Driss-A-Blog

MCX for testing

Avi — 2010-06-01T15:06:33-05:00

For testing, if you want to lock down a preference via MCX, here's how to do it. (Thanks to our awesome MacOps!)

1. Find the pref. Look at the manifest file or existing pref file.
2. Create a plist file:

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<!DOCTYPE plist PUBLIC "-//Apple//DTD PLIST 1.0//EN" "http://www.apple.com/DTDs/PropertyList-1.0.dtd">
<plist version="1.0">
<dict>
	<key>com.apple.Safari</key>
	<dict>
		<key>HomePage</key>
		<dict>
			<key>state</key>
			<string>always</string>
			<key>value</key>
			<string>http://google.com/</string>
		</dict>
	</dict>
</dict>
</plist>

3. Install it for the user:

sudo dscl . -mcximport /Users/[username] /path/to/that/file.plist

4. Log out/in.

When you're done, kill it with a

sudo dscl . -mcxdelete /Users/[username] com.apple.Safari Homepage

As a bonus, in the Accounts pref pane, the user will be tagged as "Managed".

Perfect for your next April Fool's joke.

--Avi

Google and Custard Squares

Avi — 2010-04-19T16:30:19-05:00

What's better about working at Google?

A coworker bringing in Custard Squares?

Or another coworker replying to the email:

Stop, collaborate and listen
Ben is back with his brand new invention
Cake that grabs a hold of me tightly
Flows like cream filling both daily and nightly
Will it ever stop? Yo -- I don't know
Turn off his oven, he'll still glow
To the extreme, he bakes a cake like a vandal
Heats it up with his brain, doesn't even need a candle
Slice Slice Baby Vanilla Slice Slice Baby

--Avi

Vision Pt 2

Avi — 2010-04-18T19:48:05-05:00

The haze is clearing. Thursday and Friday were brutal. Triple- and quadruple vision was rampant and I couldn't focus on anything. My screen magnification was up to about 3×, and looking at people was just too much for me.

Then it all cleared. Saturday and today is just totally clear. Well, yesterday was clear, and today's been occasionally punctuated with blurriness. But it's awesome, a hint of what's up.

Tomorrow I go in to get my bandage contact lenses out, and I can stop taking the Vigamox. Still have to keep taking the Omnipred, and the Vitamin C is going to be going for a year.

I just want to know how much longer I have to wear sunglasses.

--Avi

Vision

Avi — 2010-04-14T21:51:22-05:00

When I moved to New York I started wearing contacts. My favorites were the Ciba Night & Day. Drop 'em in at the beginning of the month, pop 'em at the end.

Middle of last year, though, they changed the formulation. Now they're called Air Optix Night & Day, but as soon as I put them in my eyes my eyes had what, as far as I could tell, was an allergic reaction. Watery, mucus, it was just terrible.

And I loved having contacts, to have the whole world available to me, to not hide behind a big lens.

So Monday I got laser eye surgery.

The place: Mandel Vision.

The kind that everyone gets is LASIK. It's quick, no pain, you go in, they slice and dice, and you walk out all happy.

My problem was that one of the machines didn't like me. For half an hour they were putting eye drops in my eyes and trying to convince the machine to read my eyeballs. Nope. Finally they switched to the Pentacam which spit out the report they wanted.

Dr. Mandel decided to go with PRK for safety's sake.

Went in, got updated readings. They gave me a piece of paper with the pre-surgery curvature of my eyes in case my cataract surgeon will need it 50 years from now:

K reading OD: 42.00 42.87×3
K reading OS: 41.25 42.12×172

Um, OK. I don't know if I'm going to be able to hold onto a paper for fifty years. “Can't I just have them call you?” “Well, depends if we're in business fifty years from now.”

Chatted with a fellow patient in the waiting room, and was surprised to find out that she didn't want to know what was going to happen. I find that so weird; if I'm going to sign up for something to be done to me, I need to know the details.

I'll spare the details here. Surgery over they sent me home. Went to bed.

Came back the next morning. Things were a bit blurry, but managed to just eke out a 20/20 result. “That's better than we expected. But it's going to get worse before it gets better. Here's some anesthetic eye drop. For when it starts hurting.”

It's Wednesday now. It's hurting a little, but it's fuzzy as hell. My computer screen magnification is easily 2×. I see double and triple images. But this is all normal. So they say.

--Avi

Big Red

Avi — 2010-02-11T19:39:59-05:00

Verizon is Big Red?

It's a hilarious self-aware parody, and I love the kissing couple homage in the hotel lobby scenes. If you dig around, you'll find the original commercial this is based off of:

Not only is half of it a shot-for-shot remake, the music is note-for-note the same. I didn't realize (until digging around) that you can date these ads by the music (this one and that one share the music and are from the '80s, while this one is much newer, this one goes for a harder rock sound, and this one is a horrible retro abomination).

--Avi

Fish and chips in the city

Avi — 2009-12-29T14:25:01-05:00

Happy 150th to you!

There haven't been too many good places I've been to here in NYC. Here's a brief overview:

Arthur Treacher's
251 E 14th St
★☆☆☆☆
A sad joke. The fish is a rectangular block that mocks the natural shape and taste of fish.

One and One
76 1 Ave
★★★☆☆
The fish is good, but someone there needs to take Batter 101. Presentation is nice but the slightest touch causes the fish to fall to pieces and the batter to slide off. Redemption comes from the 2-for-1 special on Sunday nights at 7pm.

A Salt & Battery
112 Greenwich Ave
★★★★☆
The star off isn't from the awful name, but the prices. The meal is good, but rather expensive. And how can you sell fish and chips separately?

Chipshop
129 Atlantic Ave, Brooklyn
★★★★★
Yes, to get awesome fish and chips you have to go to Brooklyn. Suck it up. The price is reasonable, the serving size is large, and the taste is great.

--Avi

New Wicks Work!

Shira — 2009-12-18T01:13:51-05:00

Happy Chanukah! Chodesh Tov! Shabbat Shalom!

I started using a new kind of wick about four nights ago, and it's working out well. It's the type with a metal tab at the bottom with a wick sticking straight up. You fill the little glass with oil, drop the wick in - make sure there's some wick above the oil - and light. Thank goodness.

All is well here. Hope all is well with everyone out there.
Shira

--Shira

Unhappy Wicks

Shira — 2009-12-13T23:22:14-05:00

I've been lighting oil for the last few years (at least) and I haven't had this kind of a problem yet. My wicks keep drowning themselves. I can't figure it out - they can't be that unhappy.

It's the third night of Chanukah - and they did it again. I had changed the oil (in case it really was the oil) but I'm thinking it's the wicks. I used these wicks last year, so I didn't expect trouble. Tomorrow I'm going wick shopping - we'll try something else.

I didn't want to change the oil and the wick at the same time, otherwise I wouldn't know what worked. So one thing at a time - oil today - we'll try wicks tomorrow.

I'll let you know!
Shira

--Shira

Happy Chanukah!

Shira — 2009-12-11T01:00:37-05:00

Just thought I'd stop by and give a short update on my life.

I'm in Toronto (shockingly enough) and thank G-d all is going well.

Immigration Front - we've received a notice that Jeff has given the okay to be my sponsor. The rest of the permanent residency application has been forwarded to the Canadian Consulate in Buffalo, New York to be reviewed.

The Apartment - it's finally shaping up. We're due to put up pictures (hopefully) this week. Yay!

My Writings - not to worry, I'm still involved. I have two websites:
http://shiradrissman.com - political musings
http://shiradrissman.org - Jewish musings - new article up on Chanukah!

That's my life. I'm still not allowed to work, but various projects are keeping me busy and out of trouble.

Wishing everyone a very Happy Chanukah!
Shira

--Shira

What the bleep?

Avi — 2009-12-07T10:20:21-05:00

What the Bleep Do We Know!?
★☆☆☆☆

Twenty two minutes into the movie I learned a new logical technique I'm calling Advanced Logical Bullshitting. It goes something like this:

Make a bad analogy: “In empty space, matter flits in and out of existence. Kinda like thoughts do.”
Turn it into a simile: “Matter is like thought.”
Assume it to be literal truth: “Therefore, we've established that thoughts create matter.”

I'm not joking. That's the actual argument made by the movie 22 minutes in. That was enough for me; I turned it off.

This seriously angers me. I've seen girls on Facebook who list “Quantum Physics” under “Interests.” Nuh, uh, honey. Not with nothing else in your profile listing the slightest bit of scientific interest. (And no, random quotes from Einstein about God don't count.)

If you want to claim that you create your own reality through your thoughts, fine. That was done in the 70s by Jane Roberts and her Seth books. But don't defend it by making a mockery of logic and science.

--Avi

Dubai

Avi — 2009-11-27T00:10:54-05:00

Bounce a check in Dubai and you go to jail.

Bounce a check and you're Dubai, well, too bad.

--Avi

NSRectFill() and +[NSColor clearColor]

Avi — 2009-10-09T14:55:20-05:00

I'm reading a code review from a colleague when I see this:

[[NSColor clearColor] set]; NSRectFill(rect);

Ouch. I see that's broken, but only because I made the same mistake yesterday. What's wrong?

+[NSColor clearColor] is actually black with an alpha 0. That would be fine but for a subtle fact about NSRectFill(): it ignores alpha. Really! The code, as written above, will fill the specified rectangle with black.

What's going on here? NSRectFill() uses the compositing mode NSCompositeCopy, which ignores alpha. If you want alpha, you must say:

[[NSColor clearColor] set]; NSRectFillUsingOperation(rect, NSCompositeSourceOver);

A quick one-liner, but too easy to get wrong.

--Avi

CrossFitting

Avi — 2009-09-08T21:22:48-05:00

I learned about CrossFit from the My Fat Ass challenge that I did with some friends of mine (we hope to be restarting it soon). I'd had mixed results from doing P90X (mostly involving knees feeling like they were going to tear), and so the opportunity to do things under professional supervision was appealing.

So I joined up at CrossFit Virtuosity and started on their Foundations classes. Once I've got the basic form down I hope to move up to the “regular” classes. But I got a taste of that yesterday when we had a joint Labor Day class.

Warmup was tossing a medicine ball back and forth between partners. Then we split off into teams of 6, leaders selected by jumping onto a platform. Keith had a gleeful smile as he scribbled the task on the board:

Team workout
Sandbag sprints (each member)
100 pullups (per team; each member must do at least one)
100 wheelbarrow pushups (per team; each member must do at least one)
Overhead kettlebell carry (each member; 16kg, one roundtrip per arm)
3000m row (per team; each member must participate)

I did surprisingly-well on the sprints (surprising to me, anyway), did some pullups (not very many), more pushups, and I hung in there with the kettlebell (my left arm doesn't like doing that).

The last part was the row, and we all did 500m (except for one team member who did 250m). I had 2250–2750 and it winded me. I powered through it, kept excellent pace, and just about collapsed after. Spent 5 minutes just breathing through the pain. Then when I didn't feel like gasping any more, every muscle in my body just hurt. So I laid down for a while longer. Eventually I got up and started walking and talking. We'd lost by 24s, but had made a major comeback.

One thing I realized was that CrossFit is essentially all nerds. I never thought I'd be talking about web browsers and coding and hacking with gym mates, but I was pleasantly surprised.

And I'm finding myself eerily looking forward to the next time. Strange, huh?

(more photos...)

--Avi

Adventures in Immigration

Shira — 2009-08-17T17:22:47-05:00

Immigration to Canada is no simple thing, even for an American. One would think, "Hey! I'm an American - here I am." Nope, that doesn't happen sorry to say.

I've been working on my permanent residency papers. Which means that I've been given 6 months to get the papers and information collected that will allow me to continue living in Canada. My 6 month deadline is approaching at the end of September.

Here is the excitement so far.

About two weeks ago Jeff and I went to go get my fingerprints taken. I needed three sets - one to send to the FBI, one set to the State of Michigan, and the third set to the State of New York. Basically I would send to any place I've lived in the last 10 years. Thankfully I haven't been that many places. We found an official place that would take my fingerprints and went to see what we would find. We found a nice lady who was quite efficient at taking fingerprints. It makes sense since she said she sees about 20 people a day.

Next part of the big excitement was today. My medical exam. Nothing tremendous, just exhausting. I knew in advance that the appointment was supposedly going to take two hours, but I didn't know how it was going to be broken down.

We got to the doctor's office at 10:45am where they sent us two buildings over. We walked over. It was hot. With the humidity built in - it's around 100 degrees today. I had blood taken, HIV and whatever else they wanted to know about. She did an okay job taking the blood, but I'll have a bruise where they took it.

We headed back to the doctor's office where they sent us to the basement of the same building to get an x-ray of my lungs. There was a long line ahead of us. That actually turned out to be useful since they didn't accept credit or debit - only cash or check, which we didn't have on us. We took about 15 minutes to find a bank in the area and return, and we still waited. In the meantime, we texted Talya and smiled at little children. I finally got called in and x-rayed.

We returned a third time to the doctor's office. I met the doctor, nice enough lady, and answered her questions. I got to tell her about my gallbladder surgery and ACL surgery. That being said, she told me that I am unremarkable. I'm quite happy to be unremarkable medically.

Then we went home and had lunch. After lunch I laid down for almost two hours. I'm feeling better now.

So the major stuff is out of the way. We're waiting for the FBI, the States of Michigan and New York to send my criminal record (nothing there) back to me. The doctor's office will ship my records directly to the Canadian immigration people. And I have some more papers to fill out in the meantime. When I get all my records shipped to me - I collect it all and ship it along... and wait at least six months to hear from them.

We're also going to fill out work permit forms at the same time to try to allow me to work while we're waiting to hear about permanent residency. Yay!

In the meantime, I'm writing on my blog and puttering around the house. Good fun had by all.

--Shira

Replacement foam earpads

Avi — 2009-07-27T21:02:57-05:00

One of the fun things about using earbuds is having to occasionally replace the foam pads.

Option #1: Go to Radio Shack. Get a 4-pack for $4 plus tax. Bought this twice already. Ow.

Option #2: eBay seller ZanyZap's 450-pack for $9. Shipped.

Hmmm...

--Avi