Nothing makes me happier than to hear the likes of Bill Gates refer to marketplace corrections ('cause that's what laws and regulations are) as "communist", particularly when I agree with them.
Perhaps there's some form of Godwin's Law that could apply here, where every time BillG refers to Open Source and Open Culture as "communist", he automatically loses the debate.
Many of the (3) people who read this weblog already know this, but for posterity's sake, I've changed employment, and I'm now at JotSpot, a company doing really, really cool stuff.
Expect to hear more on that topic here.
So Aaron has been hacking on a Firefox plugin for the likes of us DHTML geeks who want something better than a bookmarklet with which to manipulate, slice, dice, and make julliene fries out of our favorite web sites.
Behold! The Greasemonkey cometh!
If you're a browser hacker, this is for you. Just think of it as webdev crack.
I got my EXP-600 back from Casio yesterday. To my shock and pleasant surprise, it actually works. One would hope not to be surprised by getting a functioning object returned from a repair center, but then one wouldn't normally be dealing with Casio either.
To recap: I buy camera before trip to Japan. Camera performs admirably. A month or two after return from vacation, flash on camera suddenly ceases to function. I ignore this for about a month. Eventually, I get pissed off enough to call up Casio, write up problem description in excruciating detail (after researching all documentation and upgrading the firmware), and send in camera with $15 check to repair center.
Then I wait 2 months.
Then I get the camera back in exactly the state which I sent it in. My displeasure with the situation grows.
I eventually navigated through the Casio VRU to a particularly dusty corner of the maze in which, it was promised I might be able to talk to an actual person about a repair problem. Lo and behold, not 15 minutes later, I was discussing the problem with a live person who actually said something to the effect of "give me your address and I'll have UPS pick it up". And they did.
And 3 weeks later, I have my (fully functional) camera back.
Why wasn't that the initial response to my problem? At this point I cannot in good faith recommend a Casio camera to friends, even though I think the camera's performance has been wonderful, the technology great, and the form-factor amazing. It seems Casio is a case study in how to get it wrong post-sale. From now on, I'm buying all my camera equipment through Wolfe/Cord Cameras, since they have their own repair shops for most issues.
Feeling rather ill, but chugging away on Dojo none the less.
While my head has been enshrouded in fog and code, the world has been moving on without me. Notably, Joyce has finally announced her soft landing at CommerceNet's zLab, after months of wooing by some of the largest and most promising companies in the Bay Area. Congrats Joyce!
In other news, Aaron is in town for the week, hopefully I'll get to buy him a beer. Matt was very kind and invited people over to his place a couple of nights back (hopefully he'll post photos of the "christmas column" soon).