Category: I Like

Personally tested, compared to other options, and now recommended products and services.

The Difference Between Government and Private Sector

Yesterday I tried to register my car at the DMV, and then at a CSAA office. The wait looked like 2 hours at the DMV, and was 2 minutes at CSAA.

Yesterday I had the opportunity to try to renew my vehicle registration at both the DMV and at a local CSAA office. I went to the DMV office first, and bailed almost immediately, when I saw that the line stretched all along one wall, turned, and all the way down the next. I figured it was at least a 2 hour wait.

Then I went to the CSAA office, because a co-worker had said that’s where she did it. Literally within 2 minutes of walking in the door, I was in front of a customer service agent who was keying in the details. 5 minutes after she started, she was done, and I was walking out with my registration sticker.

Lesson learned!

Better Spam Killer

A while back I wrote about a free utility called Mailfilter for getting rid of spam. I’ve since switched to something much better, an inexpensive commercial utility called Spamfire. No doubt about it, Spamfire is worth the money.

Update: I no longer recommend SpamFire, having found much better tools. See my Personal Survey of Anti-Spam Tools for more current recommendations.

I wrote about a utility called Mailfilter here a while back. While I liked it, after a while I found it to not be flexible enough, and there was no safety net. If it thought a message was spam, it would delete it, and the message was gone forever.

I’ve switched to something called Spamfire. Today it’s Mac OS only (both Classic and Mac OS X), but they are working on a Windows version as well. Except for a few stability issues, Spamfire is just about the perfect personal spam filter.

Spamfire is a commercial product, unlike Mailfilter, but at less than $20 for the “Lite” version it’s well worth it if you’re getting a fair amount of spam in your e-mail inboxes. The things you get with Spamfire, that are not in Mailfilter include:

  • A very well-designed graphical user interface, which makes installation and configuration a breeze
  • A pre-defined suite of effective filters, professionally created by the vendor (with Mailfilter you roll your own)
  • A flexible scoring system (each matching filter adds to a message’s cumulative score), and an adjustable threshold for triggering mail deletion
  • Recoverable mail deletion — just Rescue a message from the Spamfilter application, which holds all deleted messages until you permanently delete them yourself
  • With the Pro version ($29) you get automated (or manual, if you prefer) updates to the application and the spam filters for 12 months (renewable thereafter)

I’m extremely satisfied with Spamfire. Because I can recover from false positives, I can set the filtering to be much more aggressive, which leads to substantially less spam. With Mailfilter I had to be careful, and only delete things that were certainly spam, which meant Mailfilter only cut down the amount, instead of virtually eliminating it.

Highly recommended if you’re tired of spam in your inbox.

Memento

Rochelle and I watched Memento off our TiVo last night. Phenomenal movie, truly, along the lines of The Usual Suspects. Highly, highly recommended.

Rochelle and I watched Memento off our TiVo last night. Phenomenal movie, truly, along the lines of The Usual Suspects. Highly, highly recommended.

Attack of the Clones

Yes, I finally saw it. It is a little slow/awkward for the first half of the movie or so, and there’s some scenes I’d have left on the floor, but overall the film redeems itself, and ends up being quite a lot of fun. Recommended.

Yes, I finally saw it. It is a little slow/awkward for the first half of the movie or so, and there’s some scenes I’d have left on the floor, but overall the film redeems itself, and ends up being quite a lot of fun. Recommended.

Making the Web Smaller

This is a brilliant idea. The web service TinyURL allows you to take really long URLs and convert them into much shorter ones.

This is a brilliant idea.

The web service TinyURL allows you to take really long URLs and convert them into much shorter ones. This makes it a lot easier, for example, to send links to people via e-mail, where long URLs tend to get munged by e-mail clients.

This is only one of many possible uses, this is a great, flexible service. You can get a feel for how it works right here:

Enter a long URL to make tiny:

If you’ve ever tried to cut-and-paste directions to someplace out of Yahoo! Maps and into an e-mail message, you now know a better way.

Whatever Happened to Boba Fett?

In the opening part of _Return of the Jedi,_ while being rescued, Han Solo accidentally knocks Boba Fett into the sarlacc, that huge pit in the sand with the tentacles and teeth. The assumption is that Boba Fett dies. Here’s what really happened.

In the opening part of Return of the Jedi, while being rescued, Han Solo accidentally knocks Boba Fett into the sarlacc, that huge pit in the sand with the tentacles and teeth. The assumption is that Boba Fett dies, and indeed, he doesn’t show up in the rest of the movie.

But here’s what really happened to him.

Timing Is Everything

So, the best hamburger in San Francisco is available at a place not too far from our house. It’s 1/2 pound of very high-quality beef, hand formed, and grilled to perfection by people who know that pushing down with a spatula on the patty while it’s cooking is a crime.

So, the best hamburger in San Francisco is available at a place not too far from our house. It’s 1/2 pound of very high-quality beef, hand formed, and grilled to perfection by people who know that pushing down with a spatula on the patty while it’s cooking is a crime.

They do 200 burgers one day a week, and when they run out, they’re gone. Too bad, try again next week. Their fame has spread wide and far, and they’re usually out well before we get there.

But tonight was different. I got home just before 8:00pm, and spied two burgers on the grill from across the street. I hustled over to place an order…three minutes too late. The last two burgers were those sizzling away, with claims already staked.

But when I got home a smile upon Rochelle’s face greeted me. She had gotten home a half-hour earlier. In other words, 27 minutes before they ran out. I ate my half burger, medium rare, with cheddar and chili and grilled onions, while typing this up.

And no, I am not going to tell you where this place is or what night they have burgers — you’re already eating my burgers, dammit!

Spider-Man

Saw Spider-Man with Rochelle this morning. $14 for the tickets and $16 for the popcorn and drinks. We ate all the popcorn (two large bags). Good movie, recommended. But two full bags of popcorn was too much…

Saw Spider-Man with Rochelle this morning. $14 for the tickets and $16 for the popcorn and drinks. We ate all the popcorn (two large bags). Good movie, recommended. But two full bags of popcorn was too much…

F.-I.W.

Not all of the concepts in this classic story scale well to a larger society, but the most powerful one — F.-I.W. — is essential (in measured amounts), even if Dumbya and John Ashcroft would tell us otherwise.

Not all of the concepts in this classic story scale well to a larger society, but the most powerful one — F.-I.W. — is essential (in measured amounts), even if Dumbya and John Ashcroft would tell us otherwise.

Good Eats

The best food show on the Food Network is Alton Brown’s “Good Eats”.

After many many months of yearning, begging, and filling out surveys our local cable company finally caved into us, and brought the Food Network to San Francisco. Everyone knows Emerile is the “big star” on that channel, and indeed he has many devoted fans. We’re not among them.

The best show has had quieter success. Not many people who don’t watch 2+ hours of the Food Network a day (fast forwarded) know the name Alton Brown, but if you like good food, you should.

Alton’s show, Good Eats, is part traditional cooking show, part comedy, and part Mr. Science. It’s got great writing, tells you a lot about food chemistry without being in-your-face educational, every show has a different theme, and Alton himself is tremendously engaging.

It’s the best thing since…uh, no, I can’t do it…you figure it out…