My self imposed election day embargo

I've begun to develop many beliefs related to democracy. Some examples, I am a firm believers of term limits, one factor in me not voting for Bloomberg. Secondly, I am for a starship troopers-esque form of earned suffrage/citizenship, although the Michael Z Williamson book Freehold turned me on to the idea.

However, one of my stranger beliefs is that one should not talk about elections on election day. On the first Tuesday after the First monday in November, I do not encourage or discourage the act of voting in particular, and I don't mention the particulars of the election. Despite these strong beliefs, I have to this date managed to not injure or kill the those that stand right outside the polling place with pamphlets.

A (hopefully) short-winded post on my long-windedness

I tend to be long winded in my written and spoken works. I just published a post on another blog. What will probably never get posted is the article I stopped writing before starting that one. The unpublished article amounts to a preface to the article I published. The only reason it is not deleted is I am an unapologetic packrat.

This over-prefacing is quite typical of me. I need to address it. Knowing to stop writing a post just as I am getting to the point, so I can start a new article that "gets to the point," is a good strategy. Maybe one day I will publish something on a blog, and later publish my "overprefacing" as the back story.

Batteries, the tires of laptops

As mentioned before, I drive a 2005 Toyota Corolla. In addition to being the car I learned to drive a manual on, it is also my first new car. Before that had a 92 shadow and a 94 Sable. Both were given to me.

I dumped a lot of money into the Shadow and the Sable. I've dumped less in the Corolla, if you don't count oil changes.

One conclusion I've come to is that you can't count tire maintenance as part of maintenance. Well you can certainly factor in tire wear, and the costs of special tires, if your tires are not of a standard size and mounted on steel wheels. I'm talking about the cost of repairing flats and dented rims and steel wheels.

Flats can happen to anyone, as can dented rims. The frequency of such a happening depending more on what roads (or lack of) roads you drive on than anything else. There also pretty self contained damage. Sure there can be some strain put on the axle, but unless you ride for miles on a flat, this is hardly noticeable.

The conclusion of this observation is I will rarely consider getting a new car as opposed to replacing its tires. The car would have to be truly on its last legs. A busted hose that I would fix myself would put me into the "maybe its time for a new car" train of though before 4 new tires and a steel wheel.

The same is true of laptop batteries. I was recently given a G4 by someone. I spent $119 for a new battery for it. I did not think twice about the cost of getting a new laptop. Sure part of the appeal of it was "full size laptop with netbook battery life," and the cost comparisons to low end laptops go out the window if you only compare Macs to it. But laptop batteries are strange things. They die at irregular intervals. They are expensive to replace, but third parties often make slightly better performing batteries for the same price. This is especially true of older laptops simply because the third party will put newer more efficient power cells in battery cases designed for older laptops.

So my conclusion is always buy a new battery for your laptop. If you don't think you need a battery, buy yourself a desktop. They make small energy efficient ones that use effecient 2.5" hard drives and laptop CPUs.

Back in the New York Groove

Time for a personal announcement. August 19 2009 at around 18:00 I handed in my laptop for my last day of work with the company I had been with for 2 years 4 months and three days. The next day, a Thursday I started at my new company, walking distance from Penn station.

It was a good run with the company. My main reason for leaving is a job in Bohemia. NY is not practical for a man who lives in queens and has a girlfriend who lives in Jersey City, NJ. The new company is definitely larger, and my role is more front end based than my old job.

The new company is larger than my old company. The people I have met so far are intelligent, and passionate about what they do. I look forward to growing with the new company.

NeatUpload is Neat

NeatUpload is an ASP.NET component that performs http post uploads while displaying a progress bar. This seemingly simply task is actually hard to get right.

I used this once for a site that never launched. The entire site was written in PHP, but I made the upload page in ASP.NET simply because NeatUpload was the only tool I could find at the time to do the job. I exposed my PHP business layer via a web service, and let this one ASP.NET app handle the uploading of large files. The ASP.NET page actually ran on mono, which was not a problem since NeatUpload was originally a mono app.

If I had to upload files again in a PHP app I would probable give swfupload a try. However, NeatUpload is definitely my tool of choice for uploading 

I want to be a Programmer Aristocrat

This past Friday night I was reading a story in the Wall Street Journal about the late Brooke Astor and the legal drama of her estate. It mentioned that if her son's wife gains control of her fortune, many charities will stop receiving her regular donations. That when it occurred to me that I want to be an old money programmer.

I don't say this because of my penchant for single malt Scotch Whisky nor any other eccentricity I possess that some might consider snobbish. I say that because I begin to understand why the rich give to charities.

The rich don't give to charities to avoid taxes, compensate for inner demons, or feel altruistic. The rich, such as Astor Brooke, give to charities to achieve control and change in ways that profitable enterprise cannot. Of course I am speaking in absolutes. However, for many people whom giving money away and raising money is how they spend their time, they are doing so to affect change.

This is what I ultimately want to do. I don't think I will ever be Bill Gates rich. However, I think I can have my own small empire. I can gain a small degree of prominence as an open source programmer. I can write a web app that supplements my income. I might not ever be of the stature of Linus Torvalds or Larry Wall, but I could certainly write a popular open source product, or become a major contributor to one.

Surreal encounter in Bellmore, NY

I was driving to work today and my gas light came on. I stopped at exit 25 of the Southern State Parkway. As I was pumping gas the man driving the SUV in front of me came up and asked me how to get to New Jersey. He had Jersey license plates. He was not a native speaker, and asked me if I spoke Spanish.

I in a response to his query I committed most horrible atrocity. I sent him through Staten Island. My concerns for Holland Tunnel traffic are no excuse.