Flip-flopping is the sign of intelligence

Some candidates in the current presidential race (and prior races) have been accused of flip-flopping their positions on various topics. The media and other candidates make this out to be a bad thing.

We make lots of decisions every day; some good, some bad. We also take up positions on various topics all the time. All of our decisions and positions are based on the information available at the time of the decision. If we gain more information or the information turns out to be false, our decisions and positions may change. Anyone that periodically re-evaluates these is, to me, an intelligent person and if he/she changes a position or reverses a decision, it shows that he/she is unafraid to admit that the original decision or position may not have been correct.

While I don't regret many decisions I've made nor do my positions on topics usually change, sometimes they do. If I were to run for political office, I might be called a flip-flopper and my reply would be "Thank you"!

(I don't endorse ANY candidate and as a non-partisan voter who didn't pick either the Democratic or American Independent parties primary ballot, I didn't vote for any candidate in the primaries; yes, I already sent in my ballot.)

Crappy coding bites me again

I write a lot of code for ReceiptWallet as well as my day job doing contract work, so it goes without saying that I write some good code and some bad code. I like to think that I mostly write good code with a low bug count. I've been getting some really odd crash reports with ReceiptWallet and no one has actually sent a description of how they managed to crash it. I took a look today based on some guesses I had about how a customer was using the product and managed to track down the crash to one line of code; granted the crashes didn't point to the line of code and were all across the board, but when I commented out the line, the funky behavior stopped. Turns out it was a really stupid bug; I use Cocoa Bindings in ReceiptWallet which saves code and is, in general, pretty neat. Basically in the UI, I specify that a particular field is bound to a variable. Then in the code, I set the variable. The trick is that the variable has to be set using Key Value Coding (KVC) such as:

[self setValue:[sender stringValue] forKey:@"variableName];

However, I found in my code a line that looked like this:

variableName = [sender stringValue];

When I first looked at it and started thinking about it, I thought I hadn't retained the value and that the results were undefined when it exited the function, but after thinking about it all day, I realized my mistake, changed the code and presto, the crash was gone. What really threw me were crash reports like:

Thread 0 Crashed:
0   libobjc.A.dylib               	0x94cc56e8 objc_msgSend + 24
1   com.apple.Foundation          	0x95f4a180 -[NSComparisonPredicate evaluateWithObject:substitutionVariables:] + 240
2   com.apple.Foundation          	0x95f4a081 -[NSPredicate evaluateWithObject:] + 49
3   com.apple.CoreData            	0x90c4520a -[NSManagedObjectContext executeFetchRequest:error:] + 2266

and

Thread 0 Crashed:
0   libobjc.A.dylib               	0x94cc56e8 objc_msgSend + 24
1   com.apple.AppKit              	0x936c3732 -[NSApplication run] + 892
2   com.apple.AppKit              	0x936909ba NSApplicationMain + 574

Now I can sleep better knowing that I fixed a long standing bug that may have solved a number of crashes that I couldn't explain.

Wire cleanup

Like any computer geek, I have a ton of stuff on my desk which leads to a ton of wires. Periodically, I attempt to figure out what to do with them. When I got my new desk, I put some wire runs under my desk to help with the clutter. That lasted a little bit, but I kept adding more stuff and it became a mess again. This week, I added another wire run, got some velcro ties and switched out a surge suppressor to one with 12 outlets! (I call it my vampire surge suppressor as I turn it off at night so that all the stuff that sucks power when not on won't suck power.) I seem to have a lot of power bricks on cords, but not many of the large transformers that seem to block outlets. This is handy as I come shove them up in the wire racks.

Here are some after pictures (I didn't take before pictures, but trust me, it was more of a mess!):

Tech reporter who doesn't know tech

There are a few tech reporters that are well known and well respected in the industry. David Pogue and Walt Mosberg to name the most famous. Both men write pretty good reviews and seem to be right on the money with what they say. So much so that their reviews can greatly influence a product's success in some circles. Today I read a review by Jonathan Blum about the Navigon 2100 and can't understand how he gave it a positive review. (I've seen a few other positive reviews of it and my conclusions below apply to all of them.) One of the following explains the review:

1. He never actually used the device (it looks great on paper). I used one for about 5 minutes and was disgusted by it.
2. He has very low standards for GPS devices (my old Garmin iQue 3600 performed better than this)
3. He has never used a competing product from Garmin or TomTom

You might be saying that these are serious acquisitions, but has anyone actually used one of these devices? It is slow, cumbersome, and lacks decent points of interest.

Am I writing this because I'm a fan of Garmin having written positively about them in the past? No, I'm writing this because if you want a decent GPS unit, don't get the Navigon!

(Generally I like Garmin, but my biggest criticisms of the company are a) their dizzying array of similar units (they're competing against themselves and driving people away because consumers have no idea which one to choose) and b) their units are quite expensive.)

Disclaimer: I own stock in Garmin, but have no inside information about the company, don't know anyone at the company, and they don't pay me to write this stuff.