obtainium blog

You’ve lost the presidential race. Not you alone, so much as George Bush and the exploding economy. The astonishingly horrible woman you chose as a running mate did not change anything for the better, nor did your insistence on tax cuts for the rich and shameless.

Barack Obama is going to be our next president. It’s all over but the hanging-chad-counting. (That is, assuming your friends at Diebold haven’t set up yet another November Surprise – that would be even less believable than last time.) Come January we’ll be swearing in "that one". It’s time for you to take the high road and stop smearing our next president.

The skeletons in your closet are a lot bigger than Barack’s, John. Ayers? How about the Keating 5 and G. Gordon Liddy? Why do you think haven’t the Democrats brought these up more often? Maybe it’s because they’re trying to lead a civil, positive campaign, while constantly defending themselves from your incessant, petty negative attacks.

The best thing you could do right now is frame your campaign as positive goals for the country. Remind Barak of the other 40-some percent of the people he’ll be presiding over. Remind the country that even though you’re not going to make it, the rest of your supporters: the gun-nuts; the anti-abortion nuts; the anti-gay-marriage nuts; the oil barons and the trust-funders who think taxes are for the plebeians; the self-righteous, hate-filled, intolerant jesus freaks; and everyone else who has a PAC supporting your campaign, will need some lovin’ after the election. Just because they’re wrong, doesn’t mean we should ship them all off to Alaska or something – though if they want to go on their own, it appears they’d be welcome, at least in the big cities. But contrary to W’s example, the people whose party did not win the election deserve representation as well.

Come November 5, your political career will be over. Why not end it on a positive note? Reach across the aisle one last time and give Barack a hand up, instead of taking a vindictive last swing at him. If you can do this, I promise – we’ll all vote for you for "Miss Congeniality".

Sincerely,

A Patriotic American.

One of the most neglected features of programming languages is the comment system. Not that there isn't discussion of the nature of programming comments - people are endlessly pondering how many comments to use, how to write code that's "auto-commenting",

As I see it, there are three major categories of program comments: descriptive, to-do, and comment-out. Programming languages should support native ways to differentiate these types of comments; none that I know of does and most don't have very many styles of comment at all.

Descriptive comments are the standard, and the ones everyone talks about. They include program "headstones" that describe what the program is supposed to do, inputs/outputs, log history of changes, etc.

/*
program: whatever

revision history:...

author:...
*/
...
//this function turns a 6-digit date string into a unix date
...
$foobar = $foo ^ 2 / $bar; //standard accounting forumula

To-Do comments are dropped into programs while you're working on - a "note to self" about something that needs to be fixed, or might be a problem later. I use php-style hash comments for these, but most languages don't support different styles of comments, so I do a standard comment followed by a hash (//#!error or REM #?values should be global, for example). I use #! for action items, things that are likely to crash if they aren't fixed, #? for things that probably should be fixed but probably won't cause a crash. Then before a program is released, I can look for #! that must be fixed, or #? that need attention. Finally, I also use to-do style comments for printing/hiding debug messages while I'm working on the code; before release these should be removed.

#!this will fail if we get more than 10 users
#!divide by zero error
#?will a salesman ever sell more than 10,000 items?
#?this code is ugly, could be refactored
#echo "$user : ".print_r($user, true);

Comment Out are comments that are applied to actual code, to disable it while leaving it in place. Sometimes this is to test different methods; sometimes it's no longer used but you're keeping it for reference; usually you're trying taking it out to see what it does. In PHP I use # for these, to differentiate them from descriptive // comments.

#old version
#$foobar = $foo ^ 2 / $bar; //standard accounting forumula
#new version, double the results
$foobar = 2 * ($foo ^ 2 / $bar) ; //standard accounting forumula
...
/* Removed: we no longer need user ID
    $user_id = lookup($user_value);
    if ($user_id = 0) {
        $user_id = request_from_server($user_value);
    }
*/

I tend to like descriptive comments to be lined up with the code, and todo/comment-out shifted to the left so I can see them when I'm looking through the code:

                //loop through users, capitalize their names
                foreach ($users as $user) {
#echo "$user : ".print_r($user, true);
                    $user->name = ucase($user->name);
#don't ucase user address
#                    $user->address = ucase($user->address);
#!user phone number needs to be parsed
                }

The Palm Treo 650 hasn't been bad - with Missing Sync it syncs to my Mac fairly well. Verizon's coverage is great, I'll miss that with AT&T. But Verizon is also about way behind the technology curve; they recently announced and available upgrade to the Palm Centro (the new, smaller version of the Treo) that's been available on ATT for over a year now.

The Palm has convinced me of the value of a smartphone, though, and the new iPhone should go above and beyond that. On a daily basis I use mobile web to look things up on Google and Yelp, and check that websites are working; Google Maps is now indispensable, paper maps to the contrary. The address book is my main reference (especially since it's well-sync'd with my desktop), as well as the calendar, even though I still manage to miss birthdays and other notable occasions. I keep notes - grocery and affinity card numbers, shopping lists, busy day todo lists, ideas for t-shirt slogans ("Mentally Confused and Prone to Wandering"), beers I've tried, medical history... I used to use Pocket Quicken a lot but when my desktop Quicken fell down and couldn't get up it took a lot of my enthusiasm away. I rarely use the camera - and I think people who go around holding up their phones and clicking pictures seem nearly as idiotic as the ones who keep a bluetooth headset in their ear when they're not talking on it. And of course I've got an HP-12C emulator - there's a hacked one for the iPhone as well (and even an HP-16C!) - hope they'll make it to the new iPhone, hacked or not.

I actually read a book this weekend ("Down and Out in the Magic Kingdom" by Cory Doctorow) on my iPod Touch. The battery doesn't last all that long when you've got the backlight on the whole time, and you have to keep swiping the screen to scroll but all in all it wasn't that bad an experience, and you can't beat the portability.

I signed up on Yelp about a year ago, looked around, didn't find a whole lot of reviews. Recently returned because the guys on the radio were talking about it - and now it seems to be approaching useful mass.

So stop reading here, there's nothing new (by a long shot!) - go to Yelp - read reviews, sign in, write some reviews. Link me as a friend, if you're so inclined - address is fheald at this website's domain name.

"May I take your order?"
"Yes, I'd like a chicken sandwich..."
     "Do you want the combo?"

At the very least, wait until I've completed my order, to suggest the combo - if I haven't ordered it already. If I order sandwich, potatoes and a drink - don't ask me if I want the combo - the computer should just add it up - why do I care how my order is entered into the computer - if you want to give me a discount for carbs, why ask for my permission? I'm certain the computer is smart enough to figure it out. But even Carl's new automated ordering systems (or as I like to call them, auto-servitrons) interrupt you with the combo question.

Maybe they're just trying to wear me down so I'll always order the combo. I know they hate it whenever someone asks for something removed or changed - which people seem to be more likely to do lately. Ever seen a menu with "no substitutions"? I think that's what they're working towards - you get the fries whether you want them or not, don't ask us for no pickle no onion haf caf double mocha with a twist. Special orders don't upset us, because we just ignore them anyway.

Thing is, I don't eat the potatoes (or rings or fried cheese or even zucchini) anymore. Yes, I could improve my health by not eating in these places at all. But I know from experience that I will just make junk food at home, take longer, and leave a mess in the sink - so I might as well ask for it from a clown instead.