I closed an account at Bank of America a few months ago. After I showed my driver's license to the teller, he swiped it through the magnetic card reader at this station. Perhaps I haven't been dealing with banks and bank tellers much lately, but I was intrigued and amused.
Then, of course, he proceeded to try to sell me a Bank of America credit card. I told him I already have enough credit cards and he proceeded to enter that little bit of information into his terminal.
Perhaps the programming elves at Bank of America implemented the "read the DMV magnetic strip" as an ease-of-use measure, or perhaps they are trying to reduce the number of data entry errors by their front-line people. In any case, it certainly made it easier for me, since I wasn't carrying the bank card that came with the account.
This use of technology I appreciate.
I didn't, on the other hand, appreciate Bank of America making the teller try to sell me something, and I certainly didn't appreciate that they then make him record why. I've already had to deal with a number of telesales calls from them (until I told them to put me on their Do Not Call list). I wonder if my interaction with the teller just took me back off their Do Not Call list. If so, I'll just go through getting off it again.
Monday, April 21, 2008
Monday, April 14, 2008
Appropriate Technology
One of the side effects of having a Prius with the radio-key is that I sometimes leave the key in my pocket. When I leave the car I don't need to pull the key out of the slot, so I had a personal pattern set where I just get out, close the door and press the Lock button on the outside of the door.
Once (and only once) that got mixed up with my personal pattern for our van. I got out of the van, pressed the lock button on the inside of the door and merrily shut the door. It was only later that I realized that I had locked my keys into the van. What about the warning buzzer, you ask? Well, it has been malfunctioning for a number of years now, and always buzzes when the door is open (regardless of the state of the keys or the headlights). The van is old and I want to spend as little as possible keeping it running.
I called AAA and they sent one of their guys. He got out of his truck with a little pillow with an inflater bulb on it. I watched in fascination as he slid the pillow between the door and the pillar and inflated it to force the door open just enough so he could get a long plastic wand through the opening. He then used this wand to push the Unlock button on the door. Nothing electronic at all.
Much to my chagrin, I had to call AAA again later that day when I went to leave work and found that I had also left the lights on. I hadn't noticed it at lunch.
Maybe I should get that buzzer fixed.
Once (and only once) that got mixed up with my personal pattern for our van. I got out of the van, pressed the lock button on the inside of the door and merrily shut the door. It was only later that I realized that I had locked my keys into the van. What about the warning buzzer, you ask? Well, it has been malfunctioning for a number of years now, and always buzzes when the door is open (regardless of the state of the keys or the headlights). The van is old and I want to spend as little as possible keeping it running.
I called AAA and they sent one of their guys. He got out of his truck with a little pillow with an inflater bulb on it. I watched in fascination as he slid the pillow between the door and the pillar and inflated it to force the door open just enough so he could get a long plastic wand through the opening. He then used this wand to push the Unlock button on the door. Nothing electronic at all.
Much to my chagrin, I had to call AAA again later that day when I went to leave work and found that I had also left the lights on. I hadn't noticed it at lunch.
Maybe I should get that buzzer fixed.
Tuesday, April 8, 2008
What I Learned Today
I started using the Lightning calendar add-on with the Thunderbird email client a few weeks ago, and have been wondering what the "CW" stood for in its date display.
Country Western?
Conventional Wisdom?
Used Google search and after going through a few search terms that either gave me too much or too little, I used "calendar CW lightning," which turned up this:
https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/thunderbird/discussions/comments.php?DiscussionID=7662&page=1#Item_0
Ah, "Current Week!"
... and today's rant...
If I had time, I'd love to work on the Thunderbird text editor. I've gotten to the point where (if I'm going to use any formatting) I just compose my emails in Word, paste them into Thunderbird and then clean up as necessary. I do this because I have not yet been able to figure out how Thunderbird stores its formatting, and I can't find any way to make the "markup" visible. Is this because Thunderbird uses some low-grade Microsoft editing control, or some other reason? (Not that the editor in OutLook Express, or whatever its current name is, is much better...)
Country Western?
Conventional Wisdom?
Used Google search and after going through a few search terms that either gave me too much or too little, I used "calendar CW lightning," which turned up this:
https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/thunderbird/discussions/comments.php?DiscussionID=7662&page=1#Item_0
Ah, "Current Week!"
... and today's rant...
If I had time, I'd love to work on the Thunderbird text editor. I've gotten to the point where (if I'm going to use any formatting) I just compose my emails in Word, paste them into Thunderbird and then clean up as necessary. I do this because I have not yet been able to figure out how Thunderbird stores its formatting, and I can't find any way to make the "markup" visible. Is this because Thunderbird uses some low-grade Microsoft editing control, or some other reason? (Not that the editor in OutLook Express, or whatever its current name is, is much better...)
Friday, April 4, 2008
Maximum Method Magnitude
While I was roughing out a series of coding standards for the company I currently work at, I decided to quantify what I mean by "a method that is too long." I prefer to have methods (and functions, for the non-object-oriented among you, or you functional programmers) that I can see all at once. I don't like to scroll up and down (or left and right) to see the whole method. I therefore decided to quantify how much I could see on my screen at once so I could put some specific numbers in the standard.
Note that this restriction is relaxed for methods that are case statements with many similar, small cases, or other simple and repetitive structures. Since these are more "data"-like than "code"-like, having to scroll up and down doesn't interrupt my flow of thought as much as with regular code.
I currently have a Dell flat-screen that I measure at 22" (559 mm) visible diagonal size (regardless of what the Dell sales literature says...). I run it at its default resolution (1680 horizonally by 1050 vertically). I have a few icons on my desktop on the left (heavy use) and right (lighter use), so that reduces my available screen size a bit. I also like to leave room at the bottom of the screen for the taskbar.
I bounce back and forth between three editors, my old standby Epsilon, the Microsoft Visual Studio Editor and Eclipse.
I run Epsilon at 8-point Courier New, which gives me approximately 60 lines vertically and 200 characters horizontally. I spend more time in this editor than the others, so I've spent more time getting it to settings that work for me.
I never changed the default settings for Visual Studio. When I configure it as I usually work (one column of panes on the right), I get about 45 lines vertically and 150 characters horizontally. Note that this is reduced during debugging, because more panes appear. Tools, Options, Environment, Fonts and Colors tells me that I'm using 10-point Courier New.
I also never changed with the font settings in Eclipse. Preferences, General, Appearance, Colors and Fonts tells me that I'm using 10-point Courier New. This gives me 40 lines by 140 characters with the default set of panes on the right, left and bottom.
For Visual Studio and Eclipse, I could probably go back and change the font size to be closer to my Epsilon setting and get similar results (if I'm ever motivated enough).
One added restriction. I really don't like lo-o-o-ong lines. There is a reading phenomenon called "doubling" where, when lines are too long, you lose track of which line is the next one you need to go back to when you read to the end of the current line. This is less of a problem in code than in text, given the "poetic" (as opposed to "text") layout of code. I still, however, find it reduces readability for me, especially when I have to scroll a couple of screenfuls to the right horizonally and then jump all the way back to the left and locate the next line of the code.
Given all of the above, I'm going to put 60 lines vertically by 100 characters horizonally into the standards document. We'll see what my team members think of my numbers.
Finally, apologies for the forced alliteration of the title. I just finished reading a new translation of Sir Gawain and The Green Knight (by Simon Armitage), where there is heavy use of alliteration. If you like that sort of book, this one's a good read.
Note that this restriction is relaxed for methods that are case statements with many similar, small cases, or other simple and repetitive structures. Since these are more "data"-like than "code"-like, having to scroll up and down doesn't interrupt my flow of thought as much as with regular code.
I currently have a Dell flat-screen that I measure at 22" (559 mm) visible diagonal size (regardless of what the Dell sales literature says...). I run it at its default resolution (1680 horizonally by 1050 vertically). I have a few icons on my desktop on the left (heavy use) and right (lighter use), so that reduces my available screen size a bit. I also like to leave room at the bottom of the screen for the taskbar.
I bounce back and forth between three editors, my old standby Epsilon, the Microsoft Visual Studio Editor and Eclipse.
I run Epsilon at 8-point Courier New, which gives me approximately 60 lines vertically and 200 characters horizontally. I spend more time in this editor than the others, so I've spent more time getting it to settings that work for me.
I never changed the default settings for Visual Studio. When I configure it as I usually work (one column of panes on the right), I get about 45 lines vertically and 150 characters horizontally. Note that this is reduced during debugging, because more panes appear. Tools, Options, Environment, Fonts and Colors tells me that I'm using 10-point Courier New.
I also never changed with the font settings in Eclipse. Preferences, General, Appearance, Colors and Fonts tells me that I'm using 10-point Courier New. This gives me 40 lines by 140 characters with the default set of panes on the right, left and bottom.
For Visual Studio and Eclipse, I could probably go back and change the font size to be closer to my Epsilon setting and get similar results (if I'm ever motivated enough).
One added restriction. I really don't like lo-o-o-ong lines. There is a reading phenomenon called "doubling" where, when lines are too long, you lose track of which line is the next one you need to go back to when you read to the end of the current line. This is less of a problem in code than in text, given the "poetic" (as opposed to "text") layout of code. I still, however, find it reduces readability for me, especially when I have to scroll a couple of screenfuls to the right horizonally and then jump all the way back to the left and locate the next line of the code.
Given all of the above, I'm going to put 60 lines vertically by 100 characters horizonally into the standards document. We'll see what my team members think of my numbers.
Finally, apologies for the forced alliteration of the title. I just finished reading a new translation of Sir Gawain and The Green Knight (by Simon Armitage), where there is heavy use of alliteration. If you like that sort of book, this one's a good read.
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