State sponsors of tourism...
We’re finally sending updates to the vendor en masse, and there aren’t many errors, but the ones that do come up are interesting… For example, the spec has this phrase:
[We] will enforce U.S. Sanctions as required by the U.S. Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC). OFAC prohibits U.S. companies and citizens from doing business with certain sanctioned countries (such as Cuba, Iran, Iraq, North Korea and Syria), organizations, and individuals deemed to be acting on behalf of, or located in, certain sanctioned countries, terrorism sponsoring organizations and individuals, and international narcotics traffickers.
I didn’t concern myself with this much, as I doubted my own company would be doing business with anyone in North Korea. So I was surprised when this error came back…
This property record has been rejected due to it being located in an OFAC sanctioned country.
…for a customer in the Cayman Islands. I think the vendor needs to update their database…
Read more...Just got an RMA for the Tivo HD...
Cox’s stupid Scientific Atlanta cable cards won’t sync with it, and even the people who got theirs working start missing shows every 2 weeks and have to reboot (unacceptable after the smooth operation we’ve had with our Series 2).
No release date announced for a fix, and it looks like Scientific Atlanta is the one that needs to produce it. (But gee, don’t they have their own DVR now? Wonder how quickly they’ll move to fix the problems their competitor is having?)
Read more...Learned the hard way...
When you’re setting up logins in Rails, the tutorials tell you to store action_name and controller_name in the session so you can redirect there later… Capture request.path instead. This works just fine:
redirect_to :controller => session['intended_controller'], :action => session['intended_action']…until you’re using restful resources and a logged-out user clicks an edit link. When Rails tries to take them to “/entries/edit” (controller followed by action) instead of “/entries/1/edit”, it’ll bomb:
ActiveRecord::RecordNotFound in EntriesController#show Couldn't find Entry with ID=edit
So this is better:
redirect_to session['intended_path'] #request.path stored earlierOh, and when they say to put this in your ApplicationController:
before_filter :authenticate, :authorize, :except => [:login]Do this instead:
before_filter :authenticate, :authorize…and then put this in specific Controllers where you need the exception:
skip_before_filter :authenticate, :authorize, :only => [:login, :verify]Was fidgeting with my wedding ring this morning when I felt an odd bump on it; looked down to see a lovely little scratch in the gold. Had to stop for a minute and think how it could have gotten there…
That’s when I realized that wearing it through the Lava River Cave was probably not the smartest thing I’ve ever done. It’s the easiest cave imaginable short of going in and paving a walkway, but I was propping my hand (and therefore the ring) on the walls, floor and ceiling pretty much the whole time. (The alternative was slipping and cracking my head open.)
Oh, well, I’m sure a jeweler can get the ring back to like-new condition. I need to think about the fact that I’m wearing it more often, though.
We made it all the way to the end of the cave, by the way, even Lenny. (I think he had an easier time than I did, in fact.)
Read more...Sweeeeet...
$ ruby %scripts%\xbox_live_alert.rb nephariuz frejya I, [2008-08-21T21:16:22.343000 #1968] INFO -- #Utility::Email::Email:0x793e340: @body="nephariuz\tXbox 360 Dashboard\nfrejya\tXbox 360 Dashboard", @recipients=["me@wirelesscarrier.com"] ...
Thanks to a Live status feed someone published and a quick REXML script, I can get a text message whenever two or more friends are online, along with what they’re playing…
Read more...Great… The heartburn is kicking in again.
I’m not really stressed, just a bit depressed. Wasn’t I blogging something along these lines last fall? I need to go back and read.
Edit:
Okay, I think I’m seeing a pattern here…
2007-08-15:
I've got that burning, aching melancholy again. It's like the calm before a storm. It's not even about the baby... I think this happens to me every fall.
2007-08-15:
My heartburn's starting again. I know it's not triggered by weight, because I just came off a diet. Must be stress, then (and I have no shortage of that).
2006-09-05:
Ah, that's why I've been in such a blue mood lately! I forgot to listen to The Campfire Headphase for, like, a whole month!
Clearly, I need to just spend the months of August and September in bed from now on.
Read more...Thank you for my sincere apologies have a nice day.
The Dell Inspiron laptop (“Mini-me”) has been sending phantom keystrokes since we got it… It doesn’t interfere with ordinary document editing, but it renders Alt-Tab useless, makes new windows pop to the back of the stack, and plays havoc with context menus. It wasn’t bad enough to return it immediately, but it’s driving both me and Diana crazy. I don’t have any upcoming presentations now, so it’s finally time to send it in for repair.
Of course, first I have to get past “Lalit” with tech support. Her first action was to point me to a Microsoft Knowledge Base article on System Restore. Here was my terse response:
> This is a hardware problem, not software. I'm certain of this because > I was able to reproduce the issue on a live Linux distribution (i.e. > without Windows running). > > Sorry, but performing a system restore won't help. Please make > arrangements for us to return the system for repairs.
Sitting in my e-mail this morning was a request for an address to ship the return box to.
I’ve done my time listening to muzak while on hold for techs who don’t know their systems half as well as I do; I’m through messing around.
Read more...Scratch from MIT...
MIT made a “development environment” for kids called Scratch. I finally got around to installing it this afternoon, and collaborated with Lenny on a couple projects:
They export as Java applets; just press Space to activate them once the page loads.
Read more...I keep sneaking into podcasts...
Heh… My old Rage Games site just got (properly?) credited on Rocketboom’s August 15th episode as the original poster of an “All Your Base” animated GIF. I have no idea if the Something Awful people (who eventually popularized the meme) got it from me, from Zany Video Game Quotes, or just on their own, but it’s always nice to just be sitting there flipping through Tivo programs and hear your work mentioned.
Read more...Braid
Those who want to see something new in gaming owe it to themselves to check out Braid on X-Box Live Arcade. It introduces entirely new concepts, requires thinking in an entirely different way. The ability to reverse time is exploited in just a huge variety of new and unique ways, and you will repeatedly say to yourself “Wow, that’s clever” or “I’ve never seen that before”.
Read more...