I just emailed this to Ticketmaster (legal@ticketmaster.com), and I encourage you to do something similar:

To whom it may concern:

I disapprove of the following clause on my user info page (especially the bolded section):

By purchasing a ticket to an event, or completing this registration form in order to be able to purchase a ticket to an event or to bid in an auction, you indicate that you consent to Ticketmaster sharing your e-mail address and other information (e.g., venues, teams, artists' representatives and fan clubs, promoters and leagues), and that you consent to those involved in the event using your information to contact you by e-mail or other means to send you marketing or other messages or using or disclosing your information in other ways. Please contact them directly to learn about their policies.

I believe you need to clearly specify to the artists, venues, teams, etc what is proper use of my email address. They have no right to disclose my email address to a third party. I believe you should work with them to define what is appropriate use of my address (notification of a venue change, show cancellation, one time invitation to the fan club, etc) instead of just passing the buck. I also believe I should be able to opt out of the sharing of my address with a party other than Ticketmaster.

This is completely unacceptable from a privacy standpoint.

Want another reason to hate Ticketmaster?

From Ticketmaster's user info update page:

By purchasing a ticket to an event, or completing this registration form in order to be able to purchase a ticket to an event or to bid in an auction, you indicate that you consent to Ticketmaster sharing your e-mail address and other information ∫ (e.g., venues, teams, artists' representatives and fan clubs, promoters and leagues), and that you consent to those involved in the event using your information to contact you by e-mail or other means to send you marketing or other messages or using or disclosing your information in other ways. Please contact them directly to learn about their policies.

Basically: if you buy tickets to Blue Man Group at the Cumberland County Civic Center (like I have), you consent to Blue Man Group, the Civic Center, and the BMG fan club spamming you. And maybe to them selling your email address to another company.

Not cool.

Google Transit + Pittsburgh = Crazy Delicious

5000 Forbes to Pittsburgh International Airport (CMU to the airport)
5000 Forbes to 300 Waterfront Drive West, Homestead, PA (CMU to the movie theatre)

Lost Luggage

I flew to Pittsburgh last weekend (and no, I don't want to talk about last night Steelers' game).

I flew United to Las Vegas McCarran, then transferred to my usual airline. I had an hour and a half layover, but I skipped the slots in Las Vegas.

My checked bag didn't make it. And that's not so rare apparently. Out of the 8 people I talked to who flew to Pittsburgh from California this weekend, 4 lost their luggage. One lost her luggage on a direct flight!

I got my bag 18 hours after landing, so that worked - but I can't find any news about a recent surge in lost luggage. I assume it might be due to more people checking bags due to the new TSA rules. It might just be noise - but it sure is strange.

You down with TSA?

According to the TSA's banned item list I still can't bring gel shaving cream, economy sized saline solution, or drinking water on the plane. Still.

I thought this was resolved! Seriously, no water?

I think some kind of cross referencing is in order

Today, I got an application in the mail from my alma mater, Carnegie Mellon. Ok, so maybe a master's application makes sense - I'm an alumnus! Nope, it's a first year, undergraduate application.

I think that the alumni association could talk to the admissions department and check that people who graduated from Carnegie Mellon don't need to do undergrad there again!

(Jim points out that it might be because I signed up for the Carnegie Mellon Admission Council. I think it might be because my smiling face is in it.)

Mac Ads

If you haven't seen the Mac ads, I recommend them highly. Even if you're a PC user, you should enjoy them.

I heard about some new Mac ad ideas today, and also enjoyed them - if a little too out there for Apple to use. Enjoy!

September 11, 2006

I had grandiose dreams about writing a long essay about how 9/11/2001 changed me. I never really found the words. Here's a brief account of what I wanted to say, on the fifth anniversary:

On September 11, 2001, at about 9:30 AM, I was in Mr. Haskell's Senior Religion/Theology class. Then, Principal Mullen made an announcement - "Two planes have hit the World Trade Center in New York. If you have family you need to contact, please come to the office." I asked if it was a drill - it seemed too outlandish, too violent to be true.

The class continued, but we started talking about the Just War theory. In my next class, Latin, we went to the library and watched the second tower fall.

I won't lie, living in Maine makes one feel safe and secure. Violence is an exception, not a rule. I lived my life in the belief that nothing bad could happen in America - wars, bombs, hijackings, and chaos were all international. I was innocent. I definitely lost a lot of my innocence that day. I also lost what I thought was a guarantee of a safe life.

(Slate has a graphic novel depiction of the 9/11 report.)

No Ketchup Dinner

I just had an idea for a dinner party: The No Ketchup Dinner.

The idea is simple. A few days ahead, everyone notifies the group what item he'll bring. The item must be something that he consumes with ketchup, like hot dogs, fries, hamburgers, fish sticks, tater tots, home fries, omelets, meat-loaf, onion rings, chicken nuggets, etc (I thought there'd be more. What did I miss?)

Then everyone would bring condiments she likes with those items. For example, I like ranch dressing with fries, honey mustard with chicken nuggets, sauerkraut and mustard with hot dogs, or guacamole with hamburgers. And, of course, everyone shares the condiments.

For desert, we could have Ketchup Cake.

The Atrium

I've previously talked about a military base (wikipedia) near my parents' house is closing.

Today, I went to the Portland Press Herald site and saw a story I hadn't expected: Brunswick hotel closing before Navy base does. The Atrium is a hotel near where I grew up, across the street from the base. We used to go there for Chinese food when my grandparents were at their summer cottage.

Over the past 10 years, the hotel has become more run-down and their clientele has become primarily military. Now, the owners can't stay in business.

It's a bellweather of things to come. I'm curious to see what Brunswick will look like after 2011, when the base is officially destaffed.

Misspelled

There are a few words that really bother me when misspelled. For example, I cringe when I see 'definatly'. I must have annoyed a few people before I learned that ridiculous is spelled 'ri' not 're'. The whole it's/its, your/you're, and their/they're/there thing makes my skin crawl when I read the wrong one.

What are the misspellings that make you cringe?

Outsmarted

I tried to get really good tickets to the Dave Matthews Band show at Shoreline Amphitheatre by joining up for the DMB fanclub and buying the tickets in March.

Well, I'm in row S of section 200 (seating chart), which is one of the back seating areas before the grass seating.

Fan club tickets are based on seniority (so I'm a new member, I'll be at the back of the fan clubbers) but I'm guessing some people who bought through TicketMaster will be sitting ahead of me.

I had pretty far back seats in North Carolina and still had a great time, so it should still be a great show. So sometimes, ticket sellers outsmart me!

The first twinge

I smelled the first twinge of autumn in the air this morning, faint but detectible.
In my family, the first hints of autumn always coincide with the first discussions of the ski season.

Ways in which the ski season's ramping up:
* My skiing magazines (Ski and Powder) have started to arrive for the season.
* My family is already talking about a trip to Mammoth Mountain for January.
* I'm thinking about a $399 season pass to Alpine Meadows.
* My oldest sister is coming to town in early December, and we're talking about going skiing.
* I've ordered a Camelbak Scorpion, with a built in insulated tube so the mouthpiece doesn't freeze!
* I've ordered new ski socks, pants, gloves, and a hat. (Hey Carolyn, want your gloves back?)
* Every member of my family has already mentioned the ski season to me!

So I know that ski season is at least 3 months away, but the first scent of fall air reminds me of the snow.

Unlike parents, I mourn the start of the school year

I bike to work on average 2-3 times a week. It's 6 miles, it's safe, I ride in bike lanes for most of the time. All in all, about the perfect ride to work.

Well, today was the start of school in Palo Alto.

I pass by 2 schools on the way to work. I also live in an area where tons of kids bike to school or parents drive the kids in. This makes for lots of fun, as I pass by the schools during peak drop-off time. Bike lanes become temporary parking lanes. Parents cut off bikers to pull into bike lanes, having seen the bikers. It makes my otherwise tranquil ride not so tranquil and a few minutes longer.

So, Palo Alto parents, if your child goes to Addison Elementary School or Duveneck Elementary School, I beseech you, look for bikers!

A veritable crapstorm of Spam

The past few days have seemed to be amazingly bad for Spam. Anyone else seeing this? I'm getting a metric crapload on all my addresses. Sad.

The Stehlik Fund

If you went to the Carnegie Mellon School of Computer Science and find yourself with some extra money, I encourage you to donate some of that to Mark Stehlik's discretionary spending fund aka the Stehlik Fund.

National parks visited

I never knew some places were national parks, I swore the only national park I'd been to was The Grand Canyon, and I'd driven around Acadia. So, with no further ado, the national parks (and recreation areas, and monuments, whatever is listed at the national parks listing) I've visited.

Acadia
Cape Cod National Seashore
Fire Island National Seashore
Golden Gate Recreation Area/Alcatraz/Presidio of San Francisco/San Francisco Maritime
Grand Canyon
Lake Mead (at least Hoover Dam)
Minute Man National Historical Park
National Mall/Washington Monument
Saguaro National Park (I believe... it's been awhile)
Statue of Liberty
Yosemite

I want to go to Devils Postpile when I'm next in Mammoth. Only problem, it's only open from mid June to mid October.

Bryan!

I'd like to point out my friend Bryan got a post on the Google Blog.

wOOt

Does anyone else think that it's cute that Woot advertises on Adwords for Goog?

Password-storage-busting

Firefox and Internet Explorer store passwords if you want them to. I'm sure other browsers do too, but the big two do.

However, there are times you don't want people auto logged in - sometimes it's unwise. You want to prevent this. (Nevermind that help desk bans password storage like this, that doesn't matter when it's not followed)

So, how do you fix this, with Struts + JSP + JSTL, in a cross platform way?

Let's explore the options:
1. Turn autocomplete off. This is a non-standard (non html-4.01) attribute. Struts doesn't want to pass it through - it's not XHTML. So I can't just do:

<html:form autocomplete="off">

2. Ok, let's try Javascript. Let's say

form.password.value = "";

This legitimately blanks the password field on load - however, when the user's cursor enters the password field, it pulls the password from the browser and automatically enters it for the user.

3. Howabout trying

<input type="password" autocomplete="off">

This is supposed to do the trick. It, upon my testing, does nothing about preventing password storage in Firefox 1.5.

4. Now how about the option I liked the best: Having the following in your jsp:

<jsp:useBean id="now" class="java.util.Date" scope="request"/>
<c:set var="nowInt" value="${now.time}" scope="page"/>
<input type="text" name="username/">
<input type="password" name="password<c:out value="${nowInt}"/>"/>
<input type="hidden" name="salt" value="<c:out value="${nowInt}"/>">

On the backend, you do:

String salt = (String) PropertyUtils.getSimpleProperty("salt");
String username = (String) PropertyUtils.getSimpleProperty("username");
String password = (String) PropertyUtils.getSimpleProperty("password" + salt);

Unfortunately, this doesn't work. strut's config doesn't allow a dynamically named form element name. It works on the frontend, no password is ever stored, across any browser. Close, but not working on the backend.

4a. The final solution works! We use the same frontend from 4, and we ignore Struts to get what we want.

String salt = (String) PropertyUtils.getSimpleProperty("salt");
String username = (String) PropertyUtils.getSimpleProperty("username");
String password = (String) request.getProperty("password" + salt);
verify(username, password);

Basically, Struts sometimes is useful. It makes everything we do regular. But sometimes it gets in my way. However, this is the solution I liked in the first place, it just took beating struts into submission.