General

Canadian accused at U.S. border of 'stealing American jobs'

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Via CBC:

A B.C. sales representative who markets equestrian products in Canada was barred from crossing the U.S. border to attend a trade show last month by a U.S. Customs and Border Protection officer who accused him of trying to steal American jobs.

“He looked at me, and in a yelling voice he said, ‘You’re friggin’ stealing jobs away from American citizens,’ and I tried telling him that I wasn’t,” Joel Borsteinas told CBC News.

Borsteinas, a Canadian citizen, said he’s been in business for 15 years, acting as a middleman between U.S. and Canadian suppliers of western wear and equestrian products and Canadian retailers who want to stock the products.

He said he goes to the U.S. half a dozen times a year to attend trade shows and meet with suppliers who want him to market their products to retailers north of the border. They pay him a commission for every Canadian order he sends to them.

As an American working for a Canadian company, I find this completely outrageous. I got to Vancouver at least once a year, and lately I’ve been thinking very seriously about moving there. My job would be a lot easier if I was working on site, and I’m getting more disgusted with this country every day because of bullshit like this, despite having a president I like & respect.

Sigma 70-300mm AF Macro Lens

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I received my Sigma 70-300mm AF Macro lens today. It was $147 from Overstock.com. For the price, it’s a good choice if you need a macro lens or an extremely long zoom. I got the non-motorized model, so AF won’t work on low-end cameras like the D40 or D60. The motorized version sells for about $30 more.

The major drawback of this lens is the extremely slow and noisy auto focus. It often seeks through the entire zoom range to focus. The lens has a macro switch providing 2x magnification, which can only be used above 200mm focal length. The lens doesn’t have an auto/manual focus switch, so you’ll have to use the M/AF switch on the camera body.

New Sigma 70-300mm lens

The lens feels very hefty and seems rugged with a rubberized surface. Mounting it on the camera can be a bit difficult, since it’s hard to grab it in an area that doesn’t rotate for focus or zoom.

Trying the Sigma 70-300mm lens

The macro mode gives a very narrow depth of field with good bokeh.

Midnight (Macro)

I have seen the gates of hell

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I usually try to help out around the condo since I’m on the board, rather than simply show up at meetings once a month. Today was one of those days.

This morning I helped prepare a building to be tented for termites. That means making sure everyone left keys, got their pets out, and double bagged all food in non-permeable bags provided by the exterminators. All units have to be opened so we can check that nothing is left that shouldn’t be there and the exterminators can put large fans in it.

One of the units went far beyond anything I’ve ever seen. I couldn’t get the door open because junk was piled so high everywhere. Every square inch of the place was completely filled with piles of junk, with the floor completely covered in crumpled newspapers. There was only one narrow path that you could walk through. It looked like what you see on the news when someone is evicted for a health or fire hazard.

This is only one tiny bit of it, probably the cleanest area. It gets a lot worse than this. I still feel sick from it.

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Netter's Dinner

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Last night was the annual Netter’s dinner, the traditional old fart’s Macworld event. As always we meet at the stairs in Moscone South, where Jon Pugh wears his traditional Hawaiian shirt and herds the crowd for the walk to Henry’s Hunan. This year I chickened out and rode, since my FastPack 250 with the D90 and Macbook was killing my back.

The crowd was smaller than usual this year, only 30 people, so we were packed into a smaller room down stairs instead of the usual upstairs hall.

After dinner we had the usual survey and free swag. When the Netter’s dinner started in 1985, the survey asked things like “how many people have an email address”. This year the questions were more like “how many have only one email address” and “how many have a personal email address”.

Free Swag included a complete set of Take Control books on a CD and Christopher Allen’s iPhone Development book (which I got and will review when I get home).

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WordPress 2.7 Released

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WordPress 2.7 “Coltrane” has been officially released. This version greatly improves the administrative functions, improves the performance, and adds new capabilities such as sticky posts. If you’re running any beta version of WordPress 2.7 you can update to the final version with a single button from the dashboard.

WordPress 2.7 is available!
Uploaded with plasq‘s Skitch!

I upgraded both this site and MacMegasite in less than a minute.

Apple has dropped their F***ING NDA!

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Apple has finally dropped their ridiculous NDA which has plagued iPhone developers.

From http://developer.apple.com/iphone/program/

We have decided to drop the non-disclosure agreement (NDA) for released iPhone software.

We put the NDA in place because the iPhone OS includes many Apple inventions and innovations that we would like to protect, so that others don’t steal our work. It has happened before. While we have filed for hundreds of patents on iPhone technology, the NDA added yet another level of protection. We put it in place as one more way to help protect the iPhone from being ripped off by others.

However, the NDA has created too much of a burden on developers, authors and others interested in helping further the iPhone’s success, so we are dropping it for released software. Developers will receive a new agreement without an NDA covering released software within a week or so. Please note that unreleased software and features will remain under NDA until they are released.

Slow motion train wreck

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Whenever I watch an interview with Sarah Palin I feel like I’m watching a slow motion train wreck. She actually makes Dan Quayle seem intelligent and articulate. When McCain picked her, I lost what little respect I still had for him. There has to be more qualified people he could have picked. Choosing Sarah Palin was one of his most transparent political moves.