Adventures in Egotism

Tuesday I walked home and found my car up on the curb. I couldn’t possibly have parked that bad and forgotten it? Did it slide on the ice? Some damage on the driver side bumper showed it had been hit and pushed 2 ft onto the curb. No note on the windshield. Crap. Did I mention I don’t have collision insurance?

I go to my mailbox, and there is a note. The driver left their name, car make and year, their insurance company name and 800 number, and their own policy number. There are good people in the world.

And today Jack’s Towing came to tow it to Progressive’s repair facility. I don’t know if I got to speak with the Jack, but what a jolly Pittsburghy guy. And while I was standing next to the tow truck, hearing Jack’s story about a power tripping officer at the impound, a car pulled up with the window down.

“Is that your car?” “yeah, it got hit” “I saw her hit it! She was gonna write a note and I told her to call 911. What if that note fell off?” “Wow thanks! yeah, someone put it in my mailbox for me” “yeah I told her to call someone. what if it had fallen off!”

So I salut the good people of Pittsburgh.

Poor man’s Skitch, originally uploaded by TfUnQ.

You can approximate Skitch with the Quicksilver “Screen Capture” and “Upload to Flickr…” actions. Just capture part of the screen and choose the Run action. (More details in this Lifehacker article.) Then QS will capture the image and open it up to operate on. Then hit tab and type begin typing “Flickr” or “Upload” to get the upload action. If you want to tag it too, hit tab again and type them in. Then just hit return to send the picture up to Flickr.

I haven’t used Skitch yet, but this is what I understand it does. At least, that’s what I wanted it for. It’s in closed beta right now.

Wish I had thought of this. And I wish my phone camera recorded better videos.

To see behind the curtain, try passingby-looking-right.

If you ever receive messages with file attachments called "noname", here’s what’s up.

There’s a problem in Gmail in parsing messages sent with Apple’s Mail.app.  It seems it’s mostly Apple’s fault.  But since Gmail still hasn’t solved it, you can work around it with this web utility.

I just got a few e-mails from the neuroling mailing list. I was once an aspiring neurolinguist. Now I study open development of educational resources at CMU’s HCII.

So I’ve unsubscribed to the neuroling mailing list. It’s liberating to let go of dreams, to pursue new ones.

Sock exchange at San Francisco laundromat - Boing Boing

Todd Lappin took this photo of a sock exchange at a laundromat in Bernal Heights, San Francisco.

University Fences In a Berkeley Protest, and a New One Arises - New York Times

In Berkeley, Calif., a protest in the trees outside Memorial Stadium at the University of California has been business, and Berkeley, as usual.

Forgive me for venting again about a bad experience with a company policy. This times it’s software activation. Maybe if everyone complains, something will change.

I’m trying to do my research today in JMP by SAS. I used to use R (FLOSS software yay) but I have to use JMP in a research methods course I’m taking. It does look easier and should save me time.

…when it works. Right now I’m trying to get the program to open with the serial number I paid for. Here is my e-mail to their tech support (since their phone support is closed for the day).

Technical Support Form
Problem Description:

Subject: My activation is no longer working

Problem Description:

I purchased and activated JMP 7 on my laptop. I have used it several times over the last couple weeks. Today I opened it again, and it asks me to activate. In the field to enter the serial number is the serial number I entered before. I click to activate and it says that that number has already been used and tells me to call technical support.

I did, but it’s outside your business hours. I am very frustrated that I can’t get my work done because a) your company does not trust its users to pay and b) your activation system is buggy.

UPDATE: An excellent tear-down in Slate: Rigging a study to make conservatives look stupid.. This is why I don’t blog much… because to say anything I can stick to takes more attention and mental energy than I have to spare for a blog. Sometimes that censor takes a break though.

Human Nature is a great column in Slate Magazine. The following is from the most recent: (see the original for better formating)

A study says liberal brains “are more responsive to informational complexity.” Test: You sit in front of a computer screen and wait for a letter to appear on it. You’re supposed to tap your keyboard if it’s an M, but not if it’s a W. The experimenters mix it up but give you more M’s than W’s to see whether you get lulled into tapping when you shouldn’t. Results: 1) On M’s, liberals and conservatives responded equally well. 2) On W’s, liberals were twice as likely to be among the more accurate responders. 3) On electrical measurements of the brain area that monitors conflict “between a habitual tendency … and a more appropriate response,” liberals were five times more likely to show brain activity. Unofficial scientist/media spin: Liberals are smarter. Official scientist/media spin: Liberals are smarter, except when circumstances call for a knee-jerk ideologue. Knee-jerk liberal spin: We’re smarter because we have more agile brains. Thoughtful liberal spin: Then again, maybe we have more agile brains because we’re smarter. (Human Nature’s view: Liberals are smart, except when their knees jerk.) To tap a reply on your own keyboard, enter the Fray.

I cringe to think how this is going to play out on talk radio. I hope Liberals don’t reinforce their stereotype as supercilious and arrogant by touting this and denigrating Conservatives. It should be dealt with soberly and not as a partisan matter. (Like so many things that aren’t.)

This was my problem last night while shopping for a new monitor. I ultimately went with the Dell 2407WFP-HC - over the Samsung 245BW. (So I could connect a Wii, which I still long for.)

xkcd - A webcomic of romance, sarcasm, math, and language - By Randall Munroe