Author Archives: Christopher Finke

Life

What’s the Dealio?

I’m watching the season premiere of “Deal or No Deal” on NBC right now, and contrary to my assumption before having seen it, it’s much more entertaining than you would expect.

Essentially, contestants are given a 1 in 25 chance of winning $1,000,000 (or in tonight’s supersized Howie Mandeltastic premiere, $3,000,000). The stage is populated by 25 women holding 25 briefcases, with each briefcase containing a dollar amount from $0.01 to $1,000,000. Each contestant chooses a briefcase to set aside at the start of their play, and then by eliminating briefcases in diminishing sets, the player whittles down the possible amounts that could be contained in his or her own briefcase. After each set of briefcases is revealed, the ‘bank’ (read ‘producer’) offers to buy the contestant’s briefcase for an amount based on the possible value of said briefcase.

So essentially, there is no skill involved. It’s basically a game of chance where the odds of winning the top prize start at 1 in 25 and get better as long as the top prize is still on the board. (I assume the amount offered by the bank after each round is determined by a function of the remaining dollar amounts, but I’m about 5 years removed from being nerdy enough and having enough time to determine if this is so’ Maybe I’ll look into it later’)

Normally, I have no interest in games of strict chance. Bingo doesn’t interest me; roulette seems like a waste of time. Blackjack fares slightly better, but only if I am actively trying to count cards, which I’m not good enough at to be a threat. But for some reason, ‘Deal or No Deal’ has kept me sitting in front of the TV for the last hour. It could be that Howie’s more likeable than I expected (didn’t he have a really lame talkshow a few years back? Ironically, the odds of that are pretty good), or it could be the character of the people who have played the game so far (a self-proclaimed ‘ghetto Reverend’ and a teamster that is as wide as he is tall), or it could just be that I can’t take my eyes off of Howie’s soul patch.

Howie Mandel's Soul Patch

Admit it; you can’t look away either.

Standard
Netscape, Netscape.com

Comment Voting

One feature of Netscape that I feel doesn’t get much usage is comment voting. Each comment can be voted “Good” or “Bad,” and with enough of either, will be designated as one of “Good,” “Bad,” “Awful,” or “Excellent.” (“Neutral” is the default.) I rarely see anything other than “neutral” comments, but apparently all I had to do was pop my head into a political thread.

Although I don’t care for the overall tone of most of the comments, it’s good to see discussion happening and people using the tools available in the system. Now if only you could save your comment threshold rather than having to choose it on every page; once enough people start voting on comments, I think that will become a necessity.

Standard
Life, Mozilla Firefox, Nerd

Nah, na na na nah, na na na nah, na na nah, na na nah, na na na nah

I just noticed that the delay between when I mouseover a bookmark folder in Firefox and when the folder’s contents appear is the same duration of one beat of Ini Kamoze’s “Here Come the Hot-Stepper.” I then spent 30 seconds opening bookmark folders to the beat.

I don’t know what’s worse – the fact that I did that, or the music that I’m listening to…

Standard
Ideas, Life

TV Channel Bookmarks

If you’ve ever used Macromedia Homesite to write code, then you’re probably aware of a feature it has called “bookmarks.” You can bookmark (or unbookmark) a line of code with Ctrl-K and then visit each consecutive bookmark by pressing Ctrl-Shift-K. This way, you can keep your proverbial finger in several parts of the page without losing your place.

Am I the only person that thinks that this would be a great feature for a TV (or satellite/cable box)? Instead of having only the “Previous Channel” button, you could have a “Bookmark” (“TV Mark”?) button plus a button for scrolling through your marked channels. With the myriad of channels available in some cable packages, surely there are more than two things that people are trying to keep an eye on at once…

Standard
OPML Support, Software

OPML XSL BLT BBQ

I’ve updated the OPML XSL stylesheet that I mentioned a while back. It now creates collapsable folders, has icons for feeds vs. links, and allows you to open all links in a folder by double-clicking on the folder name. It works for me in both Internet Explorer 6 and the major Mozilla browsers.

You can download it or see it in action. I like the new functionality, but I’m not sure if maybe the older simpler version was actually nicer.

Note: the stylesheet uses images hosted on my website, so if you are going to use it, grab grab a zip of the images. The stylesheet expects them to be in /images/.

Standard
Craigslist, Life

Fatasha Ruffin

So I’ve been thinking of upgrading the 15 year-old TV I got for $7 at a garage sale. It’s been good to me, but lately its picture has started to blur and its color has started to fade. It actually lasted about 2 years, which is 23.5 months more than I expected to get out of it.

So, as is my nature, I used the lethal combination of Craigslist and RSS Ticker to start looking for LCD or plasma TVs. I’ll most likely end up buying one from Circuit City just for the peace of mind of knowing it’s brand new and has a warranty, but I figured it couldn’t hurt to look for a deal. (As an aside, if you have a new TV that you’re happy with, feel free to recommend it to me.)

A few days pass with the only results being clocks with LCD panels or wall units designed to hold plasma TVs, but then this morning, I saw a listing for a 32? LCD HDTV for $450:

THIS HAS 2 MONTHS OF VERY LIGHT USE AS ITS BEEN IN STORAGE MOST OF THE TIME SINCE I GOT IT, AND THERE IS 2 YRS WARRANTY ON IT, ORIGINAL RECEIPT AND WORKS GREAT. IT ALSO COMES WITH THE CABLES AND WALL MOUNT. I’M SELLING IT BECAUSE I NEED SOME MONEY URGENTLY TO SETTLE SOME ISSUES. EMAIL ME IF YOU HAVE INTEREST.

I looked up the TV at a retailer and saw that it normally sells for $1200+, so my scam-o-meter jumped pretty high (‘settle some issues’?), but I figured that it couldn’t hurt to check it out, so I e-mailed and asked for more information, a better picture, etc. Also, the posting didn’t carry the normal ‘this is in or around City X,’ which I found suspicious.

A couple hours later, I received a reply from one Fatasha Ruffin:

The TV is still available for sale and in great condition it also includes the warranty which is having 2yrs on it.I’m selling it so cheap becasue I need an urgent payment to take care of an issue I want to assure you of one thing that despite the fact I’m selling it so cheap it is still working perfectly and I have only used it for 2 months.

Ok, her story jives with the posting so far’

It is at fedex location in wyoming .

What now?

Please don’t get confussed about the TV at fedex location in wyoming

Oh, ok, because I was pretty confused. Thanks for the reassurance.

the reason is due to the fact that I almost lost it to a scammer there so I had to instruct fedex to hold it up for me at their office.

Those darn scammers, trying to take advantage of poor Fatasha.

If you are interested in buying it I’ll not be able to receive cash because I’m kinda busy working on a case in Florida right now.

Apparently she’s a lawyer or a social worker’ Maybe a detective.

all I will need to proceed is your contact info so I can get it shipped to you.

Great! My name is Chris Finke, my address is – oh wait, maybe I should read the rest of the e-mail.

As for the payment Money order or Western union will be ok. But, I would prefer you making the payment through western union money transfer because that will be much easier and convenient to me. once I get the plasma shipped to you,

Plasma? She must mean LCD; it’s ok, lots of people get them mixed up.

I will provide you the shipment label and tracking number for you to confirm it has been shipped. Once you confirm it has been shipped you will send ($150) part of the payment upfront and when the TV gets to you, you then send me the remaining balance. you can reach me at (850)3030084

Alright, all joking aside, this is where it becomes completely completely obvious that it’s a scam. She sends me the tracking number for some piece of crap, I send her $150, I get said piece of crap, she disappears. Assuming that she must have pulled this kind of thing before, I search for ‘Fatasha Ruffin’ and get a few hits:

Here, she was selling a 50? plasma that she had only had for three months for $450. She had a different e-mail address, but she was still selling the tv ‘because I need an urgent money to take care of an issue.’ She must have a lot of issues.

Here, the TV is once again a 50? plasma (only $400, what a deal!), but the e-mail address has changed again.

Fatasha has also tried to sell high-end TVs in Ohio, New York, Maryland, Austin, Georgia, Ontario, DC, North Carolina, Halifax, and Winnipeg using the e-mails childtrip@gmail.com, fatasha.ruffin06@yahoo.com, fatasharuffin002@gmail.com, fatasha.ruffin02@gmail.com, and fatastered02@yahoo.com.

Her 850 area code means she (or he) is somewhere in northern Florida, and the 303 prefix maps to Lynn Haven, FL, but WhitePages.com happily tells me that the number is a cell phone, so no hope for mapping that to an address without the carrier’s assistance.

So, to sum up: Fatasha is a scammer, I’ve spent way too much time on this, but at least all of this information will now be spidered and accessible outside of cached deleted CraigsList posts. If I’m not the #1 ‘Fatasha Ruffin’ search result in a week, I’ll eat my hat.

Oh, and by the way: I tried calling her number several times, but it was always busy. She must be very busy working on her case.

Standard
Emurse, Life

Spellin’ It Out

Actual transcript of one side of a phonecall I just received:

“So, Chris, I heard you got a new job! Congratulations! Say, my son is looking for a job, and Sally said that you used some resume website. Do you have the name of that site?… murse.com?… dmerse?… d?… Immerse.com? Oh, e… m… …as in umbrella, right… r… s… e… Ok, emurse.com.”

Word of mouth advertising is great, but there’s got to be an easier way…

Standard
Life, OPML Support, Software

Kickin’ It, OPML Style

As much as I love XML files and the way that browsers display them with their little plus and minus toggles, a file is no good to me unless I can read and utilize the data it contains. So while OPML is great for storing link and feed data, I can’t really navigate an OPML file the same way I could a browser-generated quasi-HTML bookmarks file.

Thinking that someone else had to have run up against this problem by now, I was somewhat surprised when I couldn’t find any easily-accessible XSLT for transforming OPML to HTML; there was one page that everyone was linking to, but it is apparently MIA. There was also a page that dealt with creating an HTML blogroll from an OPML file, but I wanted something that would handle nested folders, HTML links, and RSS feeds.

So keeping that in mind, I present for your approval a stylesheet for transforming OPML files into cleanly presented lists of links and feeds (in HTML). My bookmarks are an example of a transformed file; the only change needed was to add the reference to the stylesheet at the top of the OPML file. So check it out, but don’t pay any attention to the folders full of Care Bears links. Those are for some, uh, research I’m doing…

Standard
Browser Add-ons, Mozilla Firefox, OPML Support, Software

OPML Support 1.2

So I finished the major changes I had in mind for the OPML Support extension. I added support for regular bookmarks, a few options (whether to import/export livemarks, bookmarks, or both; option to import/export livemarks as regular bookmarks; option to import/export nested vs. flat), and a few bug fixes.

If you’ve had problems in the past with OPML files that OPML Support creates being non-valid XML, download the new version, which has a much stricter check for illegal characters in link titles and descriptions.

Standard
Browser Add-ons, Mozilla Firefox, OPML Support, Software

Updating OPML Support

I’m in the process of updating the OPML Support for Firefox extension; I’ll be adding bookmark import/export to complement the Livemark support already there. Additionally, since the extension will have features that don’t require Livemark support in the browser, I’ll be making it compatible with browsers other than Firefox (depending on how much the bookmarking API differs from Mozilla to Firefox to Netscape to Seamonkey).

So while I’ve got my hands dirty and the code is fresh in my mind, are there any feature requests? Feel free to leave them in the comments or e-mail me directly.

One thing I’m especially looking forward to is that once this version is done, you’ll be able to use OPML to backup your bookmarks just like Firefox’s built-in bookmark import/export, but without all of the cruft. There’s nothing like adding a freshly exported (valid) XML file to your folder of bookmark backups.

Standard
Craigslist, Life, Recommendations, RSS Ticker, Software

Shopping Made Easy

I don’t like to shop. So when I decided that I needed a bigger desk (and a new coffee table and some PC133 SDRAM – email me if you’ve got extra), I did what lazy shoppers do – I hit up CraigsList. It turns out that since I live within a half hour of a major metropolitan area, there are literally thousands of people e-begging me to buy their desks! It looked like my troubles were over.

Well, finding just the right desk is hard. I need something with lots of open space beneath for PC towers and whatnot, so desks with drawers are out. I also need lots of desktop area to rest my enormous forearms while I type, so regular puny-human sized desks are out too. It looked as if I would be browsing through the CraigsList listings forever, but when I noticed that you can subscribe to a CraigsList search via RSS feed, my task became a whole lot easier.

I subscribed to the RSS feed, and with RSS Ticker installed, new desks for sale scroll across the bottom of my screen within minutes of being posted. I imagine that this method would work with products other than desks, RAM, and coffee tables, but I can’t personally confirm it.

Standard