Moo! The Musings of a Plaid Cow

> _”How did you get so successful?_
> “Good Judgement.”
> _”How did you get good judgement?_
> “Experience.”
> _”How did you get experience?_
> “Bad Judgement.”

Taken from [Done!](http://www.amazon.com/Done-Accomplish-Twice-Time-at-Office/dp/1593375077/) by [Don Aslett](http://www.donaslett.com/)

Dear Valued Customer,

Since we bought out your bank that you liked and gave you a bank you never asked for in the first place, we have found that you are not giving us enough of your money. Effective in two months we will begin soaking your formerly free checking account with a $6 monthly fee. Neener, neener, neener.

Since we just you though the pain of switching all your automatic payments to a new checking account number two years ago, we don’t think you’ll be in a hurry to change banks and do it again. We hope you enjoy remaining a customer and encourage you to bend over and [take it up the ass](http://www.oldnational.com/) each and every time you see one of our signs.

— The Staff at Old National Bank

With this nice helpful dialog, where’s the “I’ll Fix It For You” button?


Or at least a `Help` button to tell me how to enable the template for this document.

Between using [Handbrake](http://handbrake.fr/) on Windows and on OSX, I have found the UI differences to be maddening. (For the most part, I like the OSX GUI better, except when it comes to extracting more than four audio tracks and when it comes to importing chapter titles.)

To (sort of) automate the process of importing chapter titles into Handbrake, I created the following workflow (for OSX):

1. Find the movie on [Barnes and Noble](http://video.barnesandnoble.com/dvds/index.asp?)
2. Copy the chapter listing (that looks similar to this):

1. Main Title [5:56]
2. “Happiness Hotel” [11:25]
3. Lady Holiday’s Office [8:13]

3. Paste into TextMate.
4. Find `^[0-9]*\\. (.*) \\[.*\\]$` and replace with `$1` (be sure regular expressions are enabled)
5. Copy the resulting chapter titles (which have had the number and time stripped off)
6. In Handbrake, start editing the first chapter name
7. Run the “Paste Chapter Titles” script and watch as all of the chapter titles are pasted in the correct location.

-- Get the chapter titles from the clipboard
set oldDelims to AppleScript's text item delimiters
set AppleScript's text item delimiters to {return}
set chapterTitles to every text item of (the clipboard)
set AppleScript's text item delimiters to oldDelims

tell application "HandBrake" to activate
repeat with ct in chapterTitles
  tell application "System Events" to tell process "Handbrake" to keystroke (ct & return)
  delay 0.04 * (length of ct)
end repeat

Yes, I realize that the [MetaX][] tool would work well–if I was using a M4V wrapper. But I’m not. The [WDTV Live][3] I have doesn’t support chapters in the M4V container.

[MetaX]: http://www.kerstetter.net/page53/page54/page54.html
[3]: http://www.wdc.com/en/products/products.asp?driveid=735

I was looking online for my AT&T statement (which closed on Monday) and found this bit of information:

> it may take 8-10 days before invoice details are accessible for your online account. Please allow ample time for your bill to be available online.

Eight to ten days? For what? Data fermentation? This isn’t a fine wine, and just the day before the statement closed I could review all of the current billing information that was going to be added to the bill.

Here’s a hint: If your #1 FAQ is [Where is my current bill?](http://www.wireless.att.com/answer-center/main.jsp?t=solutionTab&solutionId=KB100271), you’ve got a problem.

With the Formula 1 race this weekend, much was made of the return of the [107%](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/107%25_rule) rule both before and after [Mark Webber’s Flying Lap](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g7m-Ci_oaJo). It was insinuated that if the rule had been in place this year, then this accident may not have happened. Perhaps people need to look a bit closer at the math.

Under the 107% rule, given the top qualifying speed in Q1 of 01:38:132, all cars with a qualifying speed below 01:45.001 would be allowed to race. This is all of the cars that attempted to qualify. You have to take it down to the 104% rule (01:42.057) to keep out the four slowest cars–and that doesn’t include the one that Mark Webber ran in to. To keep Heikki Kovalainen’s Lotus out of the race, they would have to enact a 102% rule, and that just seems a bit silly.

I have a 200 KB MS Word document and insert a 800 KB MS Visio document into it, giving me an 8500 KB MS Word document. I’ll update this post if I ever find out what the other 7500 KB was needed for.

\* Handling fee of $8.99 – $10.99 applies.

What the big print giveth, the small print taketh away…

This site has a nice [Dilbert Strip Search](http://www.bfmartin.ca/finder/index.jsp)–sure to come in handy in the future.

void main( void ) {
  int godot = 1;
  while ( 4 != godot ) {
    wait (1);
  }
}