The bad news (well for you at least) is that I did so by pumping lots of emailed URLS into my del.icio.us bookmarks… *blush*

So, if you’re not very development or Ruby inclined, I’d skip my linkpost that’ll come up later today from del.icio.us…

Have a good weekend!!!

Thanks to crappy UI design by NewEgg.com, I was able to solve the mystery! See, unlike other stores who actually take the time to try to auth your credit card inline with the store flow, NewEgg does not. And to add to their crappiness, they also don’t email you when your credit card auth subsequently fails. You have to go to their site and wade through several screens to see an unexplained “Attention” link next to your order.  I was lucky enought to notice this, since I had ordered something I was pretty anxious to receive.

Oddly enough their crappy multi auth flow is what helped crack this nut.  Other sites I just switch cards upon failure chalking it up to the mystery.  They wouldn’t let me switch cards on the order, even after calling in…

They had also required that I create an account to order and apply a coupon code I received.  Somewhat fair if they want to limit the code, but I could just create another account, so that methoid is a really poor control.  Now, you all know me as Myk.  That’s how I spell my name.  My legal name is Michael, but when I create accounts, I use my common name, since that is how I prefer to be addressed.  That is what has been wreaking havoc.  I won’t go into details over the whole debacale about why I had to remove the apostrophe from my last name online due to even worse usability issues on major web sites (think SQL escaping folks…)
These stupid sites use my account information name (Myk OLeary) as the name they pass for the credit card authorization INSTEAD OF the specifically requested, and correctly filled out CARDHOLDER NAME (Michael OLeary) field I filled out in the order flow.  This abbreviated nickname is unfamiliar, and unused by more than about 6-10 people in the world.

So to all E-Commerce sites (especially large ones like NewEgg.com) - ask for and use the cardholder name provided during the order flow to get a credit card auth, not some randomly provided incorrect account name.  I mean, what if I was using my mom’s or my wife’s card to order???  Time to get your heads out of your butts and make your sites work FOR your customers instead of AGAINST them!!!

Well, the issue lies in its use of Rails’ ActionMailer gem. It seems there is a particularly annoying bug in that ActionMailer unassumedly gobbles up certain common headers, even if properly set and replaces them with default settings (or rather, ignores them.)  There’s a patch in the bug, but we prefer to keep as clean a version of Rails as possible to make upgrading and versioning much easier for our production environment.  Note that even though the referenced bug may not seem to apply, the root problem causes both this issue and the one described in the bug (and another for using the proper headers to help thread conversations using In-Reply-To headers).
The solution lies in the RDocs for ActionMailer, so I’m very surprised that no one else has mentioned this solution yet.  It’s so easy of one I kicked myself for taking so long to find it.  Basically, instead of trying to set the Content-Type header, you need to set the @content-type variable equal to “text/html” in the action you have which sets up your email before it gets sent.  Don’t forget that SMTP RFCs say you need a “Mime-Version: 1.0″ header when setting the content-type header.  Below is the code to insert into your setup action, or the action you use to send the mail if you don’t have an action to setup from, etc…

@content_type = “text/html”
@headers[’Mime-Version’] = 1.0

As an additonal tip, don’t forget to make sure your from address is properly formatted.  It should include a name AND email address of the form:

@from = “My Email Address Name <user@domain.com>”

This will make sure that your email is less readily identified as spam.

Sometimes I want a regular old cup of coffee, or a cup with some custom grounds (there’s a great roaster in San Francisco, but they don’t make pods…) It’s not easily done with the Senseo (or others like the Black & Decker and Keurig versions)
My answer was to do some research and find refillable coffee pods that can be used in single serve coffee machines. I plan on reviewing them all, but initial indications have me leaning towards favoring the myPod since it can make a double cup.

If you’re looking for the same thing, please follow this link to find refillable coffe pods at RefillableCoffeePods.com (my new store )

You can also buy a new Senseo Coffee Machine Gift Pack while you’re there if you’ve been thinking about getting one.  Just click on the picture over there on the left (or go to my store - it’s on the front page.)

The whole family is coming for this one - we’re taking the opportunity to make this a vacation to San Francisco.  We were able to book into the Trendwest downtown.  If you want to get together while I’m in town shoot me an e-mail.

BTW - anybody from the area have any commuting tips for the soutbound trip from SF to Mountain View on a weekday??

The good side of our company is that we have all the free coffee you can drink.  The bad side (for me) is that there is no decaf, nor will there ever be.  Here’s where the dilemna comes in.  I much prefer to support local coffee shops, but I have yet to find ANY that offer up drip decaf.  I can get all the decaf Americanos for the price of drip that I want, but I don’t like Americanos.

What do all of you prefer - French Press or a coffee steeper (a la tea)?  I won’t go instant, and I want to do my best to avoid Starbucks even though they are the only place that offers drip decaf.

In regards to soda - caffeine avoiders have more choices than you would think.  See below for all the caffeine free soda drinks.

How Much Caffeine in Drinks — Coffee, Tea, Soft Drinks — Caffeine Content

Diet Rite Cola, Sprite, 7-Up, Mug Root Beer, Diet Barq’s Root Beer, Sundrop Orange, Minute Maid Orange, A&W Root Beer, Slice, Sierra Mist, Fresca

My current alternative is water - lots and lots of water.  I’m talking like 9-12 cups a day.  I need to get some more variety.

technorati tags: coffee, caffeine, soda

I’d been hearing about it peripherally for 6-9 months or so due to the whole Web 2.0 explosion. About 5 months ago I was at a PHP meetup which just happens to share its space with the Seattle Ruby Brigade.  One guy came over and many feathers were ruffled.  I was even more intrigued.  Since then I’d heard more and more about its power.  Now, this weekend, I saw some .rb source code for several projects and had to rub my jaw after picking it up off the ground.

So, what’s next?  Learning it of course!  I already have MySQL and Apache installed on my Powerbook (the new builds, custom buiilt - not the preinstalled ones).  I also have PHP built, but that doesn’t matter much for this learning exercise.

One of the first steps I go through when learning something new is lining up my resources.  In about 30 minutes, you’ll see today’s del.icio.us bookmarks of mine get posted to my blog by del.icio.us’ auto poster.  I have source code locations, download points, mailing lists, links, user groups, documentation, and more.

I’ll post up more entries as I go through the next steps of picking a project, designing it, coding it, etc. I’ll let you know what I like about Ruby, what is hard, what is easy.

So, while I have a few minutes of down time between bug fixes, I wanted to throw up a list of topics that interest me.  I may not have time to repost on the session ideas page, but I’ll try to.  At the very least this is my own mental list.

Even if you don’t have time to come, or geographically can’t, I suggest taking a bit of time to list out your own topics of interest.  Doing so here has got me thinking about all of them in a much deeper manner.

1) Auto tagging mechanisms.  Riya has done a great job at jump starting one side of this equation, but there is much more to go.  For example -  using the GPS EXIF data some cameras can embed to help auto tag photos with location data.
2) Micro tagging.  There might be a better (or existing phrase) that explains this.  Basically, it’s a way to tag tags such that they can express even more information.  For example, If I’m rating a restaurant on JudysBook, I could tag it as accessible, but then tag that tag with a rating that shows how accessible it is.  The concept isn’t limited to rating levels…
3) Content sharing and its interesting applications.  What is there on the spectrum between photos and videos that makes content interesting?
4) Social content recommendations based upon my own dataset.  For example, an app or site that takes as input my bookmarks, tagged data, OPML files, etc and kicks out recommendations to sites, media, content, etc that match profiles of other people with similar datasets.
5) Alternative data retrieval methods.  For example, I use zaptxt.com to SMS my phone when RSS feeds are updated.  I get some great deals off of Craigslist by doing this.  I know when there’s a new MacZot, I know what the new Woot! is, etc…  I have a filter that sends me information when and where I need it.  Now if I could only have a wifi enabled media player that auto updated itself with new podcasts… J
6) Taking smart playlists to the next level by allowing for smart formats.  For example, I’d love to create a “radio channel” in say iTunes that allowed me to specify that it would play a track from among my news podcasts on the 15, had say a mashup every 45 minutes, played a track from the Onion after every news cast, etc…  It’s smart playlists taken to the next level.  I think it’s possible using Mac OS X’s Automator, but I just need to create a few more iTunes actions first.  This is slowly climbing its way to the top of my must tackle list.
7) Data cleansing.  I recently used EatMyBrainz and ArtFetch for the Mac to clean up my library of horribly hacked mp3 files.  A lot of them were ripped by some of the first mp3 rippers created.  Most had no artwork, a lot were missing album, track and/or artist information.  Now, with very little interaction, almost my entire library is in a proper format with artwork.  I no longer have to try to remember exactly who sings the song “track 5″.

I guess they all in a way lead into the encompassing ideas of information storage, collaboration, and retrieval. How can I make my data more accessible to other people and myself without adding much more (if any) effort in facilitating that on any one person.  How do I automate my life and make things easier?

UPDATE / Editor’s note: Whoops! It looks like we got duped. It seems that this list of 20 originally was posted at MacNN as part of an April Fool’s joke. Sorry about the mix up. Nonetheless, the supposed upcoming features make for good conversation (as seen on digg).

eHomeUpgrade has a list of supposed features for Leopard (OS 10.5) Given the intro below, it seems fairly correct:

Rumors are floating around about significant Apple OS X updates that could possibly blow the doors off of Windows Vista in the near future. Of particular interest are numbers 2, 6, 11, and 17 in the following list provided by a confidential source working with Apple. Caution: You may want to monitor your heart-rate while reading.

Disclosure Agreement (NDA) with Apple precludes me from revealing proprietary detail, but because most, if not all, of this is posted elsewhere and is commonly available, I have no problems with confirming the following. Still, please don’t quote me.

Good golly miss Molly. This list is HOT! I’m particularly digging 6, 7, 8 11, 18, 19, and as an employee at a home networking company number 17:

17. Airport (Extreme only) will notify you via the airport icon flashing in the menu bar if your signal is being hijacked or used by anyone other than you authorized.

eHomeUpgrade | Future Apple OS X Rumors Look Promising