Mike Cohen

A Shipping Nightmare. Last week, I ordered a LinkSys WET-11 wireless ethernet bridge, and thanks to a series of screw-ups by FedEx Ground, it never arrived and is now on its way back to the shipper. [MacMegasite]

Buy.com won’t re-ship it. I ended up buying one from Amazon.com for the same price.

Well, FedEx Ground really screwed up royally this time. I had asked them to hold that package for pickup, but they didn’t. It’s now on the way back to Buy.com.

I contacted buy.com and asked them to re-ship the WET-11 by any method other than FedEx Ground.

Making Web Design a Team Sport. Thinkquest, a popular international Web design competition for kids, finds a new sponsor after several years of limbo. By Katie Dean. [Wired News]

No Easy Money Suing Spammers. Think deleting junk e-mail is a pain? Try taking a spammer to court. Some activists are making money pursuing spam cases in small claims court, but few say the profits are worth the hassle. By Joanna Glasner. [Wired News]

I’m still having grief with FedEx. Last Thursday I ordered a LinkSys WET-11 wireless ethernet bridge from buy.com with free shipping via FedEx ground. It shipped the next day and according to the tracking info, it was on the truck for delivery here Monday, although no delivery attempt was made. They supposedly attempted to deliver it Tuesday & nobody was home. No note was left on my door & I didn’t see any fedex truck. The same thing happened yesterday, and I called to request that they hold it so I could pick it up today. They didn’t hold it and it went out for delivery. They supposedly attempted delivery at 9:31 today, and I know I was home at that time. Once again, no note was left on my door & I didn’t see any FedEx truck. When I called them, they confirmed that they did have the correct adddress. Hopefully this time they really will hold it so I can pick it up tomorrow. I know if they attempt delivery, it will never get here.

I’ve never had problems like that with deliveries from FedEx air, UPS, or Airborne.

OK, here’s the excellent news I mentioned yesterday: effective Nov. 1, I’ll be an employee of Absolute Software. I got the official offer today & I’ve already signed it & faxed it back to them.

I’ve been working for them as a contractor since last October, developing the Mac versions of their CompuTrace & asset tracking software.

NetNewsWire Lite 1.0.2b3. NetNewsWire Lite 1.0.2b3 fixes a bug introduced in the last beta.

There was an HTTP connection leak that would cause NetNewsWire to stop being able to read news. Fixed. [inessential.com]

Excellent! I noticed this bug today.

Anyone with a clue and a desire to minimize maintenance costs of their OS X system either knows or will soon learn that thou shalt not install crap in /Applications/ unless it is completely unavoidable. There are a slew of good reasons to do this and I have ranted on said topic a number of times in the past.

Recently, the question was posed — If not /Applications, then where does Apple suggest we install applications?

The off the cuff answer is simple; make an Applications/ directory in your home account and stick the apps there. Works and works well. That Apple doesn’t automatically create that directory as a part of the default user template would seem to be an oversight on their part.

Of course, the next question: What are all the directories within which OS X looks for applications?

Good question. The Foundation provides API via which one can easily query for the set of paths upon which various searches are performed.

For Applications, the default complete set is:

• ~/Applications
• ~/Applications/Utilities
• ~/Developer/Applications
• ~/Applications/GrabBag
• /Applications
• /Applications/Utilities
• /Developer/Applications
• /Applications/GrabBag
• /Network/Applications
• /Network/Applications/Utilities
• /Network/Developer/Applications
• /Network/Applications/GrabBag

GrabBag? What the heck is that (turns out, it is where Demo applications go!)?? And what other interesting things can we deduce via the Foundation API?

For one, OS X considers /Developer to be like /Library. In particular, the Library search paths (in order) are:

• ~/Library
• ~/Developer
• /Library
• /Developer
• /Network/Library
• /Network/Developer
• /System/Library
• /Developer

Furthermore, the Documents directory is limited to just the user (~/Documents). There isn’t a concept of a shared documents directory.

On the other hand, Documentation directories can be found in multiple locations. It would seem that there should be Developer specific directories in this mix (like there are for Library).

• ~/Library/Documentation
• /Library/Documentation
• /Network/Library/Documentation
• /System/Library/Documentation

By default, Users are found in one of two places; /Users or /Network/Users. I wonder if that list is extended if the system is the client of an OS X Server based network (or otherwise integrated as a client into a directory services based system)?

In any case, there you have it — all the fun places that the system looks for things, by default. What this means is that, if there is a directory in /Developer that contains stuff found automatically by some random tool, you can likely create the same directory in ~/Developer and add, extend or override to your heart’s content.

Same goes for /System/Library/* and the myriad of contents within. Obviously, a lot of stuff will be hardwired to wherever it happens to live. But other things will not be– Input Managers, for example, can be dropped into the appropriately named directory in any of the directories in the Library search path. [bbum’s rants, code & references]

I’ve been having a lot of grief with FedEx for the last few days. I ordered a LinkSys WET-11 wireless ethernet bridge last week, which was supposed to arrive Monday. According to the tracking page, it was loaded on the truck for delivery. It was once again loaded on the truck yesterday & I stayed home all day waiting for it. No FedEx truck arrived and no note was left on my door.

As of 2:35PM it still hasn’t arrived, and FedEx normally arrives in the morning here.

On FedEx vehicle for delivery/FORT LAUDERDALE FL
10/23/2002 02:28 Customer not available or business closed/FORT LAUDERDALE FL

10/22/2002 08:42 On FedEx vehicle for delivery/FORT LAUDERDALE FL
10/22/2002 04:06 On FedEx vehicle for delivery/FORT LAUDERDALE FL
10/21/2002 01:56 Arrived at FedEx sort facility/FORT LAUDERDALE FL
10/19/2002 04:54 Departed FedEx sort facility/ORLANDO FL
10/19/2002 00:46 Scanned at FedEx sort facility/ORLANDO FL
10/18/2002 21:03 Package information transmitted to FedEx
10/17/2002 12:21 Customer-Loaded Trailer Picked Up/MEMPHIS TN
10/17/2002 00:00

I went to the condo board meeting tonight. It was mostly a waste of time. Last month they had a vote whether to allow cats (I think about half the people here own cats even though it wasn’t allowed). The vote was 93-26 in favor, with about 40 votes yet uncounted.

They’re also talking about permanently closing the gate between the two buildings because too many non-residents were cutting through as a shortcut. We have 2 entrances & the one near my building is on a dead-end street that’s only easily accessible if you’re travelling east on Oakland Park. If you’re travelling west, you need to go an extra block & make a U-turn to enter here. I always used the entrance on the other side, since it’s a lot more convenient. If I’m coming from the center of Wilton Manors, I would need to drive pretty far out of the way to enter near my building, so I’ll probably just park in a guest spot on that side.

Although the community is about equally divided between young families & singles and elderly people, the condo board consists entirely of elderly women except for one young man. I think we need a new board that reflects the makeup of the community better.