Robert Roye

I just had to jot down what I think of this whole mess with Apple and Adobe. I think Adobe is pathetic. I think they are acting like a little kid having a fit that they can't get their way. Apple sees Flash as being a resource hog and isn't supporting it on their mobile platforms. They even issued a public letter explaining why they feel that way and are not going to support it.

What does Adobe do? Do they respond and say something like, "We disagree with Apple's position, but as we wish to move forward with the support of Apple we will discuss this with their technical people and see if there might be something we can do that will change their mind and show the power and flexibility of the Flash platform."? Oh hell no. They throw a fit, stomp, scream, and pound their fists against the floor - then tell on them, screaming "It's not fair!"

Adobe actually went to the United States Fair Trade Commission and cried and screamed about how unfair it was. "Please, Daddy, make them play with us!"

How sad. How pathetic, really. You make something that is bloated and flawed, and when someone calls you on it and says you need to make improvements or they won't support it any more - ignore them. Then when they actually DO stop supporting you, run and tell Mommy!

I read the public letter from Apple. I think Steve Jobs wrote it, but the legal guys went over it and made it a bit more polite. They kept the general feel of it and what it said, just made it sound better. I also happen to agree with them that Flash is a bloated piece of pigware. I've never liked Flash. I have hated and reviled it since it became the junk way to kludge a website that pops and zips and boings all over the place - all the while sucking down stupid amounts of bandwidth. I hate how advertisers have flocked to it and sucked down even more bandwidth. I hate how the shit has slowed the entire web down with it's hogging nature, only giving in return horribly crafted junk that blares horns and whistles at us trying to get us to buy someone's crap.

I also LOVE Click to Flash for my browser. I can now surf without having to deal with that bloated junkware unless I specifically choose to. Ads flashing and boinging at me? No more. Buh bye, Flash.

Especially now with HTML5 and it's abilities to play videos and animations as Flash never got right, Flash is doomed. Doomed I tell you! Muahahaha!

Seriously, I easily see Flash fading into the background as soon as HTML5 is adopted. I also think that is why Adobe is tattling and hoping the FTC makes Apple support their commercial product. They are fucked and want Apple to save them. I foresee a big fight in the offing. I still think Flash is doomed, though.

And talk about unfair trade practices! Adobe doesn't get it's way, so it tries to call big brother to force Apple to do what they want. Ya, now who is being unfair. Grow the fuck up, Adobe. Then again, who cares. You're done for anyhow as far as Flash goes. Can you hear the death knell yet, or are your cries blocking the sound? It's ok. I'll listen for you and grin as you slowly realize that the era of your junk is over.

You know, 41 is no different than 40 was. Well, unless you count not having the whole psychological shock of "40" hitting you.

David tried to goad me a bit by doing the whole "Whoa! You're FORTY ONE!!" thing, but it really didn't affect me. Since I got over the 40s shock, I'm now just "In my 40s" and going well.

50, on the other hand...

Yes, it has been that long! I don't put very much on here. Why bother if no one reads it, right? I know, huh?

Comment, and I'll put nice crap up here for you to feast your fuzzy little eyes on. Don't and I'll know you don't even exist.

Whoa, are you god?

Last night we did the procession of lights for CPL Szuba and Ricky. Over 300 police cars attended and the procession was over 6 miles long. It took roughly 20 minutes to pass. Silence was heard as car after car, almost none holding only one person, followed the route from Mishawaka to his home in New Carlisle.

The streets were lined with people holding candles, lanterns, or flashlights giving silent tribute to a slain officer and his partner. Signs and flags were held to thank the officers in the procession. Signs had "You are all heroes", "God Bless You and All You Do" and more. Hundreds stood with wet eyes and hands over their hearts in the cold of the evening. The children stood alongside their parents and grandparents.

Last night was an incredible showing of honor and respect.

Afterwards, the irony began for me. As I was driving back to the station and talking things over with the other officer in the car, we got behind an impaired driver. Fortunately for everyone, this driver didn't try to run. Taking an impaired driver off the road right after honoring an officer killed while trying to do the same was an interesting experience. I also was yet again impressed with the cooperation and professionalism of the officers of the South Bend Police Department. Thanks, guys.

I'm sure everyone has heard of the officers killed in Washington by now. I'm sure many have shaken their head at the sadness of the event. No one really likes hearing of a cop killed. No human does, at any rate.

Does anyone really get to know anything about the officers as people? Not usually. But they were people. People with families and lives. People with friends. People you would wave to and smile when you saw them off duty. I was very happy to see that someone from the Associated Press compiled a bit of information about these warriors. Associated Press story here.

Don't be afraid to grind your teeth and clench your fists at the thought of the piece of dog shit that murdered them on cold blood in a planned ambush, either. Revel in the thought that he is gone forever, and it was at the hand of another police officer. Remember that this sack of shit also carried with him the entire time he was being searched for a bullet from one of the officers he killed. A gut shot hurts severely, so he suffered. Not nearly enough, but he suffered. Unfortunately he suffers no more. Hope that there is indeed an afterlife that is and good or bad as you were in life. Take refuge in the thought of him in pain and torment, knowing that he brought it on himself. Fucking bastard.

I'm trying to teach myself Cocoa programming for Mac. I have the book "Cocoa Programming for Mac OSX for Dummies" and am going through it bit by bit in a valiant effort to better my skillset.

It's not going so well.

I blame the book, myself. Really, I do for honest reasons. I wrote the first example program (a simple calculator) and it won't work. I enter two numbers into it and hit the Calculate button and nothing happens. The focus doesn't change. The answer does not pop into the answer field. Nothing. I'm thinking that this isn't what is supposed to happen when I hit the magic "Build and Go" button.

At first the compiler alerted me (cryptically) about an undefined function and I found that error and corrected it. Now the compiler runs error free - but nothing actually pops up on the screen when I try to run the thing. Grrrrrrrrrrrr.

I'm going to try again and see what I did wrong. If it's something the book failed to cover at this point, I'm going to write them a nasty letter. If I screwed some things up, then it's still the book's fault.

Didn't think I was dumb enough to blame myself, now did you?

In the event I get it working right, I'll attach it so it can be downloaded and you can see my pathetic little application that I wrote all on my own (with someone telling me each and every character to write every step of the way)

We got the new Apple Magic Mouse at work and I have to say I am impressed other than one little things. Ok, two little things.

1: You cannot use the left and right buttons at the same time. I play World of Warcraft and to move short distances you can use both buttons at once and run until you let off. No longer can I do this. As this is on the work computer, that's ok. It only messes me up at lunch time.

2: It ergonomically sucks ass. It's beautiful to look at, but cramps your hand too much to use it all the time. It is useable, but to use it for a long time is just not comfortable.

Also, it only comes as a wireless Bluetooth mouse. Not even an option for a wired version for those of us that hate changing batteries all the time. We'll see how long the batteries last and judge it then.

On the good side, this thing adds great functionality to the computer and I can easily see that expanding as time goes on. You can't presently use the pinching to zoom, but I can see that being added later. It clicks mechanically, so you can use the entire surface to use the touch functions, but to click you have to use the "top" half of the device. Not hard while mousing, but something to note.

I'll detail more as I use it and review the battery life and things like that.

Well, the divorce was finalized in court today. I am officially a single guy again, free to do as I please. Not that I really plan on doing anything, but at least I now can.

I was figuring that I would feel relieved and like a large weight had been lifted off my shoulders. All I really felt was relief that the judge didn't do something dumb and order restricted visitation, or something like that. I also felt slight regret that things didn't work out. I hate failure. I hate not being able to stick with something for the long term. I suppose it's for the best, though. I wasn't happy, and I didn't really even realize it.

Do I hate her and have bad feelings over the whole thing? No. Do I wish I had never met her? Of course not, I wouldn't have my kids. Back then I wouldn't have known, but now that I do I cannot live without them. They are my legacy. They are my gift to the world. The world is a better place now that they are in it, and I plan to keep making everyone happy that they are here.

I got word yesterday that my 10 month position is now a permanent position. This is a major relief as there were only 8 days remaining in that term and no jobs were forthcoming. There are just no IT jobs in this area and few jobs of other types. Relief does not even begin to describe how I feel.

WOOHOO!!

Wow, is this awesome stuff or what? They have made some major changes and I like every one of them. The main one I like is the ability to not only record from a webcam, but to upload that with one click to YouTube (as well as MobileMe and iTunes). I actually use my account now (everything is private thus far, but it has videos now). The interface is very slick now. It was functional before, but now it's very appealing.

Oh, and screen recording? Woo! Talk about making it easy to do instructional videos. This post is even being recorded just so I can see how well it works. Pretty frakkin slick, eh?

I might actually get extended out another month, and that is definitely good news for me. I have been looking at the job market and on most of the jobs sites there are no IT jobs even listed. NONE! Not a single freaking one. That just sucks for people like me that will be searching very soon for a job. Know what I mean?

So again, anyone need a tech?

Wow, I am amazed at how few IT jobs there are out there. I've been checking all over the place and the jobs just are not there, at least in this area. Fear, now that I'm at just 3 weeks left in my term here? Yes. Hell yes.

Anyone need a tech?

The Netgear router is now installed at the ex's place. She bought it from me and I installed it after I went on eBay and found a bunch of AirPort Extremes going for ~$50. I now have an APE in the house with dual band and have a USB drive attached and working through the network. My only printer has a built in print server, so putting the 80 GB USB drive on the network was the next option. Once I set everything up from the server I'll use it for backup. I may have to pick up a bigger drive so I can use it for multiple computers, but for now the server is the big one.

I like the ability to have 2 wireless networks in the house. Opening my network for guest access wasn't something I liked to do since their computer would remember the settings. Letting others into my inner sanctum has always distressed me just a bit. Now I need not worry about anyone accessing my shared files. They are on a separate network and have no access to my personal side. Brilliant feature from Apple - yet again!

It was amazing that once more I decided to get something less expensive and once I had tasted the inferior vintage - back to the good stuff. I did the same with computers. I did the same with MP3 players. Now again with home wireless routers. You would think I'd have learned by now, right?

Widows Vista Service Pac.......... err ......... Windows 7 will be releasing soon. The RTM is already out and has had to have emergency work done because it was hacked within a few hours, as expected. The whole thing M$ does to try to keep Windows from being pirated is amusing. Make it cost a ton and put very expensive-to-develop tools in it to make it hard to use ....... er ....... pirate and the pirates are thwarted! Well, hindered. Inconvenienced? Amused? Ok, amused. Factor in the enormous price they are charging for Windows 7 and you have a guarantee that cracks will be out immediately following release and those cracks will get used. I remember buying a copy of Windows 98 at a computer show in 99 or 2000. I don't remember buying Windows since then. I do remember deciding never to buy it again.

On the flip side, Mac has never had this anti-piracy crap in their software. I have bought and paid for every version of OS X since Tiger (Which had just released as I came to the light) and now what do they do? They knock off a HUNDRED BUCKS from the price. Yup, that's $100 off of the $129 price of Snow Leopard. You guessed it, mine has already been pre-ordered. Mac continues to climb in installed base and Windows continues to drop market share.

Now with Windows 7 we will have the same issues with UAC and the refucked interface. Much as I hate to admit it, we do have some advances in Parental Controls that are a very welcome addition. I have to admit that I am very impressed with the feature that allows you to set an account (especially for a teen) so that it erases everything they did to the computer when they log off. Public computers will use this functionality to be sure. I rather doubt that the antivirus people are amused, however.

Oh, and this little fracas over Word? Wow. That's gotta hurt!

It should be interesting to watch. From my Mac, of course.

The server was down for a few days due to some hardware problems. The router's WAN port went down and reported nothing but "No connection" and even plugging it into a good port on the switch gave no link light. Crap. New router time.

I went out and grabbed a Netgear router (slick, with internal antennas) and set it up. Great, we're online now! But wait - no static IP address! Crap. Wait a couple days due to work and kids. Internet is up, so not a 100% loss. Day three: Call the ISP only to leave a message and get no answer for the rest of the day. I decide to play around with it and just assigned it the IP address manually. Eureka! The next morning the ISP calls to help. I asked them if setting the information manually would be a problem and they said no, so I'm going to just leave it this way. It's easier than trying to have them redo the DHCP reservation by copying my MAC address, right?

Did the appointment with the attorney yesterday. Hopefully everything will go well and rapidly. He seems to think it will go nicely, so here's hoping he's right.

I'm looking forward to getting the kids again this weekend. I will have to be very frugal so I can afford to pay some bills, but all in all I think we'll be ok.

Had a good weekend and got plenty done. The boys now have a sparkly clean room and my room now has more dirty laundry in it that I need to catch up on. The kids are adapting fairly well to the new life, and I think I am as well. I am one seriously lonely SOB the night after I drop them off, but that's normal I think.

No significant other now, or in the foreseeable future. I sometimes think that if it wasn't for the hairy butts, I'd just go gay. At least guys are understandable.