Square Galaxy

These are mostly personal notes. I’m not sure if they will make sense to others.

I had a problem with a line of code like this:
int x = atoi(getenv("MYVAR"));

If this line was in daemon-ized code started at init level 2, it would segfault. (I’m not sure if these conditions are necessary, but those were my conditions).

getenv("UNKNOWN_VAR") == NULL
atoi(NULL) should == 0

But for some reason, things were segfaulting. I corrected the problem with:
if (getenv("MYVAR") == NULL) int x = 0;
else int x = atoi(getenv("MYVAR"));

Dear Wells Fargo,

I really want a bank that just keeps my money safe and accessible. I don’t want you calling me many times selling some soft of subscription package to your many programs. I signed up for the national do-not-call list, which means that I really don’t like being bothered my various offers made by calling me. Just because I bank with you, doesn’t mean that I really want to be bothered by you.

Tonight you called me, hiding the caller identification of the source call. Thats just plain sneaky, and something I wouldn’t expect from a bank that I would like to trust.

If you call me, I will refuse any offer you present. Please stop calling me. I told that last caller not to call me again. If I receive any more phone calls from you that do not directly concern my financial accounts, I will strongly consider moving my funds to a different institution.

July 17, 2008 update:
BOB, in comment 10180, was very nice to describe to me Wells Fargo’s privacy policy. According to his suggestion, I went to their website and found my privacy settings already set to the following:

My Wells Fargo Privacy Settings

So my question now is the following? Were my privacy settings always prohibiting contact? Or were they changed by the Wells Fargo representative who called me last with whom I requested that they no longer call me?

The good news is that I haven’t been called in quite a while. Also, now I know that any calls I may receive in the future are in contradiction to my privacy settings and against Wells Fargo’s privacy policy.

Does anyone know where I can find similar privacy settings on the Discover Card website?

Update July 24 Today I received another phone call which introduced itself as being associated with Wells Fargo. When I asked the guy if he was aware that I had specified in my Wells Fargo privacy settings that I wish not to be contacted, he asked me what privacy settings I was talking about, and then he suggested that my system was incorrect.

Hillary Clinton’s latest claim why she is the better candidate:

“The states that I’ve won total 300 electoral votes,” she told about 300 people in a high school gymnasium in Maysville, the birthplace of the actor George Clooney. “The question is who can win 270 electoral votes? My opponent has won states totaling 217 electoral votes.” (Source: New York Times)

Additionally, Clinton discounts Obama’s wins in red states: states that traditionally vote republican, such as Utah, Idaho, Texas, and others.

While I believe Clinton’s claims are somewhat silly, I’ll humor the idea for just a moment to do some of my own math.

There are 8 states who have, in the last four presidential elections, voted for the republican candidate twice, and the democratic candidate twice. These states are: Nevada, Louisiana, Arkansas, Mississippi, Tennessee, Kentucky, West Virginia, and Ohio. (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Red_states_and_blue_states)

Now if we consider these 8 swing states, the number of electoral college votes each of these states contributes toward the general presidential election, and the democratic candidate who had the most popular vote, we arrive at these numbers:

• Nevada, 5 votes, won by Clinton
• Louisiana, 9 votes, won by Obama
• Arkansas, 6 votes, won by Clinton
• Mississippi, 11 votes, won by Obama
• Tennessee, 11 votes, won by Clinton
• Kentucky, 8 votes, yet to be determined
• West Virginia, 5 votes, won by Clinton
• Ohio, 20 votes, won by Obama

The totals are: Clinton - 27, Obama - 40.

These numbers seem to indicate that Obama has the best chance to pick up more electoral college votes from these swing states.

Even if we broaden our definition of a swing state to include any state that has been mixed in the presidential voting anytime in the last four elections, Obama still beats Clinton, 71 to 57.

Tonight I watched the 2002 film, About a Boy. One of the themes of the movie deals with the main character’s search for meaning in his life as he admits that he really does nothing in life.

The theme made me think some more about the different things that motivate us in life. In particular, the movie illustrated some of the meaning that comes through service and love to others and family.

Sometimes I’m not sure how much of that meaning I am currently finding. Sometimes its hard being single when you see all your friends going off and getting married. I hate to admit it, but sometimes I even convince myself to have little crushes, because, as I think I’m figuring out, it gives me a little bit of hope of things that may come. To find the meaning and to find the hope, I think these things would help me cope.

Happy May thirteenth. I hope today means something in your life.

I released version 1.2 (download) of my little GDocsUploader program. After being published on a few websites and having over 4000 downloads, I thought it might be nice to update the app a little.

There are bug fixes, better error dialogs, a new icon (used under a creative commons license) and uploading of photos into Picasa Web Albums. A bulleted list of changes is published in the project wiki.

GDocsUploader is a small Mac OS X program that I wrote to quickly upload documents to Google Docs, simply by dragging and dropping a document icon onto the uploader icon.

I created this project entirely in my spare time. If you would like to support further development, please consider a donation: