Where Google Falls Down…

Google rules. They release a seemingly endless array of cool products and a seemingly constant pace. Everytime they turn around they are releasing some product that I use almost daily.  Yet there is one product that I use daily that isn’t perfect, or even particularly good: Google Desktop.

The best feature of Google Desktop is the ability to hit <ctrl> twice and have a search window pop up. The list of flaws is endless.  My first issue with the product is that if you quickly type in your term (ie. ‘mysql_connect’) and hit enter, its first inclination is to do a web search. This is a huge flaw in my mind; I downloaded Google Desktop to search my desktop not to have a faster interface to the web -quite frankly the Ctrl-K in Firefox to put focus in the Google search bar is fast enough.

The second issue that I have is the workflow to search for something specific in some specific location.  My standard workflow goes something like:

• Hit <Ctrl> twice
• Type in search term
• Select ‘Search Desktop’
• Get results page
• Select ‘Advanced Search’
• Click ‘files’ radio box
• Select  ‘Enter other type…’
• Type in file type (ie xml or php)
• Select in location browse…
• Browse to the location I want to search
• Hit search.

Its at this point that I may have some results. There are huge flaws in this behavior. Why are they advanced options not visible on the page, they are not that advanced. Why do I have to select ‘Enter other type…’ to tell it what type I want, I should just be able to enter the file type I want, as well it would be nice if the file type I entered would get added to the drop down list. Now the location I want to search is saved to the list, but I don’t like having to use dropdowns and it only saves 3 items. I would like it to be able to type and have it auto complete.

Now is there a better option? Yes there is! Copernic Desktop Search Engine has a much nicer UI that is greatly easier to navigate. Why do I not use it? Because my version has a bug where if I enter things in quotes -ie. “require_once(’fileName”  it will find nothing- so it is unusable to me.

What does Google need to do to fix the desktop search? Well for starters improve the search results window to make easier use of advanced options. After that is complete then it can start looking for other intelligent googlesque usages. Such as a right-click in Windows Explorer that had a ‘Search With Google…’ option. This would allow you to quickly search a folder that you are in for a term. What a great feature, windows has it, but it is terribly slow an ineffective. Oh well perhaps the support is better in Windows Vista and windows will win the desktop search battle because Google is throwing it away.

 

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Posted by Tyler Posted in: Everything, Software, Technology 1 Comment » October 2007

Bell vs. Rogers saga thickens in the Brown-Thompy household…

“… I will never give your company one more cent. Honestly go f*** yourself!”. -Phone receiver slams down-. Thus ends the relationship with Rogers Communications Inc. There were several events leading up to climatic absolute.

After a year of having Rogers as the provider for television and internet there were numerous issues.

• Upon canceling the service while moving out, the automatic payment was automatically voided. They didn’t inform us of this.
• We were charged an extra 3 days because we only gave 27 days notice.
• Twice attempts were made to return the cable box and modem. Both times we were informed they could only accept returned equipment between 10Am and 6PM. This finally resulted in taking time off work to return the equipment.
• Since it took an extra month to return the equipment we received a bill for $600
• The bill was not labeled and did not provide any indication as to why there was a $600 charge
• 3 days after receiving the bill a collection agency phoned.
• 3 days later (after payment had been made) the collection agency phoned again. -There were threats of a harassment complaint being made.-

Add all this to Rogers completely unethical behavior regarding traffic shaping to throttle torrents and encrypted traffic. Yep I was angry.

In contrast Bell does not shape traffic, and when I forgot to phone and cancel the telephone I was greeted with:

“When would you like to cancel it” - Bell

“Tuesday” - Me

“Tuesday in two days?” - Bell

“Ugggh. Yes.” - Me

“What time on Tuesday?” - Bell

“Uggghhh. Huh?” - Me

“What time would you like the line to be disconnected?” - Bell

“Anytime!” - Me

“Ok, it will be disconnected at 2Am. You will get a bill for $38 which is this month and your last 3 days. You will have to pay that one, as it will not be automatically deducted. For the next six months your phone number will have a message proving a forwarding number of xxx-xxxx. This is free of charge.” - Bell

Needless to say I was very happy with Bell and very unhappy with Rogers. Hence with the house coming up the plan was to go Bell for everything. We even spent $200 to have satellite pre-wiring put in. Bell is the answer!

Fast forward to yesterday.

We were at the Bell World store and selecting satellite programming, and then moving onto internet. Uggh Oh. Big Uggh Oh. The standard internet service is not available in our section of Barrhaven. I was shocked. My first reaction was Holy Crap! We have to move! Needless to say that Bell was suddenly not an option. Unbelievable. So now we stand in a situation where we are signed up for everything through Rogers. Who would have thought. Home Phone, TV, Internet… All Rogers, gross. If the service through Rogers does not improve this may be an interesting few years until Bell gets decent internet service in the area. As well it again illustrates why I hate people who speak in absolutes, and hate even more when I do it myself.

 

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Posted by Tyler Posted in: Everything, Technology 2 Comments » October 2007

Stream of Conscious Emails

I am guilty. Very very guilty. Do you work with people like me who do this? I am starting to think that it is very common in the software industry.

To explain the torture that I am providing people, the situation plays like this: You receive a question, you think quickly and realize that you have a clear and concise answer to the question. It may not be the answer you want to provide, you may be saying something to the likes of ‘this will be very difficult and time consuming‘, as you continue to write and explain why this will be difficult you start to realize that maybe just maybe there is a really smart solution to the problem. Before you know it you are starting to explain your solution and maybe just maybe things won’t be as painful as you originally estimated. Now you are rethinking and saying things along the lines of ‘if we can find an elegant way to solve this one issue…‘ but you start to realize that there may not be a good solution to that problem. Now you are wondering is my design flawed? and this starts to find its way into the email by way of perhaps a quick little refactoring exercise in this location. You realize that what you have said is starting to make less and less sense, and that you yourself are confused and you are worried about just how confused your reader is. You finish off the email by saying that you are pretty confident that you can complete the work in a week. This date means nothing and you just picked it because it sounded kind of safe. You end the email by saying that you are concerned that you have confused the issue further and to please phone you tomorrow if there are questions. There most certainly will be.

So. Do you have any questions? I do. Why do I write emails at the very end of the day?

 

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Posted by Tyler Posted in: Everything, Software No Comments » October 2007

The House is Painted!

The house is really coming along. There is no change now that it will be late, as they have done their first coat of paint. All fears that I had about the paint colour being too dark have fallen by the wayside as I have seen how bright it looks in the house. I must say I am more excited now than ever.

As well as seeing the paint colour there is some other exciting news. Rather than the awful teal that I was expecting for the front door colour it is a nice chocolate brown. We will probably still be painting the front door a nice red to make it more welcoming, but at least I don’t hate the colour that it will be originally. As well they have sodded the lot behind us so now we have a good idea of how big our backyard is. It’s about 25′ deep which is a good size for a town house, it will comfortably host a barbeque!

To get a better idea of some of what I’m talking about see some of the photos below:

 

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Posted by Tyler Posted in: Everything, Personal Life 4 Comments » October 2007

Harddrive Finds: Rufio Photo

It was one of the last photos that I intended to post on JunkedCamera. It never made it that far. I just found it on my hard drive a few days ago:

I also found this photo of the house during construction that didn’t make it into the regular house gallery.

 

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Posted by Tyler Posted in: Everything, Photography No Comments » October 2007

A Centimeter Makes All The Difference

Sometimes it amazes me how much difference a centimeter can make in the grand scheme of things, well actually 2 centimeters. Last week I purchased 3 sets of blinds for the back windows of the house from Ikea. Before purchasing I measured the windows and they were a perfectly standard 24″ wide, but more than 7 feet tall. When I got to Ikea I checked the size of the blinds; 60cm. That sounds like 24″ right? Well actually it is 22 3/4″ which is close. I bought 3 of them hoping that they would work, all together they cost $205 (taxes in).

After checking them they were about half an inch too narrow -you could just see glass on either side of the blind-, so they were returned. As they were returned the guy who worked at Ikea just kinda shrugged and muttered Didn’t fit?. I am guessing that it is pretty common for the blinds to be just different enough that they won’t work.

Now the current situation: I went to Home Depot to determine how much 3 sets of blinds that will actually fit will cost. $300. A piece! $900 + tax! Turns out that the two centimeters of difference will cost in excess of $800.

Needless to say I haven’t ordered any blinds from Home Depot (or similarly priced Sears). I am looking at other options, but I am quite frustrated that the few centimeters is causing such a huge issue.

 

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Posted by Tyler Posted in: Everything, Personal Life 1 Comment » October 2007

The Shoetiful Disaster pt. 2

Today I went looking for some shoes again, since I figured that this gait analysis I would have all the possible shoes that Ryan would ask for. Another $400 later and I am going in with 6 pairs of brand new shoes. Half of them are mild motion control and the other half are neutral.

Either way I am happy having tons of shoes:

 

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Posted by Tyler Posted in: Everything, Personal Life, Running 3 Comments » October 2007

The Shoetiful Disaster

I am still working on getting my shin problems behind me, but I must say that I am continually more impressed with Solefit Orthotics. I went back to the office yesterday at 5PM to review the shoes I had purchased. Ryan didn’t like the look of any of them. The Saucony Trigon Rides looked best but he still didn’t like the look of them, so he told me to return the two other pairs and to pick up the Saucony Trigon Guides and the Asics 1120. Both of those shoes fall into the Mild Motion Control side of things, which should help with any pronation.

What makes me very impressed with Solefit -and Ryan- is his insistence on getting the right shoe. He was apologetic -for no reason- for my having to come back one more time. Both of these sessions are at no charge, which I still find incredible. So I will be going back on Monday early in the AM to hopefully finally determine which will be my shoes going forward. As well Ryan indicated that he didn’t think that there was anything in my gait that would indicate that it would be causing injury, so hopefully this will be a big step forward.

 

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Posted by Tyler Posted in: Everything, Running No Comments » October 2007

Call Me Captain Fatty

Is anyone else ever shocked by their BMI? I know I am continually shocked by my BMI and I do realize that there is a margin of error, but still I find the results very suspicious. The main reason why I am suspicious of the recommended BMI ranges is that I am continually told that I am ‘over-weight’, which I would say that I am, yet the recommended healthy weight ranges I find very strange.

A quick Google search for BMI produces lists of hundreds of calculators -here is one from the National Institute of Health. They are quite simply your weight divided by the square of your height. The results do not distinguish between male and female; which is again curious. The results then can be extrapolated very simply using the following:

• Underweight = <18.5
• Normal weight = 18.5-24.9
• Overweight = 25-29.9
• Obesity = BMI of 30 or greater

Now I am 6′3″ and my weight fluctuates between 205lbs and 220lbs. That puts me solidly into the overweight category. Now I am carrying a bit of excess weight, and ideally I would like to be in the range of 190-200 (195 would be perfect), this would still put me at the very upper limits of ‘Normal Weight’. According to the BMI calculator the ‘Normal Weight’ range for someone 6′3″ is 148lbs to 199lbs. I am not a doctor but when I was this height and running 5-10 KMs per day I weighed in the 165-175 range. I was very thin, and at my strongest and most fit I was closer to 185. I was still only in my early 20s at this point. Now I could not imagine being the height I am now and weighing 148lbs.

Based on my own interpretations of the results I have decided to list some well known athletes and their results:

Roger Federer - BMI: 23.3 Normal Weight -Upper end of range

Andy Roddick - BMI: 25.0 Overweight -Lowest end of range

Justin Henin - BMI: 21.0 Normal Weight -Middle of Range

Maria Sharapova - BMI: 16.7 Under weight -Middle of Range

Svetlana Kuznetsova - BMI: 24.5 Normal Weight -Upper end of range

Lance Armstrong - BMI: 23.7 Normal Weight- Upper end of range

Cadel Evans - BMI: 22.8 Normal Weight - Middle of range

Vincent Lecavalier - BMI: 27.1 Overweight- Middle of range

Joe Thornton - BMI: 27.1 Overweight- Middle of range

Sidney Crosby - BMI: 26.9 Overweight- Middle of range

Martin Brodeur - BMI: 27.0 Overweight- Middle of range

Derek Jeter - BMI: 24.4 Normal Weight- Upper end of range

Alex Rodriguez - BMI: 28.1 Overweight- Middle of range

Ronaldo - BMI: 24.5 Normal Weight- Upper end of range

David Beckham - BMI: 22.4 Normal Weight- Middle of range

I don’t really think that I need to go on. Even cyclists such as Lance Armstrong and Cadel Evans are in the middle of the healthy range. It is much easier for women to be in the healthy range as it does not differentiate between the sexes, yet I would not expect a 5′7″ woman to weigh the same as a 5′7″ man.

I did not bother to do any football (American) players as one could guess that it would be difficult to find any players in the normal range. I think it is pretty clear that any male athlete who is not in an endurance sport will fall in the upper end of normal or into the overweight category.

I think this will just prove that BMI alone does not do much to determine ones health. I am not going to judge my weight based on BMI, but rather on how comfortably I can run/ski/walk etc… Because these numbers just don’t make me believe that it is a valid way to determine weight ranges.

 

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Posted by Tyler Posted in: Everything, Personal Life, Running 3 Comments » October 2007

The Perils of Under-Taxation

For quite a while I have been a major proponent for Canada re-evaluating its policy on over taxation. I would still like for Canada to re-evaluate the necessity of dual taxation -paying 30-40% income tax and then be taxed 14% sales tax on the funds that have already been filtered by the government coffers. One of my main sticking points has been the lack of a tax break on mortgage interest. This is only half true as there are ways to be able to right off the interest -such as the Smith Manoeuvre-, which dictates that if the loan is for the purpose of investment then the interest is tax deductible. This is an interesting concept and one that may be worth looking into if you are interested in some taxation savings with corresponding risk. The problem that I have with the general taxation situation is that the status quo -without such loopholes- eliminates any tax break for the hard working middle class. The real status quo.

Canada has a history of allowing loop holes for the rich and handy out freebies (social housing etc) for the lower class, but completely ignoring the middle class which foot the largest portion of the personal income tax bill. So what is the answer? The socialists would say that the answer is to close the loophole on the rich, but that is a naive and ill thought out option. It is simply perpetuating the problem of taxing (read: punishing) those that have attained a degree of success -frequently through hard work. There are several other ideas that may work, the green party suggests that you pay what you burn, not what you earn philosophy, which is wonderful in theory but may be more difficult in practice. Another idea would be to look at some countries that have created a tax break on interest in order to promote intelligent spending such as owning ones on home. The most recent country to employ this sort of technique is the United States in which the interest on mortgages on a primary residence is tax deductible. This has been one of the contributors to the current sub-prime disaster.

Now there are several key factors at play in the sub-prime mortgage catastrophe such as the questionable lending practices, over borrowing, and tax breaks for large interest payments. This has caused me to re-think my personal ideas on writing off mortgage interest; the problem stems from the fact that the situation has turned on its head and is currently rewarding those that have over extended themselves. This falls into a similar category to people having more children to increase their welfare payments, it only perpetuates the problem.

To me a more realistic balance need to be found where the interest from a mortgage should be applicable to a tax credit up to a certain percentage of a persons salary. That is to say that you should be able to write up to 75-100% of the interest of a reasonable sized mortgage, for instance I would consider a reasonable sized mortgage to be a mortgage where the payments fall under 25% of your yearly take home -I think the Canadian banks actually use 40% of your salary for your maximum debt co-efficient- then the interest on the mortgage payments which fall under 25% percent of your yearly salary should be applicable the the tax credit. This would encourage people to make wise decisions when it comes to borrowing and investment. It would also ease the burden on those attempting to the real-estate world. It would also remove any sort of tax break for the dangerous real-estate speculation market (another huge contributor to the Subprime situation).

You could say that the current situation is people being protected from themselves due to the very strict taxation laws in Canada. While this has avoided a situation similar to that in the US mortgage market, there is also many other factors in play, such as Canadians decidedly more conservative lending practices. There are less mortgages that stretch beyond the borrowers means, there are less variable rate mortgages and almost no interest only mortgages. For this intelligent behavior I would like to see a well deserved and similarly intelligent tax break.

 

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Posted by Tyler Posted in: Everything, Politics No Comments » October 2007

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