Comments(1)Java Applets are dead!
Pictured above is E*Trade’s Marketcaster Java applet. It provides real-time streaming stock market quotes. Or, at least, that’s what it is supposed to do. I took the screenshot above after having waited for about 5 mins …
Java applets were cool when they first hit the web, but since then a lot of other technologies have surfaced and Java never managed to keep pace with the development around it.
For the last few years Java applets were nothing but a nuisance to me. My success rate with Java applets is at around 10% - 90% of the time the applet does not initialize correctly (see above) or bombs out with one or another exception. Add to that long load times, the fact that the virus scanner goes bonkers (using most of the CPU) whenever the applet’s JARs are being loaded and you end up with unusable technology.
And, no, I’m not using some outdated JRE - even Sun’s - oops - Java’s own Java Test page gives me two big thumbs up.
[Update]
PS: Add to the list of annoyances above: “Blank Java Security Warning dialogs that require a browser kill” - as it happened a minute ago on www.thinkfree.com …
E*Trade Max-Rate checking
After researching the topic for a while I just opened an E*Trade Max-Rate checking account. I’ve been a loyal Wells Fargo customer since I moved to the US. There’s nothing to complain about them, but then there’s also nothing to write home about. After signing up at Mint.com I stumbled over a section called “Ways to Save”. Mint analyzes your accounts and suggests ways on how you can make the most out of your money. One of the items there listed alternatives to my traditional checking/saving accounts that yield (more) interest than the existing accounts.
I called and emailed Wells Fargo and asked them if they have similar products in their portfolio. The lack of comparable products and the fact that I was given the run-around pushed me towards E*Trade.
According to the information on E*Trade’s site you currently get 2.9% APR while your checking account balance is maintained above $5000 (compare that to 0.0% for the majority of other checking accounts). I don’t recall the last time that my balance at Wells Fargo was below that (well, I do, but those were the times just before the divorce). On top of that, they also waive all the ATM fees: with Wells Fargo I always have to go to Wells Fargo ATMs to pick up cash - going to a competitors ATM means that one has to pay some extra ATM access fees.
The most annoying thing will be the period where I close out the existing Wells Fargo account and switch over to the new E*Trade. Hopefully their Checking Switch Kit (PDF) will make the process as easy as possible.
And, by all means, do give Mint.com a try.
McCall’s ripoff pumpkin patch
Sunday a week ago we went to McCall’s pumpkin patch in Moriarty, about 1 hr from Santa Fe. Originally we thought we would try to go up to Durango again to catch the Great Pumpkin Patch Express, but I changed my mind, because the weather situation was unsure and it’s at least a 4-hrs drive to get up there. Moriarty seemed like a better choice.
Pia brought her baby-bladder and I don’t know how often we had to empty it that day. I guess I’m not telling parents anything new by saying that the urgency to find a bathroom is indirect proportional to the distance of the closest one: meaning - the further away you are from a bathroom, the more urgent the desire to pee. Just past Galisteo we had to make an emergency stop behind some bushes to address one such urgent desire. When we left again, Pia’s underwear was clipped into one of the back windows for drying purposes …
We had NO IDEA how big that McCall-thing in Moriarty would be. Two huge parking lots and even more people. After shelling out $27 for three people we entered the enclosed area. The tickets said that most of the “attractions” were included in the price. What they did not tell you was that it would take quite some patience to actually get to the attractions. Everything had a huge line in front of it. Think “Disney World” with a lot less sophisticated queuing techniques. I’m not talking about kid-friendly 5-min lines, but more like kid-unfriendly 30-min queues …
In defense, there were a few things you did not have to wait for and one of them was the corn maze. You could pick a short, a medium and a long route through it. Pia made an effort to find all the numbered markers on the medium route and 30 mins after we entered the maze, we found the exit.
The temperatures must have been in the mid-70s and we needed to find some drinks and food. The lines at the different food stands were the worst. I think it took us some 45 mins to get from the end of the line to front. To cut the time short, I took Pia to the bouncing-in-a-huge-pumpkin thing, while Katherine stayed in line.
In between bites, Pia would run up a 30-feet high hay stack and when Katherine joined her on one of the ascents, it looked like they were sitting at the front of a boat pointing at the newly discovered land on the horizon:
By the time we were finished with lunch, the waiting times seemed to have increased even more. Luckily we found something that was not as bad as all the other stuff: an artificial hill had two huge pipes embedded. Some plastic covers at the bottom of the pipes had turned them into long, fast “Mine-slides”.
If you plan to visit McCall’s yourself do bring some food, drinks and, most importantly, a lot of patience.
Amazon’s Windowshop
Amazon just released an interesting new way to navigate their New Releases, Bestsellers and Editor’s Picks. They call it Windowshop.
A Flash application takes over the entire browser area and allows you to navigate between books, audio books, music and videos by using the cursor keys of your keyboard. Rest on any item for a second and it will play the media associated with the item: you hear a short music clip, an excerpt from a book or see a trailer for a tv-show/movie/game.
I would not want to use it to browse the entire Amazon catalog, but it’s an interesting concept especially for our short-attention-span society.
“He’s ugly!”
It’s a tradition that Pia and I watch some news in the morning. We sit in the bed together and switch to channel 4 to watch KOAT’s local news and sometimes a bit of the “Today” show (starting at 7am). This morning we caught the first few minutes of “Today” and of course the first topic was an analysis of last nights presidential debate. A short clip of Schieffer, a short clip of Obama, followed by a short segment showing McCain. The moment McCain appears on the screen I hear an “He’s ugly!” right next to me. “What do you mean?” I ask. “The man is ugly!” she says a second time.
Made papa really proud that even Pia would not vote for McCain. Granted she judged them only by looks, but what else do you expect from a 5 y/o.
If I hear “Joe the plumber” one more time, I’m gonna puke - wait …
He’s not even registered to vote? Ben Smith’s Blog: The Joe file - Politico.com - hilarious …
“Register to Vote” - can someboy tell me why?
Is there anybody out there who can tell me why people have to register to vote?
Where I come from, the city/county takes census information to mail voter registration cards to all residents before the elections. If you are not registered, you won’t get a card (you can complain about it, but you will have some explaining to do as to why you are not registered). You don’t have to provide party-affiliation information (isn’t that the foundation of democracy?). If the same person is registered in multiple places, red flags will go off when the voter registration cards are printed and those people are investigated separately.
This is not difficult and has worked just fine in other countries for a long time already. Why does the US have this archaic voter registration process (and all the issues that go along with it) - does anybody have a good answer to this question?
“Camino La Tierra” exit as an economic barometer
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Pictured above is the “Camino La Tierra” exit off 599 near my home here in Santa Fe. At the bottom of the screen you see the highway (599) and running from North to South is “Camino La Tierra” with “Las Campanas” beginning about a mile to the North. Off-/On-ramps run parallel to the highway.
In between the highway and the On-/Off-ramps there are sandy patches. And those sandy patches have been filled with street vendors recently.
There have always been a couple of guys trying to sell fire wood, yard-work in those areas, but recently this area has been turned into a supermarket.
Besides the above mentioned fire wood and yard-work services, you can now buy: rocks, plants, trees, fresh vegetables and even roasted corn. I’m not kidding you: there’s a guy who has a portable BBQ and he provides fresh roasted corn right next to the highway exit.
The recent increase of street vendors is a sure sign that the economical crisis has arrived in Santa Fe as well: I actually talked to one of the guys (and used his services) and he told me that he used to be busy with home constructions in the area and has been affected by scaled down home constructions in the area. He’s trying to add to his paycheck by offering his services here.
Selecting random, weighted records from MySQL
Your web application has become big and evil enough to display marketing messages. You want to show your users a message whenever they login. However the Marketing department gave you 3 different messages and wants you to show them at a 70%-20%-10% ratio, meaning:70% of users will see message 1, 20% will see message 2 and the remainder (10%) will see message 3.
You’ve also been tasked to create the back-end of the message distribution and want to create the simplest query that addresses the Marketing requirements. And off you go:
mysql> describe foo; +------------+---------+------+-----+---------+-------+ | Field | Type | Null | Key | Default | Extra | +------------+---------+------+-----+---------+-------+ | id | int(11) | NO | | NULL | | | grp | int(11) | YES | | NULL | | | likelihood | int(11) | YES | | NULL | | | message | text | YES | | NULL | | +------------+---------+------+-----+---------+-------+ 4 rows in set (0.00 sec)
This is your table that holds the messages. They are grouped by ‘grp’ and the ‘likelihood’ is expressed in numbers from 0-100 (0=message is not shown at all, 100=message is shown all the time).
You add some test records:
mysql> select * from foo order by id; +----+------+------------+---------------------+ | id | grp | likelihood | message | +----+------+------------+---------------------+ | 1 | 1 | 70 | Marketing Message 1 | | 2 | 1 | 20 | Marketing Message 2 | | 3 | 1 | 10 | Marketing Message 3 | | 4 | 2 | 90 | Sale Offer 1 | | 5 | 2 | 10 | Sale Offer 2 | +----+------+------------+---------------------+ 5 rows in set (0.00 sec)
And you craft the query that selects a weighted, random message from your table:
mysql> select message from foo where grp=2 order by likelihood * rand() desc limit 1; +--------------+ | message | +--------------+ | Sale Offer 1 | +--------------+ 1 row in set (0.00 sec)
You implement it and get a raise for being a smart guy. And they lived happily ever after …