Understanding Colorado's cell phone ban

I've been pouring over the text of Colorado's cell phone ban, House Bill 1094, to see what's allowed and what's not. I'm not a lawyer, by the way, so you can't take anything I say here as a legal opinion that would stand up in court. Here are the highlights from the act:

• 16 and 17 year olds are completely banned from the use of a wireless telephone. Nothing, zilch, nada.
  
• For those of us 18 and older, no "use [of] a wireless telephone for the purpose of engaging in text messaging or other similar forms of manual data entry or transmission while operating a motor vehicle." So, no texting, tweeting, email, facebook status posting or anything of the sort.
• The bill contains an exemption for use during a life-threatening emergency or to contact "a public safety entity" to report a crime or an accident, for example. This mostly applies to 16 and 17 years old, to permit calling 911 as 18s and over can call anyone.
  
• Operation is permitted while parked, but not while stopped at a light or stuck in traffic.
• The bill explicitly does not authorize seizure of your cell phone.
  
• The original bill, as introduced, also required the use of a hands free device for talking. This provision is not in the final draft.
  
• Interestingly, also gone in the final draft, are bans directed at operators of school buses and "motor vehicle carriers regulated by the public utilities commission".

I love Christmas

Around this time of year I get really grumpy, and I mean 'get off my lawn' grumpy. My wife thinks I hate Christmas, but that's not it at all. I hate what this season has become: a celebration not of peace, joy and love, but of taking, getting, stress and self-indulgence.

I love Christmas. What I hate, is that we've lost it.

Just think about how we kick off, the 'Christmas' season here in America: Black Friday. We're no longer thankful, that was sooo Thursday. It's a rush to save money you don't have on bigger and bigger TVs that look as out of place in your living room those urban fortresses look in old neighborhoods. Last year, someone died in a Walmart while others complained outside about not being able to get in. Fortunately that didn't repeat itself this year (as far as I know) but what level of selfishness does it take to start Christmas shopping with an experience that can only be likened to a minor brawl. Around this time of year, I often make a bad joke, that replaces the word 'mall' with the word 'maul'.

Deep breath.

I have lots of great memories of Christmas. I love midnight services on Christmas Eve and the acapella singing of Silent Night in a candle lit sanctuary. I love exchanging Christmas greetings at the stroke of midnight with my best friends. I love the old hymns. I even love that our hymnal had instructions for which verses to sing on Christmas Day - "Yea, Lord we greet thee, born this happy morning". I love beautiful cards with wonderful art that tell the Christmas story.

So, a few thoughts from the Scripture on how to stay grounded and focused on the important things while the world gets stuff.

Give, without expectation of getting anything in return - Matt 2:11 - Just the magi, give generously to others
Remember that Christmas is what separates Christianity from other religions - Matt 1:23 "they will call him Immanuel—which means, 'God with us.'". - God, who is holy and other, came near.
Go out of your way to worship Jesus - Matt 2:1-2. - Take every opportunity to worship. Speaking of, how can the church truly celebrate Christmas if we don't meet to worship on it?
Go where you need to - Luke 2:1-4 - Joseph and Mary go to register in the census. (Or so they think. Really, it's to fulfill the prophecy from Micah 5:2) Go to your family home. Take with time to visit with the people important to you.
Help someone else - This is not in the Scriptural account of Jesus birth per se. But someone must have given use of the stable to Mary and Joseph. Much later, Jesus would teach us to love our neighbor as ourselves.
Tell others - Luke 2:17,18,20 - Share the love and message of Christmas.
Don't make a public scene - Matt 1:19 "Joseph her husband was a righteous man and did not want to expose her to public disgrace". No fighting in malls, or if you must, remove the fish from your car before going to the mall.

Configuring Kanaka with a shell script

Kanaka is a product that connects Macs to Novell storage. Here is how it can be configured at the command line.

# defaults write /Library/Preferences/DirectoryService/Kanaka "Kanaka Options" -dict-add "File URL" https://server.me.com:8009/KANANA/HTTP_GetClientFile
# defaults write /Library/Preferences/DirectoryService/Kanaka "Kanaka Options" -dict-add "Kanaka Servers" '(https://server.me.com:8009)'

# dscl /Search append / CSPSearchPath /Kanaka/Auth

# searchPolicyAuth=`(dscl /Search -read / | grep SearchPolicy: | awk ‘{print $2}’)`

# dscl /Search -change / SearchPolicy $searchPolicyAuth CSPSearchPath

# killall DirectoryService

It just keeps making more sense

This morning I went a company wide meeting at my employer. I fully expected to be bored with the content as I'm involved in many of the initiatives being announced. Instead I found revelation about my personal financial life.

Just to give some background, my wife and I have become students of Dave Ramsey. We've been reading his books, watching his show and trying his principals to better our financial situation. It's early days, but it's helping.

The topic of the economy is on folks' minds and our CEO addressed it directly. Here is a selection of what he had that to say that directly affected employees:

• No layoffs - in fact, a modest 2% growth in staff
• Merit raise in April as normal
• Company will absorb the increase in health insurance premium
• No benefit cuts - including no cuts in 401k
  
• A new computer on every desk in 2009
• The existing computers will be given away to employees
• Bonuses should continue
  
• And oh yeah, we're going to reduce prices by 10%. (That's on top of last year's 15% reduction.)
  

So, how the heck do you do all this in an economy like the present one? It hit me - this company has managed finances well for over 20 years and as a result has no debt and big reserves. The economic conditions may be awful, but the good management or stewardship of your finances can prepare you for those times.

While they may not be following Dave's baby steps to the letter, my employer has followed them in principal - spend wisely, pay down debt, build savings, invest conservatively.

It all showed me what could be done once you get your financial house in order.

Adding iTunes-style search to your Core Data application

Cocoa is my Girlfriend posted my article on Adding iTunes-style search to your Core Data application

Leopard Server Time Machine Restore experience

I've been setting a Mac OS X 10.5 Leopard Server at the office and yesterday I ran into some issues setting up Open Directory that I couldn't fix.

At first I thought I'd have to rebuild until I remembered that I had set up Time Machine on the server. So I popped in the Leopard Server DVD and booted to it. I chose the Restore option from the Utilities menu. I restored from the backup made about 4 hours previous, in order to ensure it was from a time before I had messed anything up.

Rather than doing a compare and copying the files with differences (which is how Time Machine create backups), the restore wiped my hard drive and copied the entire fileset from backup.

Once rebooted though, the Software Update service failed to start automatically. I tried to start it in the Server Admin console and got a CANNOT_START_SERVICE_ERR message. I also noticed, in Server Admin, that Software Update had no logs files. That piece of information made me wonder about what Time Machine was not backing up, and therefore what had not been restored.

I found this piece by Devin Lane on Time Machine exclusions, and yes, /var/log is an standard exclusion.

Once I recreated the /var/log/swupd directory, where Software Update stores logs, Software Update started normally and recreated it's log files.

Also, even although I restored from 4 hours ago, Time Machine did not remove the backups made less than 4 hours ago, and the resulting 1st backup set was a whooping 15GB.

BlackBerry GPS Navigation options (part 2)

Garmin Mobile for BlackBerry 4.0.1

Garmin, one of the biggest players in the dedicated GPS market, has 2 products for the BlackBerry. The first, for BlackBerries with built-in GPS, sports at $99 one time fee. The catch: if you buy a new BlackBerry you must purchase the Garmin Mobile software again. The other product, is for BlackBerries that lack built-in GPS but have Bluetooth. That product is $149 per year and includes a Bluetooth GPS receiver. Since I'm using a BlackBerry 8800 with built-in GPS, I'll be reviewing the first product. Garmin offers a 7 day trial and I put this through it's paces on our week long trip to Texas.

I started by downloading (http://getmobile.garmin.com/trial) the trial software directly onto the phone. It took about 10 minutes but I only had 1 or 2 bars of coverage at the time.

Once the Garmin software was launched, I was struck by how much it looked and behaved like a Garmin nuvi GPS device. This might seem obvious so I'll restate it a different way. Garmin Mobile for BlackBerry doesn't behave like a BlackBerry application. In fact the BlackBerry menu button is completely disabled throughout the entire application.

The Garmin gets right down to the navigation business with the first option being "Where to?". It allows you to enter addresses, cities, intersections, airports or search from over 6 millions points of interest. It had no trouble finding any of the addresses we gave it, including one rural address. After setting out the Garmin will offer voice turn-by-turn directions and does speak street names, although the speaker on the 8800 seemed the limit their usefulness. In fact, my wife uttered the question, "what did it say?", on more than one occasion. The Garmin also displayed a tendency to over-navigate by directing you to stay on the same road at major intersections.

I spoke to a Garmin support representative to gather information for this review, and he confirmed what I already suspected. Garmin Mobile for BlackBerry will try to download information about your entire route when you enter the destination at the start of your journey. This makes it far less likely to lose your map because you hit a cellphone deadzone. In fact, I drove the entire way from Denver to Dallas/Fort Worth without losing the map.

The map, however, is a little spartan. Since Garmin Mobile downloads so much information about the route, and there's very little need for side streets off the highway or minor intersections, information for these locations is not downloaded or displayed. When you do get on city streets, however, the map becomes more detailed. In the map view, it also shows the distance to next instruction, ETA at destination, and compass direction.

Other Notes:

• Garmin Mobile has many different vehicle types that it will optimize routes for. Car, Pedestrian, Bicycle, Bus, Truck and Taxi. We only used the car setting.
• By default, it will avoid U-turns but you may also avoid toll roads, highways, traffic jams, unpaved roads and the like.
• Garmin Mobile automatically switches to "night" colors which are darker. The darker scheme worked much better after dusk. We only used it once at night and the automatic switch happened at 8:10pm. I have no idea how it worked out that time.
• Speaking of driving at night, it was very useful to see the road curving on the map before I could see the actual road. Made my driving smoother.
• Although I had a car charger, I was able to use Garmin Mobile for 6 hours while on battery and since have some charge left.

Concerns:

• Garmin say they will "work with you" if your BlackBerry is lost or damaged. No guarantees that they won't try to extract another $99.
• We had one trouble spot with the maps. A road closure due to a bridge being replaced was not known and Garmin Mobile kept trying to navigate us over the non-existent bridge. We had directions from a local resident and knew how to get around it. Garmin Support's answer wasn't all that great, merely telling me that if Garmin didn't know about the closure, neither would anyone else. In other words, we're just as bad at this as everyone else.
• Garmin Mobile doesn't have "Find along route", like some Garmin nuvi devices. In other words, it can't tell how close the next gas station is on your route. It can tell where the closest gas stations are, but they are in every direction.
• So far it's only supported in the US & Canada.

Overall, I found Garmin Mobile to be a pleasing experience and while it will take you through places that locals wouldn't go via, it does get you to your destination.