NSLog();

Question: How often do you cook dinner for yourself or others?

My Answer: Once a week, if that. I'm terrible. If by "fix" dinner you don't mean the fast, easy stuff, that is. I eat in about three times a week (still terrible).

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

Question: What's your favorite fish to eat, if any?

My Answer: Trout or, a new favorite, redfish. The prior breaded, the latter blackened.

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

Today I went to Mud Creek near the St. Lucie Nuclear Power Plant for a little fishin'. I found the place after about 90 minutes of driving, parked, and put in at Little Mud Creek. Mud? What mud? The bottom is hard, packed sand.

I paddled out and headed south, fishing the shoreline. It was low tide, just at the start of incoming. I looked for swirls or unusual water movement, but it was difficult in the rising chop. I had a few bites right at the boat - probably a small jack crevalle or trout.

I arrived at Big Mud Creek only to find that access was blocked. Apparently the power plant doesn't like boat traffic these days. Pity - that was going to be my main fishing point for the day. I rounded the corner and found a few trout with a black/silver/orange SS Minnow (like the one seen here):

I eventually grew tired, realized I'd forgotten my sunscreen, and headed home. While heading home I trolled the SS Minnow and nabbed a 2 lb jack crevalle. Yes, today I've got that "you wore sunglasses and a hat and got a funny looking sunburn" type of sunburn.

Question: Have you done your taxes yet?

My Answer: No, but I'll be doing them this week I think. I hate doing taxes, but this year I should come out ahead. Maybe.

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

So, I'd like to file my taxes online. I'll pay $25 or so to do it. The question is: where the hell can I do this? The IRS.gov site is horrendous. I want to claim some deductions (business expenses, as some of my income is 1099) and I also have a standard job that's paid money to social security, FICA, etc.

Where the hell can I do this? Right now I'm playing with a very ugly site named "1040now.net."

This blog's sidebar supports a nice new feature: my current Rock Star top score and ranking. I've done so with a simple little JavaScript (and an accompanying PHP script):

<script src="http://freshlysqueezedsoftware.com/
products/rockstar/hiscores/username.fss?
username=Erik%20J.%20Barzeski" type="text/javascript">
</script>

You too can embed this in your Web site or blog to let the world know how big a Rock Star you are! The HTML the script creates is minimal (two br tags and a link), so feel free to wrap it in <p> or <span> tags to suit.

John Gruber says:

Recommended reading, even if you wind up disagreeing with more than 1.5 of his criticisms.

And so I shall: Matthew Thomas' list of faults found while "enduring" Mac OS X. As if the title alone didn't get you, the list surely will. Some are right, some are wrong. Let's have a look.

NSLog(@"Finish Reading %d Words", 1826); »

Question: What is your least favorite thing about Mac OS X?

My Answer: My overall opinion is clearly very high. I had to stretch a little for my least favorite answer, but here it goes: the inability to run the installer from the CD while using the computer to do other things (and install onto another disk). You could do this in Mac OS 9… Granted, this is an installer issue, but I'll cut myself some slack: it's my blog. 🙂

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

Question: Did you get one?

My Answer: I think I'm going to get a green one. I'll listen to it while I'm on my kayak. They're TEEEEEENY! It'll easily fit in my shirtpocket.

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

Please help. A friend of mine has 18 JPEGs and TIFFs (he can convert them to any format) that total 277 MB. He needs to burn a CD (on a Mac) that has the images in the highest quality possible. That's easy. Where I need help: he needs a picture viewer that works with Windows. It can't be an installer - it has to pretty much "just run" from the CD. In other words, we have to be able to deliver a CD and the recipient, on a PC, has to be able to view the pictures in high quality with little effort and no installs.

We can probably assume that they've got Windows 2000 or later, but not necessarily that they have QuickTime. Burning a DVD is not the best option - TV resolution is bad and these are very high quality pictures.

Your help is appreciated. I'll give a free copy of any of FSS's software to the person who first suggests the best option.

I'll explain this more in the extended entry…

 me: i have to be careful with you, you know...
 me: that shoulder shirk while leaving is only the start of it :)
her: LOL, why's that
 me: you're one of those sinkholes
 me: female sinkholes
 me: or, more like those sand traps those beetles build
her: LOL, where did you find that?
 me: an ant comes up and peers over the edge and then falls in
 me: the more he struggles to get out, the faster he falls in
 me: and then the beetle gets him and eats him
 me: you're one of those
 me: you're a beetle at the bottom of a sandhole
her: falls in what?
 me: the sand hole
her: we just decided in don't have an orfice
 me: i know that
 me: but this is different

NSLog(@"Finish Reading %d Words", 551); »

At least he's got a sense of humor.

Too good not to post. Plus I don't go to work until 5 today. 🙂

I don't find the image to the right appealing in any way. I've never found women with 25% or more of their bodies covered in tattoos to be extra-sexy. I've never found goth sexy. I've never found entirely too much eyeshadow/eyeliner to be sexy. I'm a big fan of "girl next door" and whatnot, and though one of the Suicide Girls may live next door to me (I doubt it), that doesn't mean I'm going to appreciate seeing them on the Playboy Cyber Club (to which I've had an unusually free membership for five years or so).

In fact, I would go so far as to say that the image to the right (I've cropped out any nudie parts) is repulsive to me. It's the opposite of attractive.

I'm not going to write to Playboy and ask that they stop showing Suicide Girls of the Week - other people surely like them. I may, however, stop dropping by on Thursdays. Ick.

P.S. July 3, 2004 - It's funny to me how many people simply think that in expressing my opinion, I'm trying to persuade or deny them of theirs. That's not true. Despite a few comments accusing me, slyly or otherwise, of this, the discussion below is good. Like what you like, I say.

Question: Email: plain text or HTML/styled?

My Answer: Plain text, dammit. Plus, so much spam is HTML that my filters may be biased against HTML email.

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

FTPeel 1.1.2 is out. Numerous bug fixes are included in this build (even though 1.1.1 is only a week old). I've emphasized the most important:

• Fixed an FTP-SSL server text parsing bug.
• The transfer status in the Transfers panel should be more accurate now.
• Fixed a bug that was preventing directory downloads and uploads from running at their fastest possible speed with queueing disabled.
• Fixed a possible security problem (don't ask, we won't tell).
• Worked around an issue with OpenSSH SFTP servers where the server wasn't setting the modification time of uploaded files. Now this should be working correctly.
• Fixed the issue where FTPeel was a little too anxious to terminate connections early.
• Now FTPeel holds connections open as needed, which should boost performance on slow servers.
• Fixed a problem with parsing the present working directory from some FTP servers.

Grab the update as soon as you can! It's one of the most exciting dot-dot releases ever!