Jim Roepcke's weblog have browser, will travel (est. 1999)

Garage Door Opener

Today we had the damage on our garage door fixed. One of Cheryl's family members who shall remain nameless decided to drive their car into our garage wall and door last month.

For insurance purposes we had to get a number of quotes from people to get it repaired under their car insurance. All of them tried selling us a garage door opener. I've wanted one forever anyway, so this was a convenient time to get it done. Today it was installed, and oh boy I'm soooo happy!

Before, when I wanted to go out and the car was in the garage, I had to open the door, drive the car out, go back into the garage, close and lock the big door, go back through the door that goes into the house, walk around the inside of the house to the front door, and then go back out that door, and lock it, before I could get back into my car and leave. When I got home, Cheryl or I would go into the house, around the main floor to the garage, into the garage, turn on the light, open the big door, and then I could drive the car into the garage and close the door behind it.

Now, I just go into the garage, push a button, drive out, push a button. I get home, I push a button, drive in, and push a button. Done. MMMMmmmmmm.... is good.

Bruce Eckel on Python (and Zope)

Bruce Eckel, Thinking About Computing: 7-02-03 Python Answers

Bruce Eckel is the author of the insanely popular book, Thinking in Java. He has some interesting things to say about Python. Thanks to Rafe for the link.

Still Whhiiiiining after all these years

Dave Winer is still whining that Google's toolbar's new weblogging button only works with Blogger, even though his own software supports the same APIs.

I find it incredible that someone with so many years of software development experience could be so blind to the obvious. (The truly annoying thing is that he's not that blind) The new Google toolbar is beta-level software. If you were the person at Blogger/Google in charge of testing and debugging the toolbar when there are problems, wouldn't you like to have as few variables as possible? And wouldn't it be handy if the toolbar was only communicating with servers which that you (the debugger) had some access to and control over?

I wish Dave would give people the benefit of the doubt he always demands from others. If Google releases the final 2.0 toolbar without support for non-Blogger.com sites, we sure as hell won't need Dave Winer to bitch on behalf of everyone... believe me, they'll hear it loud and clear from every angle. (but not me, because the Blogger API doesn't suit my needs, and I don't use IE, or Windows, and thus I can't use the Google toolbar anyway! )