When I received an email with the subject “American Airlines Apologizes For Your Flight Delay,” I got a little excited. “Yes! They’ll probably offer me a free flight or some frequent flyer miles or something! Then my hours of meaningless waiting at the Seattle-Tacoma terminal won’t be for nought!” Alas, it was not to be. Here’s the email:

Dear Tyler Butler,

On two separate occasions during the past week, we experienced technical difficulties with our computer systems, causing some flights to be delayed. We understand that you traveled during both periods and likely were doubly inconvenienced.

Please accept our sincere apologies for any inconvenience you may have experienced, and rest assured that we are working diligently to take corrective actions. We greatly value your business, appreciate your understanding and look forward to delivering the service you deserve in the near future.

Sincerely,

Dan Garton
Executive Vice President Marketing
American Airlines

I suppose I was dumb to assume that there would be some sort of incentive for me to continue my association with their airline included in the email, but there wasn’t. As I thought about it more, I realized that flight delays are just something you have to deal with when you fly, and the fact that I was expecting to get something out of my suffering was a by-product of a suffocating atmosphere of “customer-is-always-right” consumerism. So, though I initially wanted to call them and give them a chance to offer me something, I decided to keep my mouth shut.

Maybe I did get something after all?

I came across several different articles regarding a wide variety of topics, but they all center around Apple’s OS, user interface design, and the concept of cruft. I found them to be quite interesting, and I learned a lot. I think I’m going to force the IPRO 305 students to read a few of them before they start redesigning the HawkTour interface.

When Good Interfaces Go Crufty

A good introduction to the basic concept of cruft, which, as the article states, should be familiar to any programmer worth his salt, especially those involved in UI design. Unfortunately, few programmers, let alone computer users, realize what sort of cruft they’ve become accustomed to through regular computer use.

The Art of the Parlay

An interesting discussion of the common belief that Apple could be Microsoft if they’d made some different decisions in the 80’s. An interesting history lesson, and includes some comparisons of the Apple and Microsoft approach to product design.

In the Beginning was the Command Line

A historical look at BeOS and how that OS was an attempt to attack cruft. Too bad it failed to become popular (for various reasons).

eBay used to be safe, and for the most part, I suppose it still is. The honest people in the world still outnumber the dishonest ones, and I hope it stays that way forever. But anyone who has used eBay a fair amount has gotten scammed at least once or twice, or at the very least, received emails from people fishing for a gullible seller/buyer to scam. I myself paid for a relatively expensive item that was never sent to me. Luckily, in that case, I was protected because I went through eBay and they refunded my money. Of course, I was out a few hundred bucks for about three months while I went through their fraud process. That pretty much sucks for someone on a shoestring budget like me (though one has to wonder just how shoestring my budget is if I can spend hundreds of dollars on eBay… yup, I’m enigmatic like that…).

Anyway, I saw a story on Slashdot about an eBay scammer, and eventually found this site, P-P-P-Powerbook.com, that chronicles a relatively recent (April/May 2004) scam story. It’s really really funny, and there are some awesome pictures to go with it. I have the PDF document shared on here, but I’d really recommend checking the site as well.

It’s tough to explain quickly what exactly happened. I guess the really important thing is that the seller, who was trying to sell an Apple Powerbook, was contacted by a scammer who wanted to buy the Powerbook through an Escrow site. Eventually the seller decided to scam this scammer, and eventually sent him a P-P-P-Powerbook, picturres of which are below. Anyway, the story is quite long and involved, but very humorous, so I’d recommend checking it out. Some of my favorite picutres are below (there are more in the PDF and at the site). Oh, and there’s also a hilarious site that offers P-P-P-Powerbooks for sale. It looks pretty legitimate…

Get the PDF story here.

I am a mobile guy. I use my laptop on the road a lot, and at home I have three different computers (desktop, server, media box). On top of all that I use Omega to host some files and such for easy mobile access. I have everything networked together using windows file sharing, and for most part, everything wors flawlessly. The problem is, I often need to copy or move files from one remote location to another. Simple, right? Just drag and drop! Unfortunately, often times the windows I need to drag to aren’t readily visible, and it is relatively time consuming to drag down to the taskbar, wait for the window to become active, then drag back up to the window to drop the file.

If Windows would let me drop items on the taskbar, it’d be all good, but since it won’t, I decided to make my own application that would allow me faster access to common “drop” locations.

I did this in C# using a copy of Visual Studio .NET that I got through Illinois Tech’s Academic Alliance program through Microsoft. I’d never used C# or .NET before, so I learned as I went.

DropBoxxer sits in your system tray, and doesn’t take up any screen real estate at all until needed. When you select a file and drag it over the left corner (right above the system time) DropBoxxer fade up and in from off screen. There are different “drop boxes” for various locations, with three types of icons – one for local locations, one for remote locations, and one for the Recycle Bin (note that the recycle bin icon doesn’t currently work in version 0.1). Simply drop the file over one of these drop boxes, and the program copies or moves the file to the drop location. By default, everything is copied rather than moved, but simply hold down the Shift key as your drag the file(s) onto the drop box, and the files will be moved rather than copied. As you drag something over a drop box, the location bar will display where the current drop box points, in case you forget or need to double check.

After the job is complete, DropBoxxer fades back down off screen so you don’t have to worry about it any more. Next time you need it, simply drag a file back over and it’ll automatically reappear. To exit the program, simply right-click on its task bar icon and select “Exit DropBoxxer.”

Notes About Version 0.1

Everything is currently hardcoded, so it’s not a whole lot of use to anyone other than me unless you want to get into the source code (included in the download) to make modifications. I plan to add functionality that will allow you to drag folders onto the drop area to add drop locations, or at the very least provide a menu option to that effect when you right click in the system tray. I’d also like to provide some better progress indicators when copying large files. As it stands right now, you don’t have any indication of what’s going on or how long the process is going to take.

Finally, I want to trim the file size down a bit. It’s almost an entire meg executable, which seems ridiculously large for something as simple as it is. Probably has something to do with the image files I store in there…

You can snag a copy of DropBoxxer Version 0.1 here. The zip contains an executable and the source code files/resources. The source code is crappy right now, but I will clean it up when I add the other functionality. If you make modifications to the code, please write me and let me know. DropBoxxer requires Windows XP (because of the fading and transparency effects), and requires the .NET framework (I know, I know, but seriously, there is no other way to do an application that operates in a snazzy way and integrates so closely with Windows. Java? I think not…)

Ricardo sent me this website, Mailinator.net. It’s a really cool concept for people who need to sign up for websites once or need to enter an email address on a form for some reason. You don’t need an account - you make up the name on the spot, then the account is created automatically when a message is received. Then you log in, get the message, and leave. The account is automatically deleted later! What a cool concept! Check out their website for more info.