She was the brave one. When she came home with Chie and Niea, she was the first one to come out of the downstairs bathroom and look around. She loved eating Goldfish crackers and tuna. She loved playing with cardboard boxes and string. When I held her like a baby she would grab my arm with both her hands and hold me tight.

The night before she slept with me on the recliner. She climbed out of the kitty bed next to me and fell into the blankets next to me. I held her tight the whole night. During the day I took her on a walk around the neighborhood wrapped in a towel so she could see the trees and leaves and sky, feel the wind, and hear other people and the world. She was too weak to move her head but I know she could see things, and I told her how much I loved her and how much I would miss her.

She died in my arms.

Document While Coding

Comments explaining the purpose and operation of code should be written while coding. Special cases and unexpected workarounds should be fully explained. Functions should have their behavior, input and output parameters, return values, and any special considerations documented when declared.

• Helps ensure design and implementation are fleshed out.
• Encourages developers to identify edge and error cases up front.
• Documents intention and purpose versus implementation, which prevents bugs when coding or refactoring.
• Educates other developers about why something was implemented a specific way, which they can apply to their own code and future development.
• Simplifies maintenance and refactoring by ensuring behaviors and functional contracts are maintained.

Refactor Now Instead of Later

When adding new code or making changes to existing code, spend the time and effort to refactor now instead of later in exchange for completing sooner. This may require you to touch more code than you would like or make minor changes to code unrelated to your specific change or feature addition. Do not copy/paste code to avoid refactoring.

• Prevents duplicate code or logic; all duplicates need to be found in the event of a bug or feature addition.
• Making minor changes to reuse existing code decreases the amount of new untested code.
• Avoids duplication of effort when refactoring occurs later.
• Leverages tests of existing code and minimizes the prevents duplicate test effort for duplicate logic.

Unit Test Before Committing

A bug fix or new feature should not be considered complete until unit tests for that code are also complete. Unit tests should exercise both correct and erroneous code paths and incorporate stress tests if possible.

• Regression tests already exist in the event of future code changes.
• Ensures code is functionally and logically correct before it is made available to other developers.
• Encourages developers to identify edge and error cases up front.
• Encourages developers to consider the use cases and usability of new code up front.

Write Functional Code

Write functional code in favor over procedural code. Functional code is where the return value and any output parameter values only depend upon the input parameter values. Procedural code depends on information other than the input parameters or has side-effects that affect other code.

• Ensures changes to the implementation of a function do not violate the behavior expected by callers.
• Function behavior changes require the parameters to change, forcing all callers to update their use of the function and therefore be aware of the behavior change.
• Prevents multiple threads from accidentally interfering with each other due to shared state.
• Functional code is by definition thread-safe.

Write Self-Contained Code

Do not require users of a library, module, or class to understand the inner workings or state of that class. This means all state must be private, memory management must be internally managed, and all synchronization must be internally implemented.

• Prevents external code dependencies or logic from requiring changes in the event of a bug or feature addition.
• Prevents memory leaks due to unclear ownership of allocated memory (smart pointers can be used to transfer ownership).
• Ensures state cannot be tampered with or made accidentally inconsistent.
• Ensures synchronization logic is properly scoped and balanced.
• Allows modules, libraries, or classes to be declared thread-safe.

Create Immutable Objects

Immutable objects have all state information set upon construction and this information cannot be changed. Whenever possible, objects or state containers should be made immutable. Changes to state information require the creation of a new instance.

• Guarantees internal state cannot become inconsistent.
• Immutable objects are thread-safe.

Resource Acquisition Is Initialization

Use resource acquisition is initialization, or RAII. Acquire resources and initialize instances in constructors and release resources and cleanup in destructors.

• Promotes exception-safe and thread-safe code.
• Ensures initialized state before use and automatic cleanup when instances are destroyed.

Use Detailed Changelist Descriptions

When committing a code change, a detailed description of the change should be included. This description should include how the change was implemented, what problems are fixed or the new feature added, and in the case of a fix why the previous code was erroneous.

• People can understand why the code change was done the way it was done.
• A changelog can be produced easily from changelist descriptions.
• Repository watchers will receive a notification email that contains all the necessary information.
• Helps inform testing effort for the code change.
• Educates other developers about the specific issue, which they can apply to their own code and future development.

Explain Bugs

In some cases the reporter can fully describe the root cause of a bug, but in many cases only the resulting erroneous behavior is known. When the root cause of a bug is uncovered, it should be fully documented in the bug tracker. (When appropriate, this may be handled by copying the source control changelist description into the bug tracker issue.)

• People (including the reporter) can understand what went wrong.
• Helps inform testing effort for the specific bug or related areas.
• Educates other developers about the specific issue, which they can apply to their own code and future development.

Explain Non-Issues and Won't Fixes

When a bug or feature request is marked non-issue or won't fix, a detailed explanation of why it is not an problem or won't be fixed should be included. Any business or technical reasons should be included.

• Educates developers on intended behavior or technical limitations which they can apply to their own code and future development.
• Educates testers on intended behavior or technical limitations that can inform test efforts.
• Prevents others from re-opening the bug or request, or filing duplicates.

There are some minor differences in the general fee schedule with GoPayment offering slightly better rates for those who pay a recurring monthly fee but slightly worse rates than SquareUp for those who do not. GoPayment's American Express fee is also higher than that of SquareUp. In terms of fees, I think businesses with more volume that primarily this as their payment method would come out ahead with GoPayment.

However I strongly advise against any business actually signing up with GoPayment.

The GoPayment web site has a signup flow but it only works for individuals. It will ask for your personal social security number. I wanted to open a business account with them using my Federal EIN and business banking accounts. That's when things got ugly.

In order to sign up my business with my EIN there were two primary requirements which were that I own at least 50% of the business and that I am over 18 years of age. I'm not entirely sure how Intuit will handle some businesses where there are multiple owners. Maybe it won't be a problem as long as a majority stake signs some paperwork and they use the business' EIN. However that turned out to only be the tip of the iceberg.

First, even though I was opening a business account, they wanted my personal SSN. To do a credit check. Sorry, that's not okay. I told them I wanted to use my EIN and not my SSN for tax purposes. After the customer rep spoke to someone else he came back and said okay, but instead they would need additional documentation. That additional documentation turned out to be my profit and loss statements and tax returns for the past two years (or how long the business had been operational whichever is shorter). Sorry, that's even more not okay. I am not handing over my private company's P&L statements or tax returns to a merchant processing company.

I should close by saying I am so far very happy with SquareUp and it was extremely easy to sign up with them. I was able to do it from their web site, and I did not have to provide sensitive personal or business financial information to do so. And I have never had to provide that sort of information to any of the other merchant processing companies I have used in the past or for Google Checkout, PayPal, or Amazon Payments.

The first thing to fix was the NFS mounts. Obviously I cannot log in at all if my home directory is missing. I have always had a separate local administrator account, to perform system administration duties. This way, I can manage my computer without having any external dependencies like the network or my NFS server.

In OS X Lion, the way to add NFS mounts is via Disk Utility. There is an NFS Mounts... menu item and I simply added my NFS mount back. No problems and this uses automount whereas before I was using static mounts.

To fix the keychain problem, I simply restarted after my initial login. The file permissions were all correct, so I'm not sure what the original problem was. But it worked.

Now for the Trash. It took me a long time to figure out what was wrong, because my ~/.Trash directory existed and had all the correct permissions. Turns out, in /.Trashes on my Mac there was a directory named with my UID. Deleting this directory using sudo and then restarting restored normal trash behavior for my account. Previously it was always asking to delete files immediately. It may have worked as well without restarting but just logging out and back in.

There are two things to take note of. First, I ran Repair Permissions on Disk Utility and it found a lot of things to change. I'm guessing the directory structure and permissions have changed a lot in OS X Lion. Second, the auto-restore of application state, even for quit applications, can cause problems if your NFS mount is missing or flaky. For example, I had a few Terminal windows open and my shells were in NFS mounted directories. While debugging some stuff with NFS and trash, my mounts changed or were unavailable. Opening Terminal in this state would get stuck. (I probably needed my original NFS mounts to be soft rather than hard.)

The problem is that public figures and people associated with public service (and unfortunately all associating themselves with the Republican party) have been using rhetoric that probably contributed to today's shooting. Saying sorry isn't good enough. I hope they understand that what they say can have serious consequences and will try to change their behavior. I won't condemn someone for saying something in poor taste, that could be misinterpreted, or containing exaggerations. But after saying something like that, one should recognize that might have happened and clarify what was really meant. Because a lot of people aren't that intelligent or capable of in-depth rational thought.

Here's some of what I'm talking about:

• Sarah Palin posted a map with crosshairs targeting Giffords and wrote, "Don't Retreat, Instead - RELOAD!" (Source: San Francisco Chronicle)


• Jesse Kelly, who was running for Congress in Arizona, promoted his campaign with the following words: "Get on Target for Victory in November. Help remove Gabrielle Giffords from office. Shoot a fully automatic M16 with Jesse Kelly." He was advertising an offer to recreationally shoot guns with him for $50. (Source: Arizona Daily Star)


• Judge John Roll (killed at the shooting) had received death threats, spurred on by talk-radio shows, in relation to an civil-rights lawsuit involving illegal immigrants. (Source: The Arizona Republic)

This is a pretty interesting situation because of the clear statement he said to the TSA officials:

“I am aware that it is policy, but I disagree with the policy, and I think that it is unconstitutional. As a U.S. citizen, I have the right to move freely within my country as long as I can demonstrate proof of citizenship and have demonstrated no reasonable cause to be detained.”

At the crux of things is a question of whether or not the new backscatter and "enhanced pat-down" procedures are a violation of civil rights. One side argues that these measures are necessary for safety purposes. The other side argues they are a violation of civil rights and the fourth amendment which protects against unreasonable search and seizure. This is the same reason law enforcement officers need to establish reasonable suspicion (which can be used to obtain a warrant) before engaging in searches. Failure to do so allows any evidence obtained through an illegal search to be thrown out of court.

Anyway, apparently local news has picked up this person's story. I am looking forward to how this plays out.

I'm a little suspicious of their weekly "winners" of cuts. Apparently, you only have a few choices each week. You cannot vote to not cut a program. And the voting is by text message. This means, if 1 million people don't want to cut something, but one person does, that suggestion could be the week's winner.

The way the cuts are worded is fairly biased as well. And it doesn't matter what the impact of the cut may have been, voting against it is always used to negatively label that congressman.

I strongly recommend everyone take a look through the articles and reports The Guardian has put together. Given the size and depth of the information contained in the leaked documents, only a very small portion can be covered an summarized when presented for general consumption. But I believe it is important to know and understand the situation in Iraq, the activities that are taking place there, and the level of involvement and acceptance or tolerance that the U.S. government is engaging in.

For a quick overview, you can start with their Iraq war logs: An introduction. There are a bunch of jumping off points from that page. The New York Times and SPIEGEL have also put up special sections to cover the newly revealed information.

If you missed the earlier coverage on Afghanistan, also from documents leaked via Wikileaks, check out The Guardian's Afghanistan: The war logs site.

ITRR's activities were exposed in relation to surveillance over civil protest groups in Pennsylvania. The Al Jazeera article focuses on the group Peace of the Action which was founded by Cindy Sheehan. But the leaked documents also explicitly mention the recent UC tuition protests and suggest law enforcement start "coordinated responses" to control this "Anarchist movement."

ITRR states it is "an American and Israeli nonprofit corporation."

I really do hope the ACLU does something with this case. I disagree with the recent 9th circuit ruling that states it is okay to initiate tracking of a person without a warrant, so long as the object you start tracking is publicly accessible (even if on private property). In other words, the FBI is allowed to place the tracking device on Afifi's car if it was parked outside his house, or at some other location, without a warrant. I believe in due process and the checks and balances between the executive and judicial branches of our government. A warrant should always be required for law enforcement agents and agencies to engage in surveillance.

I've grabbed the background song and image in case the site ever goes away. (Make sure to hit play on the song.) But definitely check out the site as it is several orders of magnitude better to interact with it in its native form.

There She Is!

Cake Dance

Doki & Nabi

Paradise

Imagine