Archive for October, 2007

Basecamp Sucks

By | 24 October 2007 | Rant, Technology | 12 Comments

In my experience everything 37signals cranks out is over rated. I’m not sure why they get the positive press, and adoption rate they do.

I’m going to keep a running list of stuff that drives me nuts about it:

  • You only received notifications when something is created, if something is edited you have no way of knowing
    • To clear up what I am talking about here. I know that you can explicitly include when you edit a message. However, what I would like to see is basecamp remember who was originally notified, and make them the default for notifications for that message.
    • Also, what would be nice, is what a message is edited, have it tell you what changed
  • You CANNOT reply to notifications. You are forced to click on the link in the message, and wait the average 4 second load time for the page.
    • This feature has not been added because a lot of people don’t want it. However, based on my discussions with people both on and offline, a lot of people DO want it. So, why isn’t it a configurable option?
  • Notifications don’t tell you what files are attached to a message, just that there might be some random number
  • Links in messages become plain text in notifications, so you have no way of knowing that there are even links in the message
  • It is SLOW, seriously slow. Practically unusably slow.
  • Notifications only have the site name in them, no client or project information so you cannot easily sort through them quickly. You have to click on each message and hunt down contextual information.
  • The notification subjects are so abstract that most email clients cannot thread them.

If I have made an error, and you know of a way of correcting any of the above mentioned behavior please let me know!

Apple Slashes Academic Discount

By | 16 October 2007 | Rant, Technology | 9 Comments

Ever since I got my first powerbook I have been faithfully upgrading OS X with my academic discount. It has been historically generous, giving you $50 off the bloated over charge of $129. $79 seems like a fair charge for a point release to me. Anyhow, they have slashed the discount for leopard to a mere $13. Really this is more a slap in the face than anything else. I would rather they cut the discount altogether rather than giving up a pittance.

BRB finding four other people to split the family pack with.

No One Told You To Move to the Desert

By | 13 October 2007 | Politics, Rant | 5 Comments

That is a long post title, but appropriate.

I am sick, and Bill Richardson wants to steal my water. He says, “I want a national water policy.” Richardson believes it is the obligation of states that are not deserts to provide water to states that are.

My response is, Arizona is one of the biggest growth regions in the nation. How about we trade some of our abundan water for some economic growth.

Boo Granholm. Hurray Beer!

Abolish DST

By | 8 October 2007 | Politics, Rant | 10 Comments

Anyone that knows me knows that I loath daylight savings times, one of the most sadistic and evil institutions of government. For reasons beyond rational comprehension, our federal legislature abused their power, and extended DST to a full 7 months, 25 days. I view this as a fundamental abridgment of my constitutional rights.

However, I do feel a major part of this burden falls on the shoulders of Michigan. Since there is nothing requiring our state to observe DST, why the hell do we do it? We are not some ancient tribal society looking to exploit daylight hours. Nor, are an obsolete war economy trying to exploit coal resources. We are in a global economy where the wheels of business are churning somewhere.

The mere existence of DST is evidence of legislative incompetence in action.

Partial Shutdown

By | 1 October 2007 | Politics, Rant | 4 Comments

Normally I would support a major shutdown of government spending, since so much of it is waste. Unfortunately, since I believe that Jennifer Granholm is nothing more than a Canadian terrorist, the functions that are being shutdown are overwhelming either idiotic or generally disruptive.

I am not exactly sure why it would be considered intelligent to shut down revenue generating activities of government because you are short on money. The casinos generate $850,000 a day ($400,000 only goes to Detroit though). The lottery generates $2 million, primary used for school funding. And there are liquor and cigarette regulatory fees, etc…

And then you have the disruptive activities, such as shutting down all road construction, and infrastructure projects. Leaving random bridges up for sparse boat traffic. Yup. This plan is a beauty.

Ironically, all the BS socialist operations of the state government will continue unhindered.

Since we unwisely have made it illegal for the state not to have a balanced budget (screw deficit spending to help bring the economy out of recession) we need to generate $1.75 billion to offset socialist spending. I have a simple plan to resolve this issue.

We need to generate $1.75 billion dollars, and Granholm wants to raise taxes, so I suggest that we impose a temporary government excess tax, where by voters that elected Granholm pay the bill. In the 2006 gubernatorial election, 2,139,839 foolish individuals re-elected her. So, if my math is correct, that means that everyone that voted for her would just have to pay an extra $817.82 annually on top of their regular income tax. Done.

Now, since many of the people that voted for her are leaving the state just like everyone else, I suggest that these individuals be billed just the same. And if they refuse to pay we should probably sue them for the fee plus judicial fees. Regardless, there should be some level of accountability.

While we are at it, we should probably just recall Granholm, since it would be for the best. Unfortunately, we would need to collect over 900,000 signatures to do it.