According to Fox News, there is some fuzzy math going on in West Virginia at the moment…
…and now Massachusetts
Super Tuesday: Fuzzy math in West Virginia
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Category Archives: In the news
The $7.5 million dollar host
I read a lot of articles and blogs everyday using Google Reader. I had about 500 articles this morning, but this was definitely one of the more interesting ones. Dreamhost accidentally billed every single customer as if today was 12/31/2008 because somebody fat fingered the manual running of the automatic billing system. In all, customers were overcharged by $7,500,000 in just a few hours. Wow. Wrong button buddy. Sadly (to me at least), he blames the programmer for letting him make such a mistake. This is why client side validation is so important I guess and a few extra “Are you sure?” prompts can’t hurt. If nothing else, they are being transparent about the whole thing, which is good and more then I can say about some companies *cough* Prosper *cough*.
Not that I have room to talk. I’ve been known to shutdown an entire server room with one very well misplaced footstep behind the server cabinets. The still of the air and silence was deafening to say the least.
Update #1: Dreamhost obviously hasn’t learned their lesson on humility.
Photo courtesy of whitehouse.gov
Humans and their tools
We are the species that has mastered tools. Shouldn’t we be proud of ourselves!?
SOUTHWORTH, Wash. — A man trying to loosen a stubborn lug nut blasted the wheel with a 12-gauge shotgun, injuring himself badly in both legs, Kitsap County sheriff’s deputies said.
The 66-year-old man had been repairing a Lincoln Continental for two weeks at his home northwest of Southworth and east of Port Orchard and had gotten all but one of the lug nuts off the right rear wheel before getting frustrated Saturday afternoon, Deputy Scott Wilson said.
“He’s bound and determined to get that lug nut off,” Wilson said.
From about arm’s length the man fired the shotgun at the wheel and was “peppered” in both legs with 00 buckshot and other debris, with some injuries as high on his body as his chin, according to a sheriff’s office report.
“Nobody else was there and he wasn’t intoxicated,” Wilson said.
South Kitsap Fire and Rescue personnel treated the man at the scene before he was taken to Tacoma General Hospital with injuries Wilson described as “severe but not life-threatening.”
He said deputies were unable to get a full statement from the man, relying only on what they could learn while medics treated him at the scene.
“I don’t think he was in any condition to say anything,” Wilson said. “The pain was so severe, and the shock.”
Wouldn’t you have just wanted to have been there to see that? What was he thinking?
Source: Statesman Journal via AP
Code Snippets
Just some stuff I picked up along the way…
- The popular Aptana IDE goes 1.0. I used some of the previous milestones and really enjoyed the javascript debugging and syntax highlighting. Not to mention, it comes packaged with jQuery.
- Wireless SD cards for your digital camera. Do you know how much fun I could have with one of these? Not to mention your 14 year old 1337 “hacker” neighbor.
- IMAP for gMail. Sadly, not for me yet, I’ve tried every trick in the book.
- Prosper announces second loans and rate cap increases. Prosper forums are “Code Orange: Escalating Tensions. Heavy-handed Mod./Irrational Thread-Locks/Acts of Defiance.”
- Web Application Security by Joe Walker. Great resource coming out of The Ajax Experience.
iPhone: Will it blend?
I’ve tried to stay out of the iPhone hype, but this is just too cool.