photo by the awesome rob marini, at samovar for brunch this past weekend.

(oh why yes kevin is wearing the Science xkcd shirt! :P )

sorry i've abandoned you all for twitter. i still am primarily using twitter, but i just realized i never posted about anything that happened in the past two months here.

i met a guy. during wwdc. his name is kevin ballard. that's all.

:)

this whole day has been:
a certain group of people on twitter i follow arguing about religion,
an entertaining seder involving discussion about the omnipotence of a god,
more religion on a mailing list i'm on.

I'm glad it stopped, cause literally, the whole day has been like that. Entertaining, sure, but it gets sort of old after the first few hours.

Also, why am I blogging again? xD

can't spoil it, but here's the ending of the latest comic, which is an interesting problem to spend 10 minutes on.


Check it out on http://abstrusegoose.com/126 :p

I have friends with the most adorable children. Some of those friends can go overboard with wanting babies, but I don't think any of them come even close to the craziness of the mother who gave birth to octuplets recently.

She had SIX MORE KIDS AT HOME.

I feel sorry for the older kids. And who wants to bet she doesn't stop at 14? And who wants to bet she won't stop with fertility treatments and refusing selective reduction because she doesn't want to play god despite already having done so. I'm all for choice but maaaaan, is she really realizing what she is doing here with limited resources and what she is doing to her older kids? If so then good luck to her...

The best part of the story is how the husband will be going back to Iraq to support the family.


Yeeeeeaaaaaahhhhh.

Check this out. If you don't see something incredibly hilarious about either one or both of these images, something's wrong with you. :p

(context: rooms is a colloquy competitor.)

---

colloquy reviews	individual reviewer's page

And to be completely truthful, the one on the left is a lot more hilarious if you're looking at the complete set of reviews on the app store: almost a couple dozen 4-5 star reviews, and this one 1 star one in the middle of it all. All I can say is..whoever wrote that review, thanks for your $1.99/1.59€ (minus 30 percent)!

(also, dho <3 if you're reading this, since I just spotted your review in that screenshot! ha!)

Colloquy is now on the app store. It is only $1.99. Please go check it out! :)

http://mobile.colloquy.info

On the other hand, if I hear one more person complaining about an open source project charging money for software, or that Colloquy should be free because it used to be free a year ago, or anything along those lines, I will...do something really unpleasant to you. What the hell is up with the assumption that open source means free. Open source means open source, and colloquy mobile source is in svn for anyone who cares to look at it and get it on their phones (with $99 to apple, or jailbreak).


On the other hand, I am open to suggestions that aren't "stop charging because IRC clients should be free" or something as equally outrageous.

What to do when you see an 0xE80000xx error:

Step 1: Try to throw the iPhone out the window.

Step 2: Restart Xcode and restart the phone if you failed to successfully complete step 1.

Step 3: Cross your fingers and try again.

Step 4: Goto Step 1

Step 5(?): Maybe you might have to reinstall iPhone OS or reboot your mac or do something even sillier. Ten times over.


Then eventually make a "I hate 0xE8000001" tshirt and make a fortune selling that and other similar meme tshirts at WWDC 2009 (i.e. "FUCKING NDA", "[REDACTED]" and more).


By the way, to fix the 0xE8000058 error, just remove the reference to the iTunesArtwork file.

http://my.opera.com/haavard/blog/2008/12/02/google-closes-the-web-in-korea

Not opera's opinion, but one of an opera employee nevertheless. This kind of retarded* attitude is why Opera will never stop being a niche desktop browser. I honestly think the Safari/Webkit guys are doing a better job bringing real open web standards to more people. And of course, Firefox, but not so much as of late. Still better than MSIE...


* I feel I have to qualify my use of "retarded" in that statement. Anyone who knows anything about how Korean websites work and what Korean people expect when they visit a website will know this guy is laughably stupid. Honorable intentions, but laughably stupid. Especially when it has to do with Google, a corporation.

So, the Yelp reviews on El Coyote are an interesting thing to read when bored at 4am.

Link: http://www.yelp.com/biz/el-coyote-mexican-cafe-los-angeles

Backstory: One of the owner's relatives who is also a manager at this restaurant donated money to Yes on H8. Would have gone over okay if she didn't fuck up the multiple times she had a chance to smooth things over. I understand it's hard to change hard-set beliefs in such a short time, but the lack of insight of this woman is astounding and it's not about changing beliefs to begin with. A business owner must always realize that they should never do anything of a political nature in their business's name, and if they do, that if a shitstorm happens it's their fault and the easiest way to deal with it is by contributing an equal if not greater amount of resources to the opposing group, and maybe inviting disgruntled people over for some free food.

Seriously. Small Business Ownership 101. You suck up to all your customers and never do anything to piss them off in any way, and if you do piss them off, fix it as soon as you can (within reason).

Why this woman decided to donate money in her business's name as well is beyond me, and completely stupid. Who cares if you do it in private, how many people are going to connect your name to your business? But you include your business..you pretty much deserve it all. El Coyote isn't the only business that were caught with their pants down (jesus christ people, seriously this is just common sense), but it's the most notable one that's handling it badly. The rest have done what you'd expect would happen: apologize, ask for a refund or donate money to an opposing group, maybe invite people over for free food.

However, the protesters are no better for some of the picketing they're doing there.

Things to note:
- Absolutely none of the recent 5 star reviews are from frequent Yelp users. One even comes from Utah. Grew up in LA or not, Utah.
- Many of the recent 1 to 2 star reviews are from frequent Yelp users. By frequent, I mean they didn't expressly sign up only to leave a review on Yelp about only this one restaurant.
- There are many downright hilarious reviews, here's my favorite screenshotted for posterity, as Yelp already removed the other review I loved :( Hilariously it's from over a year ago, but pretty apt. Who knew :)

So thinking back, I think there's this huge disconnect between people who support equal rights for gay people and people who don't, purely because the latter don't fully understand the situation. I'm sure there are some people in the latter group who do understand everything fully, I think it's then safe to call those specific people bigots.

I believe there are two things that are indisputable. They are:

• that marriage is more than a religious union of two people. The way it works now is both social and legal as well. So the term "marriage" is usually taken to be possibly a civil marriage recognized by the government and possibly a religious or spiritual marriage (as appropriate), mix and match them. Only when the question of who is getting married does the term "marriage" become abused and selectively defined as strictly a religious institution. It definitely is not strictly a religious institution in common usage.


• that marriages and civil unions and domestic partnerships are separate but equal. The California Supreme Court outlines exactly how, even in the fairly liberal state of California (let's just ignore those weirdo Central California people ;) ) that actual marriages and the benefits that come with them are not quite the same as the ones one would be entitled to with a domestic partnership, in In re Marriage Cases from May 2008.

So the conclusion: marriage should remain a strictly religious institution if people so insist, and civil unions should be equal. Not separate but equal, but equal. See http://remiel.info/post/59602554/marriage-for-nobody-civil-unions-for-everybody for a great discussion of this topic.


There's a few tangents regarding Prop 8 that are worth considering as well:

• What is the big deal over educating kids about equality? Sex ed doesn't generally involve describing in explicit detail how to have sex. A vagina is a vagina, a penis is a penis, here's how to use a condom or dental dam, go have fun, or don't go have fun that's up to you. Nobody is saying anything about a dildo up a vagina or two penises. Nobody is forcing kids to believe that they need to change genders. It's simple education to not introduce or reinforce the idea that people of the same gender in a relationship are immoral and it's common sense to be fair.


• The people who voted Yes on 8 to protect "marriage" are not doing anything to make civil unions equal. Let's just wait until they have to deal with marriage inequality that they were partially responsible for perpetuating some other day.


• The economy sucks right now, but more marriages and divorces would be helpful. Just think about what goes into a marriage! And a divorce!

Anyway, that being said, I'm sadly laughing at what's going on in recent news. People are outraged nationwide. People are boycotting restaurants. Yes on 8 is claiming that they have a right to vote without being harassed..except they're not being harassed over their vote, but rather their actions and donations...and nobody has a right to have customers. Focus on the Family is firing 20% of their employees.

Pot, kettle. But it's nice to see that there are so many people out there now truly realizing what needs to be done to change the situation in this country, although it can be depressing to see people on the good side be so antagonistic sometimes..but I expect that to die down soon to be replaced with activism. It's too recent and it was a huge slap in the face for many, so I can understand.


And on an even more distant tangent, and the reason why I felt like writing all this, was because someone mentioned that other nonprofits donated massive amounts of money to No on 8 and nobody was protesting them like people are the LDS church. All I can say is that I wish the IRS were more strict about political activities for nonprofits (it's fairly subjective at this point) and that religious orgs not be able to receive nonprofit status unless they provide charitable services and others that are also secular in nature. Lastly, I think that any nonprofit that does get involved in too many political activities that are partisan in nature be taxed and their nonprofit status potentially be revoked. Sad to say that might even include the LA Gay and Lesbian Center, which I believe provides more services than the LDS church could ever dream of doing, but it might. I know it was for a good cause, but not taxed and tax deductible donations? I don't know..even though it is a civil rights issue..

Before I review the product, I gotta get this out of my system.

mophie or mStation or whatever the fuck they are calling themselves have some HUGE issues, besides the obvious branding one. I have been on the verge of wanting to cancel my order for weeks as they kept giving a VERY specific date they pushed back and back for weeks. I sent them a couple emails about this and I didn't get any sort of reply whatsoever. Not to mention they fucked up one email about a ship date (that was again, pushed back) and sent me someone else's order details (nothing specific though) and followed up with it saying I should feel free to ask them if I had any questions..except they didn't answer that either. All I can say are that this company are dicks with awful customer support and I didn't part with the money very happily. Caveat emptor.



More unpacking porn over at my flickr: http://www.flickr.com/photos/chix0r/sets/72157608997002728/!


The juice pack is probably a must-have for a lot of people. There are other power solutions for the phone out there, but this is the only one in such an integrated package, the rest are usually dangling from your phone: great for quick charges, but inconvenient when you're actually using the phone.

Pros:

• It's portable power for your power-hungry iPhone 3G. Need I say more?


• The mophie juice pack has a passthrough USB port that it uses to charge both the phone and the juice pack while you can sync with iTunes and use with Xcode as such:
  


• It's pretty much like a hard shell case for most of your iPhone. It even has a little round cutout on top so it doesn't block the camera. Unfortunately, there is no room for any case that adds bulk to your phone, so if you have anything like that you're pretty much out of luck. I have no idea how well Invisible Shields and the like work though..

Cons:

• It's almost the same thickness and weight as the phone itself. This means your iPhone will be twice as thick and heavy. This may or may not be a con depending on how comfortable you are with how light and thin the iPhone is. I for one find it easier to txt with the juice pack on.


• The charging indicator on the juice pack can be completely useless, the way it indicates charging status is absurd if you're like me and familiar with the way Apple batteries on laptops show this info.
  So I spoke too soon. My USB devices were spazzing out during a phone sync, and basically it turns out that the charging indicator goes into useless weird blinking mode only when there isn't enough juice coming from the port, since I was using a miniusb cable for my camera, which doesn't need to be powered. Now that the juice pack is plugged into a powered USB port, it's acting like a status indicator should.

Overall, I can't decide if I like it or not. It's definitely extra power for my phone, but this may not be worth buying at the price for most people. Plus I have to remove the case to charge my phone in the car and I can't use my favorite hard case anymore and...really, it's up to you. I think I'm going to keep it in my purse and only on if I need the extra charge. Too much bulk otherwise.

The juice pack is available from mophie.com for $99.95.

but..prop 8.

if my previous post about nonprofit churches wasn't enough, here's more. a (korean!) church that is a polling place felt perfectly fine putting up yes on 8 bullshit. inside a polling place: http://laist.com/2008/11/04/yes_on_8_sign_spotted_at_polling_pl.php

what the fuck is up with that?

again, twitter, this time from bbum:


A long, long time ago, I wanted to do some volunteer work somewhere. Being the age I was then (under 16), not many places were willing to even give me any consideration. However, my mother found me a nice place to volunteer in the newspaper that didn't care about my age..

What ended up happening was that over the past few years, I did both volunteer and paid work for a faith-based nonprofit that shall remain nameless that mainly consisted of things having absolutely nothing to do with the faith-based part (I am atheist, after all). I taught kids how to use computers, I maintained the network and the computers, I worked on the website... basically, I did almost everything computer related there. I even did other minor things on the side: math tutoring, grilling meat at lunch, reading captchas (ugh), cleaning up, helping move, proofreading papers, dressing up to meet potential donors, lawyers and others who could donate their money and skills...and who knows what else. I developed a nice relationship with many of the people I met there that I still keep in touch with. But this is the nice and sunny side you're reading about.

What you don't see at first glance is pretty ugly. This particular nonprofit is ultimately split into two parts, and depending on how you look at it, the church part and the not-church part were pretty inseparable, but the not-church part was more prominent and is also the name of the nonprofit. But if you became more familiar with the organizational structure, the church may as well have been the main entity with the not-church working under the church to provide services to only church members.

While they claim in their mission statement that they do not discriminate, a statement expressly included for the purpose of receiving grants that require nondiscrimination, they don't do this blatantly but they do do it in subtle ways. I cannot believe how many times people have attempted to pressure me into coming to services and religious events I kept telling them I wanted no part of, that when I did go for an unavoidable reason I always resented for the discrimination going on in whatever form both from what was said in sermons and in private talk with others involved with the organization in various ways. I expect that if I said most of what I had the good graces not to say in proportion to what they were asking and saying in regards to my gender, preferences, beliefs and more, that I would be asked to leave and never come back. I'm also sure that nobody could get away with freeloading off the apparently nonreligious nondiscriminating services this organization provided without attending a sermon or more.

I find this insanely sneaky. Discrimination is discrimination, no matter what form it takes, blatant or subtle. This particular nonprofit has received money in this way and is poised to get even more, more money it would most likely not receive should it become obvious that they do discriminate. It's not the only such organization either. The one thing I don't understand is why these entities are given so much in return for not doing much in return. I am talking about a registered 501c3 here, which in the US is a tax exempt nonprofit status.

Personally, I'm also offended that this particular organization and similar are grouped together with the likes of Doctors Without Borders and the American Cancer Society.

I can only hope in the future something can be done about bigoted and discriminating entities receiving something like 501c3 status, and to limit even more how much can be spent on political lobbying and similar by nonprofits. It's disturbing to think that they be allowed to get away with not paying lots of taxes and enjoying benefits they don't deserve for what they do. Deity knows we spend enough money on government-approved religious bullshit (abstinence only sex ed and intelligent design, anyone?).

For the record, I left, and on fairly good terms. If it wasn't for the religion, the people and the organization would have been a lot more bearable and pleasant to deal with. But I couldn't stand the religion anymore. To the point that right now, I would be completely open to working for a nonprofit with absolutely nothing religious involved..in fact, the more the nonprofit works to counter any religious bigotry spewed by some nonprofits, the better. ;)

So I got two "Yes on 8" mailings today. I burned the first one right after seeing it. The second one I'm shredding only after I write this..

Obama is on an entire side of the two-sided mailing about his opposition to gay marriage. That would be fine, except that Obama explicitly mentioned in June that he opposed the effort to amend this state's constitution with regards to this situation. So he's not supporting Prop 8 in any way, although he may be opposed to the idea of "gay marriage".

I wish people would realize that. I'm not sure how the hell the Yes on 8 people can get away with printing that...but the Obama campaign wouldn't commit political suicide by doing anything about that. Especially not now.


Other gripes:
Mandatory indoctrination of schoolchildren? Where the fuck did that come from? Has anyone here actually learned anything about marriage throughout their years in school? I sure as hell didn't. This is like one of the huge points Yes on 8 people make, and I have no idea where the fuck it's coming from! When are we EVER taught about marriage in schools? Maybe sex ed, but we're not taught "oh sex is between a man and a woman", it's just sex and how to use condoms, nothing about a man and a woman.

(Also I bet the only ones that DO mention marriages are religious schools and homeschooled kids, and neither the ruling nor voting no on the prop will force them to say anything about it in any circumstance. So I STILL don't get why they're making a big fuss about a nonexistent issue.)

Same sex couples rights vs. "the black experience for civil rights" not being comparable: No comment here..pot calling the kettle black..(no pun intended).

Marriage sacred and worth defending: Okay, please go suggest a constitutional ban on divorces. and make adultery a serious crime. Both of those are insults to the idea of a marriage.


The one statement worth reading: that civil unions/domestic partnerships are still available. Well, you know what, as "equal" as people love to claim this is, it's not. So I wish these Yes on 8 people would go work on making that equal, but they're not. They're just spreading lies.

So I got started knitting again lately, and this is something I had originally learned from watching other people.

I had no flippin idea of *how* I was knitting stitches, but today I just fully realized that there was more than one way to hold the yarn, and that I have no idea how to do it the other (English, as opposed to Continental) way and I tried to but failed miserably and felt like setting the yarn on fire. Then again, the piece I'm knitting now is mostly seed/moss stitch (my favorite!), and it is INSANE switching between knit and purl stitches when you're holding the yarn in your right hand. I have no idea how people can do this. I can't even knit ANYTHING holding the yarn with my right hand, let alone alternate stitches like that.

I wonder if it's because I got started with crocheting and "picking" up the yarn just makes more sense than "throwing" it?

Anyway, this was about geeky knitting, so I will leave you with an adorable free pattern: http://mochimochiland.com/weblog/2008/09/free-pattern-resisty-the-resistor/

Yes, a resistor. :)

remember this long rant of mine?: http://applegoddess.livejournal.com/123066.html

Check out what was linked from daringfireball today, and check out the comments in particular. now that apple's disabled non-purchaser reviews, people seem to have just really fully realized from both a dev and a user perspective that the app store has some major issues and non-purchaser reviews were the least of their concerns really.

http://mjtsai.com/blog/2008/10/15/something-new/

so, speaking of the $180 (shipped) 1.5TB seagate hard drive on newegg, this thought kept popping up in my head:

how come so many drobo owners report drive failures within the first week (or so) of use? I've seen two drives be marked as failed in mine, I know of three other drobo owners who experienced the same thing with new drives, and some others under miscellaneous circumstances where the drive may or may not have already been failing by the time it was inserted into the drobo. plus, looking at reviews for drives for a possible upgrade..i note some drobo owners left reviews of hard drives mentioning the same exact thing.

it's not even in the "lifetime" of the device, it's something that specifically happens very soon after initially setting up the drobo, and not very often anytime afterwards (that would stick out as an abnormal number of drive failures, that is).

is it just the higher number of hard drives involved? that when you start looking at many sets of up to 4 drives it's just inevitable that a drive will fail? the odd part about this being that I've never really encountered this kind of particular timeframe for a failing drive in any sort of array of drives, and I've never really often heard of anything like this as well, although the drobo is definitely the most well known out of all the consumer options..

otherwise, the drobo would have to be ultra-picky about determining how a drive is going to fail or has already failed.

or it might just be a DOA thing.

or it might just be me thinking too much. or being too paranoid. somethin.