Samba 3 on OSX Lion - plus SWAT!

I run Ubuntu 10.4 on my old Acer T180 for backup porpoises. I use rsynch to copy .tgz files over from my Tiger and Lion machines.

However, using Samba Version 3.4.7 on Linux 2.6.32-38-generic with Gnome I was getting beastly errors when trying to mount shares hosted on OSX Lion 10.7.2 and 10.7.3 like this (which works work fine with Tiger):

sudo mount -t cifs //192.168.2.110/WetMice /mnt/echo/WetMice -o username=mcook,password=PASSWORD

After lots of web-searching. I tried adding various extra parameters which some folks  claimed to work. For example:

mcook@cara:/mnt/echo$ sudo mount.cifs //192.168.2.110/mcook /mnt/echo/mcook -o user=mcook,password=PASSWORD,nounix,sec=ntlmssp,noperm,rw

But this would result in:

mount error(126): Required key not available

Earlier, smbclient would fail:


Connection to echo failed (Error NT_STATUS_CONNECTION_REFUSED)
NetBIOS over TCP disabled -- no workgroup available


And Lion would complain with messages such as:

Feb  7 23:03:16 echo smbd[47992]: 192.168.2.107 SMB client not supported - Unicode, NT Errors, Long Names and Extended Security are required
Feb  7 23:03:16 echo sandboxd[47995] ([47992]): smbd(47992) deny job-creation

In Nautilus it would let me see the drive and even mount it read-only with SMB, but it would not let me create a file or write back to it, saying:

error creating new file / function not implemented

I could work around this using Nautilus to mount Lion shares using sftp.

I tried using avahi with netatalk to have Ubuntu be an AFP server, but I still could not write to a Lion share.

I tried using SMBup on Lion but it didn't work for me. Also, when uninstalling it it completely trashed my MacPorts GNUpg setup. Honest!

Long story short. After doing a lot of cleaning and re-installing MacPorts I decided to install Samba 3 on Lion.

The steps to do this and disable Lion's existing SMB, are very nicely written up already at http://fiveyears62.com/2011/09/10/install-samba-on-osx-lion/ Thanks!

To get SWAT working I had to do a little more:

1) Edit /etc/services:

– Uncomment existing lines for port 901
– add this line at the end of the file:

swat 901/tcp # swat

2) sudo vi /Library/LaunchDaemons/org.samba.swat.plist

3) Add this text http://skyprod.net/pub/HintsAndTips/OSX/org.samba.swat.plist

Note that in my example .plist the -a parameter starts SWAT in "demo mode". This is potentially very dangerous, so you should remove it after initial testing. See point 7 below.

4) Save the .plist

5) To start SWAT:
sudo launchctl load -F -w /Library/LaunchDaemons/org.samba.swat.plist

To stop SWAT:
sudo launchctl stop /Library/LaunchDaemons/org.samba.swat.plist
sudo launchctl unload -F -w /Library/LaunchDaemons/org.samba.swat.plist:

6) In your web browser, go to http://localhost:901/

7) My example .plist includes the -a parameter, specifying "demo mode".  Go back to step 2 and change the ,plist to remove -a start parameter,  re-save the file, start then restart SWAT. Username root and your root password should now work to let you access SWAT securely.

NOTE: As of 2012-02-19 removing -a does not work on OSX 10.7.3 and I am still looking for a solution.

I think that’s all for now.

Have a nice day!

launchd: This program is not meant to be run directly.

Periodically I export my bookmarks into my ~/Sites/bm folder. One problem I had was that neither Firefox nor Google Chrome set permissions to 644 on the files they export. This means Apache can't read them from my "userdir". In order to be able to browse them I need to periodically turn on the "r" bits on the files in that directory.

On Linux, and on OSX in the past I used cron to do it, like this:

crontab -e

# This is ~/mcook/.crontab

#
# Format used in /etc/crontab:
#
# minute        hour    mday    month   wday    who     command
#
# Format used in ~/.crontab:
#
# minute        hour    mday    month   wday    command
#
# NOTE: Use TAB to separate entries!
#

0       *       *       *       *       cd ~/Sites/bm;chmod +r *;logger mcook Running chmod +r star in ~/Sites/bm chmod at 0 minutes of the hour

15      *       *       *       *       cd ~/Sites/bm;chmod +r *;logger mcook Running chmod +r star in ~/Sites/bm chmod at 15 minutes of the hour

30      *       *       *       *       cd ~/Sites/bm;chmod +r *;logger mcook Running chmod +r star in ~/Sites/bm chmod at 30 minutes of the hour

45      *       *       *       *       cd ~/Sites/bm;chmod +r *;logger mcook Running chmod +r star in ~/Sites/bm chmod at 45 minutes of the hour 

OSX Lion still seems to have cron turned on by default but Apple would prefer me to use launchd, so I decided to take the plunge and learn about it.

In the process, I was trying to run a shell script using launchd and I coded myself up a .plist following an example that used the <ProgramArguments> array.

[My example would go here but I lost it].

However, when I tried to load it I would get:

launchd: This program is not meant to be run directly.

After a lot of web-searching I found a suggestion that in some cases you have to use <Program>.

I changed my .plist accordingly, and now it works.

So, if you get "launchctl: this program is not meant to be run directly." you might try putting the shell script's name in the <Program> key, rather than using the first element of the <ProgramArguments> array in your plist.

See http://developer.apple.com/library/mac/#documentation/Darwin/Reference/ManPages/man5/launchd.plist.5.html and http://developer.apple.com/library/mac/#documentation/Darwin/Reference/ManPages/man3/execvp.3.html#//apple_ref/doc/man/3/execvp

2011-11-27

Too many bookmarks

I have LOTS of bookmarks in three different browsers. I use Safari, Firefox, and Google Chrome. I have given up trying to synch bookmarks between them. To help me find a bookmark from, say, "How to hyperlink Table of Contents in LibreOffice", I reached a certain inelegant solution.

I may  provide a more detailed write-up later, but here we go with the short version. 

Periodically I export my bookmarks into my ~/Sites/bm folder. To search through these quickly I wrote a short AppleScript program to pop-up a dialog, get a single search argument, and then call a shell script to do the heavy lifting.

My script does an mdfind for Bookmarks in ~/Sites/bm, pipes them to xargs and grep which looks for matches to the search argument. It uses grep again to select only lines containing "href=", sorts them, writes them to a temporary file, and finally opens that file in my default browser.

This tool works great to help me to find that interesting article I bookmarked three years ago on how to fry a penguin or something.

One other problem I had was that neither Firefox nor Google Chrome set permissions to 644 on the files they export. This means Apache can't read them from my "userdir". In order to be able to browse them I need to periodically turn on the "r" bits on the files in that directory.

In the past I used cron to do it, but Apple seems to prefer me to launchd, and so I decided to take the plunge and learn about it. More of that later.

Mord-wangling and weople-potching, not in a flock of bats

I was looking for the answer to a question the other day. 

After a lot of "wearch-ing" or "sweb-ing"I found the answer.

I love "mord-wangling", don't you?

I love "weople potching" as well, and I frequently leave my car in the "larking pot" at my "flock of bats" in order to do so.  

Groovy Dock Tweaks in OSX Lion

I found these tips on the web at Ask.com and they're great.

How to create Dock icons for Recent Applications, Documents and Favourite Volumes and Items:

defaults write com.apple.dock persistent-others -array-add '{ "tile-data" = { "list-type" = 1; }; "tile-type" = "recents-tile"; }'

killall Dock

Enter that big long command all on one line.

Here's how it looks:

Try it! You'll like it!

How to make Dock icons be Translucent for Hidden Applications:

defaults write com.apple.Dock showhidden -bool YES

killall Dock

Here's how this looks:

Follow the links to read Tom Nelson's posts in full:

http://macs.about.com/od/usingyourmac/qt/dockrecentitem.htm

http://macs.about.com/od/usingyourmac/qt/Translucent-Dock-Icons.htm

-

Stuff I always forget - Hyperlink Table of Contents in LibreOffice

How to Assign Hyperlinks to Entries in a Table of Contents in LibreOffice (and OpenOffice).

You can assign a cross-reference as a hyperlink to entries in a table of contents.

1. Right-click in the table of contents, and then choose Edit Index/Table.
2. Click the Entries tab.
3. In the Level list click the heading level that you want to assign hyperlinks to.
4. In the Structure area, click in the box in front of E#, and then click Hyperlink.
5. Click in the box behind the E, and then click Hyperlink.
6. Repeat for each heading level that you want to create hyperlinks for, or click the All button to apply the formatting to all levels.

Inspiration and Investigation

I've always been fascinated by fonts, and I found this recent article in The NewYork Times very interesting. Following a link mentioned in the article I found Thomas Rhiel's web site, and I decided to refresh my understanding of web page design by deconstructing his web page to see how it worked.  

Since imitation is supposedly the best form of flattery I took a shot at making up my own resume web page using his files as a model. The result is not very good. Amongst other things I learned that I don't seem to have very much to say for myself recently.

I guess I need to branch out my activities.

My old boring resume is here.

He sed, she sed (Or: Missing atom:link with rel="self")

So I had this problem. I had this goofy RSS feed on my web site at http://skyprod.net but most RSS readers no longer showed any articles for it. It used to work but not any more.

I ran my original feed through http:/feedvalidator.org and it showed up a bunch of errors and warnings such as not having a self-referring Atom link for the feed itself, and not having <guid> tags. Who knew? Not me.

Then I found a wonderful free RSS feed editor called FeedMe that runs on OSX 10.7.2 "Lion".

FeedMe!
 "Geekstuffs from The Nowhere Man"

I took a look at it and I found it uses various new-to-me RSS tags in the feed code, as well as an unusual Apple XML name space for use with iTunes.

It turns out the reason most RSS aggregators and feed readers would not show any articles for my original feed is that neither the original feed nor the articles referred to in it had changed since January 2011, which is a very long time in the world and time and space* of RSS articles. The real reason for this is that I have better things to do than sit around updating RSS articles.

However, in the modern spirit of things, I decided that the world SHOULD see my RSS articles, and so decided to write a Bash script to "uniquify" them by inserting current date and time values into <pubdate> and <guid> tags through the use of a feed template.

Here is my new feed template file.

Being able to automate this process depended upon being able to use sed to change only the first occurrence of a given string in a copy of the template. This is because my feed contains several <item> sections. Not only must the feed contain a valid RFC 822 <pubdate> such as Thu, 17 Nov 2011 03:20:05 CST, but also each <item> within the feed must contain a unique guid.

Normally, in the guid for each item, isPermalink defaults to true, when the guid would contain a unique URL to the article (for example http://my.website.com/2011/11/17/article-name), but I noticed that  FeedMe uses isPermalink="false" instead and sets the guid value to the current time in milliseconds, thus establishing a permanently unique non-recurring timestamp for each item like this:

<guid ispermalink="false">${nowms}</guid>

It was easy to use date to create the string for pubdate, which really only requires adding a comma after the day. I decided to cannibalize an old Perl script in order to get the current time in milliseconds:

nowms=$( perl -MTime::HiRes -e 'print int(1000 *
                     Time::HiRes::gettimeofday),"\n"' )

Figuring out the rest was easy. Apart from how to use sed, that is. I puzzled over that for a while.

It turned out the trick with sed was to iteratively use a statement like this:

sed "1,/template_value/s/template_value/${nowms}/" infile > outfile

This is invoked with a new ${nowms} timestamp value for each item in the feed, so that each item in  each new version of the feed gets a unique time stamp put in its guid tag. By way of further explanatione, the sed invocation works like this:

1,/template_value/ .. tells sed to change the first occurrence only
s/template_value/${nowms}/ .. tells sed to change the first string to the second

Here is the complete Bash script for download. Here it is again in text form. It's not very pretty but it works. I'm already working on a better version that will be parameter-driven, and I will update this post in due course.

You can find the XML source for my original feed here. The current feed is here. The XML source for the current feed is here. The source for the feed template file is here.

---

* New acronym: WATAS (world and time and space), can be used conversationally to refer to the world and time and space of something, for example: "WATAS is the matter with you?" This is not to be confused with WTAAS (World Trade Advanced Administrative System) the old IBM internal order, equipment and inventory business system that I used to work on back in the '70s.

Unemployed again! (Relieved, dismayed, hopeful and delighted)

Well, Her Majesty's back-room folks did a bang-up job with their new web site that went live at the end of August. As a result of carefully-orchestrated propaganda ("Use the web site or else"), based on various management samples, web site traffic was up 60% and call volumes down 2,000 a day. Now let's say an agent might normally take 50 calls a day. You can see where I am going with this. Whu'oh! We need to lose 40 agents!

So, after several weeks of explaining to web-duffers how to do their thing, and then a week mostly sitting around waiting for the phone to ring, I was actually relieved to hear that my term of employment would be curtailed. Hooray! No more web-duffers! Boo-hoo! Goodbye extra moulah!

As the boo-hooh boomer custodian of The Cook Millions I am somewhat dismayed by this turn of events, but I am also hopeful of finding a new source of discretionary income soon. One door closes and another one does something else, they say. Don't let it hit you on the way out.

Slow far, slow good. Since Convergys Winnipeg closed it's doors in March 2010, a new job has turned up about every three months, and I have worked about 33 weeks in the span of 83. Is this the life of Riley or what?


Since I am not overly gifted with tolerance for web-duffers, nor even for plain old-fashioned sitting around waiting for the phone to ring, I am also delighted. I shall not miss the "corporate culture" one little bit, and now I can catch up on my reading, dick around with my new Mac Mini and OSX Lion all I want, stay up late, sleep in, and go for long walks in the fine Winnipeg fall weather. How'd ya like them apples? OK, so I may have to cut down on groceries, eating out, and other entertainments. For example, no more dropping $150 at Chapters' book store on a whim! Yes to eating less and getting a lot more exercise! Overall, this is very good for me.

P.S. My new Mac Mini is the base $599 model with Intel i5 2.3 GHz processor, 2GB RAM, 500 GB hard drive, and Intel HD Graphics 3000. I went straight ahead and self-installed 8 GB 1333 MHz DDR3 RAM for only another $59, and now the beast runs like a train. Who needs a fancy graphics adapter and 2.5 Ghz processor for an extra $200? Not me.

Re-entering the workforce. Again! Quack!

I have not written here for more than two months having being fully engaged in somnolence, lassitude and decrepitude.

Now, having responded to the call of My Sovereign, after two weeks training at a secret location not a million miles from the center of Manitoba's civic jewel, I learned on Friday that I am not only certifiable but also apparently certified to execute certain secret tasks on Her Majesty's behalf. Because of the nature of my mission, no actual piece of paper can be provided in the form of, well, an actual certificate. Secret means secret.

Though Her Majesty cannot be over-generous, while disaster roils the stock markets of the world, this bodes well for a limited technical reprieve if not actual regeneration of The Cook Millions, beleaguered and embattled as they have been by events of the century to date, as well as the one before it.

As the custodian of said TCM, and having forgotten to buy Apple stock in 2001, I am always encouraged when an opportunity presents itself to somewhat repair the ship of state, which is now sadly downsized from a rather large and ostentatious ocean-going luxury yacht to, well, a circular yellow flotation device in the form of a cartoon duck.

I shall write further as my secret duties allow.

Getting an iPhone

My tax bill this year was once again rather big since I withdrew savings to cover my extravagant lifestyle. Having mostly paid my tax bill - ironically enough by getting a job at the local tax centre for 10 weeks - I finally gave in to a bad case of what I have to call "iPhone envy" and last Monday week I bopped down to my local MTS Connect place to score.

I went to the store at Grant Park here in Winnipeg, walked in and spoke to a nice young lady. Unlike most wireless phone sales agents she did not project that she thought I was lonely, pathetic, scary, crazy, a loser, bothersome, question-demented, or whatever. In fact, she was just totally nice, professional and helpful, and she got my business.

MTS have a great "Free Wireless" program. If you already have 3 of their products at full price - TV, Internet and home phone in my case - you get a $43.50 bundling credit applied to your monthly bill. I signed up for the basic iPhone plan for 36 months: 1GB cellular data (3G), 250MB tethered data usage, 240 weekday minutes, unlimited text messaging, and unlimited local calling to and from any 5 people of my choice - any provider, mobile or landline. This costs $44.99 a month plus $10 for Call Display and Voicemail and a $3.50 Network Fee (total $58.49, $14.99 after credit). I was already paying $15 a month for my old Nokia Pay-As-You-Go phone that can't do data at all!

All I had to do was pony up $159.99 for the subsidized 16GB phone (32GB sets you back $269.99), $40 for Activation, and buy a case. I got a black Otter Defender case at $69.99, making my total purchase $257.54 with taxes. Now, an iPod Touch 8GB costs $249.99, and I had been thinking about buying one for the longest time, but now I have got one with double the capacity, plus it includes a free wireless smart phone and plan! I think my Scottish forebears would say this was a good thing.

After getting the beast home, I spent many hours setting it up.

More of which perhaps later,

I'll read the fine documenataion

Working on my Ubuntu 10.4 Apache web server to check everything's OK after a recent move. One of my favourite scripts is the Uploader. It's a great piece of Perl code that I use to upload files to my server from far away. I have used it for a long time.

Just so I can monitor uploads, I modified the script to send me an e-mail whenever it's used. This used to go great thru sendmail.pm and your actual sendmail program, now all of a sudden I find messages are not being transferred. Imagine my surprise to learn that sendmail is now Exim. Who knew?

Then I started to read the Exim documentation at http://www.exim-new-users.co.uk/content/view/130/1/, and I quote ...

Start Here - If you're new to Exim

If you are new to Exim the following section is for you.

We cover the basic requirements and responsibilities for running your own mailservere...

Running a mail server is no easy task. Being a responsible mail server administrator or postmaster requires a LOT of time, effort and knowledge.

Before building your server it is worth asking your self a few questions:
Why do I want my own mailserver?

To improve my existing E-mail system or to learn a new skill are both good answers.

Becuase my distribution came with one or to be able to tell my friends I have my own mailserver are both bad answers.


Do I really need my own mail server?

If you only have a few users and limited IT resources you may find it more cost effective and a better use of your time and money to seek the professional services of others. If you are simply doing this to save time and money, this could end up costing you your sanity.


Do I have the time a skill s required to maintain a mailserver?

Setting up a mail server properly is HARD. Keeping it running against a constant stream of spam and viruses can be a NIGHTMARE. You can't just setup your system once then forget about it (Well you can, but you wont make many friends).


Will I take responsibility for keeping my mailserver safe and secure?

The Internet is a hostile place, malicious individuals can make a living from spam, viruses, trojans, key-loggers and malware. The responsibility for running a mail server is ongoing,


Where will I go for help?

If your answer is - Ask somebody else to fix it for me, please click here:

http://www.gmail.com


If your answer is - I'm keen to learn new skills and I'll ltake responsibility for this myself and read the fine documenataion before asking silly questions, then click here, and here:

http://www.exim-new-users.co.uk/content/blogcategory/22/34/

http://www.exim.org/eximwiki/MailingListEtiquette


The purpose of this was to make sure that time wasters and freeloaders understand that runnig a mailserver requires some time and effort, but also brings great rewards. We can teach you, but only if you want to learn.

If your still here - Welcome to the Exim community.

Need I say more about the fine quality of the documentation?

Anyhoo, I looked up Exim's Debian readme file, ran the configurator to define my ISP's SMTP server as a "smarthost" and now all is well. I think.

Untitled #2

eyelid hole inspection in progress all day sat as sloth continues
midwest ei participants protest high cherry garcia prices
pencil pushers go on strike for reduced glumness and boredom
alien texters cause major airwaves meltdown
this will be our last communi- .. click!

TELUS all about it!

Jessica: Hi. I'm a live TELUS product specialist. Is there anything that I can help you with?Jessica: Just type your question below.You: I'm looking into getting an iphone or android or blackberry. right now looking into clear choice voice+date $50 p/m/ plan.Jessica: Thank you for considering TELUS.Jessica: Are you looking to add another phone or replace your existing one?You: new phone - right now i just have an old mts PAYG fone - it doesn't do web any moreJessica: I'd be happy to assist you with a phone and plan selection.Jessica: Before we continue, a Visa, Mastercard, or American Express credit card is required to process your order online.Jessica: Do you have one ready to get your order processed and delivered as soon as possible?You: yepJessica: Great!Jessica: Let's continue then.Jessica: We have blackberry plans for $45 for the blackberry and Voice and data plans for the IPhone for $50.You: ok - dp you have iphones availabale in manitoba?Jessica: Yes, we do. The Iphone 3G is available but the IPhone 4 is on backorder and may take longer to ship.You: i can't see iPhones on your web site hereJessica: Please click on the "Phones and Devices" Tab.Jessica: Clcik on the Iphone option next to the smart phones.You: Not there at http://www.telusmobility.com/en/MB/phones/index.shtmlJessica: Let me check for a moment.Jessica: Oh, I apologize but Manitoba's site is undergoing construction. We are still planning to add the IPhone category to your site. I recommend that you check again next week.Jessica: Is there anything else I can help you with today?You: no - but thanks 4 your help - have a nice evening - bye!Jessica: Thank you for visiting TELUS. It has been a pleasure assisting you.Jessica: Please feel free to chat with us again.Jessica: Have a great evening!

It turns out that on March 31st 2011 MTS are about to launch their spiffy new HSPA+ wireless network which will support all sorts of spiffy new devices. Meanwhile prices seem to be dropping on older CDMA-only stock items, like the Motorola Milestone A854 Android 2.1 which dropped from $175 to $80 in the last week. I don't know which other vendors use the MTS network, but I heard Virgin and Koodoo. Not sure about Telus. Either way, it's time for me to stick with my vintage 2003 Nokia 2275, which is so old it's no longer supported by MTS's "Mobile Web", but at least their PAYG plan includes Voicemail and Call Display.

ereader and ebooks on OSX 10.4 PPC

Re. popular thread "Does anyone know WHEN the powerPC will be supported for ereader?" at the Barnes and Noble web site, see this copy of my post today about fun times I have had reading, editing and creating various sorts of e-book on OSX 10.4 PPC.

TAKE BACK INDOLENCE

TAKE BACK INDOLENCE! DECLARE SUNDAY 23RD JANUARY 2011 WORLD'S FIRST DO NOT USE THE INTERNET DAY!

Winnipeg Werewolf Wants Disposable Income

Aoooww! I knew it was a full moon again when I woke up this morning and found the palms of my hands covered in a luxuriant growth of hair. It's a good job I don't have a girlfriend. She'd've freaked right out. I think. Or maybe she'd find it a turn-on. Woof-woof!


The phone rang several times. My phone company is upgrading their voicemail service. I wonder if they are going to upgrade the cost as well.

Then my dentist's office called to ask me to confirm my appointment tomorrow to get my FREE WARRANTY REPLACEMENT METAL CROWN installed. You betcha! Aoooww!

Then a East Indian-sounding gentleman called about my PC. He said it's running slow. I told him it wasn't. He rang off. He must've been disappointed. Or perhaps he was checking up on me.

I applied for 3 more jobs today. That makes 4 so far this week, 11 in the last two weeks, 21 so far this month. Will that do? I'd sure like to get something going soon with that "disposable income"...

Facebook Blues

When asked why he had signed up on Facebook, the suspect replied: "Curiosity".

When asked why he had so many friends on Facebook, the suspect replied: "It was peer pressure, honest".

"So if all your friends decided to jump down a hole you'd follow them, would you?", scolded the officer.

"What, like that girl who followed the rabbit, you mean? I don't know anybody called Alice."

Outside the street made the sounds of traffic and light rain.

"And what's with all this make up and that stupid hat you're wearing?", the officer asked again.

Hi my name's Mike and I'm calling on behalf of... Click!

So after being gainfully unemployed for another period of about 3 months, at the end of October I got offered a job doing outbound telephone sales. This was something I had been hoping to avoid but since some yahoo creased the side of my car back in July I'd been thinking about getting a new paint job.

The new gig in Winnipeg's crumbling downtown Exchange District was very strange. We got eight days paid product and sales training before starting on the phones. The sales training involved product reviews, competition, scripts to follow, lots of role playing, how to get the customer's attention and personalize the call, how to handle objections and rebuttals, and finally how to deliver the "1-2-3 Punch!" to close. Ugh! In 27.5 years at that li'l ol' computer company U-No-Hoo I managed to escape sales training completely. Ever since I had a summer job trying to sell Tominey's ice cream off a truck back in St.Albans I had this conviction that I'm definitely not a born salesman, plus I have this troublesome aversion to BS, as result of which - when exposed to it - I get all squirly and will start swearing a lot. An old girl friend once referred to this as my "Tourette's syndrome". I like think of it more as a perfectly natural and reasonable reaction to toxic stimuli.

I still didn't get a flu shot this year, and everybody in our class got sick from Day 1. It started with the instructor, who was like a grown up Princess Jasmine, her self-admitted childhood heroine. Of East Indian descent, she is very tall and striking not least of all because of her clothes, like black leotard pants with a low cut top. Blimey! She is tall and full-figured, and I found her very intimidating. Indeed, just looking at her made me feel guilty. I am old enough to be her Grandpa! Anyhoo, as we finished up our third week on the phones, we were all getting better from our colds or else we already left. There were only 10 left out of a class of 23 the last time I checked.

The first week was cold calls to former customers and folks who never had our client's products at all. We would try to get them to switch and sign up for product packages at about 55% of regular price. The "hook" was supposed to be showing them how much money we can save them in the promotional period: either six months or a full year. Most agents seemed to do at least 400 calls a shift and there were about 64 agents. We had a sales per hour target and it was quite small, by which I mean a number less than one.

At the start of every shift we would get about a 1/2 hour motivational/informational session from the folks who run the place, including a strange "Marketing type" lady called Candace who dressed like Cruella De Ville from "101 Dalmations". For example she'd have a white faux ermine jacket over black pencil pants, or a black jacket covered in sequins, and always equally bad hair dyed ash-blonde, not even cut properly, short at the back and long in front, and otherwise all over the place.

We got a low hourly wage plus commission per sale. Different incentives were offered every day. For example, on Thursdays we played Bingo! for cash prizes based on numbers of sales. If you did something special you might get a voucher for $5 or $10. In my whole 6 weeks there I got one voucher but I never found out what it was for. We worked afternoons and evenings four days a week and all day Saturday which was supposed to be the best day for sales. I still don't understand that at all. Surely most working stiffs are way too busy on Saturdays driving their mini-vans to big box stores and suchlike. And why do people answer the phone when they are sleeping, eating, cooking dinner, watching a movie or you-know-what? I almost never answer my phone, but then I don't have a family let alone any friends.

It was all rather pathetic because of the poor quality of the phone lists. We worked different lists all the time. The management types would hype each new list, like "I know we can be very successful with this new list, so let's go out there and make some money!". But most calls would be an immediate hangup or else you would get the answering machine. If you did get a real person, they would mostly be hostile or not interested, if not actually dead ("Mr. X passed away in 1991"), geriatric, employed by a competitor, on a contract, or - most embarrassing - if they had the client's products already.

Often the decision maker is out of the residence and we would arrange for a call back. We would each call 200 to 300 numbers a shift. The actual dialing was automated. The machine that did that would often go into slowdown or else crash completely, as often as three times in seven days. When that would happen we would all have to log out while it was fixed. Twice the network went down completely, like having no DNS.

When we were calling it would be fast and brutal and you could get abused often. People can be so mean! Also grumpy, snarky, sarcastic, tricky, or even just plain rude, but then we were disturbing them at home. The bosses would rush about making sure potential sales were closed properly before being handed off to the order entry team. A scoreboard was kept. The top sellers were able to repeat, like getting 9 sales in a shift to my one, but everybody had bad days when they got 0.

Pay arrived promptly from my staffing agency but the Account Manager there got kind of mad at me when I went home early sick once, plus I took a 1/2 day to attend an interview.

That's about all I can say about that right now. I didn't mention the cost of parking downtown, the absent state of cleanliness, or the fact that we do not have keys to the bathroom, which drives the ladies from my class totally nuts.

I guess getting some other job training would be a good thing. I heard you can get the government to cover quite a bit of it but one might have to pay some fees up front, and I guess you also have to complete the course. Better check the state of my piggy bank. I could become a truck driver, carpenter, cook, accounting type, or heaven knows what. Grey power!

It's certainly true that not working can get to be a bad habit, especially when living alone. Having a job does afford one a certain structure. I don't like this one but I'll try to stick with it if I can stand it. My car's being fixed and they're taking forever to do it. Meanwhile I have a rental and insurance will only pay part of it. I need the extra dough.

Since getting laid off in March I cut back a lot on beer (totally), food, magazines, books, eating out and going to the movies. There's not much left to cut in the expense department now other than tobacco, TV, Internet, car and rent. I guess I could move to the woods and live in a little A-frame hut like Ted Kozynsky. Good thing I don't feel angry at the system. I bought some bus tickets but I haven't tried them out yet. Old habits die hard.

Mac Start Button Redux

Way back in 2007 I wrote MacStart, an Applescript program to scan the program folders on my Mac Mini PPC OSX 10.4.11 and pop up a list of applications with a single mouse click.

I've used MacStart quite a lot and recently I packaged MacStart Version 1.3.2 with some improvements.

Here's what it looks like:



As you can see I have a spiffy-looking MacStart icon in my Dock and on the Desktop, plus you can see the program selection menu showing all of my applications.

MacStart runs fast. Go here to download the MacStart.1.3.2.dmg file and try it out for yourself. Don't forget to grok the README file first! You may need to recompile the script for your system.

Work At Home!

So I spent a while getting my 2007 Acer T180 Win Vista SP1 ready to do some testing to see if it would qualify for a "Work At Home" job offered by a former employer.

I must've spent hours shopping for one of the recommended USB headsets. I ended up with a Cyber Acoustics AC-850 USB headset $44.99 from the Staples store down on Pembina Highway. It's supposed to work with Vista and OSX 10.4. Altho' the packaging doesn't also say Windows 7, OSX 10.5, or even OSX 10.6, I assume none of these will be a problem if I ever get there.

After finding out how to open the plastic bubble packaging without destroying it, I could plug in the headset. I had to set the right recording and sound devices in Vista's Control Panel, and experiment with the recording and playback volume levels. It took me six attempts at doing a test sound recording before I was able to hear the sound of my own voice. After not working with Windows for a good while, I must be getting slow. The headset seemed to pass Haupage's online voice quality tests, altho' only with moderate scores using MTS's "Lightning" DSL plan:

- Link speeds to Jacksonville, Fla.: 2.63 Mbps download / 0.72 upload / ping 105 ms
- Voice quality testing scores to Cincinnati: 3.1 for high voice quality, score for conserved bandwidth 4.1.

I had already decided to skip Vista SP2 for the PC tests. I spent more time checking my AVG Free Anti-Virus was updated, checking Windows firewall settings, setting a trusted site in IE7 (I know, I know), and finally doing Permits in Windows Defender before the PC tests would run successfully.

Finally, my equipment seemed to have passed all the tests, and I moved on to Apply for a position. Too bad. There aren't any. They must have already been filled.