Kyle Smith

Jacob, I’m sure you’ve already considered this, but keep in mind that cross-platform support and technical superiority don’t always cause universities or enterprises to make changes to their IT infrastructure.

Two primary things to consider when proposing Zimbra as an alternative to Exchange are the availability and cost of support as well as the cost and effort required to migrate the University to a new solution.

From looking at the Zimbra site, the University would likely need to purchase their premium support option in addition to the base Network Edition software subscription.  Here’s hoping the sum of those prices is less than the potentially steep discounts Microsoft can afford to offer for Exchange pricing otherwise you can forget Gard et al. from considering it seriously.

Dear Citibank,

Please join the rest of us in the 21st century by eliminating your stupid browser checks, which are preventing me from viewing some of the content on your website. According to your FAQ I need to upgrade my browser, but I am using Firefox 2 on Linux, which happens to be just as good as Firefox on Windows and Mac OS X.

If your snazzy site maintainers and web application developers inform you otherwise, you should probably fire them and hire a team of monkeys because if you’re going to have unskilled staff, you might as well pay them in bananas.

I, and perhaps others who decide to use free operating systems instead of paying $200 for an OS, will take my business elsewhere.

Stacy and I started visiting caterers and reception sites late last week in preparation for our wedding next August.  We’ve come across some pretty nice places, and also some pretty expensive ones.  The idea of a wedding reception never really seemed all that expensive to me until recently when I started running numbers and factoring in all the little expenses (and the 18 - 19% service charges most places have).  Add it all up and you get a $10,000 - $14,000 event.  Thankfully we’ve found a few places that might allow us to do something for half that and there are still a number of unexplored possibilities.

We took a break from the search on Sunday and went to West Point to see the U.S. Military Academy’s concert band perform a tribute to Broadway, which was pretty cool.  The view up the Hudson and over towards Storm King and Crow’s Nest.  We’ll probably go back next week when their jazz band does a lot of big band pieces.  And for those of you in the Poughkeepsie area that are too lazy to drive to West Point, the concert band will be performing at the Vanderbilt Mansion on August 16th at 6:30 PM.  I’m planning on going and I highly recommend it to anyone else that can attend.

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Does anyone else out there get annoyed that Nautilus makes a distinction between files and folders when sorting items in a window and won’t intersperse the two, instead sorting folders and then sorting files separately? Why the distinction?

If I say “sort these items by name”, where in there do I express any desire to sort by type, then by name?

Update: Just as I was thinking of writing a patch to fix this behavior, I went and looked through the Nautilus preferences one last time.  Lo and behold, there on Views tab is a “Sort folders before files” option.  Uncheck and voila.

COSI Reunion

Bad news, folks. I checked with the various parks in the area and it looks like all of them are already booked solid every Saturday this summer. Not sure how to proceed. Would people still be interested in getting together sans-BBQ and just doing other things?

Vacation
Stacy and I are flying to Georgia on Saturday and then to Florida on Monday and will be gone until the following weekend. I probably won’t check email in that time. If you really need to reach me call my cell phone.
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For the computer scientists in the audience that miss Tino’s exams:

I used to live in Vermont, The Green Mountain State. As of October 1, 2005, I now live in New York, The Let’s-Fuck-You-Over-With-Stupid-Regulations State. I purchased a vehicle in December 2004 which I financed (so I’m still making payments). Now that I live in New York, I would like a NYS driver’s license and I would like to register my car in NY. I would also like to refinance my vehicle to lower the monthly payment.

Notable facts and constraints:

• NYS requires a NY-based insurance policy. You must have a policy before attempting to register your car.
• In order to purchase a new policy, you need a NYS driver’s license or proof of address (i.e. a copy of a signed lease, a utility bill). Keep in mind that I have been in my new residence for 12 days.
• To trade in a driver’s license from another state for a NYS license, you must show your old license and your Social Security card. You must also provide 2 additional points of identification (1 if your license from another state is still valid).
• As I discovered today, if your SS card has been altered in any way, the NYS DMV will refuse to accept it as proof. “Altered” could include covering the card with clear mailing tape in order to help preserve it, as I did (it is just lightweight cardstock, after all).

Refinancing the vehicle produces additional questions: do I register my vehicle, then refinance and update the title? Do I refinance first and register the vehicle later? Both involve paperwork at the DMV at a minimum.

Additional complications:

• My car registration in VT expires at the end of this month.
• Monthly payments for my existing (VT) car insurance policy are processed at the beginning of each month.
• NYS requires residents to trade in their out-of-state licenses no more than 30 days after becoming a resident.
• Refinancing a car requires an insurance book for the vehicle with the appropriate coverages and the new lender’s name.
• The new lender (in my case), Hudson Valley Federal Credit Union, requires the title and a letter showing the payoff amount to complete the refinancing process
• Most lienholders (who hold the title) do not relinquish the title until the lien is paid in full.

Design an optimal algorithm that accomplishes all of the goals outlined above given the aforementioned constraints that is both time and cost efficient.

Am I missing something?

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Both my finals are now done (Database Systems and Cryptography). Conry and Tino definitely made me work for those grades. Also got my paper for Cold War mostly finished this afternoon and just handed it in. I was just getting into it and didn’t really want to call it done, but I don’t really have any more time to spend on it.

In the last 6 hours I’ve learned more about the PowerPC architecture and gcc’s assembly conventions than I ever wanted to. It’s unfortunate that I can’t really see an application for all of the info I’ve picked up.

32.5 hours remaining.

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Looks like I get to enjoy the North Country for a few more years because I finally heard back from Johns Hopkins’ Institute in Multiscale Modeling of Biological Interactions. Still not locked in for housing for the summer or fall. Hopefully that happens sometime in the next week so I don’t have to worry about it. At least the weather has been nice lately.

This past week was all about Tino piling on more work. I’ve got a pair of compilers assignments to do, a pair of cryptography assignments and on Thursday there was a test in compilers and a quiz in crypto. Plus an exam on Friday for Conry’s class (in addition to having to implement the project by this Friday). Throw in a paper due tomorrow and IBM breathing down my neck, and you’ve got an interesting week.

11 more days and then it’s all over. Then the drinking can begin.

tired of all the drama

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FedEx was much more timely about delivering packages than UPS has been. The DLO TransPod FM transmitter I ordered the other day arrived this morning and I promptly tested it out.

Pros:

• Digital tuner, so you can pick any frequency between 88 MHz and 108 MHz.
• It comes with a bunch of different mounting parts so if the standard car lighter adapter doesn’t work, you can go all Lego-mania and change it.
• It’s got power — it will completely overwhelm any radio station.

Cons:

• No hold/lock button. I already changed the frequency on accident several times this afternoon.
• Flattens the sound terribly. Fiddling with the equalizer on both my radio and the iPod didn’t really improve things.
• Volume on the radio needs to be cranked way up, so you need to be careful if you change the station.

So far I’m still happy with the purchase though. It’s still nicer than the analog tuner I had previously and it’s nice to have it mounted in a decent location so I don’t need to fumble for it while driving.

This afternoon I was cleaning up the place and ended up ripping and watching Seether’s music video for Fine Again, which I hadn’t seen before. I thought it was pretty cool, mostly because of the people holding placards with various “personal” messages on them. Also ripped 20 - 30 CDs that have been sitting at home. It used to be rather painful to rip CDs with the 24x drive on my laptop, but now that I have a 52x drive in my desktop, it takes almost no time at all.

Ended up hearing from Dartmouth today, and it looks like I won’t be going there next year. Rather disappointing because I know a bunch of the faculty, staff, and students there and would have been more than happy to live in the Hanover area. I’m still waiting to hear back from two more schools, but I have no chance whatsoever of being accepted to Berkeley. I’m still holding a little hope that I might get into JHU, but that’s also a longshot.

Anyone know of some decent apartments in the Potsdam area?

Update: while I’m thinking about it, does anyone know of any decent frameworks or tools for building webapps with PHP? There are a bunch of little dynamic things I’d like to do, but I’m too lazy to implement most of them from scratch. Ideally I’d use Zope (*gasp*) or Struts, but my hosting plan doesn’t include servlet/JSP support (oh how I wish I had a box in a colo facility).

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That’s all. Carry on.