an hour).

20080711: Left about 2245 for the airport, made good time, got there around 2340, parked. Decided to open carry my Springfield 1911 EMP (for a variety of reasons: self and common defense and assertion of my right to do so being primary: a right not exercised can be lost). I was wearing it in the car (in the holster it came with; I'll probably get an IWB holster for CC too). I was aware that there were no prohibitions against OCing in the non-secured areas of an airport, and had seen this post on Ocing in Sea-Tac, which helped my confidence. It was a positive experience. All told I was there for about 40 minutes; I did what I normally did: checked the big board to see which carousel my wife's flight's bags would arrive at (ignored the time, I'd known the flight was late; they rarely bother to update the board with the actual arrival time), then sat on an out of the way bench and read a book I'd brought.

A few minutes later a lady came over (either an airline or airport official, but not security; she had a uniform and a name tag on, but I didn't see who she was with), asked if I had a firearm, I said I did, and that Washington was an open carry state. She said she didn't know if it was legal in an airport, and I informed her that it was legal outside the secured areas. She explained (very nicely) that a few people had made comments to her about it—I think she wanted to be seen as doing something—and I said I understood; she then left. I got the hairy eyeball a few times when I was walking around, but no other comments. I felt a bit self-conscious, but I was more worried about making sure I knew who was around me, especially behind me, more so than normal, since I now had the responsibility to make sure nobody grabbed my gun; for example, I'd usually stand right by the carousel, but this time I hung back a little (probably a good idea in general; standing against the edge doesn't make the bags come any faster…) and only grabbed my wife's bag when she saw it come out.

Anyway, a positive first experience. I might try to pick up some of those brochures people on this board have made, too. OCDO writeup and recent trouble.

We watched Lonesome Dove, as it says below; really liked it; it's one of my Dad's favorite films, so perhaps that's not so surprising.

Books finished: Asterix and the Banquet, Demon Lord of Karanda, Asterix and the Black Gold.

What's wrong with McCain?

Political ·Wednesday July 9, 2008 @ 01:27 EDT (link)

I was recently challenged in a email that spun off of a comment I made in Microsoft's Conservatives and Libertarians discussion list to be more specific about what I don't like about Republican Presidential candidate John McCain. So here's the list I came up with:

Three primary objections: Plus a few more random ones; I'm getting these from his issues page: Good points: Nobody's saying he's not (far) better than Obama and Obamunism ("central planning we can believe in"; bumper sticker), but that's a pretty low bar. Given that Washington state will definitely go to Obama, I'm probably going to write in Ron Paul (conservative-learning libertarian).

What Barack and his Democrats want you to pay for

Political ·Monday July 7, 2008 @ 23:33 EDT (link)

I think this cuts to the root of the The Socialism of Barack Hussein Obama (1 2 3 4 5) series. Some of these things apply to RINOs too; I present a (partial) list of what Barak and his Democrats (cf. "the devil and his angels") want you to pay for, under threat of government force:
Above-market pay for teachers and military; free education at all levels for everybody; more free money for people with kids; pay people to grow trees; "green" technology research; aid to foreign governments; health insurance for everyone; healthcare, welfare, and education for illegals; amnesty for illegals; cheap/free housing; nurse care; transportation; more farming subsidies; force companies to employ minorities and seniors (affirmative action); drugs for seniors; urban "community development"; workforce training; free money for minority businesses (more affirmative action); bail out dumb homeowners; increased minimum wage; lifetime subsidies for veterans; Internet for everyone; more FMLA.
In my reality, you find a job, work hard, trading your skills for money, and use that money to buy the things you want. Liberals have a hard time with that for some reason. I think they also hate the idea of people not being dependent on the government: if government wasn't giving out free stuff, likely it would fall to neighborhood organizations, including churches, which would build stronger communities, possibly bring more people to Christ, and that'd annoy the Democrats to no end: they want the state to be your god, with congress as its prophet.

Books finished: Asterix and the Chieftain's Shield, King of the Murgos, Asterix and the Class Act.

DVDs finished: Star Trek: Voyager - Season Seven, The Wicker Man, Desperado.

First Independence Day as a US Citizen

News, Political ·Saturday July 5, 2008 @ 14:35 EDT (link)

20080630: Sprayed weeds when I got home, using my backpack sprayer and RoundUp™. I think last time I sprayed I diluted it too much: it's supposed to be 2.5 fl. oz. per gallon, but I might have used that amount for four gallons (still killed the grass one place I spilled some, though). This time I upped it to 3 fl. oz. for (approximately) a gallon; let's see those weeds squirm, shrivel, and die! Unsubscribed from a bunch of mailing lists whose messages that I'd gotten into the habit of deleting anyway: Bostom.pm (heh, never even attended a meeting when I was there—parking in Boston was too wretched), perl6-language, libwww-perl, and tried to drop the ACM's Technews but their unsubscribe address (from the mail header, same place I got the others) didn't work.

20080701: (Early morning) Joined OpenCarry.org ("OCDO"), actually the forums.

Went shooting at SVRC after work (my membership starts today; I paid for half-yearly since I joined in June); the factory reloads I brought were fine; met a guy named Ed who gave me some tips on grip and shooting stance; he'd brought a chronograph to test some handloads, very friendly chap. Shot some targets and some cans—that was fun. I was the only person there for probably an hour and a half (I was there about 1800-2030 then after I got home I cleaned my gun 2100-2130), so I got to open the gate.

Amazon completed the return of my defective S&W pistol rug, giving me my refund. I sent off the return (they paid shipping) on June 3, so it's been about a month from requesting the RMA and sending it in and getting the credit.

20080703: Went to the range again; did much better. Was there from around 1730 to perhaps 1930. Although it had rained earlier in the day, when I got home the grass was mostly dry so I mowed the lawn, and then sat with the garage open and listened to fireworks and cleaned my gun.

20080704: Watched fireworks from my top deck from around 2030 to 2200, out on a camp chair with a book. I could see two sets of fireworks quite well; several others were partially blocked by trees.

With all the fireworks been set of tonight, I am sure there are some being set by those that have no right to celebrate this country. Illegal aliens. Liberals who would destroy the moral fiber of this great nation. Socialists who would destroy the wealth and individual freedoms of these United States. A pox upon them for daring to pretend to celebrate even as they destroy.

Books finished: Enchanters' End Game, Guardians of the West.

Springfield Armory 1911 EMP 9mm

News, Work, Guns ·Sunday June 29, 2008 @ 22:12 EDT (link)

20080626: Honey called (around 2100 local time). Talked for a bit, then stayed up until the wee hours (0230) writing a perl program that uses WWW::Mechanize to dig into GunBroker.com feedback. A user's feedback page shows ratings ("A+", "A", "F", etc.) and comments, and has a link to the item bought, but doesn't show the price, so in theory, a seller could sell a bunch of low-priced items, get good feedback, and then rip someone off selling a high-priced item. My program fetches the item title and sell price and shows it with the rating, then shows average and maximum sell prices across all feedback with A or above (the main page is good about showing if and when a seller had negative feedback).

Bought honey a T-shirt ("Don't be a pinhead" shirt she wanted from the Bill O'Reilly store, in lime green).

20080627: This has been a Word-chart OM week, with some "Now"-level bug work for an upcoming co-authoring demo. Turns out Workspaces (a partner for some of the file transfer code) introduced a bug where there always appeared to be a new version of the document of the server, causing Word to constantly open a file and scan it for new locks. (And it has to do a full open right now, since the optimizations to just load the lock data and then scan the XML for content change markers aren't scheduled to be finished for a while yet.)

I submitted my PMP application (and $50 filing fee). Hopefully they weren't expecting a longer personal statement. Now to wait and pray.

I won a GunBroker.com auction for the gun I was looking for, Springfield Armory's 1911 EMP (9mm) (flash, sadly; see also The High Road's thread). Best price I could find locally (and only briefly) was $1089.99 at West Coast Armory; that with (9%) tax would be $1188.09; I saved over $150… provided the transaction goes well; the seller has hundreds of past deals of similar magnitude with positive feedback, so I'm not worried on that account.

Jim Cameron's guy sent us a quote for the painting, but (1) included things we'd decided not to do, and (2) wasn't itemized as requested. I wrote back asking it to be itemized; if they don't get back to me by, say, Tuesday, I'll go with the guys Chip recommended, JMJ Painters.

20080628: Up early to go to the gun show; bought a leather carry belt and a "Glock: 21st Century Technology" T-shirt. Pulled bamboo when I got home.

20080629: Called Honey at around 1830 local; all's fine there.

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