Thank you to the jack-booted federal thugs who trample on Californian’s rights to medicinal substances.

Thank you to the local police nationwide who participate in “asset forfeiture” — i.e. property seizures of alleged proceeds of crime — even before anyone’s convicted of anything.

Thank you to the TSA for keeping us safe from 95 year old grannies with loaded diapers, and for inappropriately touching our children.

Yes, I’m feeling some sarcasm today.

I weep for our once great nation.

Happy Independence Day!

For the software that’s not available yet through the Mac App Store, use AppFresh. I have been using AppFresh for over a year, so I don’t worry that it’s still a Development Preview.

Continue reading for the exact steps.

1) Create an iCal entry for the 1st Sunday of the month (or weekly, if you wish). Set a convenient time for your event.

2) As part of the iCal entry choose Alarm -> Open File -> Applications -> App Store. Set Alarm for 15 minutes before your stated time.

3) Then, choose Alarm -> Open File -> Applications -> Appfresh.app. Set alarm for 5 minutes after your stated time.

4) Install AppFresh.

5) In AppFresh Preferences -> General -> Scanning, ensure Check for updates on startup is checked, but uncheck “Check for available Apple updates”

6) For each application that you want updated, set it’s Preferences to _not_ automatically check for updates. This will help cut down on the number of popups when you start apps.

7) If you have multiple machines, sign up for an iUseThis account, and repeat the previous steps on all the other machines. AppFresh has a “Used and not installed” category.

Now, once a month, the Mac App Store will start, 20 minutes before AppFresh, which gives you plenty of time to perform any App Store updates that need to be done before AppFresh updates the rest of your software!

Note that I do not allow AppFresh to update running programs, nor Preference Panes or Menu Bar plugins. You can also right-click on any app and choose Exclude.

Enjoy!

I tried to upgrade WordPress (to the latest 3.1.2) using the built-in function that I’ve used many, many times now and it did not work. Everything seemed to go correctly, all the way through, including the DB upgrade, but apparently, it borked at the last second.

Fortunately, simply downloading, extracting, and the uploading the latest archive from WordPress did the trick. I wasn’t expecting it to work, but it absolutely did, retaining my settings, themes, plugins and everything.

Wow. I must say, I’d rather not have it fail in the first place, but what a spectacular recovery!

Separately, I had purchased a Clear iSpot to use for my Wifi-only iPad. This was a low-cost way to get my iPad on the internet when I wasn’t at home. $25 per month, and I got access to Clear’s “4G” network, anywhere it was available. Not a bad deal, really. My monthly usage was around 0.3 – 0.4GB (300-400MB) per month. Of course, their network wasn’t available outside of larger cities, and even though I don’t travel much, it wasn’t very useful outside of Loop 1604.

I added “Personal Hotspot” to my iPhone data plan, which technically changes it to “$45 per month iPhone 4GB DataPro with Tethering” … this allows me to cancel my iSpot, and save a few bucks. So, add $15 to my AT&T plan, subtract $25 from my Clear plan (actually, I will just cancel it).

In addition to that, while doing research on this, I noticed that I didn’t really use my 900 minutes a month on my voice plan. I mean, really, I had over 6,500 Rollover minutes. Turns out I use around 200 “Anytime” minutes a month. So, I changed my voice plan down to 450 minutes a month, thus saving me another $20 per month.

So, here’s how it breaks down for me…

Before:

After:

The benefits I get out of this are the fact that my personal hotspot can now run my computer, not just my iDevices, like the iSpot, my phone gets charged continuously when I drive my car, and I don’t have to carry yet another device (the iSpot). Oh, and all for the low, low price of saving $30 per month!

My 2yo vomited for the first time today. I don’t mean spit up — all babies do that — I mean blew chunks. We were driving after lunch, and he got sick in the car.

He’d gone the rest of the day with no further incidents.

But, just as I went to hug him goodnight, with him sitting in my lap, he vomited again. I could not think of what to do, even though the bathtub is mere feet away in our bathroom.

Pro tip: Don’t grab a towel, you’ll just have to clean it too.

Pro tip #2: if your child was sick earlier, and he belches and it smells really bad, run, don’t walk to the toilet or tub.

Jill’s off to get some Sprite, so we can make sure he’s not dehydrated.

Fun!

One gentleman was adamant that “everyone speeds, so when it’s your turn to pay up, you just do it”… and that by choosing not to pay, I was instead destroying the fabric of civilization.

First of all, I wasn’t the one who got the ticket, in this case, but that’s irrelevant. I do my level damndest to pay the police state as little as possible when I do get pulled over. In fact, my M.O. is to hire a lawyer, and have him plead my case on my behalf.

Second, if everyone does it… no, really. Stay with me here. Is breaking the law morally right? You say no? Tell that to Rosa Parks.

Third, it used to be, in society, that we required there to be a victim in order to prosecute. In the case of speeding, tell me, where is the victim? We’re not talking here of agressive or reckless driving, but of the simple casual speeding “that everyone does”.

Civil disobediance, then, of a victimless “crime”?

Guilty as charged.

Officially, I got my results / certificate on the 24th of March, but the cool thing is that I passed the test the day before, on the 23rd. The 23rd was my one year anniversary date with Rackspace. Wow.

I scored well on the test, too, which I was glad of. You know what they say:

Practice makes perfect.

Monday morning, my rear passenger tire went partially flat on the way to work.

I was working at a different location today, due to a training class I’m in (RHCE), so I couldn’t just call in late. I had to drive on the tire for about 20 minutes in medium traffic.

At lunchtime, I got the tire changed (thanks AAA) and had a few minutes left over to grab a bite to eat.

After my class, I took it to the closest place near where I was at (410 / I-10), which happened to be a Discount Tire.

After inspecting the tire — it had a long cylindrical object in it, but it wasn’t a nail — they showed me the inside of the tire, where the rubber sidewall was frayed. They informed me that they couldn’t fix it, due to the fact that it had “run flat”, even though the hole was in a place that’s normally very conducive to patching. The tire was ruined.

I had informed them before they looked at the tire that if they could not patch it, I would take it to where I bought it, and claim my road hazard warranty that I had purchased. I did not tell them where I bought the tires. They still offered to patch it for free, if they could, and didn’t end up charging me anything.

I then drove (still using my spare) to the NTB close to my house, where I had purchased the tires, and asked them to replace the tire under road hazard warranty. Now, according to NTB, road hazard is pro-rated, based upon tread depth and mileage.

After waiting over an hour for them to inspect my tire, NTB informed me that they were fixing the flat.

What?!?

I asked the manager what was going on, and he told me there was no damage to the inside of the tire, and that it was simply a “heat ring”.

He brought out the tire a few minutes later, for me to inspect. He showed me the inside of the tire, and where there was prevously a whitish ring, there was now a dark ring. There was also a strong smell that reminded me of spray paint.

Even after I asked for the road hazard warranty again, the manager said he can’t do a claim on it, because the inside sidewall isn’t damaged. They then put the tire back on the car, and put my spare in the trunk.

I was too flabbergasted to be angry.

I don’t feel comfortable driving on the tire, and I wish Discount Tire was open later.

It will now be easier to Slashdot my site. So, fire away!