Social Media Detox

I recently realized that I have developed a social media addiction. It's like a drug every time you get some kind of interaction or validation, for example a like on a comment, and there is a never-ending stream of distractions that can eat up so much time that could be better spent on the people closest to you, or improving yourself or your situation. So I made a difficult choice and about a week ago I deleted Instagram and TikTok from my phone. I'm not sure at what point I will ever go back to those platforms, but the compulsion to check them is already fading. If I do return at some point, I'm going to greatly reduce the list of who I follow, but at this point it is just easier to go cold turkey on all of it.

Home Screen Effect

Have you ever had that problem that you need something from another room in your home, and you go to that room, and instantly forget what it was you came for? And you can't remember what it is until you go  back to the original room you were in? This is called the Doorway Effect, and it happens because your mind resets itself to focus on what is in the room that you just entered. The unfortunate side effect of this is that you might forget something important.

I experience something similar very often when using my iPhone, which I like to call the Home Screen Effect. I will often be doing something (not using my iPhone), and think about taking out my phone to do something, for example, search on the web, or take a note, or order something from Amazon, etc. Then I pull out my phone and wake it, and there is a notification, and I follow that notification and then forget why I brought out the phone in the first place. Or perhaps I open Safari and it is on a webpage I was looking at before and I get distracted by that. Or there is an unread badge on social media app that I open and get distracted by.

I even sometimes have this problem when using my computer if I have just context switched to it... I see a Safari tab from before and get distracted by that rather than doing what I need to do. I think there is a similar mental process when context switching into using a device to when we context switch into a new room. I don't remember this being an issue when I was first using the Mac many years ago, before the Internet and before multitasking. You would turn on the computer and open the application that you wanted to run and there were very few distractions because everything was so simple.

Similarly, before smart phones, when you wanted to make a phone call or even send a text message this problem didn't exist.

I think I need to figure out ways of changing my home screen to mitigate this problem.

Idea: Letterpress Tournament

Although the current implementation of Letterpress does not lend itself to a tournament (no provision for pass and play or playing someone over Bluetooth or WiFi peer to peer, etc.), I think it would be interesting to play in one.

I think the main elements that would make it different from current play would be the following:

1) time limit (either per turn or an overall Chess clock type limit)
2) no ability to consult the Internet or any other resources to come up with words
3) possibility of spectators/audience watching your game

Netflix Blu-ray vs. DVD confusion

I have Blu-ray enabled on my Netflix account, and have the option set to prefer Blu-ray discs, which is what I want 95% or more of the time. Recently, I was trying to get the DVD version of Rango.

I went into the DVD queue and set the format to DVD, and was surprised that they sent me a Bluray. I proceeded to try again on another sub account and the same thing happened.

So today I called Netflix customer support to find out what the deal is. Apparently they must have had a firestorm of complaints from people about getting DVDs of movies that have Blu-rays available. For example, if you added a movie to your queue and only DVD was available at the time, and then a year or two later they make a Blu-ray of it, it used to be that they would just send the DVD because that was the chosen format. Now, they *ignore* the format that you choose in the queue and just send Blu-ray always if available, assuming you have the automatically send Blu-ray option enabled.

In order to get a DVD of a movie that is in Blu-ray, you have to change to manually choose Blu-ray, which means each time you add a movie to your queue you have to pick the format. Or you have to turn the option back and forth whenever you want to get a DVD.

I can understand that there are customers that may want to always get Blu-ray but it seems to me that this problem could be much more easily solved in a way that would meet my needs as well as the "always Blu-ray" and the "mostly DVD, occasionally Blu-ray" folks.

Basically, they would just need to remember whether you had ever manually changed the format in your queue, and if so, respect that. The preference would simply set what your default format is, either DVD or Blu-ray. Then the list would indicate for each item in the queue whether it was DVD, Blu-ray, or Default (which could parenthetically indicate the preference, or that could be mentioned above the list once, or both).

You could very easily migrate people to this new setup by doing the following for all items in the queue which have a choice of format:

• For manual mode, all items that are set to DVD should instead be set to Default (DVD). Blu-ray items stay as Blu-ray.
• For automatic Blu-ray mode, all items are set to Default (Blu-ray), regardless of the setting in the queue because that is actually how things behave today.

So for those who never visit the queue to set the format, everything behaves as it does today, but if you do set the format, it is respected. There could even be a popup menu on the queue to set the default format easily, which would update all Default items to indicate the proper format.

If Netflix does not change to something like this, I think they need to change the presentation of the queue when you are in automatic Blu-ray mode, so you know that you never ever will get a DVD for any movie which has Blu-ray available... perhaps just don't show the popup menus at all and show things as Blu-ray, and have a link to turn off the option. Alternately, show popup menus with all of them having Blu-ray, and if you try to change it then it should prompt you to turn off the automatic Blu-ray setting.

Without one of these two approaches, the queue is very misleading because what it shows as the format that you will get is completely ignored in automatic Blu-ray mode.

How to use alternate from addresses with Gmail on iPad or iPhone

Gmail has a neat feature that you can associate alternate from addresses with your account and then send as any of those addresses from the web interface. Unfortunately this feature is not available from the mobile web interface for iPhone or iPad. There is another way to do this using the Mail app, however.

You need to set up your Gmail account as a generic IMAP account (not using the Gmail selection). Then simply copy a comma character, and then paste that into the address field and enter all your from addresses separated by commas.

Video stores are in trouble

Traditional brick and mortar video stores are toast... looks like Redbox and Netflix are taking over. See page 13 of Coinstar's quarterly results for a comparison of Q42008 vs Q42009.

http://www.coinstar.com/US/Webdocs/A5-1-16/$file/Q4EarningsCallSlidesUpdateREV022310.pdf

More on dollar coins and modernizing US currency

Here's my latest toy:

It's a Portsou coin holder. It is from a Canadian company... apparently US and Canadian coins are about the same size. It makes paying with exact change and using dollar coins very convenient. Here's a video of it in action.

I was able to get about $20 in Presidential dollar coins at the bank and so I filled up the top two slots with them. I've used them a few times so far and had no problems getting businesses to accept them. Since $20 won't last very long, I decided to order a box of $250 Thomas Jefferson dollar coins from the US mint. They have a special offer with no shipping charges to encourage more coins to be introduced into circulation.

I've talked about things which the US could learn from other countries before. Since then I learned about the Coin Coalition and Save the Greenback, two groups that lobby our federal government both for and against dollar coins. The Coin Coalition is mainly the vending machine industry, and Save the Greenback represents the Bureau of Engraving and Printing employees as well as paper and ink suppliers. I've also read that polls indicate that the public prefers dollar bills to coins. I suspect this is mainly due to ignorance. Most people have probably never seen the new dollar coins, and many think that "In God We Trust" was removed when it was really just moved to the edge. (The latest presidential dollar coins moved "In God We Trust" back to the front of the coin.)

Here's what I would like to see happen to modernize our currency:

1) discontinue the penny
2) stop printing the dollar bill
3) increase production of dollar coins
4) increase production of $2 bills

Doing #1 and #2 opens up space in cash registers to put dollar coins and $2 bills both of which exist and are underused. Eventually I think it would make sense to transition to $2 coins like the rest of the English speaking countries of the world have, but this would be an easy change to do now. Also, increased production of $2 bills might placate Save the Greenback somewhat. Getting rid of the penny will also open up space in pockets and purses for the dollar coin.

The Congressional Budget Office estimated in 2000 that switching from dollar bills to dollar coins would save about $500 million dollars a year due to the much longer lifespan of coins (30 years vs 18-22 months for bills). Getting rid of the penny would probably save some money as well. Printing more $2 bills could offset this somewhat, but that would be worthwhile to get us moving in the right direction. Perhaps after one successful bill to coin transition, the government would be more likely to see the benefit of a $2 coin.

If this transition ever happens, my Portsou will be fine because I can just put a stack of dimes where the pennies are today. This is how it is used in Canada. Also, if we ever create a $2 coin, hopefully it is just slightly larger than the current dollar coin in which case I could put it in the upper left slot where the Canadian $2 coin goes.

What to do when you get a chain forwarded email

This is a public service blog post.

Step 1)

Do not immediately forward this to all your friends/family/coworkers.

Step 2)

Skim the message enough to get the key idea and do a simple Google search to see if there are any web pages about this email. A good site to look at is snopes.com.

Step 3)

Assuming that the email is a hoax, misleading, old news, etc., reply to the sender (and optionally the other recipients) of this message about what you found. That will save everyone a lot of time.

Citibank putting ads in my recent transaction list

Look at this lame move by Citibank:

Is nothing sacred? Is Borders that hard up for business that they need to advertise that they have free shipping on orders over $25? Right next to a transaction with Amazon? I have Amazon Prime so I don't really care. Even without Amazon Prime, this deal is no better than what Amazon does.

A month or two ago there was an ad like this for Dell next to a transaction at the Apple Store. Again, not like this ad is going to change my mind.

They also put ads for signing up for electronic statements and enrolling in some annual fee program to get your credit checked. One more reason I'm going to stop using this credit card and just use my USAA card which doesn't pull this kind of crap on me.

Things the US could learn from other countries

Every time I travel internationally, I notice some things that other countries do better than we do that just make sense. Here's a few of them.

Credit cards - Standardized PIN pads

In Australia and New Zealand, all PIN pads have the same layout of buttons and the sequence is always the same. Swipe/insert card, press button for payment type (cheque/savings/credit), then enter PIN or press OK. Additionally, they can use a PIN for credit card transactions which is quite convenient. US credit cards do not support this feature and require a signature.

Cash

Additionally, cash is much easier to deal with in Australia and New Zealand, for several reasons:

1. include sales tax in advertised price - this leads to round number pricing on most items. It is very common for prices to be whole dollar amounts.
2. no pennies - this one is a no brainer. Just round everything off to the nearest 5 cents (or 10 cents in NZ). Because of reason one above, this is often not even necessary.
3. 50 cent pieces and 20 cent pieces - this reduces the number of coins you need to make change for a dollar. In NZ you only need 4 coins max - a 50, two 20s, and a 10. In Australia it's 6 coins - a 50, a 20, two 10s, and two 5s. In the US you need 11 coins - three quarters, a dime, two nickels, and 5 pennies. Almost half the coins in that scenario are pennies. Update: if you remove the constraint that the total be exactly a dollar you can do it with 10 coins: 3 quarters, 2 dimes, a nickel, and 4 pennies. That's $1.04 total.
4. Dollar and two dollar coins - we have dollar coins and two dollar bills in the US but they aren't really used much for some reason. This is silly because we end up having to replace one dollar bills often due to wear. Coins last much longer than bills. Additionally, the two dollar coin allows you to make change for a 5 with just three coins - a one dollar and a pair of twos.
5. 50 dollar bills - when you withdraw cash from an ATM in Australia or New Zealand, some or all of it comes in 50s. Any business will commonly make change for a 50, even for a small transaction. In NZ, you get a mix of 20s and 50s from the ATM. When dealing with $300 it is really nice to have less bills - six/nine instead of 15 in the US.
6. Plastic money - leave it in a pocket and send it through the wash - no worries.
7. Different color for each denomination - we are moving this direction with the new versions of bills but in other countries each bill is fully a different color rather than just green tinted with some accent. Makes it easier to distinguish and sort bills.

Metric system
I can understand the barriers to change on this, but the metric system makes so much more sense. It seems to be intelligently designed rather than random or haphazard iike the Imperial/statute/whatever system that we have.

In addition to making things hard on ourselves dealing with unit conversions, we have to adjust to metric when traveling.

Not to mention our low performance in science education and trade deficits with the rest of the world... I have to think that switching to metric would at least improve our situation.

Cupertino Election 2009

Well, it's November again and that means it's time for another election. This time it is all local to Cupertino. I voted a couple weeks back, as I am a permanent absentee.

Let's go through the various issues:

Measure B

Measure B is an update to the Utility User Tax, which is not supposed to change anything about our current taxes, but simply to define terms to correspond to current usage. In skimming through the proposed changes, the only thing that stood out to me was that VoIP was specifically included as a telecommunications service in this tax, but I guess that is already the case.

Verdict: YES

Measure G

Measure G is an update to an existing $98 per parcel additional property tax assessment which expires in 2011. The changes are to allow this additional tax to increase by 2% per year (or the rate of inflation, whichever is higher), and to no longer have an expiration date.

The argument against this is that this is an unfair tax and that it will go up too quickly. The tax will go up a minimum of about $20 in 10 years. There is an exemption for seniors already in place that is carried over to Measure G.

Personally, I believe that our schools deserve funding, and to have a small tax which keeps up with inflation does not seem unreasonable at all. In fact, I believe it will benefit the property value and the schools to have this funding secured. A few extra dollars a year is not a big deal to me but will make a big difference for our Cupertino schools.

Verdict: YES

Cupertino City Council

There are three open seats for Cupertino City Council, and seven candidates running. This is definitely the toughest decision I had on this election. I watched two debates with all the candidates, and read a lot of campaign mailings and websites.

In the end I decided to vote for Daniel Nguyen, Darcy Paul, and Marty Miller.

Daniel Nguyen is a Cupertino native who went to Cupertino public schools. He brings a different perspective than many other candidates, being the youngest candidate this time around, and I was impressed that he has a facebook page in addition to the usual candidate website.

Darcy Paul impressed me in two ways: 1) he only sent one campaign mailing on a small card (pointing out that this was to reduce environmental impact), and 2) he was the only candidate that in the debates suggested implementing a school bus program. Growing up in Texas and taking school busses for granted through most of my years in school, I am amazed that in one of the top school systems in the Bay Area we don't have bus service. This creates huge traffic problems at our schools when all the parents have to come pick up the kids at the same time. An additional benefit of a bus program would be that parents would not have to adjust their schedules to pick up and drop off kids, except if the kids needed to get to school early or stay late.

Marty Miller has many years of experience on the planning commission. He seems focussed on ensuring our sales tax revenue is increased and that we keep costs in check. Revitalizing Vallco and filling up our empty office and retail space appears to be his top priority, as well as controlling spending.

Verdict: Daniel Nguyen, Darcy Paul, Marty Miller

Cupertino Union School District Board

This one was easy. There are four candidates and you can vote for three of them. Three of the four provided information in the sample ballot and one did not. Also, apparently two of these three are already on the board and one is heavily involved in the PTA.

Verdict: Gary McCue, Ben Liao, Anjali Kausar

Cupertino Sanitary District Director

Again, an easy choice as only two of the four candidates provided any information in the sample ballot packet. These were also the only two candidates which mailed information to me.

Verdict: Don Sun, Steve Andrews

How to set up port mapping for iChat video chatting

Here's how I set up to be able to receive incoming connections for iChat for video chatting (or audio chatting or screen sharing). These instructions should work for a Time Capsule, AirPort Extreme, or AirPort Express.

Step 1 - Set up static IP addresses

The first step is to make sure that all computers on your home network have static IP addresses. The easiest way to do this is to simply have the AirPort Base Station/Time Capsule hand out the same IP address via DHCP each time. You can do this using AirPort Utility. Select your base station and go to Manual Setup. Under Internet -> DHCP -> DHCP Reservations you should add an entry for each computer.

You will need the Ethernet MAC address for each computer, which you can get in System Preferences -> Network. Go to the interface you use to connect (AirPort or Ethernet) and click Advanced... and go to the Ethernet tab. There will be an Ethernet ID listed which is a sequence of numbers and letters A-F with colons. This is what you want.

Copy and paste this into AirPort Utility, or retype it as appropriate. Then assign an IP address which is below your starting DHCP range. In my example, the dynamic range starts at 200, so anything under 200 would be fine. I use 100, 101, etc. for the statically assigned addresses.

Repeat this process for each computer on your home network that you want to use iChat video chatting/audio chatting/screen sharing with.

An alternative to this would be to use the use DHCP with manual IP address option in System Preferences -> Network. This option works best with desktop machines, since laptops may move to different networks and the static IPs you assign will likely not be valid on other AirPort networks.

Step 2 - Set up port forwarding

Now that you have the IP addresses assigned, you can redirect incoming connections to these static IP addresses as appropriate. This is done in AirPort Utility as well, under Advanced -> Port Mapping.

The port range for iChat is UDP ports 16384-16402. Starting with Mac OS X 10.5 Leopard, iChat will first try 16402, and then continue with the lower numbered ports down to 16393. Earlier versions of Mac OS X use 16384-16392 as well. If you just have one machine you can map the entire range, but if you have more than one, just assign one port to each and then the remaining ports to the computer that is most likely to be used for chatting. Here are some examples:

As you can see, you can enter both ranges of ports with a dash, or a list of ports with commas, or a combination.

Other routers

For other routers, such as LinkSys, you have to use the web configuration interface (which is usually just the router's IP address). As far as I can tell the standard LinkSys firmware does not support static DHCP reservations, but custom firmwares like HyperThibor do.

Port mapping on the LinkSys is done under Applications & Gaming -> Port Range Forward. It is not as flexible as the AirPort, so you will need one line for each continuous range of ports.

Time Capsule update

Last weekend I went ahead and completed the switchover from my old LinkSys WRT54G to the new 1GB Time Capsule as the primary router for the home network.

On the Time Capsule, I had to set up port mapping to match the previous configuration of the LinkSys. I also set up static DHCP mappings to match what was already set up. Enabled PPPoE client and DHCP server.

LinkSys changes:
- reset to defaults
- disabled WiFi
- disabled internet/WAN connection
- disabled DHCP server

I also needed to connect one of the LAN ports of the LinkSys to one of the LAN ports of the Time Capsule.

After setting all this up, I noticed the AirPort menu extra started showing the connected time for the PPPoE connection, which is a bit annoying. Luckily I was able to figure out that you turn this off from a submenu that shows up from the network name in the AirPort menu.

Another discovery I made was that with Leopard it is now possible to have multiple computers on the home network set up to do video chats. The secret was to map different incoming ports to different computers. In Leopard, iChat will try port 16402 and then continue trying lower port numbers down to 16393. Given that the Time Capsule is more flexible with port mapping, it was easy to set aside 16401 and 16400 for the laptops, while leaving all the old iChat ports for the Mac mini.

Already Voted

I've been a permanent absentee voter in California since the switch to electronic voting machines... given a paper trail for accountability and recount purposes I'm no longer opposed to electronic voting, but I just preferred the level of privacy and ease of referring to my sample ballot that the old method allowed.

This election is the first time I am actually turning in my ballot before election day, however. Kathy and I went through the propositions today and made our decisions. It's tough when there are 12 statewide propositions and 4 local propositions. Seems like we are doing the legislature's job for them sometimes.

In the end, I voted no on most of the propositions, though I did vote for a few. I also found a cool new website called Ballotpedia with lots of information for anyone who hasn't voted yet.

http://ballotpedia.org/wiki/index.php/California_2008_ballot_measures

How to transfer local Time Machine backups to Time Capsule

I was able to successfully transfer the backups from our 500GB external FireWire drive to our new 1TB Time Capsule. This was not easy, so I decided to document the process for anyone who is interested.

1) Connect the external hard disk and the Time Capsule (via gigabit Ethernet) to the same computer.

2) Complete a backup to the hard disk, then turn off Time Machine while doing the conversion.

2a) If you have other computers backing up to the same hard disk, make sure those have a current backup as well before continuing.

3) Unmount the external hard disk.

4) In Disk Utility, create a new disk image from device from the external hard disk. Select the partition rather than the whole disk. I saved the image directly to the Time Capsule. This will take a long time. In my case, it took over 12 hours.

5) Unplug the external hard disk.

6) At this point, you have a .dmg with the complete contents of the external hard disk. This needs to be converted to a .sparsebundle image. This can be done using "hdiutil convert -format UDSB harddisk.dmg" on the command line. The sparse bundle will be smaller than the .dmg since free space is not copied into the sparse bundle image. In my case, I had enough space on the Time Capsule to fit both images at the same time.

6a) After the conversion was completed, I removed the .dmg file, and made another copy of the .sparsebundle. This is because I was backing up both my MacBook and Kathy's MacBook to the same external drive. In a single computer case this is not needed.

6b) Next, the two images need to be fixed up to only contain the relevant files and free space on the Time Capsule. I mounted each image and deleted the inappropriate set of backup files. This seemed to work best dragging the top level folder under Backups.backupdb to the trash and then doing rm -rf in Terminal on the files. Emptying the trash might work as well but seems to be slower.

6c) After removing unneeded files, to free up space on the Time Capsule, unmount the disk image. Then run "hdiutil compact image.sparsebundle" in Terminal. This will remove unused band files from the sparse bundle.

7) Configure Time Machine to use the Time Capsule and start a backup. Once a disk image is created, stop the backup. The image should be named <computer>__<uuid>.sparsebundle. Remove this image and rename the sparsebundle you created to match the name. Then do a backup again. You should still be doing this over Ethernet.

8) After the first backup, wireless backups should be fine.

The only other consideration is that the image size may not be correct (500GB vs. 1TB), but I don't suspect to run into that limit any time soon, and it is easy enough to resize using hdiutil.

Time Capsule arrived

We finally took the plunge and got a 1TB Time Capsule to replace our current 500GB Maxtor hard disk which has been backing up Kathy's and my MacBook since we upgraded to Leopard (around the time of my last blog post actually - yes I am lame for not blogging for so long).

So far I am liking the Time Capsule. Right now I have it set up in bridge mode and am still using the LinkSys WRT54G as the main router. Here are some of the tradeoffs between the two routers:

* Time Capsule has a built in hard disk which can be used for wireless backup
* Time Capsule supports USB printer sharing (thinking of moving the inkjet printer to be shared this way - it's currently shared by the Mac mini)
* LinkSys supports dynamic DNS which I am currently using... Time Capsule supports Back to My Mac, but doesn't seem to support dynamic DNS
* LinkSys has 4 100Mbit ports plus 1 uplink port, Time Capsule has 3 Gigabit ports and 1 uplink port
* LinkSys is 802.11g, Time Capsule is 802.11n
* Time Capsule requires a reboot for any configuration change, which takes 30 seconds or something. Config changes on the LinkSys happen much faster.

Overall, I think I should be able to totally replace the LinkSys with the Time Capsule, but the first challenge is to transfer our last 9 months of backups over to the Time Capsule. This is not as simple as you might think because the Time Capsule needs backups in sparsebundle disk image format, and the backups we have are just stored as files on the hard disk directly. I have an idea for how to get this working which is taking a while. If my plan works I will post an update on how to do it for anyone who's interested.

Thanksgiving preparations

We're having Kathy's family over for Thanksgiving again this year so today was spent doing a lot of preparation work... we did the big Safeway trip (got there around 5 so the store was not crowded yet - yay), and last night I replaced the dimmer switch that burned out recently with a better one that has a separate slider and on/off switch, plus replaced the bulbs in the track lights. I wasn't able to find CFLs that would work so I just went with 60W halogens for now. Maybe later I will get some different fixtures for the track that can hold a dimmable CFL flood (which seem to only come in the long neck versions of the bulbs).

Also, is it just me or is it really, really annoying that everyone seems to have forgotten about waiting until the day after Thanksgiving to start the Christmas music and decorations? In some cases, Christmas stuff was out even before Halloween.

Recent upgrades

Since my internal hard disk in the Mac mini indicated it was failing two months ago, I switched over to running it off an external hard disk. The internal drive wasn't giving me any problems, but I also wasn't using it. Recently I noticed some strange noises coming from the internal drive so I decided to go ahead and replace it. It seems the best option for the old ATA/100 2.5 inch drives is a 160GB Seagate, so that's what I got. I figured since I was going to have to open up the machine I might as well max it out by getting an 8x dual layer SuperDrive and 1GB of memory (good preparation for upgrading to Leopard as well). I also had to pick up a putty knife to pop the top off.

The upgrade turned out to be both easier and harder than I expected. Getting the top case off was fairly easy, but dealing with the bluetooth and AirPort antennas and the plastic cage that holds the optical drive and hard drive was harder than I expected. Still it didn't take too long and now the mini is running nicely from the internal hard disk.

The other upgrade I did recently was to switch over compact flourescent bulbs from incandescent for most of the lights at home. The 60W and 40W equivalent bulbs work pretty well now (come on instantly, no noise, soft white light). And, they aren't that expensive. A 4 pack was about $7 at Home Depot. This is still more than conventional incandescent bulbs, but the 75% savings on power consumption and longer life end up making them cheaper over the life of the bulb. And less power consumption is better for the environment given that a large percentage of our power is generated from coal power plants.

The only remaining lights that are still not CFL or regular flourescent are two 75W flood lamps on a dimmer switch and a 30/70/100W 3-way bulb in the lamp by the bed. I have yet to find a 3 way CFL that is anything other than 50/100/150W equivalent, which ends up being really huge to be able to put out the top light level. That would be fine except it won't fit in the lamp I have. Dimmable flood CFLs exist as well but it looks like they may not fit exactly in the track light fixture I have.

Daylight Savings

It's cool to get the extra hour of sleep and all, but I am always annoyed by the lack of daylight in the evening after the clocks are set back. To top it all off, the nice "set and forget" wall clock I got last year is now obsolete due to the brilliant idea Congress had to move the dates when Daylight Savings Time changes. Now instead of just having to set the clock twice a year for a dumb clock, I have to change it four times a year since it changes to and from DST on the wrong days now. Lame.

Not a good way to start the day

Arg. My Mac mini internal hard disk is on the way out. By some miracle I happened to run Disk Utility in time to be able to back up all the data. I guess it's time to upgrade it a bit.