User:Traal

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My Userboxes
This user is a software engineer.
This user lives in the state of Arizona.
en This user is a native speaker of English.
ja-3 この利用者は上級の日本語を話すことができます。
enm-1 This led knoweth sumhwet of Englyssh.
Ix This user is not able sat­isfactorily to explain what a Hrung is, nor why it should choose to collapse on Betelgeuse Seven.

Template:User ix-hrung

My name is Traal, after that other Traal. I've had this handle since roughly 1990 on Phoenix-area Galacticomm BBSes.

Contents

[edit] People I Admire

[edit] Userboxes I've Created

Feel free to add the following userbox to your own user page:


Code Result
{{User:Traal/Template:ix-hrung}}
Ix This user is not able sat­isfactorily to explain what a Hrung is, nor why it should choose to collapse on Betelgeuse Seven.

Originally it was the global userbox {{user ix-hrung}}, but it got deleted 10 minutes after I created it because nobody was using it at the time except me. (Go figure.) Once enough people are using it, the global one can be reinstated.


[edit] Arizona

Arizona is famous for:

Semiconductor fabs and R&D locations in Arizona

Other things I like about Arizona

Arizona is infamous for:

  • The heat (in the summer)
  • The illegal immigration controversy
  • Hit-and-runs (see the map here)
  • Road rage[1][2]
  • Really bad public transportation
  • Poor standardized test scores[3]
  • Urban sprawl (almost as bad as Los Angeles) and the urban heat island effect
  • Phoenix's brown cloud, a layer of pollution containing smog and dust, which frequently violates EPA air pollution standards[4]
  • Tap water. Phoenix came in dead last in Men's Health Magazine's March 2007 ratings of the water in 100 cities[5]. I can't stand the taste, so I drink only RO or bottled water as even carbon filtering isn't good enough. And the tap water is cold in the winter and warm in the summer.
  • High incidence of auto thefts.[1]
  • Expensive commutes. [2]
  • Pedestrian fatalities. [3]
  • Lack of after dark activities (#23 out of 25 cities in the USA), culture (#24), food/dining (#24), and interesting people (#24), according to Travel+Lesure Magazine's America's Favorite Cities 2007.
  • Unwalkability. Phoenix ranks #26 out of 30 metropolitan areas in walkability.[4]

Things to do in Phoenix

[edit] San Diego

Likes

  • Diversity
  • Walkability (in some areas)
  • The weather (for the most part)

Neutral

  • The high cost of gas (good for hybrids and alternate forms of transportation)

Dislikes

  • Crime (in some neighborhoods such as City Heights, Clairemont Mesa)
  • Cost of housing (especially buying instead of renting, especially Mello-Roos) in proportion to income
  • Freeway congestion (especially the I-5)[5]
  • Bad schools (allegedly, in some areas)
  • Political corruption[6][7][8][9][10]
  • All the potholes[11]
  • May Gray and June Gloom
  • Poor support for bicycling according to The League of American Bicyclists
  • "San Diego ranks third in the nation in the percentage of traffic fatalities that are pedestrians (22.5%). The region is also among the highest in the state in the percentage of pedestrian crashes (20%) involving hit-and-run drivers."[12]
  • Scary public transportation: "I took the orange line from El Cajon to downtown one day and it was the most terrifying, disgusting experience of my life. It was full of drunk homeless people urinating on themselves & unemployed thugs arranging drug deals by phone. Never again." [6]
  • Unsynchronized traffic lights
  • Urban sprawl in Mission Valley and northwards
  • Poor traffic signage: missing freeway exit numbers, signs approaching freeway onramps don't indicate compass directions or the lane you need to be in in order to get onto the freeway in that direction
  • Not a global city

[edit] How to Choose a Country to which to Immigrate

[edit] Keyboard

These days, computer keyboards need the following additional keys/buttons:

  • Multiple select (on Windows, the CTRL key is used for multiple select; in MacOS, the apple/⌘ button is used)
  • Block select (because SHIFT isn't self-explanatory)
  • Copy (Windows is CTRL-C; MacOS is ⌘-C)
  • Paste (Windows is CTRL-P; MacOS is ⌘-P)
  • (optional) Cut (Windows is CTRL-X; MacOS is ⌘-X)
  • Degree sign (°)
  • Sleep
  • Lock workstation (Windows-L)
  • Minimize current window
  • Go to next/previous window (Alt-Tab and Alt-Shift-Tab)
  • Go to the next/previous field in a form (to replace Tab/Shift Tab)
  • Left and right double and single quotes
  • Something to make entering latin characters easy
  • Several reprogrammable buttons for things like the euro symbol
  • Mdash (—)

Some keys can be removed:

  • Only one of ENTER or RETURN are needed
  • Pipe (|) - this can be moved to one of the reprogrammable keys
  • Carot (^) - who uses this, other than programmers?
  • Curly braces ({ and })
  • Scroll lock
  • SysRq
  • Prnt Scrn

[edit] My Politics

I advocate:

  • States' rights (move more power from the federal government back to the individual states)
  • Self-sufficiency of the states: end Federal money to the states[7].
  • Consensus over compromise
  • Currency reform:
    • Eliminate the penny and nickel
    • Replace the quarter with a 20¢ coin
    • Round all transactions to the nearest 10¢ ($0.1)
    • Eliminate the dollar bill
    • Make the half dollar coin smaller
    • Replace the $2 bill with a coin
    • Make the rest of the paper money easy for the blind to distinguish
  • Government finance reform:
    • Make fees collected by the government proportional to the cost to the government.
    • Eliminate subsidies in favor of user pays.
    • Make tariffs on an item proportional to how many of that item are imported into the country as a ratio of the total number consumed, and make tariffs adjust themselves periodically, automatically.
    • Eliminate protectionistic policies, except where absolutely necessary.
    • Eliminate the "throwing money at the problem" style of disaster relief (like the handling of Hurricane Katrina).
    • Eliminate financing of local projects. Help the states plan and finance interstate roads themselves.
  • Immigration reform:
    • First, streamline the green card approval process.
    • Neither expel nor grant green cards to all current illegal immigrants. It would take too many resources to do either one. Require that all illegal aliens register with the INS, and either participate in a guest worker program, apply for a green card, or leave the country.
    • Illegal immigrant kids who have spent so much time in the U.S. that they have been culturally assimilated and would feel alien in their home countries should be granted citizenship or permanent residency.
    • Scale back the H-1B visa program. Instead, prioritize technology workers for green cards if we need to.
  • Welfare and social security reform:
    • Abolish the minimum wage.
    • Stop giving away money to the poor and to disaster victims. Instead, provide life's necessities (housing, clothing, food, medical care, mailing address, telephone, internet access) directly in boarding school style housing. People under this program would pay a percentage of any money they make to the program.
    • Abolish the social security retirement benefits, but keep the disability benefits. People who haven't saved properly can move into the boarding school welfare program (see above).
  • Election reform:
    • Eliminate plurality election methods.
    • Provide receipts with unique, anonymous ballot IDs to each voter, and publish all ballot IDs along with the way the person voted. Then anyone would be able to verify that their ballot was counted, how it was counted, and even do a complete recount of all the returned ballots.
    • Replace manual districting with algorithmic districting.
    • À la carte propositions. Lumping provisions together into a single bill when they could be split out into separate bills (in other words, riders) restricts voter choice and is therefore anti-democratic.
  • Labor reform:
    • Union-busting by turning employees into contractors (and not renewing contracts of bad employees). I I respect the right of people to form unions, but I also agree with right-to-work laws (people shouldn't be forced to join unions).
  • Energy policy reform:
    • Energy independence
    • Eliminate the 54¢/gallon ethanol tariff on Brazilian ethanol
    • Eliminate subsidies on automobile transportation[8]
  • Bank-style queues instead of supermarket-style queues
  • Rather than restricting supply of something "bad", encourage demand for the "good" alternative. For example, fuel economy standards restrict supplies of gas-guzzlers (bad), while a carbon tax would encourage demand for more fuel-efficient vehicles (good).
  • Toll roads (with tolls proportional to income) instead of freeways
  • Prevent caller ID spoofing by making telephone companies verify that caller ID on outgoing calls matches the owner of the telephone line.

[edit] Attributes of a Responsible Health Insurance Plan

Criteria Private Health Insurance Health Savings Account Single-Payer
Affordable premiums fails for the poor passes passes
Affordable copays fails for people who are both poor and chronically sick fails for the poor and the chronically sick passes
Timely healthcare passes passes fails (at least in Canada; problem might be implementation-specific)
Encourages competition among healthcare providers to provide the best service at the lowest price fails passes fails
Avoids the classic conflict of interest where insurance companies decline reimbursement in order to boost their own bottom lines fails fails for catastrophic and chronic medical conditions passes
Encourages people to take care of themselves fails for the rich passes passes (but only when health care isn't timely)

[edit] List of new zip codes

Based on postal bulletins. Type in "establish a new zip" (with the quotes) and select the years you want.

[edit] Postal Bulletin 22154 - May 12, 2005

  • 85396 (from 85326)
  • 85388 (from 85374)
  • 85209 (from 85208)
  • 85243 (from 85242)
  • 85757 (from 85746)
  • 86409 (from 86401)
  • 85755 (from 85737)
  • 92344 (from 92345)
  • 92010 (from 92008)
  • 92011 (from 92009)
  • 06042 (from 06040)
  • 06461 (from 06460)
  • 34692 (from 34690)
  • 50023 (from 50021)
  • 60586 (from 60544)
  • 60585 (from 60544)
  • 60505 (from 60504)
  • 60503 (from 60504)
  • 60502 (from 60504)
  • 46037 (from 46038)
  • 21409 (from 21401)
  • 49528 (from 49512)
  • 49534 (from 49544)
  • 48638 (from 48603)
  • 48193 (from 48192)
  • 48168 (from 48167)
  • 63368 (from 63304, 63366)
  • 89077 (from 89052)
  • 89161 (from 89199)
  • 89165 (from 89199)
  • 89105 (from 89123)
  • 89140 (from 89199)
  • 37934 (from 37922)
  • 22025 (from 22026)
  • 98391 (from 98390)
  • 98087 (from 98037)

[edit] Favorite Software Development Topics

[edit] Web Form Test

HTML Test for any web form that supposedly allows plaintext. If you copy and paste the following text into a web form, it should come back out looking exactly as it did going in:

Ampersand (and entity reference open delimiter): [&]
Escaped ampersand: [&]
Angle brackets (tag delimiters in HTML): [< >]
Escaped angle brackets: [&lt; &gt;]
Script tag: [<script>]
Custom XML tag: [<hello>]

Note that Wikipedia is buggy in this regard (see [9]). Notice how for example the ampersand and escaped ampersand are rendered the same:

Ampersand (and entity reference open delimiter): [&]
Escaped ampersand: [&]
Angle brackets (tag delimiters in HTML): [< >]
Escaped angle brackets: [< >]
Script tag: [<script>]
Custom XML tag: [<hello>]

See [10] for a Wikimedia bugzilla entry related to this.

[edit] Things I'm looking forward to

[edit] References

  1. ^ "Road Rage Survey Reveals Best, Worst Cities", 2006-05-16. Retrieved on 2007-03-01. 
  2. ^ In the Driver's Seat: 2007 AutoVantage Road Rage Survey.
  3. ^ Kossan, Pat. "Arizona gets mostly Ds in U.S. education report", The Arizona Republic, 2007-03-01. Retrieved on 2007-03-01. 
  4. ^ Bahr, Sandy. "Sandy Bahr: Politics pollute cleanup efforts", East Valley Tribune, 2007-10-14. Retrieved on 2007-10-14. 
  5. ^ "How clean is your drinking water?", Men's Health Magazine, 2007-03. Retrieved on 2007-03-01. 
  6. ^ McCarthy, Terry. "Dick Murphy / San Diego", Time Inc., 2005-04-17. Retrieved on 2007-05-01. 
  7. ^ Hall, Matthew T.. "Council member calls report on city practices 'devastating'", Union-Tribune Publishing Co., 2007-05-01. Retrieved on 2007-05-01. 
  8. ^ Vigil, Jennifer. "City issues second financial statement", Union-Tribune Publishing Co., 2007-06-04. Retrieved on 2007-06-04. 
  9. ^ Lee, Mike. "City pays $1.59 million water bill late", Union-Tribune Publishing Co., 2007-06-06. Retrieved on 2007-06-06. 
  10. ^ "City's Crime Rate Based On Inaccurate Stats?", 10News.com, 2004. Retrieved on 2007-10-01. 
  11. ^ Hall, Matthew, T.. "City: 37 percent of streets in acceptable driving condition", Union-Tribune Publishing Co., 2007-05-02. Retrieved on 2007-05-03. 
  12. ^ Pedestrian tragedy hits close to home (PDF). Footnotes. Retrieved on 2007-06-14.