NSLog();

I rarely get sick. I'm apparently from good stock, as my parents rarely get sick either. We muscle through it. I don't have runny noses or coughs or even headaches very often. I stay in shape and don't injure myself terribly often either. When I am sick, though, I concentrate on how sick I am, so that I can appreciate all the days I'm well even more. So in that light, sometimes it's nice to be sick, because it reminds me how good I have it the other 99% of the time.

This 60-second entry was brought to you by today's word from OneWord™.

Question: Have you ever had a "friend with benefits?" If so, how'd it end (if it has)?

My Answer: Aside from Naked Weekend Crystal, no. She and I had a great time, but not of the kind "benefits" usually entail. Though I enjoy sex on a physical level, it's not really worth all the effort if the emotional side is not present as well. I have no problem with others who can have a FuckBuddy™, but it's just not my bag.

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

I've often wondered why "box" can refer to part of a woman. Well, "often" isn't quite right. Sometimes. Women, though, are the unboxiest gender. Women are curvy, not rigid and full of right angles. Silly! Of course, "box" typically doesn't refer to, uhh, that, but instead to packing and shipping and "yay, I got something I ordered in the mail!" and to "toys" as in "toybox" and whatnot.

This 60-second entry was brought to you by today's word from OneWord™.

One of the rules of customer service (and common sense): never promise that something is (or will be) "bug-free." Duh. I guess Alberto at Ovolab is about to learn this lesson the hard way:

We are fixing the problem many AAChoo users experienced, which made the application unexpectedly quit on certain machines. We are sorry for the inconvenience and plan to release an updated, bug-free version early next week. Sorry for the trouble.

This from MacInTouch (which really needs to start providing PermaLinks along with their RSS feeds, because this link will break in a day or two).

Jamie's written in a far better manner than I could an entry discussing the self-censorship one must apply to their blogging. She also links to a New York Times article that I won't link to given their "charge for archived content" policy that I found interesting. Her article brought up in my mind a distinction I've been wanting to make for some time now: the difference between what is "personal" and what is "private."

Anything I post here becomes public - the opposite of private - simply by being published on a publicly accessible (and oft-Googled) web server. I "publish" in part because I don't consider myself a very private person. There's not a lot I won't share and there aren't many questions I won't answer, regardless of the questioner.

NSLog(@"Finish Reading %d Words", 1132); »

A week or so ago I set about writing a "duplicate TrackBack removal script" in PHP. The script would give you a list of your duplicate TrackBacks and offer to delete them. The deleting was easy - getting the list was the pain in the ass. I put in a good amount of time trying to find the "best" solution. A few attempts used a lot of GROUP BYs. A few used the more boring ORDER BY. I stashed results in arrays so that they could be enumerated and their information (article name, the off duplicate/triplicate/quintuplet/etc.) displayed.

Basically, I spent a lot of time getting nowhere. I already knew how I was going to delete the duplicate TrackBacks and I realizd that I didn't really care to see what I'd be deleting. The only real purpose such a list could serve would be to list the articles that would need rebuilt to remove the off duplicate (or more) TrackBacks.

NSLog(@"Finish Reading %d Words", 586); »

I'm going to call posting a TrackBack to someone's site but not actually linking to their site a "Selfish TrackBack." If it has a name somewhere already, I apologize for not knowing it. Case in point: this article at Rob Watkins.me.uk. He posted a TrackBack to one of my articles - effectively "making my site link to him," but could not extend the same courtesy by linking to my site in the article.

Perhaps it was an oversight and one he'll correct, and I've left a comment alerting him of this, but nearly 5-10% of my TrackBacks are "Selfish" these days. It's getting annoying.

Question: Do you wish you'd waited longer to lose your virginity?

My Answer: Nope. I certainly wasn't terribly young (18) and it was in the midst of a relationship that was to last five years. Unfortunately, I think I'm one of the few people in the world who doesn't wish they'd waited longer. This QotD inspired by Rori.

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

Question: What's the latest you ever slept in?

My Answer: One time I left college on a Friday at about 1pm. As I drove home, I became increasingly tired. I could barely unpack the car when I arrived home at 6pm and promptly went to bed. I got up to use the restroom once or twice, and awoke at 11am! As I walked around I wondered where my family was. I look at the VCR and realized they were at school and work… because it was Monday.

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

I continued working on the core UI for MailDrop 2.0 today. I added outlets to some more checkboxes and text fields and made them undoable. With a strong MVC background, "undo" is a fairly easy but - repeat after me - T E D I O U S task. I have about fourteen thousand lines of code (well, okay, about 500) of pure getter/setter/UI-updater code.

Because we want to be very, very AppleScriptable in the end, I'm clinging to MVC as if it was a hot babe and I was Rob Cesternino. What's funny is that I noticed that, upon entering a string in a text field, the following occurs:

1. The action of a text field is setSomeValue: (generic name used here), a "setter" of sorts.
2. A string comparison takes place so that you can't add infinite instances of the same string to the undo stack. This calls a value "get" accessor in the model to check the current string and compare it to the UI string (the one just entered).
3. The setSomeValue: calls a setValue: method in my model.
4. The model posts a notification to the window to update its UI.
5. The window "updateUI" method calls the same value "get" method in the model to make sure it sets the text field to the proper value.

Overkill? Actually, no. Amusing? Undoubtedly. But again: T E D I O U S. 🙂

I'm from Pennsylvania. My favorite teams in the NHL, NFL, and MLB all start with the word "Pittsburgh." As such, I'm happy that Jenna won Survivor 6 (though Matt and Rob each deserved it more and "played better," I felt). It was interesting to find this site today: jenna-morasca.com. The best quote from their weekly water cooler Survivor redux has to be this one:

Finally, it was time to vote, and everyone scrawled their choice on the parchment. Jeff Probst immediately grabbed the box o' votes and sprinted into the woods where he kept his jet ski, which apparently has the world's largest fuel tank in it. Probst then embarked on a 4,000 mile, 4-month jet ski ride which he began in the dark. We should also mention he was also pragmatically wearing dockers for this trip.

Survivor fans probably also know about the existence of amber-brkich.com from Season 2.

MovableBlog.com responds to Dave Winer's request for "Edit this Page" functionality. Good idea. If I had a place to hide that on my site, I might include it. I'd havd the idea before, but when that article showd up in my news aggregator just now, I thought I'd blog it so that I've got my own reference to it.

<a href="<MTCGIPath>mt.cgi?__mode=view&_type=entry&
id=<MTEntryID>&blog_id=<MTBlogID>">Edit Link</a>

There you go. Hide that somewhere by wrapping it around a * or a link and you've got it. MovableBlog mentions the fact that the public search shows "Edit" links, and I'll further add that my 404 search code does not (try it here).

Is WebKit out? The [ed:deleted] guy seems to think so [ed: link removed]. Jeff pointed me at that entry minutes ago, yet I can't find any indication on Apple's developer Web site that the WebKit SDK is available. I've got a software seed key and everything. Perhaps this guy can clarify?

Update: removed identifying information at the request of the one named.

Hi, "reader." How are you? Good? Now grow up. Not all of you, but a select few really need to learn a little word that's spelled like this: R-E-S-P-E-C-T.

Heaven forbid you realize that some things here are fairly personal. They're not "private" because I've published them, but they are still very personal. Heaven forbid you act like decent human beings and respect the few meaningful relationships I've got in this world.

I don't call up anyone's "princess" and ask of her sex life with a co-worker. I don't corner any co-worker's fiancés and ask him why he's not gotten his woman a ring yet. I respect people's right to a personal life, even though I learn things about people every day, just as you might learn something about me by reading this site.

Just because you've found out about something by reading it here does not give you the right to pass about rumors. It does not give you the right to ask "personal" questions in non-personal situations. It sure as hell doesn't give you the right to disrespect another human being or put them in a bad situation.

I guess the downside to having high standards for yourself and others is that you're constantly let down. My faith in the general decency and common sense of the human race took a blow today. Thanks.

How many browsers have we got now, anyway?

1. Internet Explorer
2. Mozilla
3. Firebird
4. Camino
5. iCab
6. Safari
7. lynx
8. OmniWeb
9. Opera
10. AOL
11. links
12. dillo
13. Your mom
14. Konqueror

Seems we're doing okay. I routinely use about three of those. Guess which three?