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The North East High School golf team ventured to Erie Golf Course yesterday to play a match against Central. They lost, but that's not what I care to talk about here.

Erie Golf Course is a whopping 1.5 miles from my house, and 1 mile of that is the windy road you take to get to it. Erie Golf Course has a tiny putting green and no driving range, making it far from an effective practice course for me. I last played Erie over a decade ago in an EDGA event held the Monday Ernie Els defeated Colin Montgomerie and Loren Roberts in a U.S. Open playoff (1994). I remember that the course was a crapshoot built on hills and that some of the fairways were tilted 30° or so.

Erie Golf Course has seen a "major renovation" this year and the word on the street was that the course was "in great shape." I was told by several that "it'll be really nice" now. As one of Erie's three municipal courses (Downing and J.C. Martin being the others), I was looking forward to having a decent course so close. Well, it simply ain't to be: Erie Golf Course is still a dog track.

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I've heard good things about the Logitech line of universal remotes, and the 520 caught my eye. Carey and I currently have, oh, four remotes we use regularly (TV, TiVo, Receiver, DVD Player). All but the TiVo are Sony remotes, so there is some overlap, and the TiVo I programmed to power on both the receiver and the TV… but it may be nice to have all of the functionality in one place, particularly if it's truly universal.

Clearly a remote like this would handle the TV and whatnot, but I'm not so sure it can handle the TiVo stuff - record, switch channels, etc. The TiVo remote gets around 80% of the use in the house, so this would be a waste of a hundred bucks if the thing couldn't handle some of the TiVo things like "record" and "select," "skip," "replay," "ffwd/rewind," etc.

Question: If you were coaching kids in a sport, what's the most important thing you could hope to teach them?

My Answer: A game is a game. Play well, but if you don't, well, it's just a game.

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

Photon is now open source. I've written about Photon several times. Like here, and here, and here, and, lastly, here.

In the last entry, when Photon was made free, I suggested that one of two things was likely to be happening:

1. That a significant upddate (which I was told a month or two ago was in development) is coming out soon.
2. That work has been stopped entirely, and Photon is now a dead product.

I'm sad to report that the promised update never surfaced and that Photon is now, for the most part, dead. Make no mistake - it still works - but I wouldn't peg it for a major update anytime soon.

I guess that was the end of the line for them. When looking for the crash QotD on my own blog for the previous post, I found this old post about Bleu Rose and their "public notice" to the Mac community that they were going to stop developing for the Mac.

Seems they actually stopped developing altogether. Their website hasn't been updated since late 2004.

Leave it to Unsanity. Earlier this year I mentioned in a QotD that I was "still hoping Apple provides a way for an application to provide contact information for the developer so that we, not frickin' Apple, get the crash reports."

Now we can, with Smart Crash Reports. Of course, SCR is not ideal as users have to go install it - it's clearly not an Apple-provided solution - but for beta tests, it should ease the transition, and some users who are, well, the geekier users will likely have it installed. I know I've hesitated to send in crash reports because I had to copy the crash data, go to the developer's site, find their email address, and send them the info. SCR will not help everyone, but it will help the lazy geek.

Update: Links fixed. Thanks Jesper.

Yes, the "busy-ness" has crept in. Acting as the (volunteer) assistant coach for the golf team has taken an inordinate amount of time from my day. They play 2-3 matches per week and have practice several of the other days. Matches start at four o'clock, and Carey gets home at 3:30 or so, meaning every minute I'm at a match I could be at home with my wife and kid. 🙁

Work is getting busy (a good thing), and I'm excited about that. But Carey and I have been so exhausted lately that we still haven't painted the bathroom - a project we scheduled six weeks ago. As soon as Carey takes the extra glue off, I'll paint while I'm home some day.

Off to the (maternal²) grandparents for lunch, and then back home by 3:30 or so.

Question: Did you travel for labor day?

My Answer: About 45 minutes to Findlay lake, yes. Any more than that and we likely would have stayed at home.

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

Question: What single word do you think best summarizes the whole Hurricane Katrina situation - the storm, the results, the politics, the crazy people with guns - everything?

My Answer: Stupefying.

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

Question: When were you potty trained?

My Answer: I was an active kid. I didn't have the time to go potty! I waited until I was nearly 3½ years old! 🙂

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

Question: Do you buckle your seat belt?

My Answer: Damn right I do, and I insist that anyone riding with me does as well.

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

Question: Should New Orleans be rebuilt?

My Answer: I don't know that it's worth it, no.

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

The Sand Trap .com today introduced new logos, created by Mike Rohde of Rohdesign. Yes, this is the same talented Mike Rohde that crafted MailDrop 2.0's icons.

The logos will be featured on the site, some apparel, and of course some business cards. I've been working on one main idea (see below). I like it, though it may be a bit plain. The golfer? His name is Sand Man, naturally.

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For the past month or two, Mac OS X - or more particularly, certain applications - lock up for an incredibly long time when I open or save documents. Why? iDisk. As soon as I log off the AirPort network, the open/save dialog appears instantly.

The problem seems to lie mostly with Carbon applications, but it may simply be that my Carbon applications do most of the opening and saving (Entourage saves attachments, BBEdit opens and saves, Photoshop does both as well).

I have a local copy of my iDisk, but that doesn't seem to help much. As soon as I take the AirPort network offline, though, BAM! A dialog.

You'd think that by Mac OS X 10.4.2 they'd have this fixed already.

Over the next few weeks and months, I'll be putting a lot of equipment on eBay. The first of those: a putter. Bid early, bid often, yada yada. Proceeds benefit the high school golf team for which I am acting as volunteer assistant coach.