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Question: Have you started seeing Christmas decorations at your local retailers yet?

My Answer: Yes. Decorations, mostly. Nobody's playing Christmas music or anything yet, but it's coming soon. Far too soon.

You are encouraged to answer the Question of the Day for yourself in the comments or on your blog.

Question: If you could supply everyone in the world with one personality or character trait, what would it be and why?

My Answer: Honesty. Not 100% honesty, or surprise parties and things like that would be awfully difficult to pull off. So too would certain government (military) operations and things of that nature. So personal honesty - friends being honest with each other, the absence of white lies and flowery, polite banter (only to rip someone to shreds later on behind their back) - is more what I mean here.

Of course, with this trait comes the requirement that everyone handle the honesty better than they do now. In fact, given that the reason people aren't always honest is because people don't handle it well, perhaps the real trait I'd inject into everyone is the ability to better handle honesty. 😀

You are encouraged to answer the Question of the Day for yourself in the comments or on your blog.

It's out. I just haven't figured out whether to get it for PS2 (for online play and no disc-switching) or GameCube (better graphics, will import my old data from the past three years). Hmm…

The Steelers proved once again that they are a bunch of dunderheads, easily winning the takeover battle (something like 4 to 1) but losing the game, 23-20. A false start on a field goal (the first went through, the second missed) was one of the more forgivable problems.

The underneath coverage continued to suck, allowing the Patsies to throw 8-yard pass after 8-yard pass. The run game was thwarted early yet Ben and the Steelers refused (thanks, Whisenhunt) to go after a rag-tag secondary that saw two injuries during the game. Joey Porter got no pressure off the left-side on a rookie lineman after the starter was also injured.

The Steelers once again played an entire game completing less than four passes to their running backs and tight ends. Heath Miller is a first-round draft pick and he'll likely catch 10 balls all year. Willie Parker is a speedy mofo, but aside from an occasional screen, he sees no passes. NFL teams with half the talent at running back and tight end get more mileage out of these two positions than the Steelers.

Here's to hoping this game helps the Steelers (coaches) pull their heads out of their asses.

Clever name, that unlockupd. I've installed it, and I'm just blogging it here so I know that I've done it and can remove it when Apple fixes the issue.

Removal, is rather simple:

killall unlockupd
rm -rf /usr/local/bin/unlockupd
rm -rf /Library/StartupItems/Unlockupd
rm -rf /Library/Receipts/unlockupd.pkg

I don't imagine this will fix much on my system - it's been pretty clean - but it's worth a shot. I have had some mysterious Internet-related failures at times.

Wil Shipley is getting a bunch of flak for saying "Unit Testing is shit" (paraphrased, but pretty close).

My take: Though we didn't employ much unit testing on any Freshly Squeezed Software products, I do feel that unit testing is great for libraries and other non-UI pieces of software, including the non-UI portions of any application.

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Question: Have you ever beta tested any software (in an official capacity, not by warezing an early build of Photoshop 17 or something)?

My Answer: Yes, several times, and for several different companies. This question prompted by my next entry…

You are encouraged to answer the Question of the Day for yourself in the comments or on your blog.

A record exec, when talking about the need to push for variable song pricing ($0.99 and up), says:

"We are selling our songs through iPod, but we don't have a share of iPod's revenue," he said. "We want to share in those revenue streams. We have to get out of the mindset that our content has promotional value only."

Uhm… right…

Question: Do you think quitting school (college) is a "good thing?"

My Answer: Like Wil, I started my own software company. None of the jobs for which I've ever applied asked to see my college degree, because I've always proven myself to be a suitable candidate outside of my schooling.

However, advising people to quit school is stupid and short-sighted. It's almost as bad as his "don't do unit tests, like, EVAR!" post. It may work for Steve Jobs (or Wil), but it won't work for 99% of the students out there. A college degree gets your foot in a lot of doors. What I learned in college, even though I've yet to "use" my degree for anything, is invaluable in day-to-day life. Reality can crush some people, and it probably would have crushed me at 18. At 22, I was ready to face reality.

You are encouraged to answer the Question of the Day for yourself in the comments or on your blog.

Look at this google search: http://www.google.com/search?q=the+sand+trap+.com. Where is http://thesandtrap.com/ in the search results?

The Sand Trap .com is the exact name of a site that resides at http://thesandtrap.com/. You know, "the sand trap .com" - the same URL as the words broken apart.

Oh well. I guess Google isn't always as smart as you'd think it should be.

I don't know if I'd call this funny.

Did the guy's head hit the rear of the truck? Near that latch? Sure looks like blood. If so, definitely not funny.

Coldwell Banker came out with their 2005 Home Price Comparison Index. Erie has the most affordable homes in Pennsylvania. For example, a house in center city Philadelphia would costs 2.96 times more than a comparable house in Erie. The cost of an average home in the Erie area is about $107,000. There are currently 607 houses in Erie County for sale listed at under $110,000.

The power has gone out in my neighborhood at least eight times since Carey and I moved in here in early June. Yesterday and today it was out three times alone.

This is frickin' ridiculous, and so far as I can tell, there's absolutely no reason why the power should go out that often.

Hey, it's no longer "my" software, but I still had quite a hand in shaping the application, and so I'm proud of the "VIII" that PulpFiction got in the Ars review.

Of course, no review would be complete if there weren't some weird issues, like this:

I found no way to group my feeds into folders, and that was slightly frustrating. While in Feeds View I selected File -> New Folder and that just created a folder named "New Folder" in the Folders view of the drawer. However, PulpFiction does support smart folders with all the basic options, albeit unspectacularly.

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Question: On a scale of one to ten, one being poor and ten being great, how's your mental health been lately?

My Answer: About a seven. I ask only because the world has seen quite a bit of upheaval lately, school is back in session, fall is upon many of us, and Christmas decorations are being set out in stores. I'm getting through it pretty well.

You are encouraged to answer the Question of the Day for yourself in the comments or on your blog.