I am really getting sick of this.

"curb your dog": remove your dog's feces when it defecates in a common or public area.  (also, curb your dog at Urban Dictionary)

The development where I live mandates the removal of dog feces from common areas, and even provides free "stations" around the community that provide the necessary tools to do so (small garbage bags, etc.).  It's too bad that even though this is stated in the homeowner reference guide and strategically-placed signs around the community, people still choose to ignore this and let their dogs crap all over the place without picking it up.  Or, people do stupid things like take pine needles from the landscaping and put them over the feces:

This DOES NOT HELP.  It's stupid, and it makes more of a mess.  Yes, that's right in front of my porch.

I'd wager a guess that roughly 2/3 of all dog owners do their job, are considerate of others and the cleanliness of the community they live, and clean up after their dogs do their thing.  However, that 1/3 ought to be ashamed of themselves.

</rant>

I'm so upset:

I'm pretty sure it happened when I was at Pei Wei, today, but I just noticed it now.  It was probably some idiot who swung the door way too wide without care or consideration for anyone else.

Update: Got it fixed!

It's been awhile since my last blog entry, probably because I've been micro-blogging with Twitter, lately.  I'm probably going to add my Twitter updates to my site, as well, and possibly have blog entry URLs posted to my Twitter feed, too.  If you're curious, here are the Twitter clients I recommend:

• For Nokia E71: Gravity
• For iPhone/iPod Touch: Twitteriffic (via App store)
• For Linux: Twitux

Let's see, what have I been doing…

I recently picked up an iPod touch, so I could familiarize myself and do some development on the iPhone OS without paying the Apple tax on my current AT&T plan, and losing the functionality of my Nokia E71.  I can still get online anywhere via JoikuSpot on the E71.

The unit was easily jailbroken, and I feel at home with access to the Unix environment underneath.  I spent a good amount of time last weekend learning a bit about Xcode and how Apple oppresses iPhone developers.  After banging my head against Xcode and the weirdness that is Objective-C for awhile, I wrote one or two crappy OS X Cocoa applications (ok, a tiny calculator and a stupid hello world program).  Before even getting to the iPhone development with Xcode, I picked up iPhone Open Application Development, and realized that I could avoid the developer oppression and just use open-source tools without the crappy bloat and complication of the Xcode IDE and Apple's app store.

Sufficed to say, I haven't written anything of merit, yet, but one of these days I'll do something :)

The condo pool opened a few weeks ago.  The water is just starting to warm up, finally.  We've had some strange weather recently, but most of it has served to increase the temperature of the water in the pool, so I'm happy.

Unfortunately, I haven't updated the "my network" section of my site in awhile - so I just ripped it out and moved it to the wiki.  I figured I should name the network so I came up with Prolixium Communications Network (PCN).  Pretty silly, huh?

Let's see, what else.  Work's been pretty hectic, lately.  I have more projects than I really have time for, and I even have to play operations escalation every once and awhile.  Keeps things interesting, though!  Never a dull moment.

Oh, lastly, I'll be heading out to the windy city for some training, soon.  Hopefully I'll have some time to do exploring and sighseeing, although I doubt it.  The class I'm taking will consume most of my time, but we'll see.

I've seen Star Trek twice, so far, so I figure it's time to write up a small review.

Overall, I thought it was a good movie.  I can't say great because there was enough variation on the original Star Trek themes that resulted in it being not Star Trek at all, in many aspects.  From an action and suspense view, J. J. Abrams really did a great job.

WARNING, spoilers below!

The Bad

First of all, before I saw the movie the first time, I picked up the soundtrack, and gave it a quick listen.  Boring.  Really, it didn't sound like Star Trek music at all, except for the end credits track, which brought back some of the TOS music.  The soundtrack is supposed to be bright and uplifting, yet provide a complement the sense of awe that the viewer feels when the Enterprise is presented in space.  The Jurassic Park soundtrack would have done a better job in this movie.  Some of the music felt a little silly and woefully misplaced, as well..  For example, when Kirk was piloting the Kelvin into the Narada, the music should have consisted of maybe a chorus with an ambient melody.  It was supposed to evoke an emotion from the viewer - similar to the scene in Mission Impossible 2, after Nyah injects herself with Chimera, and the gunfight ensues.  It's too bad Dennis McCarthy didn't compose ths soundtrack.  Instead, J. J. Abrams picked Michael Giacchino, who dropped the ball.

Starfleet was protrayed as being way too informal.  Maybe this was Abrams' attempt at adding some comic relief (it worked in some cases) or trying to develop the characters too rapidly.  For example, Pike tried to get Checkov's name right a couple times before asking him.  That was insulting and silly, and would have never been done by any other captain in Starfleet.  If the captain didn't know the name of one of his officers, he should ask!  Overall, Checkov's character was overdone, but that's another topic.

Why did McCoy bother to ask Spock if he could speak freely?  Everyone spoke way too freely the whole time!  Spock should have thrown Kirk in the brig for yelling at him the first time.  Also, Kirk sitting in the chair before he had officially become an office on the Entprise?  Ok, it was a little funny, but still out of place.

What's up with Uhura and Spock?  The whole thing just felt wrong, but I guess Abrams was trying to show Spock's human side.

There were also a ton of technical inaccuracies, or things I thought were wrong.  Here are a couple:

• When Kirk plotted the collision course toward the Narada, the warp nacelle seemed to come to life instead of the impulse engines.  The ship certainly didn't go to warp, someone obviously messed up.
• When Spock attacked Kirk on the bridge, he supposedly resigned his commission and left the bridge.  Somehow, he came right back into action a little bit later, no questions asked!
• How can a star go nova and threaten the entire Milky Way galaxy?  First off, the Milky Way is huge, a star might take out a solar system or two, but not threaten an entire galaxy.  Even if it did, why care only about Romulus?  How about Earth, Vulcan, or everything else!  This is all covered in Star Trek: Countdown.  I read the summaries, and now it makes much more sense.
• Why was the Enterprise being built in Iowa, on the ground?  What happened to being built in space like everything else?
• The Narada was a joke.  It was menacing indeed, but couldn't have been functional as a mining ship, at that size.  It also looked like it was held together with twine, or nothing at all.
• Orion females in Starfleet?  Come on!
• There's only one warp core, not four or however many were ejected at the end like torpedos.
• There's no sound in space.  They got this right-on at the beginning and during the space jump.  However, why did warp speed make that jarring sound, and why did we hear phasers firing?
• No bridge would have a window instead of a viewscreen.  And it wouldn't crack!

There was too much action.  Maybe there was just too much CGI.  The camera shook way too often, and for little reason.   Engineering wasn't engineering.  It was like an oil refinery or something.  The bridge felt like an Apple Store (as one reviewer had said), too.  Spock's ship, The Jellyfish (?) looked like it was from Star Wars, not Star Trek.

The Enterprise exterior.. they got everything right except for the nacelles.  They are ugly!  Butt ugly!  Whoever's idea it was to make the buzzard collectors black should be fired.

Also, Nokia product placement.  In Star Trek?  That went too far, I'm just not sure what to say.

The miniskirts have to go.  Just replace them with skin-tight spandex, and the effect will remain the same!

The Good

Spock's conflict between his human and Vulcan side was done nicely.  I was waiting for the "how do you feel?" question when he was taking the aptitude test at the beginning.  McCoy's character was good, too - he even looked like he got younger as the movie progressed.

Kirk's character was done nicely, too - definitely a leap-before-thinking and fearless individual.  The birth scene (except for the music) was done well.  I usually don't like childbirth scenes in movies, but they somehow did a good job with this one, and didn't show too many scenes that would have made the viewer (ok, just me) uncomfortable.

The classic taglines were good:

• I'm a doctor, not a physicist! -- McCoy
• I'm givin' her all she's got! -- Scotty
• I am, and always shall be, your friend. -- Spock

The plot wasn't too bad.  I knew it was going to be a reboot right from the start, so I got used to the idea way ahead of time, and it was no surprise.

Is the parking break on?  There were a few funny moments, and they were done nicely.  They kept with the red shirt theme, too!

As I said before, overall - good, go see it a couple times!

Today's the day!  So far, I'm scheduled to see it three times over the next couple of days:

• Today: 21:45 in Charlotte
• Tomorrow: 16:00 in Atlanta
• Saturday: HH:MM in Atlanta (IMAX)

Should be fun!

Have you ever realized that it's horribly inconsistent whether a merchant will ask you for ID or CVV2 number when paying with a credit card?

Well, I have, and it is.

Here's a couple observations from different merchants:

• Circuit City: They asked for ID sometimes, supposedly only when AMEX was used.  I don't recall them ever asking for or reading the CVV2.
• Harris Teeter: They never ask for ID or CVV2, ever.  This seems to be the norm for grocery stores.
• Dick's Sporting Goods: These folks are weird, they sometimes ask for the last four digits of the credit card number, or don't ask for anything.
• Best Buy: They always ask for the CVV2, but only sometimes ask for ID.  It seems to depend on the store.

What's the deal?  Isn't all this all governed by PCI?  I'm really confused.

Also, some merchants ask you to agree to the total amount before the credit card is billed.  But, some don't.  Jeez.

Do you hate the Adobe Flash plugin on Linux?  Most people do, because:

• It sucks CPU like there's no tomorrow.
• It's crashy.
• It's non-free.

I've learned to deal with these shortcomings, for the most part.  However, for YouTube, Vimeo, and other sites that use Flash Video, you can easily use MPlayer to watch them, instead, without any additional scripts.  Just look in /tmp or ~/.gnome2/epiphany/mozilla/epiphany/Cache for Flash* files.  Most of the time (with Epiphany, at least) the files aren't unlinked after the video has been closed, so they will stick around.  MPlayer opens the FLV files fine, and in the native resolution, too.  Give it a shot…

It has issues, let's just leave it at that:

vmnet8    Link encap:Ethernet  HWaddr 00:50:56:c0:00:08  
          inet addr:172.16.210.1  Bcast:172.16.210.255  Mask:255.255.255.0
          inet6 addr: fe80::250:56ff:fec0:8/64 Scope:Link
          UP BROADCAST RUNNING MULTICAST  MTU:1500  Metric:1
          RX packets:0 errors:0 dropped:6 overruns:21474836480 frame:30064771075
          TX packets:6 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:274877908231 carrier:18446348254384582744
          collisions:231928233989 txqueuelen:1000 
          RX bytes:0 (0.0 B)  TX bytes:0 (0.0 B)

I followed the instructions to patch it here, but apparently it isn't enough…

Update 2009/06/20: Fixed!  Check out this post on VMware Communities.