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My blog is, today, five years old. In five years of blogging, I've posted at least one article every day.

Whoopty doo.

Why does Repair Permissions spit this junk out? Every other person I asked confirms that they see the same things. Is there something wrong? If not, why does repairPermissions tell me about it?

Started verify/repair permissions on disk disk0s2 Peter
Warning: SUID file "usr/libexec/load_hdi" has been modified and will not be repaired
Warning: SUID file "System/Library/PrivateFrameworks/DiskManagement.framework/Versions/A/Resources/DiskManagementTool" has been modified and will not be repaired
Warning: SUID file "System/Library/PrivateFrameworks/DesktopServicesPriv.framework/Versions/A/Resources/Locum" has been modified and will not be repaired
Warning: SUID file "System/Library/PrivateFrameworks/Install.framework/Versions/A/Resources/runner" has been modified and will not be repaired
Warning: SUID file "System/Library/PrivateFrameworks/Admin.framework/Versions/A/Resources/readconfig" has been modified and will not be repaired
Warning: SUID file "System/Library/PrivateFrameworks/Admin.framework/Versions/A/Resources/writeconfig" has been modified and will not be repaired
Warning: SUID file "usr/libexec/authopen" has been modified and will not be repaired
Warning: SUID file "System/Library/CoreServices/Finder.app/Contents/Resources/OwnerGroupTool" has been modified and will not be repaired

10.4 had the same sorts of issues - repeated "warnings" that were never fixed or "hidden."

P.S. Occasionally "secure.log" has an extra "w" permission for the group. That seems to get fixed by repairPermissions, then shortly thereafter is modified again to be rw--w----. Whatever…

Go ahead, run leaks Safari. I dare you.

[10:01am iacas@Bunny:~] % leaks Safari
Process 318: 909079 nodes malloced for 90364 KB
Process 318: 9329 leaks for 273936 total leaked bytes.

That looks worse than it is (it's in bytes), but nine thousand of them?

I've had a lot of random thoughts about gaming lately, and so I'm going to start a little "group blog" with some online gaming buddies of mine. I'll update this entry with more, but we've got the domain picked out and I'm working on the blog's design. Should be done late Sunday night.

We'll discuss all platforms.

You know, the only annoying thing about having an iPhone is that the Sync server will often have problems with the images.

In fact, I've got an iPhone, Adium (which updates user images), .Mac backup, and BusySync - all of which lead to about three or four conflicts per day. I've found that the best thing you can typically do is choose "Later" when asked when you want to sync your changes. For some reason, choosing the "Now" option often leads to repeated sync conflicts regardless of whether I chose to keep the buddy icon on my iPhone or in my address book.

BTW, I don't sync my entire address book to my iPhone. Just the people who belong to an "iPhone" group in Address Book. Makes it so much simpler to find people when I need to call them.

I gave Twitter an honest shot (I'm "iacas"). Can't say I'll be using it.

The only way I'd probably ever use Twitter is via Twitterrific, but I can't stand the Twitter "overloaded" errors. I would have happily paid the $14.95 ((The only tweak I'd like to see made to Twitterrific is to make the "new" messages stand out more. This could be done by actually removing the articles marked as read from prior refreshes. The current "make the text white" isn't high-contrast enough for my taste.)), but the errors just bug me too much. Purely Twitter's fault - I get that - but gosh, I thought they would have been beyond those problems at this point. I even backed my "update" regularity back to 5 minutes from the default of three.

If the errors go away, I'll be back. Feel free to "follow" me in the meantime. When/If I do go back, you'll know almost as soon as I do.

The WordPress plugin "Bad Behavior" seems to be malfunctioning today. I was blocked from my admin area and so were the admins of a few other WordPress blogs I know of.

Email to the Bad Behavior folks bounced, and the software is still at version 2.0.10 despite promises several months ago of upcoming 2.1 and 2.2 releases. I'm starting to think it's abandonware or something.

At any rate, I hope the issues it seems to be having tonight are cleared up quickly.

Today I bought an HD-DVD player for the Xbox 360.

Previously, they were $179 everywhere. Last night, I saw that they were down to $129 on Amazon.com and Toys 'R' Us. So, I picked one up today at Toys 'R' Us and printed the form for 5 free HD-DVDs. A few of the movies are worth the effort.

Oddly, today at Amazon.com, the price is back up to $179. At ToysRUs.com, it's $129. I bought mine in a local store (after returning one I bought ten days ago to Gamestop), so if you're trying to track one down, I recommend calling or dropping in to a brick and mortar Toys 'R' Us.

The timing of the price drop couldn't have been better, either: two HD-DVD titles from NetFlix just arrived. I was a day or two from opening the "overpriced" HD-DVD drive.

After two years and about 27,000 miles, the Touareg's tires were in need of replacement. I went to Dunn Tire on Peach Street and got a pretty good deal on some Dueler H/L Alenzas in the Touareg's odd size (255/60HR17). They're rated pretty well (600A A) and other review seem favorable.

Dunn has a few nice services, like free rotation and whatnot. They're 65,000 mile tires, so I'm going to read the fine print and do what I can to make sure I follow the policy, because at $750 I don't want to replace them every 25,000 miles. Dunn also filled the tires with nitrogen - big whoop. Here's to an extra 0.001 miles to the gallon! 😀

Attention all customers of Time-Warner's Road Runner cable Internet service living in the Erie area west of I-79.

I've previously documented the issues I've been having with Time-Warner's service here and here. Today a "PM" (plant maintenance) technician came to my house. I had scheduled the appointment last Thursday when my speed issues were not resolved by the first "IR" tech that came last week.

The PM Tech ((I did not ask his name.)) told me several interesting things. Essentially, since June, all Road Runner customers in the Erie area west of I-79 have been getting horribly slow speeds well below acceptable minimums. Local Time-Warner management only bothered to tell the techs and installers of the issue two months ago. The PM Tech told me that they've also recently discovered what they think is the cause: a faulty piece of equipment at the Asbury Road hub ((I don't know the exact address of this Time-Warner location.)). The PM Tech then told me that he was told the equipment has been "ordered." When I asked him when the part was likely to arrive, he couldn't guess. When I asked him how quickly Time-Warner was going to replace the faulty part after the new one arrived, he told me they were planning to overhaul the system in January, so they'd probably just wait until then.

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The Xbox 360 "Fall Dashboard Update" is set to hit consoles at 2am PST tomorrow. Among its many features (some of which I've already talked about), the update adds the option to "Tell a Friend" about a game.

Rather than "Friends of Friends" or the option to "Tell a Friend" about Worms or Aegis Wing, I'd like to see - particularly in Xbox Live Arcade games - to see which other friends have the game also. I'm more likely to buy a game if a few friends have it so that I can play with/against them on Xbox Live. Or, rather than not taking a chance on a game, I can ask my friends if it's worth it and buy it if they say it's good.

I've got other ideas as well, like the ability to set up meeting times for games with friends complete with SMS reminders one hour prior to the time of the meeting, but I guess I'll have to wait six months or so until there's even a chance of seeing anything else. What is it with Microsoft and bundling these updates into huge "service pack"-like things? I much prefer the Apple/Nintendo approach of smaller, more frequent updates.

Penny Arcade hints at it, but the "7-10" scale is a problem with IGN and a lot of other reviews online. It's an even larger problem when you realize that virtually every game is going to get a 9.5 or less because the "9.5 to 10" range is reserved for those truly remarkable, once-a-year-or-less type of games as well as the promise that future games will be better ((Same reason it sucks to be the first skater in figure skating: you can perform a flawless, wonderful routine but the judges feel compelled to "leave room" in case someone does even better.)). No problem reserving the top 5% of the space on a true 0-10 scale - big problem when you're reserving 17% of your working space.

So really, you've got a 7.0 to 9.5 scale. This puts the "average" game at about 8.2 and any game under 7.0 is effectively a negative score. It diminishes any real differences by making the differences so important. It pushes sales because "hey, the game got a 7.4 on a 10-point scale!" It doesn't matter that the 7.4 is roughly equivalent to a 2, it just sounds better.

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When I was cleaning out my cord box a few days ago I found an old Griffin PowerMate (and two of the acrylic stands for it). USB Overdrive recognizes the button and "up" and "down" (though it gets them backwards), so I've set it to send keystrokes that map to Synergy, which controls iTunes.

If I find myself not using the PowerMate to control iTunes, perhaps I'll use it for Spaces.

You know, since "switching" to AT&T from CellularOne, I haven't felt the need to hack my iPhone (like this tutorial for installing apps on 1.1.2). Not even a little bit. It's just so much hassle for very little real gain.

I'm perfectly content to wait to see what might be possible come February '08, and perfectly content (or more so) with the iPhone just as it is.

Today the Time-Warner technician came to the house to look into the slow, dodgy Internet connection I've had for the past few months.

The first thing we did was provision a new modem. I owned my old one and I own the new one. The old one was a Motorola Surfboard 4100. Though it still works, the tech said it belonged in a museum and it might reach a limit at some point. The new one - an SB5101 - is DOCSIS 2.0 compatible (big whoop).

At any rate, while he watched I repeatedly ran the Time-Warner speed test (you can get a trial version of the same test from Ookla). The speed fluctuated from 4200 to 931 kbps.

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