Desultory Thoughts

You might be surprised to know what kind of information people know about your computer when you visit their website. I have several different stat programs that record information about the visitors who come to my website, as most people do. If you’re curious to find out what people can find out about your computer just by visiting a website, check out this interesting site called Project IP [projectip.com].

The most revealing thing (especially if you’re using Internet Explorer) is at the very bottom of the page on Project IP. It’s the last item you copied onto your clipboard and the script that was used to find this information out is turned on in IE by default. I was surprised to find this out and I immediatley set this option to prompt me if I ever run into it again. I don’t keep track of what was last copied into my clipboard, but I know that it’s nobodys business.

The instructions to disable or prompt for permission to run the script is outlined on Project IP as follows:

Only works in Internet Explorer on the Windows platform. It reportedly works with varied success when IE is running in an emulator such as VMWare on another OS. If you have to use Windows, at least dump IE and use Firefox.

Rouge Evil websites can use this to steal potentially sensitive data from your Windows clipboard. I have done this in Javascript within the browser and the contents of your clipboard is not sent to this server. If someone wanted to snoop they would do what I have done, except the text area where it’s displayed would be invisible (using CSS) and they would use an XMLHttpRequest object to send it back to the webserver.

Fix: Go to Tools > Internet Options > Security > Select a security zone > Custom Level > Scripting > Allow paste operations via script and set it to Disabled or Prompt.

Today our entire LAN team went out to lunch and we talked a little bit about some differences in programming between two departments in our building; namely District Computer Services and Agency Computer Services. Agency Computer Services employees are currently programming in PowerBuilder (Sybase) and District Computer Services are writing in Visual Basic. We discussed how there is a possibility that Agency Computer Services may decide to conform with a building standard. Standardizing would be beneficial, the question is, what should be the standard?

Side-by-side comparison between PowerBuilder and Visual Basic [woodger.ca] are actually not as different as I would have thought. The major differences seem to be the learning curve (PowerBuilder has a higher learning curve), “openness” and diversity (PowerBuilder remains “open” so that it can be implemented on a much wider range of platforms) and cost.

I don’t really care what they choose, although it is more likely that they’ll choose Visual Basic based on its popularity and short learning curve. The programmers in Agency Computer Services could pick up VB easily enough.

Interestingly enough, there was a Slashdot article today along the lines of our lunch conversation entitled “Is Visual Basic a Good Beginner’s Language?” [slashdot.org]. I don’t have any experience in Visual Basic, but based on many of the comments made on Slashdot, I would tend to agree that it may not be the best beginner’s language, but not for the reasons you might think.

My experience is based entirely what I learned in college, so I am definitely not the expert. However, I started out with a C++ class (without concentrating on OO to start with) and then an advanced C++ class that taught us all about the Object Oriented nature of the language.

The entire time I wished that I knew what the computer was doing with the programs I was writing. I was very happy when I finally had my assembly language class, although admittedly, it didn’t make me a better programmer; it just shed some light on the process.

When I took my COBOL class, it was a completely different experience. COBOL was pretty straight forward compared to C++, but very verbose! It was very format specific and the only good thing about it was that it was extremely easy to tell what the program was doing.

Finally, I used Java in my graphics class which was pretty satisfying for me. Despite having to get past the fact that I had never formally learned Java, I really enjoyed writing programs whose output was so much more then just lines of text; they were moving, interactive, and clickable.

I like the idea of knowing how to program. If I ever did it as a job, I would need some major refresher courses, but I think I could pick it up again easily enough. One of the arguments made at lunch today was that many of the programmers want to use C# or .NET primarily because by learning those languages they would be more marketable if they ever decided to leave. I tend to agree, I would rather learn something that is more widely used and that teaches you more. Visual Basic from what I’ve read, really doesn’t make you a better programmer. From Wikipedia:

Many critics of Visual Basic explain that the simple nature of Visual Basic is harmful in the long run. Many people have learned VB on their own without learning good programming practices. Even when VB is learned in a formal classroom, the student may not be introduced to many fundamental programming techniques and constructs, since much of the functionality is contained within the individual components and not visible to the programmer. Since it is possible to learn how to use VB without learning standard programming practices, this often leads to unintelligible code and workarounds.

Of course, everybody has their comfort zones and background, so you tend to like what you’re comfortable with. Since I’m no longer comfortable with anything, it really wouldn’t matter to me, but I would prefer to learn something that will help me in more areas than just my current job. Seeing as how I work on the network side of things, it really doesn’t make a difference what I think. I don’t have to deal with programming at all in my current job, but I’m still quite interested in programming. I think if I ever find the time, I’ll learn the latest web development craze of the last year, Ruby on Rails [rubyonrails.org].

I wonder if anybody else in Tooele has experienced what my wife and I have experienced at the new Home Depot. The employees don’t seem to be catching on very fast and every time we go there we have people helping us that don’t know where anything is. Still! I wrote a letter to Home Depot about my concerns. (This is what I do when I have other things that I should be doing but as the procrastinator that I am I always find something else to do.)

Dear Home Depot,

All of Tooele was quite excited at the news that we would be getting our very own Home Depot! Finally the day arrived and the doors were opened. I have already been there several times as has my wife. This leads me to my complaint.

The first time I went to the Tooele Home Depot, it had only been open for a day or two. So when I asked one of your employees where something was, it was somewhat expected (although still unacceptable) that they might not know yet. When a new restaurant is opened, they hire the employees well in advance of the opening and the servers are required to know their job on opening day. That may include memorizing the menu and being able to tell people the ingredients of a dish when asked. I would think that the same mentality would apply to a business such as yours.

Of course, it wasn’t just one incident of asking an employee where something was and having no clue, but another incident a week after and another two weeks after and another three weeks after! When will your Tooele employees know how to help us find something? Am I setting my expectations too high? Perhaps some further training is in order?

Last night my wife stopped by the store to pick up a new swamp cooler cover. We knew that you carried them because we had looked online. My wife asked an employee who evidently didn’t know 1) where they were and 2) that they were out of stock. He led my wife up and down the aisles until he finally relented and asked somebody else who then informed him that they were out-of-stock.

We’re still happy that you decided to open shop in Tooele, but we’re even more excited for the day that your employees know what they’re doing.

Tyler Slack

So we didn’t end up getting a new swamp cooler cover, but we did get some shingles to replace a patch that blew off due to extremely high winds the other day. It was my first opportunity to patch shingles on a roof. I’ve never been much of a handyman, but things have changed since I moved into a house. I surprised myself and did quite a good job if I do say so myself. I also got around to caulking the remaining baseboards and door frame in the laundry room. What I didn’t get around to is the video I’m supposed to be working on right now (due on Sunday). I guess I’ll be up really late tonight and probably up late Saturday night, too. I wonder if I’ll be able to find something else to deter me from what I should be doing? Maybe I’ll add a spell-check tool to my blog.

Ever since we moved to Tooele, we’ve been using a wireless broadband service called Wireless Beehive [wirelessbeehive.com].  We only pay $30/month for the 512 Kbps service and coupled with Vonage [vonage.com] for our home phone, we’re saving quite a bit of money.

The cool thing about Wireless Beehive is their awesome service!  We really didn’t expect much by way of service from them at all after reading their self-titled “What We Won’t do for you” document.  My favorite is number six:

6) We will probably not respond to trouble reports as soon as you wish.  All of our employees are on this system at home and we monitor it constantly.  System wide troubles are detected and resolved in what we believe to be a timely manner.  But for certain critical uses and critical users we are probably too slow.  This is the reason we do not offer a Service Level Agreement.  We only agree to give you the best service we can. Sometimes, for some people, our best is not good enough. Again, we will be happy to direct those users to our competition.

I have never had to wait more than an hour or two from a response AND immediate action from Wireless Beehive.  Based on their disclaimer, I would expect to wait days if not weeks.  But they really rock!  They have always had an answer and they are always super fast!

If you live in the Tooele area then I would highly recommend these folks.  With burst speeds up to 10.2 Mbps, built-in optional web filter (we have ours turned on and it works great!), and customer support that rivals any I’ve ever experienced, it’s worth a go!  For all the rest of you that are stuck with Comcast, Qwest or some other horrible company who say they care but could actually give a rats butt, sorry.  Be jealous.

One more thing that I thought was very funny and that I’m now borrowing from Wireless Beehive is the message I got once when I incorrectly accessed the Subscriber Module on my roof and which is now the text of my 403 page (the page you see when you access a file on my server that you don’t have permission to access).  I hope they don’t mind!