Julian C. Dunn

I diligently enter all my purchases (at least those that have receipts) into GnuCash. I’ve been keeping track of my purchases since 1994, which means that I can, at a glance, see that I have paid, for example, at least $6,367.08 in GST since then. (Ouch.)

In doing this, I’ve begun to notice how certain stores’ receipts are a complete waste of paper. For instance, I’m looking at a receipt for a birthday card I bought for Dave Raso, and it is ten inches long. That’s right, for one $3.29 birthday card, I got ten inches of cash register receipt.

I’m sure I’ve seen other more egregious examples – if I find them, I’ll post pictures here. What’s the longest cash register receipt you’ve seen for a single-item purchase?

It’s pretty clear from my journal entries that I’m not a big fan of all these so-called "Web 2.0" websites (and I really have to use the air quotes every time I say that, because I can’t say it with a straight face). Part of that stems from me being a system administrator who really doesn’t care that much about what people put on their website, as long as it’s not total crap, but part of it is also that I despise marketing-and-sales-style buzzwords. I cringe with the same ferocity when I hear "Web 2.0" as I would if someone said "leverage the value proposition to create a win-win synergy" to me.

My biggest complaint about so-called "Web 2.0" tools is that many of them are solutions looking for problems. I used to work with a developer like this; we’d call his overcomplicated 60-table database schemas "enterprise solutions to non-problems". My most recent pet peeve is Twitter. I guess it isn’t bad enough for people to pollute their LiveJournals with inane banter about what kind of socks they are washing tonight; they also need to do it by "phone, IM, or right here on the web!" (to quote their boundless enthusiasm directly) Does the world really need this?

Actually, wait, I take it back! For all its inanity, Twitter isn’t even sufficiently Web 2.0. The website isn’t http://tw.itt.er/, nor is it labelled twittr (beta!) nor does it have a tag cloud on the front page. I guess all we’re left with after Twitter’s failure to leverage the value proposition to create a win-win synergy is just… crap.

Just saw another tzdata update get pushed down the Fedora Core YUM channel; this one changes a couple of zone files, one of which is to implement standard time year round for Mongolia. That’s right, the Mongolians have abandoned Daylight Savings Time! I think they’re onto something here…

As most North Americans know, Daylight Saving Time came earlier this year due to the changes introduced by the US Energy Policy Act of 2005. My colleague Gabriel and I have probably cumulatively spent 80-100 hours on patching CBC.ca systems to handle this change, and so far (keep your fingers crossed!) nobody’s noticed a thing.

My personal view of DST, however, is that the whole thing is folly; and furthermore, attempts to justify the DST change as an energy conservation measure are ludicrous. In fact, you can listen to an interview right on CBC Radio’s The Current with Prof. Ryan Kellogg of the University of California at Berkeley, who’s done a study stating exactly that.

Continue reading…

My girlfriend and I are converting to a completely IP-based telephony setup in our new house, so it was time for me to get more IP phones, or to convert existing analog phones to IP using ATAs. I decided to go cheap and buy a Linksys PAP2 from Best Buy and see if I could hack it to work with Asterisk. Continue reading…