A couple of week ago, Netflix announced that they were dropping the feature called "profiles." With profiles, you could setup separate sub-accounts for other family members, and assign some number of DVD's to each profile. We're on the four-at-a-time plan, and I setup a profile for my son Thomas, with one DVD assigned to it. This means that he has his own queue with stuff he wants to watch, and his stuff isn't mixed in with mine. It worked beautifully.

And then about two weeks ago, Netflix announced that they were killing the feature in order to make the service "better" for everyone, or some such crap. I complained to them. Apparently lots of other people did, too, because about 10 minutes ago I received an email from Netflix that made me very happy.

It's really nice when companies actually listen to their customers.

Some of you know that I left Jobkabob at the beginning of June, to work for Spectrum K12 School Solutions. It's going well, thanks. For the past three years or so, my blog has been hosted on a Jobkabob server, but since I was leaving, I had to find another home for it. I was going to just buy a virtual server with GoDaddy, but a guy at work mentioned SliceHost, so I decided to check them out. I liked what I saw, and I am now running on a "slice." Setup was painless and moving my blog was cake, since I moved it from one Ubuntu system to another. What was really cool was that within about 3 minutes of setting up the account, the "machine" was ready to go. I know they're just cloning VM images, but it's still neat. I like the price, too. It's cheaper than GoDaddy and at least I don't have to put up with all the crappy ads on GoDaddy's site when I need to manage the machine. :-)

So, if you're reading this, then you are seeing the blog on the new server. If you're not reading this, you won't know it.

If you are in the market for a virtual server hosting solution, give SliceHost a look. And if you sign up, be sure to use my referral code so I get some lovin' from SliceHost, OK?

I received this photo in the mail today along with a puff letter allegedly from the man himself. It was basically, "I'm running for Prez because blah blah blah" and the same old promises he's been making. Though no mention of drilling for oil in our own country or of stemming the tide of the Mexican invasion.

Oh yeah, and a plea for money. He wants as much as he can get, but he's not getting a dime from me. I gave money to the RNC once, and all it seemed to be used for was to ask me for more money. Last year, I gave money to Fred Thompson's campaign, but all I got for that was a lackluster 'campaign' by Thompson until he finally just gave up and went back to the set of 'Law & Order.' I may have given Bush 43 some money back in 2004, but I can't remember.

McCain sucks as a candidate and he would suck as president. But he won't get the chance to prove or disprove that, since he's going to have his lunch eaten in the general election by Jesus Obama. As much as I hate to say it, Jesus Obama is going to win, and win big, in November.

Yesterday I received a packet in the mail from Disney's Pirates of the Caribbean Online game. I am a charter member or something like that since I joined up really soon after it launched and I might have paid for some length of time. Anyway, so this packet comes with some neat maps and such, but also some glaring spelling errors in the first paragraph.

I was shocked at those. Disney usually has much better quality control, so I'm really surprised this slipped out the door. For those of you scratching your heads about what's wrong with the circled words, let me 'splain. "You're" is a contraction of "you" and "are". The word they really wanted was "your." And "adieu" is French for "goodbye." The word they wanted was "ado," as in "Much Ado About Nothing."

Come on Disney people, you can do better than that.

Drudge has a link to this revolting story which showcases, once again, how Democrats lust for your money. Dems in the House are proposing a "millionaire tax" on those evil, wicked, filthy "rich" people. It's only on those "rich" and not "working people," of course, since "rich" people don't actually, you know, work. The telling bit in the story is this

"What we're talking about is a one-half percent income tax surcharge on incomes above $1 million," said Rep. Mike Ross, D-Ark., a leader of the Blue Dog group. "So someone who earns $2 million a year would pay $5,000. ... They're not going to miss it."

It's called "incrementalism," and it's where those jackasses in Congress get things passed a little at a time. It's also called "class warfare" where they get "working people" to hate those evil, wicked, "rich" people in order to pass their agenda. "They're not going to miss it," eh? Who the hell are you to decide how much I will miss? What if Mr. Mike Ross thinks that somebody wouldn't "miss" $100,000? Does that make it OK for Mr. Mike Ross to just take it? I mean, that's only 10%, who would miss that? And for the poor schmuck making $2 million a year, it's only 5%! What a deal!

There's also this

Still, the development allows House Democrats to keep promises to adhere to pay-as-you-go budget rules that were a top campaign plank in 2006.

It would never occur to a Democrat to cut spending in another area in order to offset new spending. The knee-jerk reaction of a Democrat is to raise taxes on those evil "rich" people since, "they're not going to miss it." (In fairness, the knee-jerk reaction of Republicans seems to be to just not worry about where the money is going to come from for their new spending, which isn't any better from a fiscal perspective.)

Also notice that the $1 million limit is only for couples. If you're single, the tax would kick in at $500,000. That doesn't exactly sound "rich" to me.

I saw this bumper sticker yesterday and snorted Pepsi out my nose. I refuse to vote Democrat, and I can't stand John McCain, so who can I vote for? I don't know. Bob Barr has just announced that he's seeking the Libertarian Party presidential nomination, and the LP seems to have changed their position on immigration to something sane, so maybe the LP will be an option. Still investigating.

Go buy your own Cthulhu 2008 bumper sticker today.

And if you don't know who Cthulhu is, WikiPpedia is your friend.

Someone wrote to tell me that MiddleClickClose was no longer working after upgrading to Safari 3.1.1. I hadn't yet installed the latest version, so this was news to me. I just upgraded, but MCC still worked for me. I'm not sure what the user's problem was. Maybe he upgraded from Safari 3.0 to 3.1.1, skipping 3.1, which I can see how that would have broken it for him.

I did change the MaxBundleVersion in Info.plist to 5525.18, which is the current version of Safari, so if you're having problems, install the copy linked below. Or edit the Info.plist file in MiddleClickClose.bundle/Contents yourself.

• Binary — MiddleClickClose.zip
• Source — MiddleClickClose-Src.zip

The Ludwig von Mises Institute has an excellent article called Economics 101: The Price of Gas that everyone should read. It explains how much of the price of each gallon of gas goes to those "greedy" oil companies, how much goes to our wonderful, benevolent, altruistic government, and how prices have changed since the 1950's. It also compares prices in other industries with a critical statistic, called the profit margin. Go read the article, now.

Last night before I went bowling, I decided to get something to eat. I wracked my brain to come up with some place that I haven't eaten at 900 times recently, and finally settled on Applebee's on Hwy. 124. I was seated and after what seemed like about 5 minutes, the waitress finally came over. I ordered a Coke and the Crispy Orange Chicken Bowl, without the mushrooms. She responded, "I'll see if they can pick them out for you. It's a mix." I responded that I have gotten the dish there before without mushrooms, so it shouldn't be a problem. For the record, a better response would have been, "OK" rather than, "I'll see if they can pick them out." After placing my order I commenced to reading my book while waiting for my food to arrive.

After 10 minutes or so, the food arrived, but the chicken and broccoli pieces were too large to manage in the bowl, so I asked for a small plate to cut them up. As I started cutting the chicken, I noticed something: it was completely raw on the inside. Not just one piece, but all of it. I called the waitress over and showed it to her. She took it, but didn't seem overly concerned. I asked for a manager. The manager came over and after I explained what happened, she expressed a modicum of concern, though not as much as she should have. She said, "I'll have to check the grease temperature. Everything is on a timer." Well, yeah. If your grease is not hot enough (or is laden with gunk) then your cook times will need to be longer. But since the kitchen staff at places like this doesn't actually cook, they only warm things up and mix things, I guess expecting them to know that is asking a bit much.

Anyway, I told her that I didn't have time for a reorder and I was just going to leave. She didn't make me pay for my Coke, but didn't offer anything else as a concession. Good management, there.

As I was leaving, I heard my name called. I turned and saw six of the people from my bowling league. I went over to talk and right as I walked up, one of them was calling for their waitress. Guess why. Her chicken was also raw! When I saw this, I said (rather loudly), "Hey! They gave you raw chicken, too!" I found out later that the manager didn't even bother to come out to talk to them, nor did she take the raw chicken off the bill.

As it turns out, they got a 79 on their most-recent health inspection. I won't be going back any time soon.

I subscribe to a lot of podcasts, and lately I've been subscribing to lots of video podcasts. I love watching GeekBrief in ginormous HD format. But not all of the videocasts come in that large format, so I have to right-click on them and select 'Double Size.' But the next time I watch GeekBrief, it spans both monitors, because iTunes applied my 'Double Size' selection to this video as well.

What would be nice is if iTunes remembered your video settings for each subscription instead of one setting for all. This would allow me to set 'Actual Size' for GeekBrief, but 'Double Size' for The Buzz Report. That would be really nice.

On Idol last night, Jason Castro announced that he was going to sing 'Over the Rainbow,' as performed by Brudda Iz. When I heard that, I thought, 'OK, this is either going to be insanely great, or really awful.' As it turned out, it was unbelievably great. He captured the essence of Iz's version, but he owned it, too. And he played the ukulele! I was almost speechless when he finished. He got praise from all three judges, which he richly deserved.

You can buy Jason's version of the song from iTunes, which I just did. I'm on my second listen right now. Wow.

I announced here that I had updated MiddleClickClose to work with Safari 3.1, but that it had problems loading under Safari 3.0. Actually, the problem was that it wouldn't load on a PPC chip; I was testing on my iBook G4, but I hadn't generated a universal binary. That was caused by having the iPhone SDK installed. Anyway, I dropped back to Xcode 3.0 and got a universal binary built, and now everything is happy.

If you want the plugin, ensure you have SIMBL installed, download the binary package below, and unzip it in ~/Library/Application Support/SIMBL/Plugins and restart Safari.

• Binary — MiddleClickClose.zip
• Source — MiddleClickClose-Src.zip

As usual, it's distributed under the GPL.

According to this story, a short "anti-Koran" film has been taken offline due to death threats against the site hosting the film. On this Digg thread, there are lots of asinine comments about this story, and Islam in general, but also one gem. In response to the (probably facetious) question, "How could anyone feel threatened by someone who adheres to the religion of peace?", one digger replied

"It's the religion of peace and we will kill anyone who says it isn't."

That, friends, is becoming an axiom. Yes, I know there are billions of Muslims around the world who aren't participating in violence. But there are increasing numbers who are threatening violence against anyone who says anything about their cult^H^H^H^H religion, and far too many willing to carry out those threats.

As I reported two days ago, after I installed Safari 3.1, my MiddleClickClose extension stopped working. Well, I've gotten it working again. , but it doesn't load under Safari < 3.0. So, only install this version if you are using Safari 3.1. If you are using an older Safari, use this one.

• Binary — MiddleClickClose-Safari3.1.zip
• Source — MiddleClickClose-Safari3.1-Src.zip

As before, I'm releasing this under the GPL.

I just checked my Activity Monitor to see how much of my 6 gigabytes of RAM was in use. I was shocked (shocked!) to discover that a Java RMI server program (that I wrote) appeared to be using a bit more virtual memory than it should. Take a look at this screenshot of this process:

I'm sure it's just a reporting error, but it was still funny to see.

If you install the new Safari 3.1, my MiddleClickClose extension stops working. The first time you launch Safari, SIMBL complains that the plugin hasn't been tested with this version of Safari, but that's easily fixed by putting the proper version 5525.13 in Info.plist for the tag MaxBundleVersion. Once that's done, the extension loads, but doesn't seem to do anything. The problem is that the system is no longer delivering a mouseUp event when you middle-click a tab. I'm not sure what's going on, but I will look into it. I've become dependent on my middle-clicks...

Like 10 million other iPhone fanboys, I applied for the Apple iPhone developer program. Today, one week after applying, I received this email

Thank you for expressing interest in the iPhone Developer Program. We have received your enrollment request. As this time, the iPhone Developer Program is available to a limited number of developers and we plan to expand during the beta period. We will contact you again regarding your enrollment status at the appropriate time.

Thank you for applying.

Best regards,

iPhone Developer Program

And I've seen lots of other people on Twitter complaining of getting the same email. One disappointed reject said this

As I understand it, no one got in except for a handful of large partner companies alla Google.

It's bad enough that the "free SDK" isn't actually free since you have to pay $99 to be able to load your apps on your own iPhone, but now they're rejecting hopeful developers in bulk. They ought to let everyone in who wants in. What's the harm?

Gee... I wonder if I'm violating some NDA by blogging this? I'm sure some of the helpful souls on the xcode-users list will let me know if I am.

Oh yes, we haz it. Thomas has been playing for hours. I've played for an hour to two, myself. It's very cool. We haven't played online yet, but we're working on it. Thomas and I have both created stages using the stage editor. I really like when you can customize a game.

Like 10 bajillion other Mac fans yesterday, I downloaded the iPhone SDK. It took me four tries to get it, but I finally got it. I installed all 5.3 GB of it, and rebooted (reboot? what is this, Windows?) and then created a sample project, just like the ADC video shows. I excitedly clicked the 'Build and Go' button and... nothing. Well, not completely nothing, but not what was supposed to happen.

What was supposed to happen was that the app would build, the iPhone simulator would start up, the app would be loaded onto the simulator and then it would run. My app built, but the simulator didn't run. All I saw was 'Debugging of "Sample" ended normally' in the Xcode status bar. I checked the Xcode console, and I get this every time I try to run the app:

[Session started at 2008-03-07 16:42:09 -0500.]
2008-03-07 16:42:10.772 Sample[1326:10b] Warning: CFFIXED_USER_HOME is not set!
2008-03-07 16:42:10.793 Sample[1326:10b] Warning: ASPEN_SIMULATOR_ROOT is not set!
Terminating since there is no system event server.
(Run the EventPump or pass the argument "-RegisterForSystemEvents" if you want to run without SpringBoard.

The Debugger has exited with status 0.

I've been exchanging emails with people inside Apple about this and the only suggestion so far was to run the uninstall script in /Developer/Library and reinstall. I have done both, but it still doesn't work. Upon the suggestion of a friend, I created a new user account, logged in as that user and tried from there. Everything worked. Which means Xcode, the SDK and the simulator are all installed properly, but something in my account is dorking things up. I am loath to ditch my account and start over from scratch, but obviously something is wrong. Does anyone have any suggestions? I am awaiting another email from my guy at Apple, but if anyone else knows anything, please let me know. And when/if I get it working, I will document what worked here.

03/08/2008 21:47 Update: It's working! w00t! It appears that if you are running Xcode in 64-bit mode, you get the errors that I got. If you run Xcode in 32-bit mode, it works. Now, I had switched to 64-bit mode when I installed Xcode 3.0, but when I installed 3.1, it got reset to 32-bit mode. Only it didn't get reset, at least not for my user account. That's why when I created another user account, it worked for him. I right-clicked on Xcode in my dock and selected 'Show in Finder.' Then I right-clicked on the Xcode icon and selected 'Get Info.' On the Get Info screen is a checkbox labeled 'Open in 32 Bit Mode' and it was checked. I unchecked it, launched Xcode and the same problem happened. Then I re-checked it, re-launched Xcode, and now the simulator works. If I uncheck it, the problem returns, proving the cause. Thus, you must run Xcode in 32-bit mode and even if you think you're running in 32-bit mode, it wouldn't hurt to toggle that checkbox a time or two just to make sure. (Thanks to Daniel Cliche who suggested the 64-bit problem.)

As much as I would absolutely hate to see Obama or Hillary win the White House in November, a very large part of me would just love to see John McCain get screwed by McCain-Feingold. That would be some sweet justice.