NSLog();

Carey and I toured a house we found online earlier today. Yesterday, just kind of goofing around, we found the house online and called the agent right away - the house looked great online. Today, the real estate agent was 10 minutes late and couldn't bother to call - real nice first step.

The house - recently dropped $3k to $189,900 - has been on the market for six months or so. The old family is moving because their son is now in the military and they don't need all of the space. It was built in 1996 and has had one owner. The lot size is "only" 65 x 135, but we're not too concerned about that. It's in a nice area and only 1.9 miles, door-to-door, from Carey's school/job. Lots of young kids were outside playing.

More below…

NSLog(@"Finish Reading %d Words", 853); »

This comes from a friend of mine in need of some help. I'll reproduce what he emailed me as best as I can (in terms of presentation, I mean):

I created a simple shell script to kill a running process (MSN Messenger) by name. When run independantly it works without issue. When run via crontab the lines with kill commands do not run. I'm sure it's running because the log file is updated at the time of execution. I've tried running is via root's crontab as well as an administrator's crontab with no luck. Any idea as to what might be supressing the kill statements?

MSN Killer Shell Script:

#!/bin/bash
kill `/bin/ps -auxc | /usr/bin/awk '/MSN Messenger Daemon/ {print $2}'`
kill `/bin/ps -auxc | /usr/bin/awk '/MSN Messenger/ {print $2}'`
/bin/echo "MSN Killed: `date`" >> /msn_killer.log

Crontab:

SHELL=/bin/sh
PATH=/bin
HOME=/var/log
*    *    *    *    *    /.msn_killer

For whatever reason, the kills never run. When run via "/.msn_killer" it works fine. When the command is run within a bash prompt, it works fine. Within crontab, it fails to work.

Note: My friend will check this post occasionally, and may be able to post follow-up answers to any questions y'all may have.

We've had a heck of a time tracking down some crashes in PulpFiction, but, I think we've got it:

Modified Files:
 FetchController.m 
Log Message: fix for the weird crash when fetching. None of the users
have had it crash on them since and I can't reproduce it anymore. Looks
like we're good.

NSLog(@"Finish Reading %d Words", 171); »

Question: Did you watch The Masters today?

My Answer: You bet your ass I did. Or rather, you can bet your ass that my ass didn't leave the couch for about five hours.

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

Question: Ever applied for a mortgage? If so, how much were you approved for as a % of your yearly income (i.e. $40,000 -> $150,000 = 375%)?

My Answer: No, I haven't. I've heard that you can "afford" a mortgage of 3x (300%) your yearly income, but I know of people who have been approved for 5x quite easily.

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

It's long pissed me off, but I've never had the time to write about it. I don't so much have the time now, but the "pissiness" has reached critical mass, so to speak.

Safari's table-copying sucks. Here, go ahead, try it out:

I would expect Safari to copy that with tabs and line breaks so that, when pasted, the result might look something like a table (bear in mind I have no idea how tabs in <pre> appear in your browser, but it should look fine):

NSLog(@"Finish Reading %d Words", 457); »

Carey, as some know, went back to college to become a teacher. She's student teaching at a local high school right now and figured she'd begin interviewing for jobs after the school year was over. Most teachers, it seems, are hired pretty late. It's not uncommon to get hired in late July or even early August.

But not my girl. No, she had to go and over-achieve. She's Millcreek School District's top pick and already got to choose the position she most liked. She's got a job already. Well, the superintendent has guaranteed it, but technically it needs to be approved by the school board. The superintendent's recommendations have never been overturned. So, it's basically a mortal lock.

It's quite possible she's the best graduating (new) teacher in Erie county (and beyond). She's the first to be hired, and the board with whom she interviewed couldn't stop gushing. The superintendent and the main HR guy called her back within minutes, and all of her meetings - from her first interview to the meeting with the superintendent - took place over a span of five days. Two of those days were Saturday and Sunday. And the place at which she's student teaching? They want her back three years from now when one of their senior faculty members retires, and they've repeatedly told her as much.

Now, we have to wait about two weeks for the official letter and contract. Then, letter/contract in hand, we can begin talking with banks about a mortgage and, following that, a house. As soon as we've bought a house (could be as soon as two months from now, eek!), we'll get married. The reception party will come later.

I couldn't be happier - or more proud.

I'm giving SpamLookup a try over at The Sand Trap. I'm curious to see how it goes, and I've disabled MT-Blacklist for the time being.

Question: What's your "interview success rate?" In other words, of the job interviews you've had, what percentage have resulted in job offers?

My Answer: 100%! Of course, I've only really ever interviewed for about ten (paying) jobs, and that's stretching all the way back to my first job as a concessionaire at the Erie Zoo. When you freelance, you don't "interview" a whole lot. If you throw some pro-bono, charity, and freebie/favor work in there, it jumps up to about 15/15.

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

Easy!

<div style="height:17px; width: 270px; float: left; clear: left"><span></span></div>
<div style="height:17px; width: 278px; float: left; clear: left"><span></span></div>
<div style="height:17px; width: 286px; float: left; clear: left"><span></span></div>
<div style="height:17px; width: 294px; float: left; clear: left"><span></span></div>
<div style="height:17px; width: 302px; float: left; clear: left"><span></span></div>
<div style="height:17px; width: 310px; float: left; clear: left"><span></span></div>
<div style="height:17px; width: 300px; float: left; clear: left"><span></span></div>
<div style="height:17px; width: 290px; float: left; clear: left"><span></span></div>
<div style="height:17px; width: 270px; float: left; clear: left"><span></span></div>
<div style="height:17px; width: 230px; float: left; clear: left"><span></span></div>

I've often wished text wrap were possible in CSS, possibly by defining the corners or radii of objects (like the language used to define imagemaps). I suppose this solution will work until someone creates support for the better other way.

It's funny to read the comments of the PC-ites on the meaning of the word "replace." So funny it prompted a Daring Fireball article.

I wasn't aware of the Windows way of doing things - "merging" instead of "replacing." To me, the Mac definition is far closer to the meaning of the word "replace."

Folders are containers, but they're single entities in and of themselves. "Replace foo with bar" works on the Mac regardless of whether foo and bar are folders or files. If Matt really wanted to "merge," he could have simply dragged the contents of the folder.

Having read the comments (a few - not all), it's clear to me that this is one of those things that's simply tough to understand from the other point of view. Windows has its (cough, wrong, ahem) way, and the Mac does it the right, errr, its way.

Question: What is your favorite yearly non-holiday event?

My Answer: The Masters. It starts today. Well, maybe.

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

Hey, I've got a plugin request for MovableType. Someone could make some money with this (I'd pay ten bucks). Or give it away free.

Read this and see if you can figure out what my plugin request may be.

Yep, you guessed it: a plugin that overrides MovableType's failure to allow TrackBacking URLs within the same domain. I figure it shouldn't be too hard to write (if you know Perl).

Anyone up for the challenge?

P.S. Ideally, this would be a simple checkbox in MovableType's preferences. But until the silly people at Six Apart realize that continuing the conversation within your own blog is just as important as notifying someone else that you're continuing their conversation, a plugin will have to do.

I went to the zoo today with Little One and took some pictures. I'll link to a few on .Mac's HomePage as soon as HomePage ceases to experience problems…

Almost all of the pictures turned out about as well as I expected, and there are some pretty nifty ones. I was shorted a little bit with the 28-135 lens. I think the 75-300/4.0-5.6 IS would be ideal for the zoo ($415), but I'm also considering the 100-400/4.5-5.6L IS as well ($1415) because I'm going to need to take some pictures at a golf tournament or two in late May/early June (discussion here).

Most of the shots at the zoo, as I said, came out as expected, and had a really nice tonal range. A few of the duck pictures, though, are quite concentrated in the midtone region.

I cropped a little out of this shot, but it was mostly more murky water.

Question: What's your computer's uptime output?

My Answer: 15:31 up 2 days, 6:04, 2 users, load averages: 1.08 0.64 0.49
BTW, uptime | pbcopy is a great way to copy your uptime to the clipboard. I've found that few people are aware pbcopy. It's quite handy.

Incidentally, this QotD came about as a result of The Sand Trap's load average. Check this shit out:
15:11 up 17 days, 9:16, 19 users, load averages: 69.16 59.18 49.15

Needless to say, the site is hosted on a shared server, and one of the other users is running some exceedingly intensive CGIs. Needless to say, I'm not too happy about the hogging, and I'll be considering moving the site to a dedicated plan shortly.

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