Where’s the peanut butter?!

I finished the penultimate touches on using href="http://www.cis.upenn.edu/~bcpierce/unison/">unison for
mirroring directories I want mirrored. This involved the following
magic in my profile files so that emacs ediff handles the diffing and
merging (all on one line, of course):

# use ediff to merge with[out] ancestor (if the ancestor exists)
merge = Name *.txt -> perl -e “$a = ‘CURRENT1′; $b = ‘CURRENT2′; = ‘CURRENTARCHOPT’; $n = ‘NEW’; = =~ /^\W*$/ ? qq(gnudoit \”(ediff-merge-files \\\\\”$a\\\\\” \\\\\”$b\\\\\” nil \\\\\”$n\\\\\”)\”) : qq(gnudoit \”(ediff-merge-files-with-ancestor \\\\\”$a\\\\\” \\\\\”$b\\\\\” \\\\\”\\\\\” nil \\\\\”$n\\\\\”)\”); “;”

# ediff for diffing
diff = perl -e ” = CURRENT1; = CURRENT2; = qq(gnudoit \”(ediff-files \\\\\”\\\\\” \\\\\”\\\\\”)\”); “;”

I had dealt with three issues on the road to what I get with unison
out of the box and this state of near nirvana:

• released unison has a bug in diff where some of the
  documented values are href="http://home.comcast.net/~andrex/unison/patches/2.12.0/diff-quoting.patch">not
  substituted properly.
• the quoting and directory delimiting (/) are goofy, so use perl
  one-liner to do path handling
• winclient (for xemacs) does not seem to allow -eval processing, so
  I needed to switch to gnuserv and gnudoit

Now I just need to get my sshd to work and I’ll be a replicating
fiend!

My friends Steve and Catherine were wed last Saturday at the beautiful
Kubota Gardens in south
Seattle. The forecast correctly predicted rain but that was no match
for their determination to hold the ceremony as planned. I’ve never
been to a wedding in the rain and can’t imagine a more memorable or
better experience. The wedding party held umbrellas, the quartet found
refuge under a tent, the colors were magnificent, and the memories
indelible. When selecting a gift from href="http://www.heifer.org/">Heifer International, Tanya and I
followed the old adage to “say it with llamas.”

i just talked with my credit card (the rei visa, which is generally great) about using it overseas. i needed to get it opened up for transactions while i’m in morocco, which was a snap. i also asked about getting my pin, which i don’t have since i never use it for cash advances. they couldn’t give me my pin and i can’t get it online, either, which poses an inconvenience since i stupidly waited until a week before my departure to investigate this and now there isn’t enough time for them to mail it to me, but this is definitely the approach i would hope they take with information like this so again, i’m happy.

what surprised me were the fees! cash advances, overseas or domestically carry a 4% commission. now i remember why i don’t h
use it at ATMs. plus, they charge a 3% fee above the exchange rate for credit card transactions overseas. so much for the myth that credit card transactions just get the exchange rate and are the best way to shop internationally. add to this whatever fees the local bank throws on their ATM for non-native cards and for the international transaction and it adds up to “you’re screwed!”

now im actually contemplating finding out these fees from my credit union and using my ATM card overseas. this was Tanya’s first idea and i had dismissed it since unlike our credit cards which, if they are stolen and used fraudulently, we’re insured to $50 and ATM cards generally have no such protections. fraudulent use of either means our credit ratings go in the toilet and we probably spend years getting it straighened out, so it’s no walk in the park with credit card fraud, but given the choice between ruined credit and ruined credit AND being broke, i’d take the former. but when that comes at about a 10% premium, it makes me think twice.

UPDATE 2005.06.09 Other fees

I made a few more calls to Visa and my credit union and found some
useful notes:

• My credit union won’t charge anything on top of what Visa charges
  for international transactions.

• Visa charges me only a 1% commission on the exchange rate. This
  is confusing since when I called my Visa issuer they said their 3%
  commission is from Visa, not USBank who issue the REI Visa and when I
  called Visa international they also cited a 3% commission, but my
  credit union rep confirmed the 1% number when I mentioned Visa said it
  was 3%.

• As long as any fraudulent use of my Visa check card (debit card)
  is reported within 30 days, I’m not liable for any misuse at all.

So now it sounds like my best option is to simply use my check card
since the fees will be lower, they seem to have an answer to my
concerns about fraudulent use, and I know the PIN for that card! But
the real lesson is that this is way too confusing and I’ll plan on
taking the hour to make some calls before I travel internationally
again and make sure I understand what fees I’ll be looking at.

How sad that this floozy would apparently break the contract and href="http://forum.mediacorp.com.sg/board//showthread.php?s=2db8c79c99d544650b87b7e5ea7a6342&threadid=21102">auction
herself off to the href="http://www.cartier.avence.com/pop_collection_us/pop_index.php?idproduit=417">highest
bidder. Or are these all just rumors? It’s clear from the forums
who href="http://forum.mediacorp.com.sg/board//showthread.php?s=1a3bf1fa9687e968d3843f621454280a&threadid=20467&perpage=15&pagenumber=8">the
people want to win and it’s href="http://forum.mediacorp.com.sg/board//showthread.php?s=1a3bf1fa9687e968d3843f621454280a&postid=776953#post776953">not
the guy who lives out of a suitcase in a pre-furnished apartment and
href="http://www.moblog.com.sg/blogger/home.asp?uid=AC4979B4-F333-4583-A4BF-6B8E4DA67CBA">doesn’t
care about talking with the fans of the show.

“Character is much easier kept than recovered” - Thomas Paine

From a recent href="http://www.timesonline.co.uk/printFriendly/0,,1-196-1619264,00.html">Richard
Dawkins op-ed in the Times Online

Dear scientist, don’t work on your mysteries. Bring us your mysteries for we can use them. Don’t squander precious ignorance by researching it away. Ignorance is God’s gift to Kansas.

The Pixies are playing live every night. Last weekend Tanya and I went to the
beautiful Gorge near the Colombia River for the href="http://www.hob.com/tickets/festivals/sasquatch/2005">2005 Sasquatch
festival. Overall it was a mixed bag but a weekend I’d repeat in a heartbeat.

• The heat! It was 95 and sunny all day long and there is no shade at the
  Gorge. That mother was H-O-T!
• We missed most of USE (who, it’s been said, rock a stadium like a club and
  rock a club like a stadium - if you haven’t caught them, you really should) but
  got there in time for Bloc Party, who
  were charming and played a strong set of tracks mostly off their debut
  album. Their sound combines elements of The Cure (who I haven’t really paid much
  attention in about 10 years, when they were the only thing in my world)
  and Franz Ferdinand. “This Modern Love” and “So Here We Are” are in my top 20
  new songs of 2005.
• Jem followed and she was not outrageous. She truly, truly was not. She
  started about 15 minutes late (a third of the way into her scheduled block) and
  tormented us with her rendition of Stevie Wonder’s “Master Blaster” and then
  started a cover of Wings’ “Maybe I’m Amazed.” Ugh. As we were leaving I heard a
  familiar bass line and thought “Sweet Jesus - tell me she’s not covering ‘The
  Guns of Brixton’!” Fortunately they were ripped off the riff.
• We caught up Steve and Ryan at the second stage (which featured a less
  direct blast of sunlight), and then Brian, Carrie, and John-Anthony.
  A. C. Newman was next up on that stage and the view and sound weren’t as good as
  the main stage but I was convinced I should go buy href="http://www.acnewman.net/">The Slow Wonder.
• We made our way back to the main stage where we spent the rest of the day
  and where Ray LaMontagne (whose album is very, very good) was putting the
  audience to sleep. After his set, The href="http://www.arcadefire.com/">Arcade Fire were next. I’m not a huge
  Arcade Fire fan but their live show is awesome. Everyone in the band is
  super-energetic, even the people who you would think from listening to the album
  and reading the credits are auxiliary band members. Being the second or third
  percussionist in the Arcade Fire means you get to be that much zanier on stage.
  And they wore their suits in the heat! A for effort, A for delivery.
• Wilco were next. Like I would expect from A Ghost is Born, their set was
  fairly subdued. They played the new, synthesized version of “Spiders”, and
  managed to pull off “At Least That’s What You Said” in the sun and heat.
• Kanye West took us to dusk with a really entertaining set. It was just him
  and 8 Track, his DJ on stage. Kanye let the DJ take the stage for a full track,
  too, which is a rare courtesy these days and a lead other hiphop acts should
  definitely href="http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/B00006AL1G/103-1134537-7127839?v=glance">follow.
• Modest Mouse played the second to last set and were clearly the band that
  most of the crowd was there to see. I stood in line for 45 minutes waiting for
  the worst burrito ever during their set and didn’t see a lot of it, but they did
  play “Cities made of Ashes” (which may be the worst song ever written) and
  “Trailer Trash” (which has the kind of desperate beauty and instability that
  makes them deserve the coverage they’re finally getting).
• Then it was The Pixies. This was the third time I’ve seen them and no
  one rocks the house like the Pixies. I don’t know how they do it, but from
  the instant they take the stage until they leave, the audience is treated to a
  solid set of the best rock and roll ever written and played absolutely
  perfectly. It’s incredible to see this happen and more incredible that all the
  songs they played are at least 10 years old but they sounded as vibrant and
  exciting as anything in the festival. Oh let it rock!

We camped out that night and shouldn’t have been surprised by this, but it seems
like spending 12 hours in the sweltering heat isn’t enough to really wear out
the people at the show. Our camping spot was near the edge of the parking area
though so the noise wasn’t overwhelming (if I camp at the Gorge again, I would
definitely park as far from the middle of the camping area as possible). I’ll
post pictures in flickr soon…

href="http://moneycentral.msn.com/investor/charts/chartdl.asp?Symbol=ge&ShowChtBt=Refresh+Chart&PT=5&CP=1&C5=7&C6=1998&C7=6&C8=2005&C9=2&CE=0&CompSyms=msft&D4=1&D5=0&D7=&D6=&D3=0">This
is a depressing snapshot of the economy. That’s a chart showing the
stock performance of Microsoft against GE from July 1998 (when I
started) through today (when my options are about to expire). Not exactly
the golden leash of yore.

my delkin usb bridge came two days ago and i can recommend it to just about anyone who’s looking for such a device. i did test runs copying from (my pqi wallet usb drive, a canon g5, a canon sd300) to (my iriver). copy times were better than i expected since it claims usb 1.1 speeds. all backups were successful and i was able to use the “data verify” function to confirm that the copy worked for the cameras. with the usb pocket drive, after it successfully copied the data it went into a weird undocumented light state and i had to disconnect my devices. this was discouraging but since it worked and since the camera scenario (which is what i care about) worked with no problems, i’m not so worried. i’d read while researching usb otg that manufacturers have had problems supporting devices that are powered over the usb bus, so maybe that’s what was up. anyway, i’m a happy customer! a picture of the device is in my flickr stream.