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Although I’ve still got a few months left on my XrackHosting account, I decided to take the plunge on DreamHost’s insane deal — the top tier hosting account for the cost of the low tier account.

I don’t actually need everything in the high tier account, but then I saw this tidbit on the DreamHost home page: This special pricing will remain in effect for as long as you keep your account!” Unless I’m badly misreading this, I’ll continue to get the $80/month account for $10! That’s just nuts. Furthermore, if I a second domain to my web presence as I’ve been considering, I’ll recoup the money I’m leaving at XrackHosting in a few months.

Since I was likely planning on jumping to DreamHost when my account at XrackHosting expires, I figured now was as good a time as any.

News.com:

The U.S. District Court in Oklahoma City said the Federal Trade Commission overstepped its authority when it set up the popular anti-telemarketing measure, according to a court decision filed late Tuesday.

Just. Frigging. Wonderful.

Chris Hanson:

The standard response is to change one of the hidden user defaults for Project Builder. But did you know you can easily customize the file and project templates used by Project Builder?

Chris goes on to discuss creating file templates for his open source work.

I was looking at file templates last week and I think it’s cool that creating a new template is so simple. However, I’ve this far been thwarted in my attempts to create a template for Objective-C categories. It just doesn’t seem like there’s any way to split the file name into the class name and extension name.

It looks like Apple is back to using brain-dead installers again. I installed 10.2.8 earlier tonight and discovered I had 2 copies Safari on my hard drive — one in /Applications/Internet and one in /Applications.

Now, I did have to Force Quit the install because it hung during optimization, but all the installation should have been complete by that point.

So, am I going completely nuts or are other people seeing this as well?

Tuesday evening update…

Well, I was going to retest this scenario on my beige G3, but Apple had pulled the 10.2.8 updater by the time I got home from work. It sounds like the reasons for the pulling were likely more serious that the Safari install location

In the meantime, I tracked down the two links I wanted to include last night but couldn’t find (I must have jumped right over the Daring Fireball article when I was scanning the archives).

• Daring Fireball: Install Like it’s 1991 (via 2lmc.org)
• Bill Bumgarner: New Software Update Features (via Daring Fireball)

The latter article proves I’m not completely nuts — Apple installers at one point were able to locate and update applications stored in subdirectories of /Applications.

From Bill Bumgarner’s post:

If you look at the receipt for the installation of the OS X 10.2.4 update, you will find a file within the installer package named TokenDefinitions.plist. If an application is not found in the default location, the installer looks for the application by bundle identifier. This means that the app can be moved or renamed and the Installer will still find it.

Well, since I’m so fond of digging around packages, I was off to check the receipt for 10.2.8. I found TokenDefinitions.plist in /Library/Receipts/MacOSXUpdate10.2.8.pkg/Contents/Resources. The only application included in my copy of this file was the Address Book.

Granted, I’m going by what Bill Bumgarner wrote back in February. It’s entirely possibly that Things Could Have Changed with regards to Apple’s installers since then. However, I find the ommission of any other applications in the TokenDefinitions.plist file a bit odd.

Talk about your impeccable timing. On Saturday, I received my permanent New Hampshire driver’s license. On Sunday, I signed a lease on a new apartment… in Massachusetts.

If you’re using NetNewsWire 1.0.4 and have been experiencing problems with Safari, you should upgrade to 1.0.5.

Railhead Design has more information on this bug — see the last entry for Tuesday, September 16, 2003.

The final version of NetNewsWire 1.0.5 is out and I updated the link to the Railhead Design story.

Gizmodo:

Like with the new Isophone that researchers at Media Lab Europe created which is basically a sensory-deprivation helmet with a phone attached that you wear while in a flotation tank so you can finally give your full attention to the person you’re speaking with.

Boy, am I glad we use email at the office…

Peter King:

New Millenium publisher Michael Viner called Blair “one of the best writers in the country today.” Fiction writer, perhaps. Then Viner made the lamebrained statement of the year. He called Blair “very honest.”

So Cousin Jason has a book deal. Is it going to be fiction or… sorry, stupid question.

I’m not the least bit surprised by this. I also completely agree with King that anybody who buys this book is a “fool.”

If you’re looking for the relevant section in the King article, it’s about 1/3 of the way down.

Oddly enough, this time it’s not my car having the “fun.”

It’s a few days after the fact, but Larry has a new car. May he keep this one longer than he kept the last, which was stolen within the first few days of ownership.

Hey, it seemed like it fit in with the overall car theme…

Main point — my kid brother Dan’s car got creamed over the weekend. Somebody apparently had difficulty grasping that there are several cases where you should use the break. One such case is when you’re making a left turn. Another such case is when the car in front of you isn’t moving.

My brother acted correctly, following the first of these cases. The Induhvidual behind him managed to forget/ignore both of them.

Fortunately, my brother’s fine. The car behaved as designed, rear end crumpling instead of jumping into the middle of the intersection. However, there’s now one less Honda Accord owner in the family (if I remember correctly, it was a 1998).

I’ll say one thing about the kid — he’s got his priorities in order. My folks came down to pick him up and the car was about ready to be towed away but, damnit, my brother wasn’t going anywhere without his golf clubs. He and my folks convinced somebody to tear out the back seat so said clubs could be rescued.

I spoke to Dan on Monday and he’s fine, though possibly a little pissed he wasn’t able to get out of class because of the accident. He’s getting a 2003 Mitsubishi Outlander to replace the Accord. After having my own SUV experience, I wouldn’t be rushing out to buy one, but I realize it’s quite useful for a college student to have the extra cargo space for moving in and out of the dorm (not to mention the obligatory road trip).

Garrett Rooney:

For some reason both Photoshop Elements and Acrobat Reader have both managed to lose their icons on my powerbook.

I’ve been having this problem on my computer at work and, after reading Garrett’s posting, discovered the same issue with a file on my laptop. Following Louis‘ suggestion, along with clearing the various Caches folders, and my missing icons came back.

I think I already tried clearing the Caches folders on my system at work, so I suspect it was Louis suggestion to remove the ~/Library/Preferences/com.apple.LaunchServices.plist file that turned the tide. I’ll confirm this at work, but I’m just happy to have my real icons back.

Oh yes, Garrett has made the switch to TypePad — his blog is now available at http://asdf.blogs.com/ I’ve updated my mini-blogroll accordingly.