IDE Survey

• IntelliJ - BMW
• Eclipse -General Motors
• Netbeans - Hyundai (maybe VW) - someday a Volvo?
  
• VI - Fixed Gear
  
• VIM - Lance Armstrong's bike
• GVIM - a recumbent bike

My use:

• Netbeans 80%
• Eclipse 10%
• GVIM 10%

Obsolete Computer Disposal

I have a bunch of these things sitting in my house. They gather dust in the den.

Here's what I've thought of,

1. Let them continue to gather dust. Even when they are off, they still seem to gather dust pretty well. At my dad's house there's still a PCjr sitting in the garage. Maybe the Microsoft 128K sidecar with original mouse will have collectors value?
2. Turn the old laptop (200Mhz) into a digital picture frame. I spent about 6 hours getting an OS (Damn Small Linux) installed on it. Wireless (802.11b) too! Then I used it for 30 minutes before my wife asked me why.
3. Ebay - the whole posting and shipping seems like a lot of work.
   
4. Craigslist - I'm not sure I want all these people in my house.
5. Recycle - Since these computers actually work, seems like a waste.
   
6. Donate the whole lot to FreeGeekChicago and take the lazy way out. Maybe it's sassy if I donate some time along with the hardware?

What do you guys do?

My vs. Your

Michael recently made one of his pet peeves known to me. He prefers a web app to say "My Settings" as opposed to "Your Settings". I never really thought about it before, but I think I prefer "Your Settings". I'm guessing this is a perception issue, perhaps due to a difference between desktop and server-hosted apps.

On a web app, I think I feel like the server is talking to me: "Here are your settings that we are storing on our servers for you." With a desktop app, perhaps I'd feel more ownership over the data and I would expect the button to say "My Settings".

Or maybe because I am writing the software, I'm thinking as a service provider when I write "Your Settings" in a link.

Anyone else? Is there a Strunk & White for user interfaces that provides a rule?

Moose Tacos

From Colbert excerpted from the Fact Checker,

I will give the last word to failed Democratic presidential candidate and fake news commentator Stephen Colbert who described the superhighway as a scheme "to make Canada, the U.S. and Mexico one country and force us to eat moose tacos." After investigating the matter, Colbert concluded that it must be true "because I got it from the Internet."

pobox.com move...

Time for an inane question:

I'm getting a little sick of paying pobox.com $20 every year, but so many people have that address. I just renewed for another year and my New Year's resolution is going to be to move all humans to my gmail address. While it will be a pain to change all my accounts to gmail, I can do that. I just don't know the best way to get people to change.

Any thoughts on the best way to do this that would be the least annoying? At least with my contacts, mass emails don't seem to work as some people are still calling a phone number I haven't had for 5 years. My "reply-to" has been gmail for a long time, to little avail.

I was thinking of setting up an autoresponder that will send a form message to anyone that sends to pobox telling them that in the future they should send it to gmail. But that's pretty annoying. Then again, I really don't have that many friends. I could even do it by hand each time a pobox email arrives.

Only possible on the Internet

If we didn't have the Internet, how would we know things like this exist?

It's been a long time

So I went to the mailbox the other day and was surprised to see an envelope from the law firm of Linebarger Goggan Blair & Sampson, LLP. Surprised really to see a letter from any law firm. Having been through the lawsuit wringer before (well maybe it was a washboard not a wringer) I was a little nervous to open the envelope. Nervous enough that I had to open it right there and then standing on on my driveway. I was hoping for stupid junk mail or maybe some Nigerian e-mail scam turned postal.

After opening the envelope and pulling out the letter I tried to quickly process it. The letter said something about parking tickets for a license plate that didn't belong to either of my cars. But wait... the license plate does seem a bit familiar... and what is the date on those tickets? 1998? Oh crap. Then I remembered the license plate of the car I owned almost 10 years ago. The license plate that is still in a box in the basement on top of the license plates from all the cars that I've owned, my parents have owned since I've been alive, and maybe some others I've collected.

As you may have guessed by now, this was a letter from a law firm representing the City of Chicago. The city decided that after 9 1/2 years I owe $440 for 4 tickets - straight up. Do I remember getting those tickets? Not specifically. But I do remember that was the year I left Chicago (and the state) and sold the car to a junkyard for $25. I remember that was the last summer for that car and that it didn't work very often. It certainly seems possible that I got some tickets, but I don't remember specifics. Really most of the details are blurred through the lens of 9 1/2 years.

To add insult to injury, the glorious City of Chicago has informed me that I've been found liable through an Administrative Hearing process. This process is now over, my time to contest the tickets has come and gone, and this is my final notice. The final notice was sent via regular mail - not registered mail or something to prove I received it. If I don't pay they claim they could put a lien on my property or garnish my wages. Why is this the first letter I've received? It's not as if I've been hiding out under a false name. Granted, I did leave town for a couple years, but I've lived in Illinois for the last 7 1/2 years. Was I really that hard to find? I have a drivers license, two cars registered in my name, and I faithfully pay state income taxes.

Should I pay? I think I'll consult with my attorney.