Externals

I hate going 10 days without writing.

Internet is still on hold. They needed on the roof to install the antenna, and I don't have the key. The process to get the key involves asking my management company, which asked my community president (of the neighborhood), who has to ask everyone in the community if they object to the antenna. It's a wonder anyone makes any improvements at all to their homes with such a process. Sadly, I'm sure many neighborhoods in the US operate similarly. Something tells me this will drag on for a week or two, at which point, if they say yes, I'll have to get a new installation appointment and wait another few weeks. If that is the case, probably not going to be worth it.

This week a group of high schoolers from Burbank, California is here. I guess it is their spring break. Unfortunately it has been raining and cold all week, some spring break for them. They seem to be making the best of it though. Three are in my class and they are amusing. Talking to 16 year olds makes me feel ancient though. When they asked what I studied, I told them that I had already graduated. Then they asked what college I was planning to attend. It took me a second to realize that they thought I was talking about graduating from high school. Heck, I've been out of college well over a year now. Crazy.

Spent the last hour or so fixing my screwed up vendor directory in my rails project. Not entirely sure what was going on, but it would error when I tried to update, commit, cleanup, delete, or change the svn properties. Finally resorted to nuking it completely in the Repository Browser and exporting the latest rails tag and all the plugins instead of using svn:externals. In the process of committing all that now. I think I like the idea of keeping it cleaner anyway.

Bah, today is just not my day. Commit won't work because of a subclipse bug. And, long story short, have to wait for Joe to do something tonight before I can finish committing it.

Tonight I have to write a paper for conversation class. Que Guay! I'm just going to quit writing before I start whining.

UI

The last couple days I have been schlepping my laptop around to various places to use free wifi. In the process I have had to reboot many times (I dual boot gentoo and windows [for games]) in order to play a random game of DotA in between programming sessions.

If you are like me, by the time your computer boots up, you already have about six programs in mind that you need to start. For instance, booting into windows for DotA, I open up the healthbar hotkey script, the war3 banlist, gaim (to see if any of my friends want to play), and War3 itself. When I boot into gentoo, I usually open gaim, firefox, eclipse, a terminal or three, etc...

The continuous rebooting this weekend led me to discover the single most annoying UI problem ever in the existence of man... focus grabbing.

For instance, in windows, I get the hotkey script and banlist open right away, while war3 is loading up... but then after I'm into War3 trying to get on bnet, gaim decides that it is very important that I see my buddy list load up. After this annoyance, I'm back in War3, maybe even into a game, when someone IMs me. If a convo window is already open, no problem. If it opens a new convo window, obviously it's necessary to rip me out of my game and show me my new message (*sarcasm bleeds*).

You would think that Gentoo would be better to me, but every new app I open demands my attention at random after loading. Azureus grabs focus every time I add a new torrent to it. Gaim acts the same as in Windows. Eclipse plays nice mostly, but firefox pops up windows demanding my attention all over the place. (Although I did find the awesome download bar plugin that minimized some of that.)

Grabbing focus should be on the canonical list of UI no-nos. It destroys the user's flow. It's like a forceful context switch for your brain. I believe this is why popup ads are so annoying. They are basically a forced context switch. Instead of continuing with whatever you have at hand, you must pay attention to this interrupter. It is both disorienting for novice users and downright death-by-1000-annoyances for experienced users.

If software needs your attention, it should flash in the taskbar. It can play sounds. It can blink it's systray icon. It shouldn't just assume that whatever it needs is more important than whatever you are doing.

The same goes for forms in webpages. I can't count the number of times I have been typing in my password to a bank/credit card site and the page finally finishes loading and an asinine onload event moves the focus to the username field. This is especially annoying when someone is looking over my shoulder. Nothing better than having my password shown in plain text.

So I make a resolution to never manipulate the focus in any software I write. I will use a message area, blinking taskbar items, whatever. I only wish others would do me the favor of removing their focus grabbing shenanigans.

Das WiMax!

Well finally got a notice that they are coming to install interweb access in my apartment on the 23rd. This means 24/7 net access, which means that I will just sleep less and get out less. On the upside, I won't have to move around constantly searching for net access. Also, instead of 4-5 hours a day (mostly work), I'll have on the order of 10-12... not to mention I'll finally have something to do on Sundays.

Magic site work is coming along. Can now add/remove cards to/from your cart. Next up is the actual price/availability matching. That should be pretty fun. Hoping to work through it Saturday.

Today has been an odd day in general. I just feel like doing nothing at all. I just want to watch a movie, eat junk food, and sleep. No idea why. Hopefully it passes soon.

Paris

So my brother is stuck in Paris overnight. Te lo juro, nunca debes volar al aeropuerto de Paris. (I swear, you should never fly to Paris' airport.) Not only did they lose his bag for a week (he got it back about 12 hours before he left), but now he is stuck there for a 24 hour layover. I guess at least his Europe trip was interesting.

Not much else is new with me. Battery is about to run out, so this will be a quick post. Trying to get as much as the new SG-1 downloaded before that happens. Also looking up vocab to use tomorrow when talking to Joaquin about withdrawing from class.

Hoping for an 80% refund... considering I got a 15% discount originally and my cheap living conditions, I can live with a bit of wasted money. If not, then I guess I'll finish out the courses.

Granada

Well my brother and I have been tourists the last couple days. I took him to Gibraltar on a day trip yesterday to see the Monkeys and the coast of Africa. Today we came to Granada, and are about to head up to the Alhambra.

I must confess that I am looking forward to getting back on the magic project. Problem is that with school and work, this isn't likely to happen for several days. Oh well, at least I can try and squeeze it in. Honestly been debating about withdrawing from school to work on it more full time. I think I might go talk to Joaquin about it on Monday. Part of me thinks its a waste to be in Spain and not focus on learning Spanish, but I don't feel very focused on it anyway. Work I have decided to put up with out of necessity, but at least I can focus on being nerdy most of the time.

Anyway, I feel like I rant about the same thing a lot here, so I'll drop it until something changes.

The weather has been awesome the last week. It's getting into the 70s pretty much every day, with lots of sun. Hopefully the cold days and nights are behind us now.

Well, Ben is back... time to run...

Taxman

Accomplishment for today was doing my taxes. Only getting $71 back though. While normally I would be happy about this, (since I think I can allocate my capital far better than the government can allocate it for me while I loan it to them for a year) my Kansas tax owed was close enough to the penalty line that I think I will adjust my W-4 claims.

Not much else to report, as that consumed most of my internet time. I read a bit about Rails and the stock market. I also caught up on all my work email. How exciting!

Well, off I go to eat some dinner and find something to do with Ben. Hasta pronto!

Que Mala Suerte

Well Ben finally got here. His first flight was delayed an entire day due to bad weather in the US. Then his second flight got into Paris two hours late, so he missed his third flight and had to take another one 7 hours later. When he finally got to Malaga (31 hours later than originally planned), his bag was still in Paris. It was supposed to arrive the next day, but it wasn't there, so now they are supposed to send it to us. At least we are about the same size, so he is wearing my clothes. Hopefully we will get it tomorrow!

Had my monthly test this morning. It was harder than I expected, but I only needed a 50% to pass, and I know I easily got that. Considering I didn't study at all, it was a success.

Randomly read a really good idea for solving the options backdating issue. I agree completely.

Speaking of IRS changes, I should go finish doing my taxes and submit those. Yay (tiny) refund!