Here is a message I got after logging into a website recently:

** NOTE ** Using a colon (“:”) in your password can create problems when logging in to Banner Self Service. If your password includes a colon, please change it using the PWManager link below.

Protip: If you are designing any kind of login/authentication system and you find that you need to give users a warning similar to this, you are doing something wrong.

On a much more nitpicky side note, why not just make “PWManager” or “using the PWManager” link to PWManager?  To their credit, at least they didn’t say “by clicking the PWManager link below.”

I was looking for a listing of the broadcast schedule for the Beijing Olympics that begin tonight, and I had trouble finding anything in a format that was close to what I wanted.  Fortunately, as a programmer, I am used to taking existing data and manipulating it into a format that I want, with the help of a regular expression or two.  The idea was to have something very compact that I could print out, that would be useful when deciding what to record on our DVR.  I figured I’d share what I made.

• 2008 Olympics Schedule in PDF format (probably your best bet)

• 2008 Olympics Schedule in Microsoft Word format

• 2008 Olympics Schedule in ASCII text format (not very pretty)

A few notes:

• Schedule is subject to change.  If it does, blame NBC and China.

• I used data from TeamUSA.org because it was the closest format I found to what I actually wanted.  If it is wrong, blame them.

• All times are correct for the east coast and most are correct for the west coast.  Otherwise, I’ll quote the source data: For NBC primetime and late night, all times listed are ET/PT.  NBC weekday daytime show airs at same time in all time zones.  For USA, MSNBC and CNBC all time listed are ET.  For Oxygen all times listed are ET/PT.

• The data is sorted by air date, to make it easier to pick what to Tivo in the next 24-hours.  If you’re trying to find when a certain event occurs this probably isn’t the format you want.

• The data is very compressed because it was intended to be printed.  Through the magic of columns and margins I got it to fit on just two pages.  I wanted to make it compact, because everything I’ve found online is either a huge spreadsheet or a huge list.

• I have omitted the listings for events streaming from NBCOlympics.com because this was intended to help with DVRing.

• I have omitted the Telemundo listings because I don’t speak Spanish.

• I have omitted the Universal HD listings because they all said “24 hour coverage.”  No need to repeat that every day.  (The listings for USA were almost as vague with 12-hour blocks, but they at least listed the events that would be shown.)

• I’ve omitted NBC Olympics Basketball and Soccer channels because: 1) it is pretty obvious what they air; 2) I don’t know if we get them; and 3) if we do I still don’t have any desire to watch basketball or soccer.

• Be sure to watch in the HDs if you can.  6.75 times more pixels FTW!

I didn’t hold the highest opinion of Time Warner Cable before, but lately they’ve sunk to a new low.  They want to start introducing bandwidth caps on users but they can’t do this for existing customers who signed up for unlimited internet.  So what do they do?  They offer a new “deal” where you can get cable, internet, and digital phone service for a “locked-in rate” for a year.  Buried in the fine print is the fact that you’d also be signing up for a bandwidth cap.  Even worse, the afore-mentioned locked-in rate requires you to sign a contract for a year of service.  So if you found out after the fact that your bandwidth was capped, you’d have to pay a $150 early-termination fee to get out of the contract.

What is even more ridiculous is that the limit is set at 20GB per month.  When I first read about the 20GB limit, I thought surely that is per day.  That I could live with.  The only way you’re likely to use 20GB a day is if you’re downloading torrents constantly (which I still say is none of their business—courts have already ruled that the ISP is not responsible for what users do on their network).  But 20GB a month is very easy to reach even if you’re not pirating anything, especially if you watch TV online, or if you use VOIP (i.e. Vonage, Skype).  It’s almost as if Time Warner’s internet department has some financial incentive to limit competition from Time Warner’s cable TV and digital phone departments!  No, that’s just crazy talk.

I created a Facebook profile.  I sent friend requests to a few people.  If you’re not one of those people, feel free to send me one.  I’m not promising that I’ll use or update it any more than my MySpace; however, the fact that Facebook doesn’t look like the internet threw up on it makes me more likely to log in some as opposed to none.  Plus I think it’ll repost my blog posts from my feed, so that those of you who use Facebook all the time but don’t want to have to check this website (ahem) should be able to keep up with, let’s say, photos of Emma.

Public service announcement

If a carbon monoxide detector goes off in your house, you are supposed to call the fire department immediately, and then go outside.  Do not ventilate the area or turn off appliances: the fire department will be there in about 30 seconds, and they are more likely to be able to identify the source that way.

I put this out here because it’s something I didn’t know.  So when I got home today and the carbon monoxide alarm was going off, I opened some windows, turned on a floor fan, and took Punky, my laptop, and a phone outside to try to figure out what was the problem and what I should do.  Now I knew that carbon monoxide was deadly, but I didn’t know you were supposed to call the fire department.  I figured it was something like a leaky pipe:  if you own the property you’re responsible for diagnosing and fixing the problem yourself.  Eventually I found a website that said to call the fire department.  So I called the fire department, and they were there before I could get the front door unlocked (literally!).  Of course, by this time I had ventilated the house for an hour, so they were unable to detect anything.

Anyway, I thought this was the kind of knowledge that I should pass along.  Because knowing is half the battle.

Update
It seems I may be an idiot, but this carbon monoxide detector’s UI is largely to blame.  Here is what it looks like:

There is one input, labeled both “Test” and “Silence.”  And there is one LED, with a label underneath saying “Move to fresh air.”  But that LED is always on to indicate that the device has power.  Maybe it flashes when there is an emergency?

Then there are the audible beeps, which must be counted.  One “chirp” per minute: replace battery.  Three “chirps” per minute: replace alarm.  Four beeps (no time limit specified): carbon monoxide alarm.  And this information is printed on the side of the device that is plugged into the wall.  I was getting one beep per minute, I think, which means to replace the batteries.  I assumed the slow beeping meant that CO levels were low, and that they might pick up when they reached deadly levels.  I couldn’t find the paper that came with the detector, and I was afraid that if I unplugged it that it might recalibrate itself upon being plugged in (like a joystick?).

For very little cost they could have used three LEDs: one to indicate low battery, one to indicate power, and one to indicate that carbon monoxide is present (maybe that one could flash and be a different color?).  Then the device wouldn’t need to output sound except in the event of an emergency.

In any case, this is still good information to have.

A few weeks ago I received an e-mail with the following at the end of the message:

Please don’t print this message unless you really need to.  Our forests will thank you by providing the oxygen your children will need to survive.

What a brilliant idea!  All that paper that I’ve been using to print e-mail messages really adds up and hurts the environment.  And to think I’d never thought of it until I saw this message.

But then I got to thinking: why stop there?  Maybe I should stop printing out webpages too.  I don’t know about you, but I used to print out the entire Wikipedia on the second Tuesday of every month.  You just never know when the whole site will go down, or when some vandal will vandalize your favorite page with obscene vandalisms.  When that happens, it’s good to have a hard copy to turn to.  I used to think this was a victimless habit, since I would print it from work.  (No way I can afford five hundred reams of paper per month!)  But now I see that there is a victim.

The Earth

From this day forward, I pledge that I will no longer print out the Wikipedia or any of the other Internets.  I estimate that this will save seventy-four thousand, six hundred acres of rain forest per year.  (My office only buys paper made from endangered rain forest trees.)

But I am just one person.  What if someone else wants to print out websites?  Is there anything I can do to stop him or her?  Well, if I am the administrator of a website I can.  And so can you!

Just create a new file, named save_the_earth.css.  In that file, just put this little snippet of code:

* { display:none !important; }

Save that file somewhere on your site.  For simplicity’s sake, let’s say you put it in the root of your website.  Now, in the HTML for every page on your site, just put this somewhere in the <head> tag:

<link rel="stylesheet" type="text/css" href="/save_the_earth.css" media="print" />

Voila!  Now whenever someone tries to print out a page on your website, they’ll get something like this:

Go ahead and do a print preview on this particular website.  You’ll see that I am not lying!

Unfortunately, the header and footer will still be printed on each page due to a browser “feature.”  Since this can harm so many trees, I consider it a major bug, but none of the browser manufacturers agree with me.  Yet.  But until this bug is fixed, at least there will be minimal ink wasted.  And no matter how much data is on the webpage being printed, it will all fit onto one page.  That’s pretty neat!

And the best part about all this is that it is 100% standards-compliant.  In addition, it has been tested on all major browsers, without any workarounds.  Now that is something web developers can really get excited about!

But here’s the part where I need your help!

I need the help of you, the reader.  I’m only one guy, but there are a lot of trees out there to save.  Sure, I’ve saved the trees required to print this website, but we need more websites to do this.  It’s so easy, anyone can do it!  So spread the word to any and all you know.  Tell them, “By allowing users to print, you are allowing them to destroy the earth!”  Write your Congressmen and/or Congresswomen.  Tell them, “We need to do something about earth-hating eco-terrorists like Google and Wikipedia!  Please pass a law requiring them to prevent users from printing their webpages!”  If we all work together, we just might be able to save this planet before we run out of trees!

I had to devote a small part of my blog to spreading the word about The King of Kong: A Fistful of Quarters.  I wouldn’t be doing this except for the fact that you probably haven’t heard of it.  It’s a movie about Steve Weibe’s efforts to beat “Gamer of the Century” Billy Mitchell’s 1982 world record Donkey Kong high score, and the efforts of Billy and his posse to stop him.  It’s a documentary, but it’s still really entertaining and hilarious.  I won’t spend time repeating things you could read on various other sites.  I’ll just suggest that you go see it if you can find a theater that’s showing it (you currently only have two options in North Carolina..).  Failing that, save it in your Netflix/Blockbuster queue so that you can watch it whenever it comes out on DVD.

you’re the best around, nothing’s gonna ever keep you down

Just a word of caution for the world:  if your installation of Windows XP is, shall we say, less than legal, and you get a popup while using Windows Media Player that says there is a security update to be installed... DO NOT INSTALL IT.  Although they don’t tell you this, the “security update” is actually Windows Media Player 11.  After you have installed WMP11, you will have to verify your Windows installation to use it (sure, they could have just as easily checked this beforehand, but that would be nice).  And if you have System Restore turned off (and what self-respecting geek doesn’t?), you won’t be able to go back to version 10.

I understand that a person who is using the software illegally has little room to claim that Microsoft is wronging him by doing this.  However, the method is pretty underhanded—they claim there is a security update, which is the one thing that Microsoft has said they won’t require Windows validation for, and something that they’ve been trying for the last six years to teach everyone to do automatically.  Not cool, Microsoft.  Not cool.

A word of advice for the next time you go furniture shopping:  check your pockets frequently, to make sure nothing has fallen out while testing out a recliner or couch or reclining couch.

I learned that the hard way last weekend at Hickory Furniture Mart, which is kind of like a mall, except it only has furniture stores in it.  After I got home and realized I didn’t have my cell phone, I had to go back and look through dozens of stores.  After spending the better part of an hour searching, I found it buried deep within the cushions of a recliner.  The lady in the store said that this happens a lot.  So.. don’t let it happen to you..

If you’re a fan of The Office, you will recognize how incredibly funny this article is (read to at least the fourth paragraph...).

And if you’re not a fan, you should be.  Season 2 starts September 20.  9:30pm on Tuesdays on NBC.  Check it out.  It’s stupid awesome.