Nobrainer’s Think Tank

Received this solicitation recently from a charity recently:

“Make one gift now and we’ll never ask for another donation again!”

Umm. Thanks?

Somehow this made it through some filters:

Knowing that my engineering curriculums lack of marinating in Finance and Accounting, I studied CFA level I curriculums hard and passed the test last year so as to expand my knowledge in Finance and Accounting.

For something like 2 years, I have received 2 auto-generated work emails each and every day. I have been unable to auto-filter them because the emails have no subject / empty subject / missing subject. Not that I’ve spent much time on it, but over that period I have been unable to figure out how to have the filter recognize the lack of a subject. Today I finally cracked the code.

In SquirrelMail, the filtering options are these:

• contains
• does not contain
• is
• is not
• matches wildcard
• does not match wildcard
• > is greater than
• >= is greater than or equal to
• > is lower than
• >= is lower than or equal to
• = is equal to
• != is not equal to
• matches regexp
• does not match regexp

In the past I had attempted to use “contains” and then leave the field empty. No dice. Same thing for “is”. Specifying that the subject “is” “null” or “is” “empty” didn’t work. Nor did saying the subject “is” “(no subject)” (as the subject is displayed in the folder view) nor the subject “contains” “(no subject)”.

Recently I suspected the key must be to use the regular expression matching. Alas the “^$” filter did not work, I suspect because there are no empty spaces in the subject line because there literally is no subject and it therefore cannot contain any empty spaces.

Finally, after reading up a bit on the subject (no pun intended), I finally figured out that the wildcard was the key. The ultimate winner was “does not match wildcard” “*”.

I love simple solutions. I just hate it when it takes me forever to find it.

UPDATE 2011-12-26: Back to the drawing board. This worked in trial conditions but has been otherwise failing. Dagnabit!

In a survey due out Wednesday, the U.S. Travel Association asked airline passengers what bugs them most about flying; Seven out of 10 said it was people who bring too many carry-on bags through security.

Who the fuck are those seven people? If they asked me about the things I liked least about flying, I’m not sure that other people’s luggage would even crack the top 10.

Fortunately, it appears that the survey might be fine, and that it is instead the geniuses at CBS who have reading comprehension problem:

Although passengers are supportive of TSA’s new screening initiatives, four of the top five frustrations of air traveler [sic] relate to the security screening process. When asked to list their top five frustrations with air travel:
• 72.4 percent chose “people who bring too many carry-on bags through the security checkpoint”;
• 70.4 percent chose “uncomfortable seating on an airplane”;
• 68 percent chose “the wait time to clear the TSA checkpoint”;
• 62.3 percent chose “having to remove shoes, belts and jackets at the TSA checkpoint”; and
• 42.5 percent chose “TSA employees who are not friendly”.

I’d still like to see the survey since I imagine the 604 people who completed the survey were likely given options to choose from rather than free form to list things. Knowing what the options were might inform the outcome. I still have a hard time thinking that people really care that much about the issue.

I’m becoming a bit hesitant to upgrade my versions of Firefox and Thunderbird. It seems with each new version there is some little change that really throws me off (or it has my add-ons disabled for bit to throw me off). My upgrade to Thunderbird 8 was no exception. In the new version I was having problems finding the quick filter functionality. Turns out there was a good reason: one of the stupid old additions was fixed:

There are also new Search and Find keyboard shortcuts alongside numerous security patches and bug fixes.

The new keyboard shortcuts have come about due to an ambiguity between using the [Ctrl] + [F] shortcut to both search using the Quick Filter and within individual messages depending on what was selected. Now [Ctrl] + [F] is used specifically to search within selected messages; to search using the Quick Filter bar, use the brand new [Ctrl] + [Shift] + [K] shortcut instead.

It always bugged me that [Ctrl] + [F] did different things. I think the search functions in Thunderbird still need a lot of help, but this is a god start.

Thanks to BetaNews for having the scoop.

… but I seriously can’t make it past the first 2 paragraphs. The Audacity of Occupy Wall Street, from the very beginning:

A few years ago, Joe Therrien, a graduate of the NYC Teaching Fellows program, was working as a full-time drama teacher at a public elementary school in New York City.

Public elementaryschools in NYC have (or at some point had) full-time drama teachers? Are you serious?

Frustrated by huge class sizes, sparse resources and a disorganized bureaucracy,

and ignorant to the fact that he was probably lucky to have a job anyway,

he set off to the University of Connecticut to get an MFA in his passion—puppetry.

Always a wise investment.

Three years and $35,000 in student loans later, he emerged with degree in hand, and because puppeteers aren’t exactly in high demand, he went looking for work at his old school.

I always get a little nervous thinking that teachers of our children can make such bad personal decisions. Is this from the Nation or the Onion?

Paragraph 2

Like a lot of the young protesters who have flocked to Occupy Wall Street, Joe had thought that hard work and education would bring, if not class mobility, at least a measure of security (indeed, a master’s degree can boost a New York City teacher’s salary by $10,000 or more).

So there you go. Because our fully functional education system provides raises based on credit hours and not so much on ability to teach this guy thought it was a lock that 3 years at puppetry school would pay off handsomely. And had he been a few years ahead of the curve, he might have been right. So naturally, this is all Wall Street’s fault.