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Online TurboTax refused to serve me PDF files because I did not have the Acrobat plugin installed. Since I have mozplugger, I can view embedded PDF files fine. I shouldn’t need to have Acrobat.

Here’s how I built a fake Acrobat plugin to fool the detection script. Some of the more arcane steps I got from here.

1. apt-get souce mozilla
2. cd mozilla-1.7.12
3. make -f debian/sys-build.mk source.make
4. Edit build-tree/mozilla/allmakefiles.sh. Search for “plugin” and change the “windows” references in that section to “unix”.
5. debian/rules build. Presumably not all of this is needed, but I don’t know how to prune it down.
6. cd build-tree/mozilla/modules/plugin/tools/sdk/samples/common/
7. make
8. cd ../basic/unix/
9. Edit the Makefile. Add -I$(topsrcdir)/dist/include/plugin to the LOCAL_INCLUDES line. In SHARED_LIBRARY_LIBS, change $(DIST)/lib to ../../common.
10. Edit plugin.cpp. Change fine PLUGIN_DESCRIPTION to #define. WTF?
11. In plugin.cpp, change PLUGIN_NAME to Adobe Acrobat. Change PLUGIN_DESCRIPTION to 0123456789_10_456789_20_45678_6.0. (The TurboTax JavaScript reads the Acrobat version number from offset 30 in this string.)
12. make
13. Copy the resulting libnpSDKbasic.so binary to the Firefox plugins directory. If it worked it should show up in the about:plugins page.

Be warned that even though the resulting plugin .so is only 19 kB, the mozilla tree is 550 MB. There is a mythical “plugin SDK” that allows plugin development without a full source tree, but I couldn’t find it.

The single-serve coffee machine in the break room has an odometer, which tells me it has made 72,928 cups of coffee.

I saw a full-length tanker truck marked “restaurant grease disposal” the other day, which got me thinking about the grease trap.

I couldn’t find a picture of the truck online, but I did find a WSJ article titled Municipal Heart Attack: Illegal Dumping Of Fryer Grease, Fat Leads to Infarctions; The Sewer-Fat Crisis Stirs a National Stink.

Crazy alarm clock idea:

• alarm goes off, makes loud noise
• to turn off audible alarm, turn on water in the shower
• if water in shower is turned off after <10 minutes has passed, audible alarm restarts

I should start traveling to Asia. Actually, it’s the “from Asia” part that’s exciting. Arrive before you left! With the Concorde gone it’s the only consumer-accessible time travel.

Typically I don’t like software with a “do what I mean” interface. I prefer a “do what I say” interface where my input is 100% unambiguous.

Examples of DWIS:

• command line anything
• graphic design software (Visio, Pagemaker) with a good alignment grid
• PrimeTime giving an “invalid start (end) point” warning if you report timing from (to) a cell instead of a clock/data pin as appropriate, rather than assuming you meant the clock/data pin

Examples of DWIM:

• Outlook changing “RSX: subject” to “RE: subject” (instead of “RE: RSX: subject”) for replies. I assume it’s guessing RSX means RE in some other language?
• the subtle difference between the parent and child window “X” buttons in Office applications
• anything involving advice from an animated paperclip

Today, I had a DWIM epiphany, in PowerPoint of all places. I think it helps that PowerPoint makes me feel dirty, so I want to get in, get it done, and get out before the smell sticks to my clothes. I probably end up overlooking sloppiness that might usually bother me.

PowerPoint did all sorts of crazy stuff on it’s own, which on the whole I actually found useful.

• “Click to add text” labels that actually go away when you click, instead of getting highlighted. Bonus points for not saying “Click to add text” in the preview pane.
• Bullets that appear and disappear in a rational fashion, instead of sticking to text whenever you don’t want them to

This entry is dumb but I might as well post it since I’ve written it already.

csh is an aptly-named shell. It is an acronym for “crappy shell”.

bash is not an aptly-named shell. I want to bash things when I am using other shells. When I use bash, I don’t feel like bashing things.

I suppose that reversed meaning could be the intent, but it’s bad marketing to promote any negative associations with your product.

I get free food at work, with some exceptions. Most of the exceptions can be described as “pre-packaged” items, meaning things like chips, yogurt, granola bars, and bottled drinks. Since only fountain drinks are free, I’ve ended up drinking a fair amount of diet coke.

I found drinking diet coke with my lunch surprisingly tolerable. My guess was it somehow tasted different (less gross) from a fountain than from a can, just like the same kind of beer tastes different when drunk out of bottles and cans. This seems reasonable since regular coke tastes different from a fountain.

I think I was wrong. Late this afternoon I got a diet coke from the fountain but neglected to grab a straw. It was gross. My new theory is diet coke tastes less gross when consumed through a straw.

I recall reading that “optical sound discs” protected with schemes like the one mentioned here cannot use the “compact disc” logo because they do not conform to the standard. Phillips owns the copyright on the logo.

Just something you may want to keep in mind if you’re buying music.

I updated the table to show the final outcome. The Yankees get the division title anyways because they suck.

In other news, the Patriots didn’t do so well today.